Google Articles by SEO Speedwagon

November 23, 2009

Google Indexes Its Own Toolbar Content(?)

I don't think this is a particularly big deal, but I am fascinated by crawler behavior and the wheres and whys of crawlers not honoring sites' specific robots directives.

And it makes it even more interesting when the robot and the site belong to the same company.

A few weeks ago, I was trying to find out exactly when Google overtook Yahoo in the race for search engine market share. (It's not important why, but it will help you understand why I was searching for such an odd phrase.)

I ended up searching for this query:

["google passes yahoo" "search market share" 2004]

And the results page looked like this:

If you click over, you can clearly see that we're in the /archivesearch portion of the toolbar.google.com site:

If you go to the Google Toolbar site's robots.txt file, however, you'll see that this portion is supposed to be off-limits to Googlebot:

(Note: This robots.txt file also has certain "allow" commands, but none that should pertain to this particular page.)

But wait. Couldn't this just be an "uncrawled reference" -- that rare-but-easily-recreated instance where Google indexes pages based on incoming links, but doesn't actually crawl the page, so therefore still honors the robots.txt exclusion protocol?

No, I don't think so, at least in this case. Uncrawled references are generally don't have snippets attached to them, and if you look at the SERP above, you'll see a snipped pulled from deep within the actual page:

I'm not claiming to know each subtle nuance of uncrawled references, but I study robots exclusion pretty closely, and this is the first instance I've seen of a section from within an excluded page being used as its snippet.

I'm certainly willing to concede that Google just happened to find this information somewhere else and attribute it to this page, but part of me making that concession is someone proving that it actually happened. I'm not tied to any particular outcome; I'd just like to learn more about why this happens.

Google Indexes Its Own Toolbar Content(?)
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May 27, 2009

Dafforn First to Discover Google Changes Profile Hop from 302 to 301

I am happy to report I am not the only one so oddly obsessed; money quote:

About three weeks ago, [John Lustina] noted that Google numerical-based URLs were redirecting to custom profiles, but they were using a 302 instead of a preferable 301. Today, however, I'm happy to note that's changed. As of this writing, the 302 has changed to 301.

Mark the time, SEO Friends; Google is listening to our Social World.

And with the step toward doing what they tell us to do, me Google Profile hops another steep up, to 5:

Is this why they wanted to 302 Hop[e], originally?

Dafforn First to Discover Google Changes Profile Hop from 302 to 301
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May 18, 2009

Google Profiles Now Above the Fold?

In spite of that odd numerical URL that persists and 302 hops, my Google Profile has proven to indeed be a climber, for the first time breaking above the fold for the vanity search I have been vainly keeping my own eye on from day one:

Now, as is normally the case with a non-temporary 302--THE problem with a non-temporary 302 you might conclude--I don't know whether to link to http://www.google.com/profiles/John.Lustina or http://www.google.com/profiles/116187582762783426547 when I am referring to it.

Google?

Google Profiles Now Above the Fold?
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May 06, 2009

Google Vanity Profiles Buggy on the iPhone

I wouldn't categorize this under DEFCON 5, but there's a bug with Google Profiles in the iPhone version of Safari.

When you do a vanity search and you've filled out your Google Profile sufficiently, it might show up at the bottom of the first SERP. My profile, for example, does show up correctly on normal browsers.

In an iPhone vanity search, however, something weird happens. Where the profile link would be, there is instead a link to a page called "prose%200", as seen here:

%20 is the escape code for a space, so in reality, the page is called "prose 0". When you click the link in the iPhone, you land here:

I imagine the "pro" in "prose" stands for "profile." As for the "se," I'm not sure. "Search engine," perhaps, although that seems too easy, as well as redundant.

Conclusion: If you have thousands or millions of people searching their iPhones for your Google profile (like I don't), they're not finding you.

Google Vanity Profiles Buggy on the iPhone
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May 04, 2009

Google Profiles Doing the 302 Hop?

Continuing in my vainglory of days past, I was surprised today while exploring below the fold to see my Google Profile suddenly appear as a tenth result along with the standard extra bottom result (with smiling picture) for a vanity search:

Even more surprising, if you look at the yellow highlighted rectangle, is that Google choose to show www.google.com/profiles/116187582762783426547 as the URL for the result, rather than the www.google.com/profiles/John.Lustina vanity URL that I selected as my preference, when offered, in the initial setup of my Profile.

Now, I was happy to see that it redirected to http://www.google.com/profiles/John.Lustina when clicked, yet wondered why the numerical URL would yet list if the redirect were a 301. My SEO senses tingling, I went to Rex The Answer Man to find this:

Why a 302 temporary redirect? Why not just keep them numerical rather than vain if they are not going to implement a proper 301?

Isn't that what they would have us counsel our clients in a similar scenario?

Google Profiles Doing the 302 Hop?
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April 28, 2009

Bonfire of the Vanity Search Revisited

Not three days later, the Google Profile influence now has ordered the top six:

Note to self: the right column space is pretty important:

Bonfire of the Vanity Search Revisited
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April 25, 2009

Bonfire of the Vanity Search

Although unveiled in the innocuous position last--always, mind you--of the first page for your name, it seems more likely ever-prescient Google has a larger share in mind than the 10th result on a page; namely, a cover page for Socially skitzophrenic above-the-fold situations like the following:

Are they actually after, rather, One Profile to rule them all?

Bonfire of the Vanity Search
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December 19, 2008

Spanish Site SEO Pays Off

In 2007, one of our long term clients launched a Spanish version of their web site. Their site is very content rich and has approximately 1,000 pages. During the course of 2008, we've worked closely with them to optimize these new pages with the goal of significantly increasing search traffic.

Here's a look at the results to date...

Prior to optimization of the Spanish pages, of all search engines, Google Spain was ranked #33 in bringing visits to the site. After optimization, Google Spain is #3 behind just Google and Yahoo.

To make this kind of jump, Google Spain brought just 53 visits per month to the site prior to optimization. Now the site is receiving over 10,000 visits a month from Google Spain. Google Spain now brings more visits than MSN and AOL.

Here's a closer look at the visit numbers before and after optimization:

Search Engine		Monthy Visits Before SEO		Monthly Visits After SEO
Google Spain		53		10,310
Google Mexico		41		6,383
Google Columbia		15		3,207
Google Venezuela		8		3,001
Google Peru		8		2,926
Google Chile		16		2,442
Google Puerto Rico		23		689
Google Portugal		33		137
Total		197		29,095

We expect these monthly visit increases to bring a minimum of 350,000 additional new visits to the site in 2009.

Excelente!!!

Spanish Site SEO Pays Off
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November 20, 2008

Google Lets Users Promote, Remove, Comment on Listings

This has been discussed for a few months here and there, but this is the first time I've seen it in the wild. Google SERPs are giving users the ability to "promote," "remove," or "comment" on listings:

Here's a closeup of the three. See if you can figure out which is Promote, Remove, or Comment:

I've only begun to play with them, so I have no idea what the implications are. I suspect that like with most things, Google will harness the data and use it in aggregate to try to improve relevance of results. I'm sure we'll read more about that in the next couple days, along with the imminent speculation about "what it all means," which, in the grand scheme, is usually very little. Still, it's cool.

Google Lets Users Promote, Remove, Comment on Listings
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Google SERPs Showing MySpace + other Videos

I'm surely not the first to notice this, but I saw MySpace video thumbnails in Google SERPs for the first time today:

Looking around, G is pulling from multiple sources, including MetaCafe, CollegeHumor, and this example from Spike:

A couple months ago, AccuraCast noticed two video results in a horizontal line, but in that sample, both videos were from Google-owned YouTube.

This is the next logical step in the universality of Universal Search, so to speak. Is it also the beginning of the end of big corporate presence on shared video sites?

Google SERPs Showing MySpace + other Videos
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October 20, 2008

Error in Google's robots.txt Docs

Update: This was fixed rapidly; see Riona's comment.

I don't want to get too deep into the complexities of robots.txt parsing (if you want that, try this, this or this), but I found something odd at the bottom of this page, one of Google Webmaster Help's many pages on robots.txt.

The page says:

URLs are case-sensitive. For instance, Disallow: /private_file.asp would block http://www.example.com/junk_file.asp, but would allow http://www.example.com/Junk_file1.asp.

Here's a picture just so you trust me:

This is wrong in a lot of different ways. Let's look at them with my comments following in bold.

URLs are case-sensitive.

So far, so good.

For instance, Disallow: /private_file.asp would block http://www.example.com/junk_file.asp

It would? How?

..., but would allow http://www.example.com/Junk_file1.asp.

I suppose Disallow: /private_file.asp would allow /Junk_file1.asp, but not because of capitalization style. It's because /Junk_file1.asp has nothing to do with the excluded file, /private_file.asp

So what did they mean? If they're anything like me, this was a paragraph started, edited a few times, and never really finished. It appears to try to cover a variety of the issues covered on the page, including cap style, pattern matching, and wildcard characters. Here are a couple alternatives I'd suggest:

URLs are case-sensitive. For instance, Disallow: /private_file.asp would block http://www.example.com/private_file.asp, but would allow http://www.example.com/Private_file.asp.

or, to continue along the pattern-matching theme also discussed on the page, this would work:

URLs are case-sensitive. For instance, Disallow: /private_file*.asp would block http://www.example.com/private_file.asp, but would also block http://www.example.com/private_file1.asp. It would not, however, block /Private_file1.asp.

This is a pretty minor detail at the bottom of an esoteric page, but if you're looking for specific information on cap style and robots.txt, it could cause some head-scratching.

Error in Google's robots.txt Docs
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August 29, 2008

Google Search Suggestions Is Just Dumb

As many of you may already know, Google has officially launched its keyword suggestion tool as of yesterday. The keyword phrase suggestion tool acts very similar to what people are accustomed to seeing for over 13 months at Yahoo! where as you type in phrases in the search box, down drops keyword phrase suggestions that allow you as a user to select a targeted phrase from the list as opposed to typing in all the phrases for the search. Pretty cool, right?

Well, I think Google is just dumb with the deployment of this new feature. Why you ask? The keyword phrase suggestion tool ONLY WORKS ONCE at the homepage of Google. In other words, once you have pulled up a set of results from your initial search @ Google's homepage, you never see the suggestions box again if you conduct another search from the resulting search results page. To me, that doesn't make any sense especially taking into account the fact this search feature has been in Beta/testing mode for over 3 years. You would think Google would have figured out this 'bug" prior to taking the feature out of Beta and in to the mainstream.

Perhaps Google is just "testing" the new feature at the homepage level to see how people are using it before they roll it out entirely? Time will tell I suppose.

Google Search Suggestions Is Just Dumb
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July 02, 2008

Google Maps Abroad

The inclusion of Google Maps in natural search engine results is nothing new for queries such as Ohio, Indiana, United States, etc. but I just noticed something new today. Google is now showing maps of foreign countries.

I'm sure everyone is aware of the tension between the West & Iran. Me being a news nut, I went to Google and typed in Iran. Here is what pops up in natural search. What you'll notice is there is an obvious immersion of Universal Search Results on page one, but to stay on point with the post, you'll see a map of Iran at the very top of the SERP. This is the first time I've personally seen foreign maps propagating natural search results like this and I find myself curious if this has been around for some time?

Anyway, after further digging with searches for other countries such as Russia, Iraq, UAE, India, Austria, etc., I noticed something VERY interesting in a search for China in that it's the only country out of about 30 or so searches that didn't have a map in search results and required an additional click on the Maps link to actually get maps of the country. To me it doesn't make any sense why Google would change its map inclusion protocol in search results for just one country out of over the 30 country searches I conducted.

I'm sure there are other orphaned country map examples out there, but why doesn't Google just have a standard for country-specific searches pulling into search results in a similar fashion?

Google Maps Abroad
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July 01, 2008

Google to Index Flash Content ... Again

In a post last night entitled "Improved Flash Indexing," the Google Webmaster Tools blog reports that

We've improved our ability to index textual content in SWF files of all kinds. This includes Flash "gadgets" such as buttons or menus, self-contained Flash websites, and everything in between. ... In addition to finding and indexing the textual content in Flash files, we're also discovering URLs that appear in Flash files, and feeding them into our crawling pipeline—just like we do with URLs that appear in non-Flash webpages. For example, if your Flash application contains links to pages inside your website, Google may now be better able to discover and crawl more of your website.

This brings up several satellite issues:

• Since it's been so difficult to index Flash content, a virtual cottage industry sprang up with ways to circumvent that disability, including methods like SWFObject, sIFR, user-agent-based delivery of plain text vs. Flash content, and so on. With these techniques becoming more sophisticated and easy to implement, is it likely that sites will abandon them soon?
  
• It appears that for now, Flash files spawned when users fail a JavaScript test will still be uncrawlable, since engines too typically fail a JS sniffer.
  
• If you have a SWF file embedded as only a part of a larger HTML page, trust me that you do NOT want only that SWF file being returned in search results. It typically looks awful, lacking both the size requirements you implemented, as well as the critical navigation that resides in your HTML. The Webmaster Central post didn't say that SWF files would be returned in SERPs, so I'm not saying that's what will happen. But I've tested client sites by searching for strings of text that only appear in Flash files, and I've seen it happen. So test with your own site and cross your fingers.

I chose a somewhat sarcastic post title because ever since search engines and Flash have butted heads, the ability for engines to index text embedded in Flash files has been "just around the corner." In 2002, for example, hearts were briefly aflutter about the Macromedia Flash Search Engine SDK, which was going to be the end of engines' inability to index Flash content. Hear that? The end. 2002.

So I enter into this new era with guarded optimism. Optimistic because Google never releases anything "new" until it's been tested in the wild for months or years. Guarded because the "right" recommendation for clients is never quite as black and white as people think it will be.

Google to Index Flash Content ... Again
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June 13, 2008

Yahoo to Become Adsense Clearinghouse?

Sean saw it coming yesterday, and little more than a Month ago I thought it a Yang Threat to balance the Microsoft yin of bluster.

Yet here we have it, and have you ever read anything that made Yahoo suddenly seem more insignificant?:

If the Google partnership passes what's likely to be a rigorous review by U.S. antitrust regulators and lawmakers, Yahoo! intends to use its rival's superior search technology to display ads on its own Web site as well as those of its partners' in the United States and Canada.

Let us all give a collective search way of goodbye to the once great king.

Yahoo to Become Adsense Clearinghouse?
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May 21, 2008

The Ineluctable Organic Moment Gets a Big, Big Update

This is from much earlier in this fleeting year, admittedly, but with most focusing on the average words per search query increase angle of the story, I wanted to make sure and dig out a fine morsel from the very mouth of Google that may have been lost had I not:

14% of Google clicks come from paid search and 86% of clicks are organic.

True in court it may only qualify as hearsay, having come from the Google mouth of Avinash Kaushik to the ear of beu blog before finally being transcribed into print; yet, as you may remember from my earlier quest for a documented source behind that most mythical of numbers in all of SEM, the percentage of overall searchers clicking on an organic, rather than paid, search result, hearsay here surely now trumps unattributed there.

And the alleged statement is said to have come from Google's Analytics Evangelist, folks, so I think we are getting closer...

The Ineluctable Organic Moment Gets a Big, Big Update
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May 03, 2008

Breaking: Yang Googles Ballmer

Just when it seemed the twain might soon be making their way down the aisle, arm-in-arm, the mere spectre of Google is enough to call off the nuptials: Mashable has the goods, including Balmer's e-mail that is really more about Google than Yahoo:

We regard with particular concern your apparent planning to respond to a “hostile” bid by pursuing a new arrangement that would involve or lead to the outsourcing to Google of key paid Internet search terms offered by Yahoo! today. In our view, such an arrangement with the dominant search provider would make an acquisition of Yahoo! undesirable to us for a number of reasons:

He goes on to devote almost half of his e-mail to explaining how bad an idea Yang's Google threat is. I caught this on my Mashable feed as I began watching the original Frankenstein movie with my kids. No kidding.

Breaking: Yang Googles Ballmer
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April 30, 2008

Real and Imagined Errors in Google Sitemap Feeds

When you upload your XML sitemap feed to your server -- especially if it's GZipped -- don't expect it to look pretty. I got a nervous call from a client because when he called the XML feed URL in his browser, he saw this:

While it looks like an error, it's really not. Not in the traditional sense, at least. The error here is that your browser (in this case, Firefox) isn't able to view the file without a little help -- specifically, a stylesheet that tells it how it should look to human viewers.

The bottom line is that this message doesn't mean that engines can't read your XML feed -- only that you can't see it. To see whether Google can process it, for example, check the Sitemap Summary report. For some reason, this report isn't in the main GWT left nav. To find it, you need to click the "Details" link at the far right of the Sitemap Overview report. When you click that link, here's what you see:

Real sitemap errors do exist, even in the example I used above. In this case, I've inadvertently included in the sitemap a URL that I also excluded via robots.txt. So I'm sending Google a mixed message there. Fortunately, the robots.txt file overrides the URL's inclusion in the sitemap, so it ends up being more of a gentle nudge than a true, crippling error. If the error doesn't specifically say that the sitemap is invalid and unreadable, then it's probably not.

Real and Imagined Errors in Google Sitemap Feeds
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March 13, 2008

Google Showing Robots-Excluded Links in Sitelinks

You might have noticed that Google rolled out sitelinks for a new batch of sites a couple weeks ago. This blog was included in that batch, as you can see if you do a query for [seo speedwagon].

The goal here isn't to beat up on Google, but I think it's significant enough that site owners should be aware of it. In a couple cases, the sitelinks that Google shows (or showed) for our site have been links specifically excluded from robots, either via robots.txt or by the "noindex" attribute in the robots Meta tag. Following is a screen shot of the [seo speedwagon] query taken on February 26, which is roughly when the new batch of sites started noticing their sitelinks:

Note the two red-outlined links. The one in the left column, ip login, is our staff login page. It's been excluded by our robots.txt file for almost three years. Coincidentally, Google couldn't index that page if it wanted to, as it's password-protected. I know that robots.txt exclusion isn't a totally reliable way to keep a URL from showing up in SERPs, as it often causes what's known as a "partially-indexed" URL (example). But come on -- a Sitelink?

The outlined link in the right column (November 2007) is a typical (if capriciously chosen) monthly archive page -- exactly the kind you see in the third column of this blog. They're ugly, more or less useless (both for SEO and for people), and I'll probably eventually do away with them, but for now, there they are. But the important thing here is that I added the robots "noindex" tag to them well over a year ago.

Just this week, Google changed the format slightly. Here's a current shot:

The November 2007 link (excluded via Meta tag) is now off the list (automatically -- I didn't do it), but the ip login link remains.

Yes, I know I could block specific sitelinks from within Webmaster Tools. And I might, but I wanted to show it to you first.

It seems like excluding specific URLs via robots.txt or via the robots meta tag should be a sufficient method of opting URLs out of sitelinks.

This topic is especially timely as Matt Cutts just recently asked users how they'd prefer that a meta-tag-excluded URL appear -- if at all -- in the Google index. As of this writing, 83% say "Don't show a link at all." I don't want to speak for his readership, let alone all site owners, but I can confidently predict that most people don't want a robots-excluded URL (regardless of whether the exclusion mechanism was robots.txt or a robots "noindex" Meta tag) showing up in a Sitelink.

Google Showing Robots-Excluded Links in Sitelinks
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March 04, 2008

NYT Traffic Doubles, Revenue Grows Since Killing Subscriptions

John wrote a few times last fall about the NY Times tearing down its paid subscription wall and allowing spiders in.

Now, in an interview at The Deal, Google's David Eun (on p. 5) confirms that it was a good idea:

We have some partners that have made very bold steps, such as The New York Times, which went from a pay model to a free model. After they went free, the traffic they got from us alone doubled. Their math says they make more money by offering content free to consumers, but stimulating demand and making it work with advertising. The Financial Times did the same thing, and at least early on in the process they experienced at least a 100% growth in traffic.

Don't hold your breath waiting for further breakdown of the math, especially for the NYT example. Note that while Eun says traffic doubled, he was less specific about the money, saying only that "they make more" under the current scenario.

It should be no surprise that it's Google -- not the Times -- telling us the good news about expanded indexation. After all, Google has more to gain from all of us knowing about it, because it now gets a slice of the pie:

Thanks to BeetTV via SearchCap.

NYT Traffic Doubles, Revenue Grows Since Killing Subscriptions
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SEO Success Factors

I was recently asked about the success factors of an SEO campaign. There are many, but let's take a look at three of what we consider the most important success factors:

1) Knowledge Is Power

It's very important for us to know what prior SEO activities have been conducted on a site. This can make or break the campaign. On a few occasions, our team of site analyzers have uncovered controversial techniques that even our client didn't know had been performed!

It's also very important for us to have access and learn from your web site analytics data. SEO is about getting the right people to your site from search engines. Your analytics data prior to SEO and after SEO is a constant gauge to see if your SEO company is traffic-focused, not just placement-focused.

Finally, the knowledge of understanding how your target audience is searching for your offerings allows an SEO best practices firm to shoot for the bullseye where visitors convert, not the outer rings of the target where visitors are "just browsing". Since the early days of SEO, this has not changed.

2) Link Popularity

With the significant weighting of link popularity in Google's algorithm, there are very few sites that can ignore link building. Now crucial to your site's success at major search engines is the continual effort of adding quality, relevant third party links to your site. Trust me, most of your competitors are doing just that.

3) Flexibility To Site Changes

We always make sure to take the temperature of potential clients as to their flexibility to make changes to their site that will make the site more search-engine-friendly. If you are considering SEO, I would suggest you rate your flexibility to site changes on a scale of 1-10. Bottom line, if you are below a 5, you may want to consider Paid Search along with Natural SEO.

SEO Success Factors
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February 15, 2008

Where oh Where Is Thy User-Friendly 404, Google?

As I kick off my day this morning enjoying the beautiful weather down here in Florida and sippin' on my starbucks, I noticed something I found to be quite interesting with Google. They have no user-friendly custom 404 page!

Now I know Google is probably not a company that needs to be too concerned about having user-friendly custom 404 pages, but feel it would make sense for them to at least have a link on 404's going back to their home page. If I were tasked to create a 404 page for Google, I'd want to have links to a bunch of services such as GMail, Google AdWords, Webmaster Central, Blogger, Google News, Picasa, Google Analytics, Etc.

By having a user-friendly customized 404 page with links to a plethora of services, Google can potentially attract new customers who may not be aware services such as the aforementioned are even available.

Just my .05.

Have a great weekend everyone!!!

Where oh Where Is Thy User-Friendly 404, Google?
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February 13, 2008

Nip/Tuck Drops Google, and Leaves It on the Ground

I found myself in the midst of a double-take last night while watching Nip/Tuck. A patient revealed that she found McNamara Troy when she googled [free plastic surgery]. Now Nip/Tuck has a history of sprinkling web talk into episodes (YouTube episode from Season 4), and a Google drop today is as common as a professional athlete wandering onto the Brady Bunch Astroturf. However, in almost all cases, characters google to learn about a person or a thing without a direct action. What led me to double take was that an actual conversion had just taken place. The character made an appointment based on the results of her search.

So how far did Nip/Tuck take it? Is the media in place to draw in curious fans who might perform the search? Think Seduce and Destroy Hotline from Magnolia, which was actually in operation when the movie was released. Well, McNamara Troy has a site with plenty of interaction available for curious fans, but no easy route to get them there. Certainly, curious fans would not get there from a results page.

So, tell me what you don't like about your site.

Almost no content accessible to search engines. The only actual content on the page is the "HOME" link and the footer.

No other pages available for indexation. All links on the page point to FXNetworks.com or are behind JavaScript.

Site is buried. McNamaraTroyLA.com permanently redirects to FXNetworks.com/shows/originals/niptuck_s5/ , which links to an incredibly long intro that eventually displays an unspiderable link to McNamaraTroyLA.com/LosAngeles/.

As a result, the site is nowhere to be found for [nip tuck] and barely hits the front page for [mcnamara troy]. No chance for [free plastic surgery] or any other term.

Then again, maybe the character was referring to the McNamara Troy PPC landing page? Nope, nothing there either.

Kudos to Nip/Tuck for upping the ante on Google dropping. I loved seeing a greater level of understanding applied to casual dialogue, yet it only leaves me wanting more. I felt the same way last year when the characters all watched the sexy YouTube video. Could you imagine the views if they actually had uploaded the video in question?

Nip/Tuck Drops Google, and Leaves It on the Ground
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February 08, 2008

Tracking Local Press Release Syndication Performance

If you are a PR professional and looking for a way to track your newly syndicated press releases across a local platform then you've got to check out "Google's News" new local search feature. Now you have the ability to look up your news via zip code, city, or state and see what's showing up in your local market. You can use this information to see how well your local PR campaigns are doing online and get a better feel for other places to possibly syndicate your news.

To check out the new Google News local search feature go to news.google.com and scroll down the page, look for the "Local News Category", and enter your pertinent information into the search box. You will then be presented with the latest local news that reflects whatever region you are searching for online.

Your news results will look like:

Then to monitor your local news with ease on a daily or weekly basis create a Google Alert with your local news preferences are you are good to go!

Tracking Local Press Release Syndication Performance
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January 28, 2008

Barack VS. Hillary Above the Fold

What does first glance show the thousands of searchers looking for Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton each day?

The first thing a results obsessed searcher might note is the number of results. Hillary has more than twice as many relevant pages to her credit. Perhaps understandable, she has been around much longer than Barack.

The quick clicker might first note Barack's sponsored ad. That searcher would receive a warm welcome video and a call to action from Barack. No such sponsorship from Hillary.

Searchers with a blind eye to ads might first note News Results, which leave both Barack and Hillary at the mercy of Google (and/or their campaign's ability to constantly generate news). Actually, Barack receives some Google Book Search links above the News Results, a bonus opportunity to speak to potential voters In His Own Words.

The searcher only interested in natural results might first note the candiates' sites. If that searcher were a Link Builder, however, he or she might note an internal linking issue manifested in those first results. Hillary must be doing a good job of showing the search engines her most important internal links, as she receives 8 site links within her first result. Barack receives just one.

After that Link Builder regained composure, he or she might note an internal linking/duplicate content issue manifested in the second results. Hillary's second result should be her second most relevant page, not a duplicate version of her first page. As for Barack, he doesn't have a second result.

Wiki-obsessed searchers might first note Wikipedia, which lands just above the fold for both candidates. As for what they would see there, well, that's for another day . . .

I wonder what the chances are that either campaign has completed this exercise.

Barack VS. Hillary Above the Fold
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January 16, 2008

Less Sponsored Ads = More PPC Revenue? Que Pasa, Google?

One of my favorite clients of all time, with us now going on 8 years and powered mightily by the rare, dual client-side SEO strengths of search understanding and inter-departmental implementation influence, recently noticed the same thing Mark Jackson saw in Google's most recent round of Universal Search peekaboo:

Notice the incredibly disappearing PPC Ads? My immediate explication was that surely this must be to prove, in a small test sample, that someone's bad idea from above would be a disaster, indeed.

Mark, though, has made me think again:

Google may succeed in encouraging companies to bid more ferociously for the top two positions. If universal search leads to more searches because it's fun, this could be a win for Google (higher revenues) and users (better experience).

Sometimes it's hard for us to imagine that there is a finite set of clicks on any given day. The business model in a closed set like this, then, must discover what to do to increase the value of the average click within the set on a given day. Mark's point about less ads likelier driving up value per is on target, I believe, but thanks to him getting me to think again I think the test layout in question has less to do about increasing searches "because it's fun" and much ado about that map, an image mind you, kissing the PPC ads at the right corner of the screen and making your eye immediately jump there to focus.

Take a look yourself and see where your eye is drawn, and then check out what eye tracking heat maps are telling us about how pictures affect focus on a search page.

Less Sponsored Ads = More PPC Revenue? Que Pasa, Google?
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January 02, 2008

What was that about Google Host Crowding?

Matt Cutts talked a while back about algorithmic changes to heighten Google's host crowding capabilities. Now he said they would not apply this across the board, but the below serp for [google adsense] shows some kinks.

And further down on the first page, a couple more results from the secure connection and a subdomain.

What was that about Google Host Crowding?
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December 05, 2007

Google Poisoning

I remember back in the late 90's when I was first cutting my teeth in SEO, Google was in its infancy and merely a project for Brin & Page. Back then, the major players in search were AltaVista, Infoseek, HotBot, Yahoo! (when it was a crappy arduous directory) and DirectHit. In the mid-to-late 90's, SEO was not en vogue and black hat SEO techniques such as doorway pages, sneaky server side redirects, spider spoofing and a slew of other controversial techniques ran amuck. Of course, search engine guidelines for SEO didn’t exist nor “Best Practices SEO” for that matter in those days. Come 2000-2001, that all changed when sites were getting banned left and right for using those sort of "black hat SEO" techniques.

Here we are in December 2007 and black hat techniques are still running strong. Just the other day, I read an article about some crazy folks deploying thousands of sites with incestuous linking between them for instantaneously increasing link popularity at Google primarily, but certainly would affect any search engine with link popularity as a part of it’s algorithmic flavor.

Hell, even as I write this post I can smell a 302 hijack taking place somewhere in Google SERP’s!!!

Read about one of the latest Google poisoning articles here.

This sort of thing makes me sick and really doesn’t help the image of SEO for SEO’s who only follow best-practices SEO guidelines as set forth by the search engines. But come to think of it, it does help those of us who do the right thing; the white hat thing. It helps in that companies such as Intrapromote or other reputable SEO’s out there who follow SE guidelines will NEVER have bad press like this nor have to explain to clients why their site's PR went from a 6 to a 0 and why their site was completely dropped out of Google Index simultaneously. We will never have to explain this to clients as white hat SEO's because we do what we are told by the search engines themselves and therefore have nothing to worry about.

So, for those black hatters out there, we’ll be seeing you in a damning article again sometime in the near future and for you white hatters, keep on keepin’ on, baby!!!

Google Poisoning
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November 30, 2007

Will Google's New Linking Stance Create Innocent Victims?

Color me at least somewhat concerned about the latest revision to Google's stance on buying and selling of links. Here's the phrase that worries me:

Buying or selling links that pass PageRank is in violation of Google's webmaster guidelines and can negatively impact a site's ranking in search results.

Conventional wisdom, until now, has stated that "you can't be penalized due to who links to you; you can be penalized only because of whom you link to." Because otherwise, if you could be penalized based in inbound links, all a competitor would have to do is purchase a ton of "noteworthy" links on your behalf, right?

Isn't this reason for concern?

Will Google's New Linking Stance Create Innocent Victims?
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November 28, 2007

Are You A Canonical Fascist? Stand Tall!

We are sticklers with our clients when it comes to issues of content duplication, sometimes to the point, I think, of being viewed as Canonical Fascists. This can be annoying, much like fascism mostly can be annoying, so it is gratifying to see Mr. Google himself lay out just why such annoyance is worthwhile advocacy, even approaching the subject of PageRank Splitting in the process:

When I did a wget from the Googleplex, I eventually got a 301 from the seomoz.com url to the seomoz.org url. But look at the timestamps: " --09:28:33-- " was the initial fetch and "--09:32:41--" was when the 301 came over the wire. Assuming that I'm reading right, that means almost a four minute delay on getting the 301 from seomoz.com to seomoz.org. Googlebot will wait around for several seconds for a page, but it won't wait four minutes. Instead, the connection will time out and we'll treat those urls as separate (and think that we couldn't fetch the seomoz.com url). So if a bunch of people are linking to your article, and some link to seomoz.org and some link to seomoz.com, that PageRank is getting split between two urls, and the long delay on the 301 response can cause Google to believe that the urls are separate and therefore cause dupe issues.

Hat tip to Randfish for calling forth such manna in his heavily commented comments area.

Are You A Canonical Fascist? Stand Tall!
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November 06, 2007

Google Sitelinks Expansion: Early Results in Traffic Funneling

As you probably recall, Google rolled out an enhanced version of Sitelinks in mid-October. I thought it would be interesting to monitor the early results and see how effective the new links are.

Following is a typical example of Sitelinks. Google now shows up to eight links instead of the maximum of four that it showed only a month ago. When I refer to traffic later in the post, these Sitelink numbers are the links/URLs I'll be talking about:

The point of this post is to show you what happened (if anything) to the traffic that had traditionally funneled to either the main link or to the four Sitelinks. I plotted traffic to each of the nine links through October to see what would happen. the following charts reflect these filtered criteria:

• The query term was a single word
• The referrer was Google (organic)
• The entry page was the exact URL of the link being discussed

In addition, here are some important caveats:

• These charts are NOT all the same scale; I can't give actual visit numbers, but I will give the percent of all clicks received. The "main" link, as well as Sitelinks 1-3, pull in some serious numbers. While the traffic spikes in Sitelinks 5-8 will look pretty large, they shouldn't be construed as having the same traffic numbers. More on that as I discuss each link.
• Don't necessarily infer any proposed correlation between drop in traffic to one link and rise in traffic to another. These things are controlled by many, many more factors than the mere existence of new Sitelinks.
• The Sitelinks change was announced around 10/18, but it took a while to roll it out to all DCs. I didn't see it for any searches until at least the 25th. Keep a gradual rollout in mind when you look at the charts for links 5-8.

Okay, here we go. Following are descriptions of each link followed by a graph of the traffic to that link for October.

URL/Sitelink 0: The "main" link -- represented by "Company Name and Stuff" in the shot above. A slight drop overall, but it appeared to happen across the month, not necessarily at the same time as the Sitelinks rollout. Total traffic: 67.6% :

URL/Sitelink 1: The first true "Sitelink" link. A slight decline throughout the month, but again, not necessarily correlating to the Sitelinks rollout. Total traffic: 25.2% :

URL/Sitelink 2: Like the previous two links, it declined slightly. It looks a little more aligned with the rollout, but not completely. Total traffic: 5.1% :

URL/Sitelink 3:This link actually showed modest gains, starting about the time of the rollout. Total traffic: 1.6% :

URL/Sitelink 4:In early October, this link was already coming down from an offline push that peaked in late September. But the Sitelinks rollout didn't seem to help it, as it shows additional decline after the rollout period. One additional thing about this link: It's not what you'd traditionally think of when you type "keyword," so I attribute a lot of its clicks to curious onlookers who didn't expect to see it there. The other side of that sword is that now, the query shows four new, shiny links in the other column that will continue to drain clicks away from this guy. Total traffic: .22% :

URL/Sitelink 5:Okay, the first of the new links. From out of nowhere, it starts getting traffic on 10/17. But not that much. Total traffic: .12% :

URL/Sitelink 6:Like Sitelink 5, this one really jumped when the rollout started. It had just a few clicks before the rollout for this query, because this URL also ranks for "keyword" on its own somewhere beyond Page 2. Total traffic: .07% :

URL/Sitelink 7:In addition to its new location as Sitelink 7, this URL also lives above the fold on Page 2 for the same query. Since the Sitelinks rollout, it's on a pace to roughly triple its former traffic (for this keyword only, of course). Total traffic: .06% :

URL/Sitelink 8:This link came from nowhere, but it didn't do much. Part of it might have to do with being in the eighth spot, but more likely it's because I believe this particular link doesn't interest people who are searching for "keyword." Total traffic: .02% :

Required disclaimers. This click distribution across the nine links (main link plus eight Sitelinks) is highly variable and will change depending on what Google picks for your Sitelinks, how well the links match the query itself (and the intent of the searcher), etc.

The interesting thing for me here is not that Sitelinks 5-8 are getting clicks. That's not newsworthy. But from a behavioral perspective, it's interesting to watch how users react to links they might not have expected to see associated with their query.

One final note: These eight links are the ones that Google auto-generated. We'll be doing more posts about the ability to subtly affect the Sitelinks choices in the future.

Google Sitelinks Expansion: Early Results in Traffic Funneling
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October 24, 2007

PageRank Punches Perennials

[Cue Bob Eucker]

In case you haven't noticed, and judging by the attendance you haven't, the Indians have managed to win a few ball games . . .

. . . and . . .

[Cue 1982]

The Google PageRank for major sites is plummeting like the careers of Soft Cell, Dexys Midnight Runners, and Toni Basil.

Below are some articles discussing Google PageRank drop for the biggies:

Major Sites Taking PageRank Hits
Google Reduces PageRank of Many Sites
Google Changing the PageRank Algorithm?

The drop in PageRank is most likely a result of Google devaluing links pointing to major sites from very large networks. Because of the removal of the value of those links, the sites experience a drop in PageRank. You can call it a penalty, but that does not get at Google's intention or tell you anything about the process. These sites still have PageRank and they still show in results. We are seeing the cumulative result of one piece of the puzzle being altered.

Why is this distinction important? It tells you that you need to vary your links. Google is getting much better at categorizing links and devaluing certain types that exist solely to impact rankings. A huge, old site will survive because so many other links and/or so many other pieces of the puzzle are very strong. However, you will not survive if you are a smaller, younger site that relies on rankings based on an overwhelming number of one type of link pointing to your site.

[Cue Lloyd Bridges]
Looks like I picked the wrong week to quit sniffing glue.

PageRank Punches Perennials
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October 01, 2007

Google Search Results Already Finding Columnist Articles

Frank and Maureen and Thomas, oh my!

The chipped cement still has yet to be cleaned up fully from the wall being torn down at that historical error known as TimesSelect, and already we are seeing NY Times columnists able to commune with readers freely at point of search, at least at the Frank and Maureen level:


As internet titan Alan Meckler noted in his posting of the Times e-mail to subscribers, search results like these were the driving force:

Since we launched TimesSelect, the Web has evolved into an increasingly open environment. Readers find more news in a greater number of places and interact with it in more meaningful ways. This decision enhances the free flow of New York Times reporting and analysis around the world. It will enable everyone, everywhere to read our news and opinion - as well as to share it, link to it and comment on it.

Sharing it, linking to it, and commenting on it are the currency of being able to find it in search, and that might be important to a newspaper if, as the latest surveys indicate, 91% of adults use a search engine to find information and 72% get news therefrom.

Ya think?

LATE UPDATE: We just noticed that similar to 1989, another Eastern Block Web Site is about to topple...

Google Search Results Already Finding Columnist Articles
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September 28, 2007

The Emergence of Universal Search Engine Optimization

In May of this year, Google announced its new Universal Search System which blended traditional search results with news, video, music, images, local and book search engine portals, as well as Blogs on a single page to help users find information with greater ease. Universal Search, a new platform which represents a major shift in information display and retrieval, is causing search engine optimization companies to rethink how they conduct service offerings. So what does this mean for SEO professionals?

For those who conduct Search Engine Optimization services for clients, “Universal Search” is yet another marketing opportunity worth considering. Our industry is already known for dealing with extreme change on a monthly basis, and as a result of being able to adapt to this ever-changing market, this has enabled us to thrive in the industry. With these changes, we must re-invent or enhance our offering to meet the growing changes presented by Google in order to stay ahead of the curve. The emergence of Google’s Universal Search now forces SEO professionals to look outside the box for providing their customers with bleeding edge Internet marketing solutions.

To be able to help our clients rank in the top Google search results, we now have to look towards creating effective SEO strategies that involve RSS, news, videos, audio files, images, local and book search engine portals, and Blogs. With so many new things being displayed in Google’s search results it will be much harder to attain a top ten search engine listings for clients. However, this doesn’t mean that the world is coming to an end for SEO’ers. Nevertheless, it means that we must look towards existing Google search platforms and integrate them into a new strategy called “Universal Search Engine Optimization.”

Universal Search Engine Optimization encompasses traditional SEO (on-site & off-site) methodologies as well as combines Web 2.0 marketing tactics, i.e., RSS, Online Optimized Press Releases, Podcasts, Vodcasts, Blogs, Social Bookmarking, Social News sites, Image and Book listing optimization, as well as Local Search, that aids clients in gaining a greater market share within Google’s Universal Search results.

The following Internet marketing activities make up a large part of Universal SEO:

"Definitions in parenthesis taken from Wikipedia"

RSS -- “RSS is a family of Web feed formats used to publish frequently updated content such as blog entries, news headlines or podcasts.”

Online Optimized Press Releases -- Tailoring a company’s news in such a manner to gain greater visibility online through optimizing elements within the press release.

Podcasts -- “A podcast is a digital media file, or a series of such files, that is distributed over the Internet using syndication feeds for playback on portable media players and personal computers.”

Vodcasts -- "Video podcast (sometimes shortened to vidcast or vodcast) is a term used for the online delivery of video on demand or video clip content via Atom or RSS enclosures.”

Blogs -- “Many blogs provide commentary or news on a particular subject such as food, politics, or local news; others function as more personal online diaries. A typical blog combines text, images, and links to other blogs, web pages, and other media related to its topic.”

Social Bookmarking -- “A way for Internet users to store, organize, share, and search bookmarks of web pages. In a social bookmarking system, users save links to web pages that they want to remember and/or share.”

Social News Sites -- News aggregation (social network) sites that gain stories from community members online.

Image Optimization -- Effectively optimizing image file names, alternate text, and the utilization of photo sharing sites such as Flickr, Picasa, Photobucket, etc.

Book Listing Optimization -- Optimize Book company Web site pages to enhance placement in search engines for the titles of books for sale.

Local Search Listings -- Create local business listings and optimize Web sites to better perform amongst local search engine (Google Local, Yahoo Local, etc) listings.

To stay competitive in the ever-changing SEO industry, we need to create strategies for our clients that focus on all aspects of Universal Search. I believe this new form of search results presented by Google will open many doors for companies seeking to embrace the evolution of search.

The Emergence of Universal Search Engine Optimization
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September 18, 2007

Search Tearing Down Walls Like It's 1989

We knew it was coming and we tried to bake a cake for Maureen Dowd more than a Month ago, yet we are still surprised at how search-friendly they are being in their explanation today:

What changed, The Times said, was that many more readers started coming to the site from search engines and links on other sites instead of coming directly to NYTimes.com. These indirect readers, unable to get access to articles behind the pay wall and less likely to pay subscription fees than the more loyal direct users, were seen as opportunities for more page views and increased advertising revenue.

If you have any doubt that this is the SEO equivalent of 1989 scroll a bit further down the page for this money quote:

The Wall Street Journal, published by Dow Jones & Company, is the only major newspaper in the country to charge for access to most of its Web site, which it began doing in 1996. The Journal has nearly one million paying online readers, generating about $65 million in revenue.

Dow Jones and the company that is about to take it over, the News Corporation, are discussing whether to continue that practice, according to people briefed on those talks. Rupert Murdoch, the News Corporation chairman, has talked of the possibility of making access to The Journal free online.

Mr. Murdoch, tear down that wall!

Search Tearing Down Walls Like It's 1989
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September 10, 2007

Google Book Search Results Defy Clustering, Quantity Precedents

Sean pointed this out to me early this morning. While we've known that Google has rolled out Book Search results in its main results column, some of the things Sean is seeing seem a bit out of whack with G's traditional clustering and placement precedents.

For example, here's the first page of results for [monopoles]. When I run the query, I don't see these results, but Sean does, along with a few other people that Sean has (mono)polled around the country:

Note how the results are unclustered. In other words, results from a specific subdomain typically get grouped together on the SERP for the sake of convenience, user experience, or ... well, for some reason, anyway. The results pulled from the books.google.com subdomain seem immune from the clustering behavior. And when results appear in the "regular 10" (as opposed to one-box) results, any given group of 10 results typically shows only two results from a given subdomain. This SERP shows three.

This is hardly the clustered behavior that some bloggers like Seth Godin have noticed. The examples he gives in that post are neatly organized at the top of the SERP in a one-box-style format.

If you move to the second page of SERPs (results 11-20) you'll see even more instances. In the case of [monopoles], Google Book Search holds six positions in the 11-20 group:

So for at least this query (and several others he's shown me today), Google Book Search has nearly half the top organic positions. That's hard to beat.

Google Book Search Results Defy Clustering, Quantity Precedents
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August 21, 2007

Microsoft Talking Points Parroted: Day II

Article or Press Release?:

It's always seemed strange to look for information on a brand, and to see it appear both in the organic search results and at or near the top of the paid listings. Why spend money on a brand term that's going to deliver a top five organic result for the same query anyway?

If this sounds eerily similar to what many Wagon Riders thought yesterday was a lede of questionable intelligence, then your parotid attention may have kept you from swallowing full gulp. For those caught in the act of mastication, though, it's good to know that the above meme is being pushed by Atlas, owned by Microsoft, neither of which are owned or own or like Google, beneficiary of the great majority of the branded ad spend currently under PR assault.

Here at The Wagon we get the same strange feeling the Talking Point pushes in the quote above when we fix our eyes on a graph like the below:

With search behavior like that, why in the world would you want your brand to appear more than once, let alone a single time, in the same screen space above the fold? Good advice from the originator of democracy of screen space.

Microsoft Talking Points Parroted: Day II
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August 16, 2007

Link Building in the Google Supplemental Aftermath

Having gone to play basketball with Chuck Cunningham, Google Supplemental enjoyed a stint just long enough to present questions that shouldn’t go away. Although we no longer see the GSI tag identifying the doghouse inhabitant, does it not behoove us to believe that, like Tiger, that dog still exists? We must continue to ask ourselves what places a page in the doghouse, and more importantly, what pulls that page out of the doghouse.

From a Link Building perspective, we know a deep page with no links is likely to be tagged. Search engines will consider a page important (read as not supplemental) if it is linked well throughout the site. All pages cannot be linked from every page, obviously, but a site’s structure must both allow and encourage spiders to get deep into a site to deem those pages as important.

Also, an external link building campaign must add links into a site, not just to a site. We have found that applying this slightly adjusted preposition to a site generates a huge impact on that site. Links pointing to deep pages indicate to the search engines that those pages are important, push the spiders farther into the site, and indicate to the search engines that the pages linked from that entry are also important. Deep links are necessary for better indexation as a whole, and they are necessary for greater importance at the page level.

Thankfully, Google took the high road with the disappearing character. I’m not sure there would have been anything to gain from the replacement of Google Supplemental Index with an adorable child or a farm boy from back in Hanover . . . although there still is time for Google to wake up and realize it was all a dream . . .

Link Building in the Google Supplemental Aftermath
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August 15, 2007

NY Times Select(s) Death over Charade

As you probably know, the NY Times has been the most prominent experiment in the paid content-behind-a-firewall-yet-at-least-partially-indexable model, and they are indeed now, finally, announcing via trial ballooning they are no longer going to put their most popular columnists behind that magic curtain one has to pay to sweep aside. After the magic show ends and the same fingers which initially drew the curtain are finished being pointed this way and that, this failed experiment will have had much to do with the principles of Link Building.

A party-goer cloaks her content as Maureen Dowd. Found on Flickr. Copyright 485i

First a great quote that helps explain the decision's relevance to our industry:

But the truth of the matter is that you get far more eyeballs when you're not locking away your content from the general public. The reality of Web 2.0 news is that people a rising tide raises all the ships. If you've got good content, and the Times does, people will link to it. When people read a technology blog like Engadget or a political blog like Daily Kos and find links to articles at the New York Times, everybody wins. Keeping your archives, op-eds, and other content locked up means that blogs and news sites won't link to you, won't give you credit for finding a story first, and won't drive up your traffic.

This lack of inbound links to the content-behind-the-firewall damaged traffic to the site not only through a paucity of visitors being able to click on these links to the columns themselves...:

...the share of traffic that the NY Times sends to NY Times Select has been decreasing over the past year – down by 16% year-on-year in July. With NY Times Select receiving more than two thirds (67%) of its US traffic from NYTimes.com, the decline had an impact with US visits to NY Select down 22% in the past year.

...in having to rely far too heavily on the parent site rather than third party links for traffic, but also in the residual effect such had in these columns' search engine visibility. With few third party inbound links accumulating with each new column, in fact from a deliberate online community decision not to link to content-behind-a-firewall, it is also very difficult for each new column to be judged more relevant than similarly themed columns emerging on the same topic that immediately acquire inbound links in the form of the same online community recommending them. It's no wonder the Times Select had to rely so heavily on clicks from the parent site for visits, as a great many of those visits were likely already subscribers. In that situation it is difficult to grow at the rate of the internet. Try these two simple searches for Frank and Maureen alone: nary a column to be found. Haven't they written quite a few?

I think everyone likely to read this blog knew this would happen. But to say we knew it would happen ultimately is not to say we are not happy to see even giants felled by an algorthm rejected, not select(ed).

NY Times Select(s) Death over Charade
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August 08, 2007

Download all query stats for this site (including subfolders)

I get the feeling that most people, even in our industry, using Google Webmaster Tools for themselves or a client aren't scrolling far enough on the Query Stats page to reach this link:

What you get if you click is rather unwieldy, sure, especially if you are dealing with a very large site, but the payoff is simply as large by the same degree. We are beginning to view it more and more here as a kind of matrix for how Google views your site architecturally, especially in light of GSI now having been moved to an undisclosed location. Actually, now that I've said it I'm a bit afraid it, too, will be taken away...

Download all query stats for this site (including subfolders)
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August 01, 2007

Google Supplemental Index Label Formally Dropped

Yesterday's announcement from Google's Official Webmaster Central Blog represents a formal declaration of what Matt Cutts hinted at in a recent SEOMoz post: The "Supplemental Result" label that used to appear for pages in Google's "junior varsity" index will no longer appear.

Do not mininterpret this as "Supplemental Result pages no longer exist." They still do, if you read the Google post with subtlety. The gist of it is that Google crawlers are now able to cruise through these pages with more frequency and reliability. This apparently negates the need for a special label, as while these two indexes are certainly not treated the same, the differences appear to be waning.

Personally, I don't really mind that this is disappearing, because even in the best cases, it wasn't always easy to determine if pages were "really" in it, and people seldom agreed on what caused pages to be there (despite several Googlers saying exactly what got you there). Still, the presence of Supplemental pages forced webmasters to figure out some better ways to organize their sites, which is the silver lining.

With a good analytics program, you have the capability of seeing how many pages on your site are performing well or not performing at all. Seeing them labeled as "Supplemental" was a shortcut to diagnosis, but its absence is hardly cause for panic.

Google Supplemental Index Label Formally Dropped
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July 30, 2007

Google Analytics Not Working

Has anyone else noticed that Google Analytics stopped working yesterday and still isn't working? Any news as to when Google will have it up and working again properly?

I need my daily dose of Analytic lovin' and anxiously await its return.

This just sucks.

Google Analytics Not Working
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July 17, 2007

An Ampersand Gets More Results Than All Other Punctuation, Combined

This is one of those few demonstrably true things. Even though it might actually be more accurately described as a symbol, in our character-challenged world of SEO Title tags we are more likely to view it in the same manner we view the disappearing punctuation mark.

But Google knows it is a logogram, and treats it as such, differently from the mere punctuation it eschews.

Try each one of these searches yourself and tell me which one is the outlier: [!], [@], [(], [)], [-], [;], [:], [“], [‘], [,], [.], [?], [/]—and—[&]!

& is also so well respected as to have its own eponymous magazine. Now what punctuation can also claim that?

An Ampersand Gets More Results Than All Other Punctuation, Combined
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June 26, 2007

Checking Supplemental Index Status for URLs in Large Sites

For sites with fewer than 1000 pages, it's possible (if not monotonous) to see which URLs are in Google's Supplemental Index. Simply run a site: command for your domain (example) and scroll through the results pages until you start to see "Supplemental Result" next to some of the URLs.

But what if your site has 50,000 pages and the supplemental results don't start until the final 10,000? Even the fairly common site:domain.com *** -view query isn't totally accurate, and it's still subject to the 1000 URL display limit.

Depending on which case you find yourself, it can be either tedious or impossible to detect whether a specific URL is Supplemental.

Using our blog site as an example, suppose I suspect -- but can't confirm -- that an old post about Yahoo Sitemaps is in the SI. A simple info: query doesn't tell you whether the URL is supplemental or not. For example, the following shot came from the query:

[info:http://seoblog.intrapromote.com/2006/11/an_update_on_ya.html]

Instead, a quick way to check Supplemental status is to pull a unique string from the URL in question (such as a folder or filename) and tack it into an inurl:-filtered site: query. In other words, the following shot came from this query, in which I added the filename (minus extension) into the inurl: command:

[inurl:an_update_on_ya site:seoblog.intrapromote.com]

In this result, note the Supplemental Index status.

The bottom line is to find an inurl: string that will quickly filter down the site: query results so that your specific URL shows up quickly.

Checking Supplemental Index Status for URLs in Large Sites
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June 14, 2007

The Google Supplemental Index Inbound Link(s) Threshold

Wagon Rider Pat Fusco penned a great primer this Month on the issue of Google’s Supplemental Results as they are tied to duplicate content, if you’d like to orient yourself first. Our own Wagoneer Doug offers some points on Getting Out of Hell Free (that is, at least, without requiring direct payments to Google), the last method of which involved examining backlinks, and the fact that a great number of pages in the GSI we have examined across the massive sites we spend time with each day seem to share the commonality of zero inbound links.

We are finding, increasingly, that the distance from zero to one in terms of inbound links to a page seems to be much more of a threshold for exiting the Google Supplemental index than, say, 2 to 100. This is not to say that 1 gets you out, bada bing, but that there is a great more deal of love granted from Google on that single giant step from nil to 1 than there seems to be on the next link steps a page takes out of infancy.

A baby’s first steps are much more exciting and remarkable than the subsequent toddling around the room that follows, and it may be helpful to think of Google watching a page with no links in the same manner.

The Google Supplemental Index Inbound Link(s) Threshold
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June 12, 2007

A Quick Route to the Google Text Cache

I am constantly looking at cached copies of web pages through Google's cache. It's a wonderful way to double-check that your content is showing up the way you want it to and quickly tell if Googlebot has noticed any recent changes you've made. It's also a great way to sniff out some rather "brave" techniques on behalf of your competition.

As a primer, you can view the cached version of any web page by typing cache:URL in a Google search box, where URL is any full URL string. For example,

cache:www.united.com

will show a cached copy of the home page of United.com:

But beyond the normal cached version, I prefer to look at the text-only cache. The pink rectangle above shows the link to the text-only cached version. Clicking this shows you a version of the page much more like what a robot really sees.

But sometimes because of the site layout, the box at the top of the cached page doesn't appear. Consequently, the link to the "text only" version of the cached copy is hidden -- as in this sample shot from the BMW USA home page:

When this happens, the text-only cached version is still not hard to find. Simply append

&strip=1

to the URL of the regular cached version, and you'll see the text-only cache.

Now to take this to the next level (if you're a Firefox user ... and you are, right?), here's how to use Firefox Quicksearch Bookmarks to find the cache of a page so fast you'll amaze your friends and stun your competition.

(If the concept of Quicksearch Bookmarks is new to you, get some background here and here. It's a way to search any site from the Firefox address field. Trust me: If you search a lot, you will LOVE this.)

When you create a new Quicksearch bookmark, here's the data to use:

Name: Google Text Cache
Location: http://72.14.209.104/search?q=cache%3A%s&strip=1
Keyword: tc

So typing this in Firefox's Address field:

tc www.yahoo.com

will show you this. Pretty cool, huh?

A Quick Route to the Google Text Cache
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June 01, 2007

Flash, Javascript, CSS, Ajax, sIFR, and Textual Image Replacement... Oh My!

Not just because I am somewhat easily confused, but as our title today suggests, the overlap, literally and figuratively, among all of these web elements can and often is the nexus of confusion in advocating Best Practices SEO to any client development team, whether in-house or, um... out.

Comes now a Flash Engineer at Google (on the YouTube side) with the most elegant writing to date on the lines of demarcation in what he terms modern web development philosophy:

First off, you need to embrace web standards. Semantic markup and separating content from style and behavior is the only way you should be building your sites. Many web standardistas have been recommending this method of web development for years, and rightly so. However, this post isn’t the place to go into the whys of this type of development, so I’ll skip that part and just say this about how it’s done: There are three areas of front-end web development: Content, Style, and Behavior. You should always keep these three things separated as much as possible.

Content, Style, and Behavior as three separate things. Makes it all much easier to put in place and figure out where one stops and the other begins. The money quote helps even further:

Progressive enhancement is a method of web development that goes hand in hand with Web Standards. You start with your HTML (your content), then add CSS (your look and feel), then add in additional behavior (Javascript, Ajax, Flash, any other interactivity that isn’t handled automatically by the browser).

Content. Style. Behavior. Trot that out next time everyone is looking at each other confused.

Flash, Javascript, CSS, Ajax, sIFR, and Textual Image Replacement... Oh My!
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May 22, 2007

Google Hell: Is That Google Poo On Your Shoe?

One of the hottest topics these days in SEO forums, message boards, and blogs is Google's Supplemental Index. We've had some hearty discussions here at Intrapromote about GSI!

If you have a lot of web pages in Google's Supplemental Index, then you may refer to it as "Google Hell". A kinder, gentler reference I've seen is "The Google Poo".

Hell or poo, both stink and no one wants to have anything to do with them.

Perhaps most interesting ..... I have a feeling that hundreds of thousands of web sites have stepped in the poo unknowingly.

Heaven or Hell

Google's Supplemental Index (GSI), as defined by Google:

Supplemental sites are part of Google’s auxiliary index. We’re able to place fewer restraints on sites that we crawl for this supplemental index than we do on sites that are crawled for our main index. For example, the number of parameters in a URL might exclude a site from being crawled for inclusion in our main index; however, it could still be crawled and added to our supplemental index. The index in which a site is included is completely automated; there’s no way for you to select or change the index in which your site appears.

Did you get through that without falling asleep?

If you want to see if you have web pages in the GSI, simply replace "www.abc.com" below with your web address and search at Google for:

site:www.abc.com *** -view

Welcome To Hades. Have A Nice Day.

Here's what you need to know if you find you have pages in the GSI. Searches conducted at Google, with rare exception, will return pages in Google's Main Index. So, your pages in the GSI will have little opportunity to ever be found by potential site visitors. Pages in the GSI simply do not rank well.

However, when it comes to the GSI, you'll be glad to know that the wages of sin are not always death.

Google Reconciliation

Here's what to do if you want to smell better to Google. Take a close look at your web pages in the GSI:

First, check the quality of your web page content. Especially look to see if your pages contain duplicate content from other web pages in Google's Main or Supplemental index. The majority of the pages we've seen in the GSI have been banished there because they contain duplicate content. So, one way out of Google's lake of fire is to make sure your web pages have unique content.

Second, check the quantity of your web page content. We've seen a lot of pages in the GSI that have little or no content. Again, make your web pages as unique as possible.

Third, check the backlinks to your pages. We've seen a lot of GSI pages that do not have any links to them. If your page(s) are linkless, securing quality internal and external links from pages not in the GSI may prove to be your online salvation.

Lastly, once you have addressed the items above, resubmit your HTML or XML sitemap to Google.

Google Hell: Is That Google Poo On Your Shoe?
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May 16, 2007

Google Universal - a Quick Look at Google's New UI

Today Google rolled out "Google Universal," a major update to its SERP interface. For me, it literally happened at about 45 minutes ago, as I was looking up some restaurant information.

In the following query for [mentos experiment], the first thing you'll notice is that the links to Web, Images, Video, News, Maps, and "more" are now at the very top left of the screen (see pink highlight below). The "more" link drops down to offer (as expected) more options.

Note the Google Video thumbnails near the bottom of the shot. Also highlighted is pink here is an additional set of options -- possibly. In the shot above, only "Web" results are available in this search. But look at the following search for [adidas stan smith], which shows the additional options of Products and Images:

Clearly, this is a little bit of server-side decision-making on Google's part: Show additional vertical search options only when the index warrants it. Still, this could potentially get a little too "busy," as the "Images" link right above the Google logo points to the same page as the "Images" link below the logo, which seems redundant.

Basically, Google's new interface dumps every conceivable data format onto the SERP and lets you decide which direction you want to take it. On first look, it's a pretty nice upgrade, which, along with the new release of Google Analytics last week, gives SEOs something new to chew on for a while.

Note: Don't bother telling me that Danny Sullivan already did a post on this that was earlier, longer, and funner. I get it.

Google Universal - a Quick Look at Google's New UI
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May 15, 2007

Rosie Now Powerful Enough to Mock SEO Speedwagon in The SERPs

My oh my. We have to admit we were a tad worried here at The Wagon of backlash when we exposed Rosie O'Donnell's exact same URL appearing as result #'s 1 and 2:


What we didn't know, though, was that her media influence extended to being able to poke us in the eye with a self-conscious rejoinder of a description in her now magically changed #2 result:

Never mind that she doth seem to protest too much in her description. The sheer SEO power of this woman is breathtaking.

Rosie Now Powerful Enough to Mock SEO Speedwagon in The SERPs
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May 10, 2007

What Does Mundane Have To Do With Dictionary?

Q. What doest mundane have to do with dictionary?

A. Absolutely NOTHING!

But Google seems to think so:

This reminds me of a discovery I made a while back where a search for "therapy products" pulled up a "see results for Yahoo" suggestion mid-page.

Does Google really think dictionaries are mundane? Maybe, but I'm leaning more towards them having a small glitch with this particular SERP.

What Does Mundane Have To Do With Dictionary?
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May 08, 2007

SEO Best Practices - International or Region-Specific Sites and Domain Issues

Suggested Best Practices:

A good first question to ask is “Who exactly are we targeting?�? If you are targeting a specific country, targeting a specific language-speaking audience, or your web site copy is specifically for a country or language-specific audience, use a ccTLD (country code top level domain) that relates to your target country rather than a general .com domain. For example, a ccTLD would look like www.domain.fr, www.domain.ca, www.domain.jp, or www.domain.co.uk. Always use ccTLDs for each language of your site.

Avoid having multiple language sites on the same domain, e.g., www.domain.com for English language content and www.domain.com/fr/ for French language content.

Make sure that there is not any duplicate content on your .com and any other sites.

Make sure your pages identify what language they are in, e.g., meta http-equiv="Content-Language" content="jp"

If you cannot use a ccTLD, use a subdomain, e.g., fr.domain.com. Google views a subdomain as a separate site.

Benefits Of Best Practices:

A ccTLD communicates to search engines the focus of your site.

A ccTLD is the quickest and most accurate way to communicate regionality to the search engines.

A ccTLD assigns more weight for local search. It allows your site to be more easily included in Google Canada, Google Mexico, etc.

Search engines tend to have higher confidence and often give a ranking boost to a ccTLD site for local searches. For example, Google France may give a more favorable ranking to a France-specific (.fr) site.

FAQ:

Q: What about using subdirectories such as www.domain.com/fr/? Can we do a 301 redirect from a subdirectory to a ccTLD, e.g., from www.domain.com/fr/ to www.domain.fr?

A: From a search engine perspective, it is always best to use a ccTLD. If a ccTLD is not possible, then consider using a subdomain. We do not recommend using subdirectories for international sites or language-specific sites.

Q: What does Google say about the use of TLDs, ccTLDs, subdomains, etc.?

A: “Use TLDs. To help us serve the most appropriate version of a document, use top level domains whenever possible to handle country-specific content. We're more likely to know that www.domain.de indicates Germany-focused content, for instance, than www.domain.com/de/." (Source: Google Blog)

SEO Best Practices - International or Region-Specific Sites and Domain Issues
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May 02, 2007

More Sitelinks Hijinks with Google Duality : A Tail of Two 301's

It's not just Rosie enjoying the new Google Sitelinks Value Meal. FON, that guerrilla Wi-Fi startup knocking at Starbucks doors via their neighbors, is also now seated at the table:

But note in the above the two highlighted URLs, which are indeed the same page, do a bit of a pa de deux with how they serve the language, in this case English. The Sitelinks serving places the language as served from the en subdomain, yet that very URL redirects in this manner:

So that subdomain 301s from its English language subset that the subdomain indicates back to the non-language specific setting at the WWW level, whence it makes another direct turn back toward the language specific:

The whole trail of 301s serving to have moved the language specification in the URL from subdomain to folder level, with a waving pass through nothing. Quelle bonne idée !

Perhaps it is if it's another way to order a Google Sitelinks Value Meal.

More Sitelinks Hijinks with Google Duality : A Tail of Two 301's
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April 26, 2007

Rosie O'Donnell's Google Sitelinks Value Meal

An interesting thing happened on Rosie's way out of the door of The View; her sudden, earth-shattering departure caused a quake of an anomaly in the Google result for her name -- namely, the exact same URL appearing twice as a result, both #1 and #2:

What gives? SEO purists might argue that as result #1 is in the Sitelinks formation and Rosie’s site itself links out in the main navigation to her blog, the URL highlighted above exists as both a shortcut that will save users time, per Google’s explanation of the criterion for URLs selected for the formation--

Our systems analyze the link structure of your site to find shortcuts that will save users time and allow them to quickly find the information they're looking for.

--and also exists on its own, as a blog, and thus merits a listing apart from one tied to Rosie's site, ergo the Value Meal Result.

But surely this rare achievement cannot be helped by the fact that Rosie's site itself argues against that very justification with its Title Tag. Aren't those supposed to be quite important, and importantly unique?

Does Rosie's massive influence extend even into the algorithmic sphere?

Rosie O'Donnell's Google Sitelinks Value Meal
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April 19, 2007

Friends Don't Let Friends 302

Our 300 Series expert James sent out an important warning earlier in the year about 302's that aren't really temporary coming back to bite hard, and here at The Wagon we're starting to believe this may be a new Google theme for Spring.

The gist is there is a ticking clock on temporary, in that, we surmise, Google can tell when a 302 started, and it can certainly tell if it has yet to end. This makes sense. The unknown is what period between is given Google's blessing as truly "temporary" in temporal terms, and what then falls outside that window.

In 2007 so far, though, we are definitely seeing instances of the window slamming shut, loudly. And these are not spammers, no -- just, as can often be the case with a 302, used in a pinch with all intentions to return and fix, then forgotten. A promise written in the sand.

Please make sure any 302 you are using does indeed end, ultimately. If not, it likely will be ended for you.

Friends Don't Let Friends 302
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April 13, 2007

Sitemaps Protocol News / SEO Humor

If you've had a backstage pass to the SEO Speedwagon for the last few months, you should know by now that we are official groupies for the Sitemaps Protocol. In fact, if we ever take SEO Speedwagon on tour, Sitemaps Protocol would open up for us.

There actually was some interesting news this week re: the Sitemap Protocol.

1. Ask.com has drank the kool-aid so you can now share your sitemap with them.

2. Although MSN isn't "...ready to consume sitemaps just yet", all three major engines announced the sitemap protocol will now include Autodiscovery.

Autodiscovery allows site owners to add a link to their sitemap within their robots.txt file. Here is what it should look like:

Sitemap: [sitemap URL here]

We highly recommend that you add this line to your robots.txt, especially since you will not have to resubmit your sitemap file when it is updated (which should be often if your site content is dynamic).

If you are a fan of the statistics, etc. provided by Google Webmaster Tools, then also be sure to submit your sitemap there. Along with statistics, you will also be able to see if there are any errors in your sitemap which can be very important, especially for large web sites (trust me.....been there).

SEO Humor:

An SEO guy walks into a bar and asks the bartender, "Can you submit a sitemap to MSN?" The bartender looks at him, scratches his head, and asks, "Why?"

Sitemaps Protocol News / SEO Humor
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April 05, 2007

Google's AdWords New Color

Hey, am I the only one who noticed Google switched it's top-listed AdWords ads to a yellow color today???

Personally, I think the yellow is a little much for my eyes and don't really care for it. I like the old blue coloring better; it's much easier on the eyes!!!

Do I need corrective lenses or what?

Google's AdWords New Color
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Rudy Giuliani Finally Winning the Race to be Himself

We said we'd keep an eye on Rudy's race against himself, and almost a Month to the day after we noted he was losing, he's now finally pulled into the lead, at last vanquishing Wikipedia as the most relevant Rudy Giuliani on the web.

It is appropriate now, literally, to say the candidate is coming into his own.

Rudy Giuliani Finally Winning the Race to be Himself
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March 27, 2007

Did You Know WWW and Non-WWW are Two Different Sites?

If you're an SEO you certainly do lest you are malpracticing. And if you're a Cutlett, you've likely concurred here just a little while ago but more likely immediately.

Yet in spite of immediate pick-ups of everything Matt posts and that fact that this is a day later, Good God, I want to highlight his explanation of why, if only to be able to link to this portion of it when I am asked why and do a poor job explaining why:

Some people ask “Why don’t you just assume www.example.com and example.com are the same?�? The answer is that they don’t have to be, and for some websites they are different. For example, http://phpicalendar.net/ is a different page than http://www.phpicalendar.net/. This happens more often than you might think; FindWhat has different www vs. non-www pages, for example.

Best and simplest it's ever been put.

Am I now a Cutlett, too?

Did You Know WWW and Non-WWW are Two Different Sites?
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March 19, 2007

Google's Supplemental Index: Questions and Inconsistencies

What I want to discuss in this post is Google's unreliable method of showing which pages are and are not in the Supplemental index.

What I don't want to get into with this post, beyond a very superficial level:

• Whether pages being in the Supplemental index is bad (or merely not good)
  
• How pages end up in the Supplemental index

Let's just say that all things being equal, I'd rather have 10,000 pages in Google's main index as opposed to its Supplemental index.

Using the method (that is fairly commonly accepted, in my opinion) of determining which pages from a site are in Google's Supplemental index (site:yoursite.com *** -view -- first read at SEOBook -- see References), I decided to pick a random URL -- in this case, our blog's article archives in the "Crawling and Indexing" category:

So clearly -- at least according to Google (who should be the authority) -- this page does sit in Google's Supplemental index. Right?

But let's refine the query to be a mere listing of the site contents -- site:yourdomain.com. To find the URL I discussed before, I needed to scroll to page 37 of the results:

This time, it doesn't show the "Supplemental" label. But is this a contradiction? Maybe in a straight-up site: query, the Supplemental label doesn't appear.

No, that's not it either, because if you click over to one more page of results -- page 38 in this case -- Supplemental results DO start to show up with the Supplemental label. Here (some on page 38, and all on page 39 and beyond), most of our pages are labeled as Supplemental:

So there's an irrefutable contradiction. Some Google results call this page Supplemental, and some don't. Why is that? Is it a data-center thing? Have some machines in the server farm not yet received the proper memo?

But let's cut to performance. For the query [crawling and indexing], the page ranks #1 at Google (even with no account sign-in). It doesn't bring a ton of traffic, but it does bring some:

So some would say, "There's your answer. It doesn't matter, because it shows up in SERPs and brings traffic. Quit overthinking it."

That's true -- IF the page is truly a Supplemental page. But because we have mixed signals, it's not so clear. Is this a Supplemental page that performs well despite its Supplemental status, or a Main index page that performs well and happens to be sometimes mislabeled as "Supplemental"? That's an important question I can't answer right now.

To follow up this post, I'll try to hit another angle: When a URL that is consistently labeled as Supplemental does not show up in search results, despite the fact that it's the most relevant post for that query.

Resources, Notes:

• Barry Schwartz first (to my knowledge) cracks the issue with this post last September. The technique worked briefly and sporadically.
  
• Adam Lasnik clarifies some Supplemental concepts at Google Webmaster Help (Google Groups).
  
• SE Roundtable brings up more questions.
  
• Aaron Wall brings it up again, with the added refinement of subtracting a nonsense string, which is more or less its current form.
  
• In pre-emptive response to one of my favorite audience niches (the beside-the-point nitpickers), I have adapted our robots.txt file in response to the third screen shot above. It now excludes search results and and stray comment previews.

Google's Supplemental Index: Questions and Inconsistencies
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March 15, 2007

The Ineluctable Organic Moment Goes Primetime

It's one of the most mythical numbers in all of SEM, rarely published, seldom spoken; yet most industry insiders nod and agree, even if furtively, that the organic search share of total search clicks, meaning the percentage of overall searchers clicking on an organic, rather than paid, search result, is somewhere in the 70% - 85% region.

I was quite stunned, then, when by happenstance I came across this line in Macworld, of all places:

Site owners are eager to get their hands on the 75 percent of free Google traffic that is not affected by AdSense and AdWords, Google’s pay-per-click programs.

Still within that magical, mythical margin. Still unattributed. Damn nice to see as a given in a non-industry mag.

The Ineluctable Organic Moment Goes Primetime
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March 09, 2007

Therapy Products Search Gets Therapy From Google...Finally

Back in June, I uncovered a rather odd search results page for the keyword phrase "therapy products" in Google that pulled up a "see results for Yahoo!" mid-page. Links to Tom and Erik's previous posts about this subject can be found here.

Well, word spread about this lil' bug in Google and was brought to the attention of Matt Cutts who said that he would pass it along.

After months of seeing this annoying SERP, it has finally cleaned itself of any Yahoo! reference! Ahhhh...what a relief!

One bug down, thousands to go!!!

Happy Friday Y'all!!!

Therapy Products Search Gets Therapy From Google...Finally
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March 07, 2007

Over Half of 2008 GOP Presediential Candidates Outranked by Wikipedia in Google for Own Name

Here and there The Wagon has been known to get political in its analysis, often to illustrate pols know not what they do on the internet. Today we have a new honey of a rankings scandal courtesy of techPresident:

In a recent survey, I found that Wikipedia has an expansive influence in organic Google search results for 2008 presidential candidates. For each candidate, their Wikipedia entry is ranked no lower than 5th place by Google. In addition, the Wikipedia entry ranks higher than the election web presence of that particular candidate for 25% of Democrats and 60% of Republicans.

Now first, lest the uninitiated, casual SEO observer not fully grasp the above search incompetence, it is quite difficult for a major brand not to rank first for its own brand name. You almost have to be doing something wrong at the site level, and most competent SEOs will be able to discover the reason for the glitch and remedy the error fairly quickly. The higher the brand recognition the greater the ease, if for no other reason than Google understands that a pure brand search will almost always signal an intent to find the brand site itself. Google's product is relevancy, as we like to say here.

Is there a more recognized brand on the techPresident list than America's Mayor, [Rudy Giuliani]? Yet at second he languishes, behind the Wikipedia entry replete with detailed analysis of the controversies not broached on the site he would like for you to rather visit instead.

The difference between these first and second positions? We know from the massive AOL search data leak that on that engine, at least, about half of all searchers click on #1 and south of 15% on #2, at least for the 20 million searches performed by 658,000 subscribers in that data sample.

If you are losing half of all searches on your brand that should be visiting your site uncontested, you should try and do something about it. Let's keep an eye on Rudy and see if he does.

Over Half of 2008 GOP Presediential Candidates Outranked by Wikipedia in Google for Own Name
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March 02, 2007

Matt Cutts Concurrence Committee Part Deux

A year after our inaugural ode to Matt Cutts sycophantism, the Concurrence Committee continues to raise the bar to unimaginable heights of fawning flattery. From the mouth of Mr. Cutts today comes the manna of eight (8) words brilliantly crafted into an iambic pentameter gift to the Committee:

I want to play some roller hockey today.

For the poetic purists among us this would actually have to be read as follows to achieve that vaunted meter, though:

i WANT to PLAY some ROL ler HOCKEY to DAY

We're betting the Committee will concur with such a reading.

To be sure, the generous giftiness of the souring gift of phrase did not go unnoticed by the Committee. To date, the eight (8) word throwaway line, albeit beautiful, has received 39 comments!

Our favorite by far:

Hi Matt, as a frequent reader, I was wondering if you could help me out. I know you’re insanely busy, but could you shoot me an email?

Suggested Refrain:

All glory, laud, and honor,
to thee, Redeemer, King,
to whom the lips of children
made sweet hosannas ring.

Matt Cutts Concurrence Committee Part Deux
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February 23, 2007

Interesting 2007 Best Picture Google Result

I just saw this for [2007 Best Picture].

I would guess that David Poland has held the #1 result for quite some time, and technically still holds #1, even though it probably feels like a #11. As incredible as the AMC Best Picture Showcase sounds, I wonder how a one-time event finds itself above natural search results with no sponsored identification.

Interesting 2007 Best Picture Google Result
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January 27, 2007

Taking an Ad-Targeting Lesson from Seinfeld

One of Jerry Seinfeld's older, better standup routines involved a laundry detergent ad - specifically, its ability to remove blood stains easily.

Jerry went on to suggest that if your clothing routinely requires the removal of blood stains, maybe picking the right detergent isn't your biggest concern.

A couple days ago, I was searching for a list of top Google subdomains, and on a simple search for [google], I saw this Adwords ad on the page:

Here's a full shot of the results page in a new window.

Now this is probably a glitch, and I've been able to reproduce it only a few times, so I really don't want to go into the technical aspects of why or how it happened.

Instead, I am intrigued by the possibility that it's intentional, and that the folks at Compare.com have come to the brilliant conclusion that maybe - just maybe - if you're a person typing the word "google" into a Google search box, you might have problems stemming beyond computers, including but not limited to management of personal finances. I think it's a pretty safe bet.

Taking an Ad-Targeting Lesson from Seinfeld
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January 26, 2007

Google Don't Know Inches

It's finally snowing in northeast ohio and this here boy can finally break out his beloved snowmobile for some hot snow action on the local trails.

Just yesterday, I was out riding my sled in about 15 inches of fresh powder. After about 20 minutes, my engine was bogging down and I had to head back to the garage for a quick look. Low and behold, I was pulling a dead left cylinder due to water getting into the motor (not good considering the nasty implications water can impose on ANY engine). After careful review of spark plug coloring and air filter, I discovered my air filter was practically non-existent and needed replacement STAT.

Me being the search geek that I am, I instinctively head over to good ol' Google for a quick search - [3" air filter snowmobile] The results were OK at best, so I thought I'd search for 3" in quotes as to force Google to show just those results.

Now, due to the nature of exact phrase match searches, one must use quotes which unfortunately is the same symbol as inches. The results were a whopping 1 matched document in this case and was quite dishearening for me, but what can you do? Well, the only thing you can do in this case is spell it out for the search engine - [3 inch air filter snowmobile] and hope to get better results. In this case, I need to start checking with other engines as well as some well-known snowmobile parts sites to find my much needed air filter.

Since the forecast for this weekend is an additional 10 inches of snow, I'm going to find this damn filter if it kills me. Too bad Google couldn't come through for me this time around.

Google Don't Know Inches
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December 18, 2006

Google Gobbles Up The Globe

We've noticed the Google juggernaut gobbling up more and more international marketshare from our SEO perch here over the years, especially with many of our clients wanting to know what engines matter most as we move across the globe results-wise. Still, this blurb from The International Herald Tribune is quite staggering:

For Europe as a whole, as in much of the world, Google leads in Internet search. Of all those who visited search and navigation sites in Europe this October, 86 percent went to Google at least once, compared with 30 percent for Microsoft's search sites and 21 percent for Yahoo, according to comScore, an online market research firm.

Using this as a plank from which to dive into explaining how the sea is ripe for European competition against the Big G, though, I have to find fault with the article's assumed assessment throughout that the results are basically the same across countries. We have noticed quite the opposite, with a local bias quite evident.

To take a look at this phenomenon yourself, try your favorite search phrase at the .com version of Google and then, in your address bar, change the domain extension to the the country extension of your choice, like http://www.google.jp, and then give that same phrase a spin.

Google Gobbles Up The Globe
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October 27, 2006

Google's Arrogance

No friggin' way! I just got a heads up from our very own Erik Dafforn about an incredibly pathetic post (IMO) by Google on their blog.

Google's incredibly arrogant blog post

Google's Arrogance
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October 25, 2006

A Cure For The Summer Time Traffic Blues

“Well I'm gonna raise a fuss
And I'm gonna raise a holler
About workin' all summer
Just tryin' to earn a dollar�?
Eddie Cochran, “Summertime Blues�?

There ain’t no cure for the Summertime blues?

One of the clients I work with has some seasonality to their business and traffic to their web site either levels out or dips during the summer months. This summer was not any different, traffic-wise. Their search traffic numbers in the Spring months averaged 482,000 visits per month while their Summer average was 410,000 monthly visitors.

That doesn’t sound like it’s on the road to cure anything right?

A deeper trek into their analytics, though, raises the eyebrows. Their conversion rate during the higher traffic Spring months from visitors coming to their site from search engines was .825% which calculates out to approximately $13,918 in online sales per month. Their conversion rate during the “Summertime blues�? months was 1.23% which is 45% higher than the Spring and calculates out to $17,538 in monthly online revenue.

Nothing like an increase in revenue to melt those blues away. But still, the higher revenue isn’t the real cure nor is the higher conversion rate.

The cure is in the answer to the question: Why is their conversion rate 45% higher?

The Cure

I have a fever, and the only prescription is a higher quality web site visitor.

I love best practices SEO.

Higher quality visitors are a direct byproduct of improved search positions for SEO-targeted keywords and phrases.

It’s no surprise to also see that this client had a Summertime increase of over 200 positions at Google for their optimized phrases.

A Cure For The Summer Time Traffic Blues
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October 24, 2006

Help Google Tackle Vertical with a Custom Search Engine

The big buzz this morning (Threadwatch, SEW Blog, WebmasterWorld) appears to be Google's announcement that it's allowing users to create custom engines based on the main Google index.

On the technical side, this is little more than using a subset of Google's index to narrow the number of specific sources that appear on a Google results page. In other words, if you're a dentist hoping to create the Next Great Dental Search Engine, you could tell Google to include only the sites you want, perhaps such as the American Dental Association, your own site, a few hand-picked dental blogs (I'm sure they exist ... right?), and so on.

This way, when someone searches for [plaque] on your custom dental engine, you won't get any trophy shops popping up in the results.

This is nothing new. Sites like Rollyo have been doing it for a while (although they're somewhat parasitic, using Google's index as a back end). But Google offers more horsepower than the others, letting your trusted users help you build the list of resources your engine uses, as well as letting you add thousands of sites into your custom index.

So let's call this what it really is. I've talked before about the potential power of small, vertical engines vs. large, catch-all indexes like Google's. It's pretty much understood that Google owns the latter segment. With this announcement, Google is offering its users the distinct privilege of enabling Google to own the first.

Matt Cutts pretty much sums up the potential here (emphasis added):

I do think that this launch will kick off a lot of opportunity that not everyone will see or understand at first. For example, the first person to make a truly kick-butt search engine about biking will likely start to attract volunteers and traction and first-mover attention, and could very well become the authority search for that niche. I think that this launch could kick off a wave of search over a long tail of niches; rather than a big vertical like “health,�? someone could make a search for the much much smaller “health at every size�? movement.

So Google is leveraging the power of communities to let communities themselves build their own vertical search sites. And Google runs its ads alongside these highly-targeted, loyal-user sites.

Smart and efficient. Sounds like in addition to C++ Programming Fundamentals, a few Googlers have been reading Tom Sawyer too.

Help Google Tackle Vertical with a Custom Search Engine
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October 18, 2006

Yahoo Sidles up to Firefox

In a boldly unobtrusive move from its Passive Chap-Hiding Division, Yahoo! has sidled up to Firefox with the following banner:

Using Yahoo! from within the Firefox browser is possible! . . . Who knew?
This has Google wondering what not to do next, as they provide the start page for Firefox users.

Yahoo! plans next to unveil a banner proclaiming that spelling Yahoo on an Etch-a-Sketch is also possible! . . . Who knew?

Yahoo Sidles up to Firefox
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October 17, 2006

Google Earth Gets Duped - by Google Earth

Conventional SEO wisdom has generally arrived at the point that claims duplicated content won't necessarily hurt you, but it won't really help you either. If you present Page X on two unique URLs, so goes the lore, engines don't know which version to pick, so they'll probably just pick one, although you don't necessarily have control over which one they'll decide to include.

That is, unless the engine owns Page X.

I was doing a little research on Google Earth, so I typed what I figured would be the correct URL: www.google.com/earth. Google is usually really good about guessing what people will type, and if that person is wrong, redirecting him to the proper page. But I wasn't wrong, because Google Earth did resolve at that address.

But I clicked around for a while, and wouldn't you know it, before long I was on the earth.google.com subdomain, and I was pretty sure I hadn't been redirected.

So www.google.com/earth/ and earth.google.com are identical. But, no big deal, right? After all, won't Google simply decide which of its pages to show in a query for [google earth]?

Not necessarily. Following is results page for that query (notice the listings in red boxes):

The bottom line is, despite the fact that Google says "Don't create multiple pages, subdomains, or domains with substantially duplicate content," Google gives itself double the exposure on the results page because it has the same content sitting on two different URLs. Kids, if you try this at home, don't expect the same results. (And wear a helmet.)

And as a neat parlor trick, the two different entries for the page (again, boxed in red) even have faux differences. The top listing shows the DMOZ description for Google Earth. The lower listing shows copy pulled from the page body.

Oh, and notice that boxed in yellow, the exact same thing happens with Wikipedia. The only difference is an internal redirect on the Wikipedia site between /Google_Earth and /Google_earth. Get it? When you're Wikipedia, a character in lowercase is enough to get you a dual listing - to the exact same content.

Google Earth Gets Duped - by Google Earth
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October 12, 2006

What Google Sitemaps Can and Can't Do

On the heels of my complaint that Google is sending mixed messages about how it interprets the "nofollow" link attribute, I need to give credit where it's due. Earlier in the week, Matt Cutts asked his readers to report genuine SERP bugs. Not the type of "bug" characterized by your competitor's site ranking higher than yours, but results that return truly crazy results.

The post itself was fairly unremarkable because its purpose was merely to narrow his definition of "buggy." But in the comments section, when asked by a reader why the reader's site showed only two pages indexed at Google "when the site has several more pages that are search engine friendly and a Google Sitemap," Cutts dropped a nugget of gold:

The fact is that if you want Google to crawl you deeply (more than the 1-2 urls), you do need to have some links. Submitting a sitemap to Google lets us know those urls exist, but sitemaps are also not a back door; if no one at all in the whole web links to your domain at all, Google won’t crawl you as deeply.

Sounds like a great excuse to plug a link building service, but that would be crass. Instead, I'll just mention that a Google Sitemap is great for truncating the crawling time required for a site, but it's not a shortcut to ranking well, and as this quote states, it's not even a shortcut to getting indexed.

Per his request, I did leave a comment about the [therapy products] query that Sean caught in June. He said he'd pass it along.

What Google Sitemaps Can and Can't Do
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October 02, 2006

Google Sitemap Feeds, Regular and Images, And Overlap, Or Lack Of

We hear from a Googler an important clarification that to date had been a bit murky, especially if you are creating both regular Google Sitemaps and Google Images Sitemaps (or feeds) for clients. At issue:

Can a site use both a Google Image Sitemap Feed and Google Sitemap, or does one supersede the other? And if there's no overlap between the two feeds, if there are pages in the images feed you'd also want to be in the main index, should you have those pages in both feeds? Is that ok?

The answer, Wagon Friends, is no longer blowing in the wind:

There's no overlap between the feeds and indexes here. The stuff in the image sitemaps goes only into Images, stuff in the other sitemaps goes into the main index. So no superceding, no overlap... and therefore it makes sense to use both sitemaps. No need to put pages in both feeds. As I understand it, the main sitemaps file won't really take image files into account anyway.

So, images only in Google Image Sitemaps, and not images but just pages in regular Google Sitemaps, which makes perfect logical sense, thankfully.

And to boot, the Googler it comes to us from has proven to be a Trusted Feed.

Google Sitemap Feeds, Regular and Images, And Overlap, Or Lack Of
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September 27, 2006

Revisiting the Many Faces of Nofollow

About a month ago, in my post about Del.icio.us cloaking its robots meta tags, I got into a great discussion about the relative functions of the "nofollow" robots meta tag vs. the "nofollow" link attribute.

Jason Dettbarn, in the comments, said

I know one is global and one is used for individual links. But end result, what is the difference? Both tell robots not to follow the links.

The reason I bring this up, is because del.icio.us still has the "nofollow" link attribute on the individual links, regardless if your user agent is "normal" or Googlebot or whatever. So the link juice still doesn't pass, regardless of the meta tag.

to which I replied,

As for the nofollow meta tag and the nofollow link attribute having the same effect, that's not my understanding. As I understand it, the nofollow meta tag tells the bot to literally not crawl the target page, while the nofollow link attribute does NOT instruct the bot to avoid crawling the link, but instead, tells it to merely not pass link popularity (or PR, or however you want to think about it).

So having a nofollow meta tag on a page does (or should) put a stop to indexing pages linked from that page, while having the nofollow link attribute enables indexing of links on the page but does not allow them to pass popularity.

Jason set me straight by pointing me to an earlier Cutts post that described the two as being similar in functionality. With that, I felt a little foolish, although it didn't negate the main point of my post, which remains that Del.icio.us is misleading its users.

Fast forward. I feel vindicated today, because while I still wasn't right (at least in terms of what Matt Cutts says, which I'll consider authoritative), I certainly wasn't the only one who believed that the two "nofollow" attributes have different purposes.

In an interview with John Battelle yesterday, Matt Cutts once again equated the attributes. This morning, Danny Sullivan asked for clarification, saying

Let's back up. You can put a meta robots tag on your pages with the value of "nofollow," as described here. This tag, about 10 years old now, long predates any concerns about link selling skewing search results or the nofollow attribute. It is supposed to tell a search engine not to follow any links on a page, for purposes of indexing those links.

...

Now on to the nofollow attribute. Created in January 2005, it was a way to flag particular links to search engines as those a site owner doesn't explicitly approve of. It was never defined as a means to telling search engines not to actually "follow" the link. It was more a way to say that you don't endorse the link. In fact, to my knowledge, Yahoo and perhaps others will still "click on" or follow links even if they make use of the nofollow attribute.

I doubt that Matt Cutts misunderstands Google's methodology in dealing with the two "nofollow" attributes, so I'm officially changing my beliefs on their usage. But I do feel better knowing that I'm not crazy, and that others (of significant influence and industry knowledge, no less) were lured into believing as I did.

Revisiting the Many Faces of Nofollow
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September 13, 2006

Site Verification Headaches with Yahoo and Google Sitemaps

In the spirit of Doug's most recent post about Google Webmaster Central, I wanted to add a few notes about both it and its Sunnyvale counterpart, Yahoo Site Explorer's recently updated webmaster area.

Yahoo Site Verification. I spent about an hour this morning preparing to verify about 20 sites for a very large client. One thing that's REALLY annoying about Yahoo's site verification process is that each site requires a unique text file - complete with unique filename and unique 16-character text string within the file - uploaded to the root.

Now, of course you can't create all 20 verification files, dump them into an email message, and send them to the client for uploading, because the client won't know what file goes with what site. So I created a folder for each file and zipped all the folders into one Zip archive.

I also added an Excel sheet with columns for the site, filename, and character string, because more than once, I've sent Yahoo authentication files over and over, only to have the recipient complain that the attachment didn't make it through. Apparently, many zealous mail clients look askance at curiously named, 16-byte file attachments. With the Excel file, I had a failsafe record of each verification file's contents in case they needed to be recreated by the client.

I'm sure Yahoo has a reason for giving each user a different authentication filename AND character string for EACH site that needs to be authenticated. I'm just not sure what the reason is.

Contrast this with Google Verification. First, I have to be honest and admit that I'd verified about a half dozen sites through Google before I realized that each time the server spat out an authentication file, it was the exact same file each time. Few people understand that with Google, your unique verification file (tied to your personal Google account) is your backstage pass to any concert you want. You can view the stats for any site that hosts your verification file in its root, and a site can host verfication files for as many people as need access to the stats.

So verify one site, then keep that verification file in a place you'll remember. From then on, you don't need to go through the process of having Google spit out the same info again and again, each time you want to verify a new site. Just upload your file to the root and Verify.

Like Yahoo's verification files, Google's also suffer from Napoleon Complexes - in fact, with no recommended content at all (just unique filenames), email clients are even more suspicious of them, because at 0 bytes, they're infinitely smaller than Yahoo's 16-byte files. While Google doesn't specifically demand that your file contain text, it doesn't discriminate against files that do. So here's a tip: Add some nonsense text to your Google verification file, and I think you'll find it more easily passable through email.

Site Verification Headaches with Yahoo and Google Sitemaps
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September 12, 2006

Google Webmaster Tools Uncovers Missed Site Opportunities

We have many clients whom we’ve helped create and submit sitemaps to Google through Google Webmaster Tools.

Simply put, a Google sitemap is a special file that resides on your server that enables you to tell Google what pages are present on your site. Once this is done, you can login to Google’s Webmaster Tools console and manage your sitemap as well as view statistics and error information about your site.

Some of the most valuable data provided by Google is under the Statistics and Query Stats tab.



Here you’ll find:

Top Search Queries – this data shows the top search queries for your site within Google’s placement results. In other words, the most popular queries where you have some presence at Google. These are highly searched-for keywords and phrases where your site shows up in Google’s natural search results. Think of this as a VISIBILITY indicator.

Top Search Query Clicks – this data shows the top search queries that sent traffic to your site. In other words, these are the most popular queries for which people actually clicked over to your site. Your site is getting clicks from these specific keywords and phrases. Think of this as a TRAFFIC indicator.

Along with the data above, Google also provides the Average Top Position of your site which is the highest position any page from your site ranked for that particular query.

While this data took us a while to digest and analyze, over the last few months we’ve been able to create some very helpful reports for clients. The secret to this data is not necessarily the data within the two groups of data above, but rather in comparing both sets of data.

For example, if a search query appears in both groups, this means the search query is both highly searched and found at Google (visibility of your site is good) AND the query is also getting clicked on (traffic is flowing from Google to your site). You may find that these queries are very important queries to your site, while others may not be. A few of our clients have been surprised by some unexpected search queries that their site is highly visible for and is also getting traffic from! The ideal situation, and a good indicator of SEO performance, in this example is to find some or all of your major keywords and phrases in this group. For us at Intrapromote, this would allow us to meet our first and second goals in an SEO and Link Building campaign: Placements (visibility) and Clickthroughs (traffic).

Perhaps the most “SEO-affecting�? comparison of the two data sets is where search queries are highly visible (they are a Top Search Query) but they are not getting clicks (they are not a Top Search Query Click). We see these as potential missed opportunities IF the search query is highly relevant to your site.

For search queries where this occurs, you should ask yourself a few questions:

A. Is the keyword/phrase/query not ranking high enough on page #1 at Google to get clicks?

B. Why is the page returned by Google not getting clicks?

1. Is the page title and/or description on Google unappealing?
2. Are there on-page factors blocking higher placement?
3. What else can be done to push the page higher on page #1?

Google Webmaster Tools Uncovers Missed Site Opportunities
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September 11, 2006

Welcome to the Real Wiki, George Allen!

Allow me to play Oliver Stone for a moment. With the exception of the initial incident, I’m filling in the blanks entirely because I don’t care about the blanks. For the purpose of this post, my sole concern is illustrating how Wikipedia is impacting Election 2006, at least in one race (does anybody appreciate puns anymore?).

The initial incident is this video. Virginia Senator George Allen twice threw a racial slur at a gentleman holding a video camera. All else is conjecture.

Somebody at the Webb Campaign must have realized the power of natural search and the power of Wiki with respect to natural search. Perhaps it was the same person that realized the power of a blog. When the Webb campaign members got together and thought aloud about how to get this video in front of as many people as possible, somebody must have said, "YouTube!" Maybe those same people sat with Jim Webb and wondered how to get people to YouTube, and further, they just might have wondered if people would recognize this racial slur.

At this point, our conjectural hero would have gazed triumphantly over at Jim Webb, as theme music filled the room, and proclaimed, "You just keep talking about macaca. Wiki will tell people what macaca means AND show them the video." You see, our hero would know that search engines love Wiki, and our hero would also know that, although anybody can contribute to Wiki, it bears the authority and credibility of an encyclopedia. Get your story at Wiki, and trusting eyes will find it.

Now let’s see where google directs people that want to know more about macaca.

ADW: Macaca fascicularis: Information - Doesn't appear relevant. Move on.
ADW: Macaca fuscata: Information - Doesn't appear relevant. Move on.
Macaque - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia - "For the slur see Macaca (slur)" I wonder who added that to Wiki.
Macaca (slur) - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia - that looks about right. And what do they see when they get there? A definition, and later "Macaca and the George Allen Campaign Incident." And what else is there? A link to the Washington Post article and the YouTube video. Funny, those are the 5th and 7th Google results, respectively.

Now allow me to play Mastercard for a moment.

George Allen's Campaign - Big Bucks, One Whammy
Jim Webb's Campaign - Smaller Bucks, No Whammies
Video Upload at YouTube and Contribution at Wiki - $0
Racial Slur Pointed Directly into a Camera - Priceless

Update: The Wiki Battle Rages On
One of the coolest Wiki features is the edit history for a given page. Do you want to keep your eye on this vicious cock fight (politically speaking, of course)? Click here. And after that, click here.

Update Update: Destiny Takes a Hand
Macaca is now redirecting to Macaque. The former Macaca page is still here.

Stay tuned to find out how our fearless hero responds . . .

Welcome to the Real Wiki, George Allen!
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September 01, 2006

Google Keyword Association

As a reminder, try using the tilde search @ Google for a keyword or phrase? It's pretty cool and gives you some insight into how Google looks at various words.

Go to Google and type in [~cars]. What you will find is cars is highlighted in the search results along with other keyword phrases Google deems as relative to that word. You'll find phrases such as "autos" "car prices", etc. When conducting an SEO program with your sights set on Google, this is a valuable search function that allows for you to also target supporting keyword phrases when writing code and content for your pages.

Happy searching!

Google Keyword Association
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August 24, 2006

Google is Not Relevant, Relatively Speaking

I doubt there could be more of a connection between the words Google and Relevance. Google talks constantly about relevance, and we respond by talking more about Google’s relevance. It is their aim to deliver the most relevant results, and they do it for the most part.

We have almost too many examples of Google products and features that are so much better than anything the competition offers. That being said, it is not too difficult to come up with a product or feature that hasn’t exactly come to Google fruition just yet. The one that always leaves me scratching my head is the related: search operator.

Isn’t there some type of connection between the words relevant and related? If a search engine prides itself on relevance, shouldn’t its related: query provide relevant results? Couldn’t Google use its “sophisticated text-matching techniques to find pages that are both important and relevant to your search�? to provide better related: query results. This should be one of their strongest queries, yet it is such a glaring weakness. Some examples follow this rant.

Are any sites related to Google? Apparently, just other Google sites.

Are any sites related to Yahoo? Apparently, just other Yahoo sites.

Are any sites related to MSN? I guess not.

Google is Not Relevant, Relatively Speaking
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August 17, 2006

Google Says Index This!

Recently, the Wagon has noticed a new option at play over at Google Sitemaps. Next time you're in the area, click on Preferred Domain.

Google is giving you the opportunity to choose whether you would like your urls listed with or without the www (http://www.yoursite.com or http://yoursite.com). Google follows this opportunity with the following note:

Once you specify your preference here, it may take some time for changes to be reflected in our index. While Google doesn't guarantee that we'll show your URLs in the form that you prefer, we will use your choice as a suggestion to improve our indexing.

We think this is important for a few simple reasons. Google is trying to improve its index of your site, and they are allowing you to help them. Further, Google is acknowledging that the www vs. non-www indexation issue is causing duplicate pages to appear in its index. And finally, and most importantly, Google is telling us that sites can improve their indexation by clearing up the www. vs. non-www issue.

Click over there to learn how to 301 redirect non-www pages to their www equivalent, or vice versa.

Google Says Index This!
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August 08, 2006

The Google Portal?

Has anyone seen the the Google homepage today? It certainly looks like the beginning of a portal for ol' Google. I'm hoping this is just another one of Google's "tests" and isn't a permanent thing for their home page. Even while not signed in, I'm being redirected to Google's "personalized" home page:

For some time now, Google has been slowly becoming what many have feared...a portal that will inevitably allow anyone to do anything for their day-to-day needs and wants from a single source. Today's new home page indicates a possible swing to the portal-like platform.

Yahoo! has and continues to have success in the portal market, but does Google have what it takes and does Google have enough experience and savvy to compete in the portal industry? I have a feeling the answer is yes.

The jury is still out on the home page interface. At least the search results pages haven’t changed...yet.

The Google Portal?
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August 01, 2006

NOODP: Should Google Have Kept Greasing Wheezer?

One of my favorite Little Rascals episodes is called Bear Shooters where Spud can’t join the gang on their hunting trip because he has to stay home and grease his little brother Wheezer. It’s rumored that the band Weezer took it’s name from this classic episode.

"I can't come out," whines Spud. "I've got to stay home and grease Wheezer!"

It all works out for Spud in the end. But, I’m wondering if Google should have stayed inside and greased Wheezer a while longer before adding support for the NOODP tag. Did we celebrate prematurely?

We’ve read several site owner reports that allege their rankings have dropped significantly since implementing the tag on their sites. A few of these also report that they removed the tag and their placements returned to their former positions.

The only Intrapromote client so far that has implemented the tag has also experienced a drop in placement for their most important and competitive search phrase at Google. About the same time, they’ve also seen a major drop in the number of pages indexed by Google.

Coincidence?

Poor Wheezer was better off with the croup?

Hmmmmm . . . . . . . . . .

Our client plans to yank the NOODP tag to see if normalcy resumes. Stay tuned. I’ll let you know what happens.

NOODP: Should Google Have Kept Greasing Wheezer?
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July 31, 2006

Proximity Uber Alles: Relevancy Not Very Relevant

This is a hoot:

The idea is to encourage visitors to start their searches for additional articles on newspapers' own sites, rather than go to Google News or another news aggregator, said Julian Steinberg, Inform's vice president of operations. "If you give your users all the functionality and content that your users want online, then your users will keep coming back day in and day out," he said.

Julian, we hardly knew ye. Yet online history is littered with the tattered pages of business plans stipulating relevance to be less important than proximity, so there is a long line of tradition for you to stand in and, hopefully, some free drinks remain at the bar from the bubble era to tide you over as you await your on-site search revolution.

Relevance? Fie! We'll worry about relevance after users start searching within our site.

Old media can be so quaint it's almost kind of cute...

Proximity Uber Alles: Relevancy Not Very Relevant
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July 19, 2006

Google, Hoops and Hat Tricks

In doing some keyword research this morning, I was checking to see what Google considers to be synonyms of various sports-related keywords.

I frequently use the tilde (~) character in such searches to find ways to vary text but still keep the pages relevant for specific terms and concepts. Google has this to say about the tilde search on its search refinement page:

If you want to search not only for your search term but also for its synonyms, place the tilde sign ("~") immediately in front of your search term.

So I was a little surprised when I did a tilde search for [~nhl] to see that Google considers NBA synonymous with NHL:

I expected to see National Hockey League, and Sports didn't surprise me. But NBA? That's a stretch. (Strangely, searching for [~nba] doesn't return NHL as a synonym, as you might expect.)

I did more tilde searches for abbreviated sports leagues, such as [~mlb], [~wnba], [~nfl], and a few others. In all cases, Google typically returned as synonyms the full name of the league or another related term - but no surprises.

So who knows more about hockey than Canada? Logic would then suggest that google.ca would fix this American error - right? Almost. While google.ca still shows NBA in its results for [~nhl], NBA.com appears at number 2 instead of number 1, where google.com puts it.

Google, Hoops and Hat Tricks
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July 18, 2006

NOODP = Yes!!!

I have no musical reference to my post this week other than to say that I find the instrumental gem called YYZ on Rush’s finest album, Moving Pictures, to be the perfect music to write a blog post to. I highly recommend it. And Neil Peart, I know you're reading this ..... you are the finest drummer on our planet.

Last Thursday, our fair-haired and highly regarded Erik Dafforn sent the Intrapromote staff an email with a Subject line that all IPers (Intrapromote staff) assumed was a bad joke.

The subject line you ask?

“Google now honors NOODP meta tag!�?

This would mean that our clients could include a tag on their web pages to tell Google not to pull the often ho hum titles from ODP and use them as the title in search results pages.

“Yeah right�?, was simultaneously (I like to think, harmoniously) uttered in our Ohio, Indiana, and Oregon offices as the email appeared in our collective In boxes. However, much to our surprise it is actually true!

Did Google finally get tired of people asking for this or did they quickly follow suit because MSN recently added support for the NOODP tag? Did Danny Sullivan finally get through to Google? Who knows, but my money is on keeping up with the competition.

It was good timing for me since one of the clients I work with needed to shake loose from a Google SERP that listed only their company name as the title. Clickability score? About a 2 out of 10.

If you’re in the same boat of folks disgusted by your ODP title and description and how it shows up upon searches at Google, simply add the following code to the source code of your page:

< META NAME="ROBOTS" CONTENT="NOODP" >

NOODP = Yes!!!
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June 29, 2006

Bueller?... Bueller?... Google?... Google?...

This Speedwagon Presentation of Great 80's Moments in Film has been made possible by Peculiar Google Results.

Economics Teacher: Bueller?... Bueller?...

Simone: He's sick. My best friend's sister's boyfriend's brother's girlfriend heard from this guy who knows this kid who's going with a girl who saw Ferris pass-out at 31 Flavors last night. I guess it's pretty serious.

Economics Teacher: Thank you, Simone. Google?... Google?...

Simone: Oh. My sister's boyfriend's brother's best friend's girlfriend heard from this kid who knows this girl who's going with a guy who saw Google pass-out after searching for just 3 therapy products last night. I guess Yahoo took over at that point.

Economics Teacher: Thank you, Simone.

Simone: No problem whatsoever.

Economics Teacher: MSN?... MSN?...

Simone: I totally don't think MSN is in this class.

. . . And Scene.

Special thanks to Sean Bolton for discovering this peculiar Google result and to Ben Stein and Kristy Swanson for reprising their roles as Economics Teacher and Simone, respectively.

Bueller?... Bueller?... Google?... Google?...
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June 22, 2006

Anatomy of a Blog/Newsletter Archive

Archive, Archive, Archive.

The following transcript is loosely based on many client conversations. For our purpose, we will join this conversation in progress, and leave it in much the same fashion.

Consultant: Oh, so you have a newsletter. Do you archive it?

Client: No. Should we?

Consultant: Absolutely!

Client: Well, we’ll see

. . . And Scene.

The recommendation repeatedly . . . dare I say ritualistically . . . receives reluctance. Why, man, Why? If you go to the trouble of creating fresh, useful content for a targeted audience, why not show it to the search engines? How different is that from a blog? Not too many people argue that blogs do not have search engine value, including newsletter pushers not yet ready to be called bloggers. What they do not realize is that the blog structure is flexible enough for the newsletter pusher to plug in newsletter content postfactum, thus protecting his or her newsletter status.

Enter Jill Whalen. You would be hard pressed to find someone that balances search engine value and user focus better than Jill. When she makes a move, you can guarantee that both parties are justly considered. Jill Whalen has always archived her newsletter, but she did not always archive it like this.

In adopting the blog structure, Jill Whalen has made it easier for humans to peruse her archive, for search engines to index her archive, and for me to advocate such archives. Jill's linking structure is perfect. She drives traffic and correspondence to the archive by linking to the archived location from that article in the newsletter. The article will have a temporary home on the archive main page, as well as permanent homes on its own page, within the monthly and other relevant categories.

With the release of each new issue, the archive will show search engines new pages of fresh, relevant content. And Google loves new content, but Google also loves old content when there is proof of new content, so the older articles will continue to gain steam as new issues are added.

And look at those links, a completely different navigational structure than the main site. Just one link on the left. Jill Whalen is completely emphasizing conversion. And on the other side, she points out the previous issues, beneficial to human and search engine alike. Then she links (with keywords, of course) to her most important sections of the main site. As for the body, every article links to itself in the title, then all categories under which it could be found at the end of the article.

More pages, more fresh content, and more keyword-rich links equate to more relevance, more importance, and better indexability. If you will not do if for me, please do it for Jill Whalen.

Anatomy of a Blog/Newsletter Archive
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June 19, 2006

Nielsen Finally Asked to Go Away?

G, who could be next?

When I read the headline I was as excited as a young boy on Christmas morn': Google's Next Rival: Nielsen Media Research. Surely the Google juggernaut would finally drive a stake through the mythical Gross Ratings Point (GRP) old media uses to protect its medieval villages from knowledge of the shape of Earth.

I was not to be disappointed; Google's vision is one that would make even the most ardent Nielsen fan run for the hills with a lighted torch:

Here's how it works. Plop down on the couch with your laptop and tune into Survivor. Using an audio signature, your computer knows what you're watching and delivers real-time information on the contestants, a chat room for fans to discuss, and an advertisement for a local camping store. The paper's presenters say the technology only notes what's on television and does not "overhear" conversations.

If you shrug off the creepiness of the overhearing conversations part, you notice that Nielsen may be in the typical came-to-a-gunfight-with-a-shiny-sword scenario:

The rich, real-time data Google will collect and provide to television networks to base advertising prices could obliterate Nielsen's offerings of quarterly randomly selected household results, which are sometimes, in more rural markets, still collected via pen and paper diaries.

I'm betting Google will collect more data than that of Nielsen's famed 5,100 households:

Google's viewer data would involve not just what program where and how many people are most likely watching, but what, how many, why, when, and how everyone is watching, what they are saying about it, and which ads get the most distance.

G, think that might be a bit more accurate tha the current 5,100 abaci to be couted?

Nielsen Finally Asked to Go Away?
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June 12, 2006

GBuy : Would a Payment System Beginning with any other Letter Smell as Sweet?

That sweet smell of "G" we've come to associate with seemless Ajax integration is actually the perfume of new money being minted, as the buzz surrounding the expected June 28 launch of GBuy suggests.

Teknomo's olfactory senses are the sharpest on the subject of the latest entree on the GBuffet:

By tracking users while they first start looking for a product to their virtual wallets while payment takes place Google will be able to understand the link between products and buying habits.

Let’s track back, for a moment, ourselves. The understanding Google seeks is much more than to understand ultimate user query intent for understanding’s sake alone. This is less about improving their product, which I always remind clients’ is relevancy, than about ultimately owning the capacity to gin the results in favor of the likely buyer, so as to stoke buying through an algorithmic bonfire. Now, obtaining that capacity is quite different than actually allowing that capacity to affect relevancy, and Search Engine God Danny Sullivan remains in the camp of those who believe that fire will never be set.

I sure hope so. Relevance cannot be defined purely on the basis of purchase. Relevance is not a zero sum game, and to this point Google has gained user trust and marketshare through making sure they always erred on the side of not manipulating their users, even though at any point they surely could. Favoring the buyer uber alles would be a significant step in the opposite direction.

Let's cross our algorthmic fingers and hope the smell of this newest G doesn't sour anytime soon.

GBuy : Would a Payment System Beginning with any other Letter Smell as Sweet?
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June 09, 2006

Track Me Consistently, or Don't Track Me

It's no big news that Google sometimes uses tracking codes in the links on its SERPs. People have been discussing it for years.

But I just don't understand what I saw earlier today. Below are Google Results from within the same browsing session, captured within minutes of each other. I have included the linking information that displays in the status bar when you roll over the link on the Google SERP, pointing to the external sites.

Google Results Page 1 shows a redirected link, but Google Results Page 2 shows a direct link.

We're way beyond debating the "rightness" of Google using tracking URLs in its SERPs. It is what it is. What I'm curious about is why, apparently arbitrarily and within the same browsing session, Google is using tracking URLs in one instance, then (literally) the next minute, it's not. Are they getting the full picture? Will they tie my IP address to my query for [fertilizer bombs], but not my refined query of [defusing a fertilizer bomb]? (Yes, I'm also a secret agent.) The last thing we need, especially in these days of government "curiosity" in searcher behavior, is tracking with the same cloudy accuracy as TV's Nielsen Ratings.

Track Me Consistently, or Don't Track Me
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June 07, 2006

Google Analytics Data Blackout

Google Analytics appears to have missed about five hours' worth of data from yesterday. The following shot shows a representative picture that appears for all my clients who utilize GA's statistics. The outage was from 1pm through 5pm, or might be different depending on your time zone.

No one's saying much about this yet. We'll have to wait to see whether the data is merely not there yet or whether it's gone for good.

Google Analytics Data Blackout
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June 05, 2006

Google Adds to Online Office Suite with Spreadsheet

Coming only a few months after it purchased the Writely online word processor, Google has added another application to its online application suite with the announcement of an online spreadsheet.

While the online spreadsheet concept is new for Google (and the Reuters article implies that it's new to everyone), plenty of alternatives already exist, including iRows, Zoho, NumSum, and spreadsheet-database mashups like Trackslife.

More and more, when we post about Google, it's not always easy to answer the question, "What does this have to do with 'Search'?" Google's move into things like desktop gadgetry sometimes distracts us from the bigger picture. But an online office suite really isn't a distant leap away from the search box - or at least the Desktop search box. Assume that any spreadsheet you create with Google Spreadsheets will be fully indexed by your personal Google Desktop search, and that you (and anyone with whom you collaborate, chat, gmail, or otherwise share sheet-based information) will have quick access to it from any computer on which you've signed into your Google account.

The forums and blogs have plenty of armchairistics and first-round critiques, ranging from "great idea" to wondering who in their right mind would trust sensitive data to a web storage system. Few from the latter camp seem to remember a similar brouhaha when we learned companies like Amazon would store our credit card data (!) within their server farms.

I eagerly await Google's imminent version of PowerPoint and its likely ability to bore large masses of people on a much more efficient, scalable level.

Google Adds to Online Office Suite with Spreadsheet
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June 01, 2006

Maybe There's Something To Google

I'm starting to think maybe Google is on to something. It's still pretty early in the game, but this new search engine is pretty darn good. Not only does it appear to be offering more accurate results than the others, but it gives you more accurate information without having to click.

I know these are new concepts, so just bear with me. Let's take last weekend's race in Indianapolis. Lots of people seem to be interested in that event, so there's probably lots of information across the world wide web about it. And the race just happened, so it would be pretty impressive if these search engines could already give us information about this current event. I'm not interested in visiting any sites right now, but I'd like to see which search engine would be able to tell me who won that race. See, I think in the future people will not just use search engines to find web sites, but to find information in a hurry.

Anyway, who was the [2006 Indianapolis 500 Winner]?

Google's Answer:

And the other guys:

Google has my answer above the fold (twice). Yahoo came up with the answer further down the page (6th result), and MSN did not show the winner anywhere on the first page.

Like I said, maybe there's something to this Google!

Maybe There's Something To Google
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May 24, 2006

A Reminder To Small-Medium Size Players Seeking Google Love

Early in my career, I spent several years managing a 5 physician family practice in a small Missouri town.

Perhaps the most embarrassing moment of my life happened inside the walls of that clinic. That was the day I thought I was interviewing a gal for a receptionist position when actually she was there for a pap smear. You see, my office was occupied and I had to use one of the physician exam rooms for what I thought was going to be an interview. It was her first visit to the clinic and she thought I was the doctor. Talk about mistaken identities. You should have seen the look on her face when she asked if she should sit on the exam table and I said, “No, that chair over in the corner will be just fine.�?

Rural health clinics (RHCs) are formed in Missouri and other states in order to get quality health care into medically underserved rural areas. Physicians can actually get a better reimbursement rate from Medicare, Medicaid, etc. by choosing to practice in a rural setting. The official designation as an RHC comes from the Department of Health and there are rigid guidelines to achieving this determination including an exhaustive “site visit�? inspection.

I remember the preparation for this inspection was excruciatingly detailed and went on for months! One of the things I remember is that all 16 of our exam rooms had to meet 3 or 4 pages of criteria … everything had to be exactly per the requirements if we were to pass the inspection and be awarded the RHC designation. I even recall someone saying that if one room didn’t contain a particular Policies & Procedures manual, the entire clinic would fail the inspection….just that one little thing!

This small piece of my past recently came to mind while talking to a client this week. This is a client that if you put their site into a large aquarium with other sites in their industry, they would be a small to medium size fish in an aquarium with lots of very small plankton, a few sharks, and one giant sperm wale.

Google was giving some “special treatment�? to the sperm whale (imagine that) and our client wanted to also be considered for this Google Love. Google has made some positive comments to them, but has yet to officially consider them alongside their competitor.

Our client is smart. Before I even had a chance to ask them, they had already started to double and triple check their site, making sure all their ducks are in a nice, uniform row. They know that if Google does consider them, they need to be prepared right now.

Google isn’t as strict as the rural health clinic above, however, it’s incredibly wise to make sure your site isn’t in the black or even gray when it comes to Google’s inspection.

Just a reminder to all you small or medium size fish, check your site using Google’s “No No�? list routinely -- especially if you want to be considered along with the bigger fish in your industry.

A Reminder To Small-Medium Size Players Seeking Google Love
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May 16, 2006

The Second Cutts is the Deepest

You've probably read by now that Google has hired someone to help Matt Cutts in his work as liaison to webmasters. The new "MiniMatt," as he's been dubbed, is Adam Lasnik.

Until very recently, Adam was Intrapromote's Director of Paid Search, a role in which he handled PPC strategy for clients small, large, and very large. In his new role with Google, Adam's heading over to the organic side, where he'll be "hanging out at Webmaster conferences and various geek gatherings, occasionally replying to Google-related blog or forum posts, tackling some Webmaster-related e-mails, and undoubtedly popping up in other random places."

Intrapromote is proud to have had Adam on our roster, and we wish him the best in his new role at Google.

The Second Cutts is the Deepest
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May 11, 2006

Who’s Winning American Idol?

Our friends at WordTracker tell us that 68,324 searches will occur today for [American Idol]. So who is winning American Idol? The answer . . . when we return from break.

OK, Fox has #1. No surprise. But look at #2. Call it David vs. Goliath. Instead of the network behemoth occupying the #2 spot (there is no reason it shouldn’t) or some other serp behemoth (Wiki and IMDB are further down the page), true American Idol William Hung is hanging right there! This makes me proud to be someone who spends way too much time analyzing Google Results.

So what forces are at play?
A. The American Dream.
B. Link Building.
C. Irony.
D. All of the Above

Yes, William Hung! She Bangs! She Bangs!

Speedwagon Out

Who’s Winning American Idol?
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May 02, 2006

An Objective Look at Google vs. Microsoft

Just a few counterpoints about the current spate of Google/MSN craziness floating around:

Steve Lohr kicks off the hoopla in a NY Times article that states, regarding Microsoft's long-awaited release of IE 7, that

The new browser includes a search box in the upper-right corner that is typically set up to send users to Microsoft's MSN search service. Google contends that this puts Microsoft in a position to unfairly grab Web traffic and advertising dollars from its competitors.

Reaction, predictably, was polarized, with many people wondering what Google is thinking, since

1. The current search engine market share numbers favor Google over MSN at a ratio of roughly 4:1, and
2. Google has similar arrangements (that is, to be the default search engine) for Firefox and Opera browsers

I'll address the second point first. It basically boils down to the fact that IE 7, as well as Windows, the platform it runs on, are software, not a web site. And in terms of anti-trust, Windows is already tainted goods.

In 1998, the government made the connection between platform ownership and its ability to unfairly influence browser adoption - especially when choosing another browser was difficult or impossible: "The thing about browsers that's different from a lot of software is this is potentially an alternative platform," said Joel Klein, then Assistant Attorney General, Antitrust.

Google is counting on the government to make the same "alternative platform" connection between a browser and a search engine that it made between the OS and the browser in the late '90s. With MS holding roughly 80% of the market share with Internet Explorer, it seems like a plausible argument. Now if Opera or Firefox were to suddenly run on 80% of machines, Google might still not find the tables turned, because the arrangements between Google and those browsers are deals between different companies - not one company using its standing to push another of its products.

As for Google crying foul before a foul has been committed, that's possible. Yahoo's Jeremy Zawodney claims "double standard," noting Google's $1 billion deal with Dell to tweak browsers on Dell PCs in Google's favor. Danny Sullivan asks, "what advantage?" when he says

I am nauseatingly exhausted by idea that Microsoft will conjure up some magical method of yanking people into its MSN Windows Live Whatever You Want To Call It search service via the Windows operating system or the Internet Explorer browser. Microsoft has failed for years to be successful in this, which is why it's amazing anyone would still believe it.

I submit that Danny's nauseated exhaustion is premature. Google is smart to point out a potential advantage in Microsoft's setup before that advantage is illustrated in the marketplace. Should Google wait until MSN controls 80% of the search market before it claims that Microsoft unfairly used its advantage of platform and browser control to influence search?

It'll never happen, you say? Maybe not. Google certainly hopes not. But Google would be foolish to simply sit around idly and not use the Justice Department's precedent in this case.

The path of computing and Internet history is littered with the carcasses of companies who underestimated Microsoft or never thought Microsoft's ownership of the OS would pose a serious threat to their vertical. Ask Digital Research. Or WordPerfect. Or Lotus. Or Netscape.

Does Microsoft's ownership of desktops and the browser market create an unfair situation for other search engines? The answer, as determined by a court, may well be "no." But Google is not foolish or hypocritical for asking the question.

An Objective Look at Google vs. Microsoft
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April 13, 2006

Search Engine Management on a Friendly Level

I have long come to terms with the fact that search engine marketing services cannot be of use in the event of most offline emergencies. If a bomb is moments from detonation or my fellow man is stalked by an ugly mob with redcurrants, my ability to optimize a web page seems inconsequential. Our industry, mighty though it is, leaves me with a lower hero quotient when I put on my civvies.

That is until now!

An old friend called me yesterday. More than a few years ago, he gave some quotes to an acquaintance that was struggling to complete an article about an unsavory topic. She, in turn, made the article about him. This has been the source of great embarrassment, as anyone – friends, family, business associates – who googles him sees this article at #1.

My friend needs search engine management just like McDonald’s, but not on a super sized scale, although You would think the two entities were reversed in terms of respective concern. He’ll jot down Doogie Howser nightcaps on a well-named blogger account for a few months. Maybe a few external links, and the first results page will be his.

Emergency averted. Add a few points to the hero quotient.

After all, he is not a business battling entire sites. He is a human battling one article. I left my friend with the following thought to end this episode, ala Doogie.

… besides, if Traci Lords has a clean first results page, I don't think it should be that difficult for anyone else!

Search Engine Management on a Friendly Level
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Note to Self: Check Out Google Calendar - 8-9 am.

For over a year we've been hearing rumblings about Google Calendar, and Charlene Li was the first person I noticed who'd actually seen it.

Without further ado, here's the exclusive shot of the Google Calendar interface you've been waiting for:

That's a joke - sort of. Access has been sporadic all night, reminding me of the surprisingly resource-draining release of Google Analytics, which had to sit in the time-out corner after a quarter-million signups last November.

Even before I saw the Google Calendar interface, which is cool enough in its light-blue-trademark-Googlish-AJAXity, I got lost in thinking of the unprecedented ways Google will be able to integrate ads into your life when it decides you're ready for them.

Suppose you decide to have "Dinner at Buca" at 9pm. Contextually, Google could conceivably offer to make a reservation by linking to any of the Buca locations near your ZIP code. You could also get offers from Maggiano's, in the untimely event that Buca is full. And expect full integration with Google Maps to show you nearby cafes offering dessert.

Not that any of this is bad, of course. We're getting pretty used to it.

Note to Self: Check Out Google Calendar - 8-9 am.
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April 11, 2006

Why Does Google Hide its Zeitgeist?

In preparation for a post even less informative than this one, I was looking for the home page of Google Zeitgeist. While I'm usually pretty good at guessing where Google keeps its content, it often keeps me wondering about whether it's a subdomain of the main site (such as Google Base) or a folder off the TLD (such as Analytics).

So when I finally searched for [google zeitgeist], I was disappointed at the options. I clicked over on what I quickly figured was the page I wanted, only to find the UK version. Then there is Canada's. There's also a link to a services.google.com page so cleverly coded that its title doesn't fall within a <.head> tag.

I decided to do a site-specific search for it, hoping I'd find the right page. I didn't, but I found a page that knew the page ("friend of a friend" sort of thing).

From there, I hit "Zeitgeist home" and finally found it. By that time, I didn't even want it anymore, but I did wonder why I had such a hard time finding it. And there it was, in the source:

<.meta content="NOINDEX, NOFOLLOW" name="ROBOTS">

Why on earth would this page be set with those attributes? Is Google afraid too many people will see the rising popularity of queries for [masters], [katie couric], or the [gospel of judas]?

There's a joke there - somewhere - involving betrayal, Matt Lauer, and a 5-iron, but I spent so much time finding the page itself I don't have time to work it out.

Why Does Google Hide its Zeitgeist?
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April 06, 2006

Google Base Continues March Across SERPian Border

Google Base keeps rolling out into regular SERPs.

People started noticing Autos earlier this week, and I saw some recipe results this morning. My thoughts are mixed. For searches like real estate and recipes (sample), the Google Base box can be helpful (where "helpful" is defined as matching the intent of the user query).

For searches like autos (such as [toyota camry] shown below}, I don't think it's helpful. I know enough about certain verticals and user behavior to know that a search for [toyota camry] isn't particularly interested in finding a Toyota Camry for sale nearby.

It's still very early in the game, and no one is sure exactly how these results will come to rest on the page, but as organic results get shoved further and further down the page, Google begins to lose the interface simplicity that once differentiated it.

Google Base Continues March Across SERPian Border
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March 16, 2006

Is eBay Spamming My Beloved Google Search Results?

The weekend approaches and I find myself itching to hit yet another local motocross track to stretch my Yamaha Banshee's legs and, of course, blow off some steam from a very busy week in the SEO world. Uh oh, I need to find me a kill switch in order to qualify for riding at the indoor track. Sigh...I guess I'll look for a "yamaha banshee kill switch" on Google and check prices.

Uh...Ok, so there are only 22 matches for the exact phrase "yamaha banshee kill switch" but seven out of the top ten listings are from eBay!! I don't know about y'all, but I like having at least a few different websites to choose from within the confines of the top ten search results.

Having looked at the top ten pages individually, there wasn’t a single page that had the exact phrase match "yamaha banshee kill switch" on the active page. As a matter of fact, the only site besides eBay that matched my search in the top ten list of results was www.on-the-i.com, but even that was eBay-related.

Ok, this obviously isn't working. I'll try "banshee kill switch" and see what comes up. Nice! I have a whopping 112 matches to this search and only a couple of Supplemental Result returns on page one. Damn it, eBay, you're doing it again. You own six out of the top ten results for all of your domains and subdomains. Well at least I have a few other sites to consider, right? WRONG! eBay's affiliates are populating the other spots and I have no option but to conduct a generic search to find my much-needed kill switch.

It's pretty obvious that eBay is taking advantage of subdomain structure to the point where they are spamming to wipe out the competition from the top ten real estate on Google. I have nothing against subdomains in particular and feel they are necessary in some cases, but this is just malicious.

Google, I beg you, please find other relevant content pages for ancillary product search phrases other than eBay.

Pretty please with a cherry on top?

Is eBay Spamming My Beloved Google Search Results?
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February 23, 2006

Join Bode Miller in a Temporary Relocation

Much like his ability to dominate Alpine Skiing, Bode’s website has been temporarily redirected. Bode may prompt you to join him at www.joinbode.com, but this is not where you will find him.

Although it is not the intention of the 302, big brands use it to combine catchy-name appeal with trusted-site value.

Google shows an attractive first result for [Join Bode] with “join bode�? throughout, and because Google believes the redirection is temporary, it shows the Join Bode domain name. Click on the result and you are taken to a page at Nike boasting a Nike-like PageRank.

Now Nike could not have predicted Bode’s performance -- of course, that did not stop them from signing him, designing his site, shooting his commercials, and airing them – but let’s pretend that Bode Miller’s Torino performance was good enough to garner more than 40 searches per day for [Join Bode]. Nike and Bode would still just have one good result for one keyword phrase, and way too much room for stolen traffic. If they used the actual Join Bode domain then discussed and linked to it at Nike, they could have had the top 4 results for [Join Bode], and much better results for other Bode searches. Instead, they have a no link presence and no Nike mention. If you think flashing a web address constitutes search engine marketing, see Erik’s post about domain deafness.

If Nike did not want to concern themselves with search results, they should have hidden them like NBC does for [Bode Miller], which grabs 1400 searches per day. The second result is only slightly visible above the fold because the first result has no description.

Fortunately for Nike, all will blame Join Bode’s sub-par performance on Bode.

Join Bode Miller in a Temporary Relocation
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February 22, 2006

Revisiting 404 Error Pages That Show 200 Codes

We just keep running into clients whose error pages return incorrect (either 200 or 302-then-200) header codes. Because Google Sitemaps won't let you validate a sitemap file if your server is misconfigured, I thought it was worth another mention.

Johannes Meuller has an excellent article about making sure that your error pages return the correct codes. Unlike a lot of articles in the genre, it gives specific code to fix the situation, covering Windows ASP and Apache servers as well as PHP pages.

As I pointed out here, there are reasons beyond Google Sitemaps for making sure your error page(s) return the correct 404 error code.

If you're in doubt about your error page header codes, test it by plugging in a "fake" URL from your site (such as www.domain.com/xxxxxxx) into a header checker tool. Rex Swain has one of the best. Don't let looks deceive you. Plenty of custom error pages LOOK like they're 404 pages (with all the requisite "File not found" terminology), but they're still throwing bad header codes.

Meuller, the article of the article above, is also the author of a terrific program that generates XML files for use as Google Sitemaps.

Revisiting 404 Error Pages That Show 200 Codes
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February 16, 2006

Atop Brokeback Mountain

If you need help inserting a joke here, . . .

I must admit that I devised the linking structure for IMDb (that should be read as “I have absolutely nothing to do with IMDb, but I love the site�?). The site is incredibly helpful to its visitors in terms of quickly tracking down important (some people might read that as “trivial�?) information about your favorite movies, and its linking structure is more than helpful when it comes to ranking well in search engines.

It is no surprise who is atop [Brokeback Mountain], a phrase currently searched for more than 27,000 times per day. IMDb adds movies to its database as quickly as possible, and thereafter generates internal links from all involved parties ranging from star to assistant dialect coach. Each link -about 200 for Brokeback, which is not a large budget movie by an means- includes the movie name in its text and comes from a page filled with unique content. If that were not enough, other features like Movie News, Now Playing, and Awards keep the content and internal links coming.

2 Thoughts in closing:

Your internal linking structure has the power to propel your Link Building campaign.

and

IMDb, I'll never quit you!

Atop Brokeback Mountain
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February 15, 2006

An Open Letter to Search Engines

Dear Search Engines,

Here's a word for you: Relevance. I know you have it. And I know you know people want it. But here's some difficult news. They're not getting it, because you're making it too hard for them.

I know, I know. You're trying to get the word out. You have "advanced search" pages. You have APIs. You have tabbed searches for tiered results. You have these and a ton of other features that NO ONE USES, because despite more-or-less-accurate fantasies about how important you are to the world, you refuse to understand that people, while not exactly stupid, aren't exactly as "search literate" as you need them to be.

What's that, Google? You say you're getting the word out in the world's 8th most popular blog? I'm sorry, I guess I had trouble hearing that over the din of NO ONE KNOWING WHAT A BLOG IS. That's like saying your brand of calculator is the most popular among Hyperbolic Topology Ph.D. candidates. Woohoo!

Part of this isn't your fault; it's ours. We fill your comments and trackback sections. We write article after article about search engines. We spend days telling you what we think about preferential treatment of subdomains, or the mishandling of 302s, or how to measure effectiveness of site-wide links, and you start to believe that we represent a significant portion of potential users (we don't). Even the dreaded MSM is jumping in - a sure sign of the social dissemination of your technology, right? You can't even wend your way to the Times Op/Ed section without seeing half a dozen articles about how cool search is. But don't be misled: Most of these articles are mind-numbingly shallow, and they're mostly read by people who know thrice as much as the authors themselves. Not a lot of additional reach there, unfortunately.

Here's the bottom line. The most popular searches in your very own search boxes are actual URLs. Did you hear that? PEOPLE SEARCH FOR URLs IN YOUR SEARCH FIELDS SO THEY CAN SEE THEM IN YOUR SERPs AND THEN CLICK ON THEM. Does this sound like a group of people who are looking for a way to restrict search results to a specific TLD or find out how much they weigh in a popular British/Irish format? (By the way, would you call that "13 stone 8"?)

Search engines, here is the brutal reality: you're trying to get your message out in a world where 17% of HDTV owners mistakenly believe they're watching a high-def broadcast simply because they own a high-definition television. What's the moral here? YOU CANNOT MAKE THIS STUFF TOO SIMPLE FOR PEOPLE TO UNDERSTAND.

• Spend less time posting to your official blogs and more time putting your message on tray liners at fast-food restaurants.
• Spend less time speaking at tech conferences and more time buying a few TV spots to showcase your features. (When people see something on TV, they want to try it. When they see a tiny link to it pulling them away from a comfortable place, they don't. Pontiac should not understand this more than you do, but it does.
• Spend less time catering to corrupt governments and more time creating ad inserts for Sports Illustrated or Parenting or Marie Claire or whatever publications target the users who aren't fully exploiting your capabilities. Trust me, that's just about all of them.

Your employees have spent a lot of their time creating some very cool search features. It's time that some of them spent their hours thinking of innovative ways to educate searchers. And remember, counter to your intuition, "innovative" means "less technical." Users who know how to use search engines correctly better understand engines' potential for solving problems and are even more likely to associate specific engines with relevant results. And the managerial subset of that group will really understand how important it is to have a viable search engine presence. When that happens, everybody wins.

An Open Letter to Search Engines
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February 10, 2006

Crisp, Clean, and no Caffeine

I wrote an article two weeks ago on the eve of the much-anticipated release of Google’s fourth quarter earnings. I must say that I have been amazed, but not surprised, at the reaction of Wall Street.

Ok, so you’re wondering what in the world the title has to do with Wall Street. Well, if you’re old enough to remember the 7up commercials from, shall we say, many years ago this was their catch phrase. One that rings true in light of this discussion.

As probably everyone is aware Google’s earnings were not quite what Wall Street expected. By looking at Wall Street’s reaction one would think that Google’s servers had been compromised by Bush’s wiretapping. In reality how can one be upset with earnings that represent a 22 % increase over the prior quarter, and an 86 % increase over the previous year’s same quarter earnings? But, you see, I said the magic word……reality. We can never forget that Wall Street is built on perception, not reality. Now I’m not saying that the self-corrective nature of the markets are not good, they just should not be viewed as perfect.

I must say that I find Google’s refusal to disclose earnings predictions quite refreshing. Google is doing what more companies should do, and that is be more concerned about fulfilling their mission, than about fulfilling their shareholders. If you’re curious about just trying to fulfill shareholders look no further than the recent scandals.

So Google, Yahoo, MSN, etc., continue to strive to produce a good product, not please Wall Street. If you are always striving for a better product, then your customers and Wall Street will be pleased. Actually, you’ll probably be heralded as a “revolutionary�? company who put first things first.

Isn’t it crazy how simple things can really be. Just do a good job, the rest will take care of itself.

Crisp, Clean, and no Caffeine
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February 09, 2006

Are you looking for Good Morning America or GMA?

Both my readers know that Google sends traffic when The Gonetwork is pulling the strings, but what happens when the puppet decides to leave the traffic and take the cannoli? That story today on the Wagon!

Fittingly, Good Morning America owns the first two results for [Good Morning America], but I doubt these results are enough to wet the The Gonetwork’s beak.

The second result essentially has no information due to an unfortunate redirect. The first discusses “GMA,�? which Google has decided is similar to “Good Morning America.�? Neither result actually says anything about “Good Morning America.�? That distinction, along with traffic, is conceded to the third result.

In fact, it’s hard to find “Good Morning America�? anywhere on the Good Morning America main page (that Google can notice). It is not in the title or description. It appears once in the text and twice in the keywords. Conversely, “GMA�? appears once in the title, once in the description, and nine times in the text.

To gain a better understanding of the "GMA" Strategery, we asked Wordtracker if people are searching for [Good Morning America] or [GMA]. Below are the top 5 searches per day involving these keywords:

Phrase...........Predicted Daily Traffic
good morning america.............4409
abc good morning america..........590
good morning america recipes.....209
gma...................................479
gma recipes...........................90

WCHS TV is pulling as much of the 4409 daily searches as possible for [Good Morning America] and owns the best result for [Good Morning America recipes] and [GMA recipes], while Good Morning America fights tooth and nail for the 479 daily searches associated with [GMA]. Perhaps they just don’t have a wartime consigliere.

****SPEEDWAGON UPDATE: A representative of the Gonetwork has delivered the following message to Good Morning America:

“The Gonetwork says that if you can’t take care of this, I have to.�?

This might be completely unrelated, but my favorite horse is also missing. Hopefully, he'll show up by tomorrow morning!

Are you looking for Good Morning America or GMA?
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February 07, 2006

Ode to a German Auto

A stable grows, but not all steeds the same
They know my new, but no one knows my used
My jockeys came to me to boldly claim
Disable JavaScript and be amused

Yet viewed through lenssen (not of rosy hue)
My stable's fate rests in the whim of Man
Depends which country code you're looking through
My doors are lock'd because of irksome ban

But when the sun sets here it calls to thee
My stallions' lovers will demand their say
And hit the track to once again run free
When new moon's passing seems like just a day

I tremble when I find myself between
Gott und Die entscheidende Suchmaschine

Ode to a German Auto
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February 02, 2006

Way More Google Results for ABC

We have come to expect more Google results for the biggies, and ABC is certainly a biggie. But just how many more Google results is ABC getting? That story today on the Wagon!

A search for [ABC] leads to ABC with additional links to ABC's best from the news, drama, sports, and kids sectors. Google covers any other bases by linking to more results from ABC.

And a search for [ABC News] leads to ABC News with additional links to the network, the local affiliate, and Good Morning America. And just in case, Google still offers more results from ABC News.

Searching for [7 Online] leads to this local affiliate with additional links to ESPN, ABC News, Movies.com, and ABC. And yada yada yada, more Google results. . .

When [ESPN] pops up, it starts to become obvious that the Go Network is pulling the strings.

I would continue the investigation, but someday, and that day may never come, I might need to call upon the Go Network for a favor.

Until then, I will simply end with a word from our sponsor.. . .

Way More Google Results for ABC
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January 27, 2006

Google Financial News

Google is poised to announce it’s 4th Quarter results on 1/31/06 and everyone is eager to see how the search giant does. I have been reviewing the financial filings that Google posts on a regular basis and have been nothing but astounded by the actual results.

A lot of times all we hear about is the stock price. That’s important no doubt, but I also like to look at the internal workings of a company. Remember the old axiom, “numbers don’t lie�?? Well, that’s the school of thought I’m in and I also know that stock price is only concerned with what you’re going to do for me in the future. In light let me give you some quick numbers from their September 2005 filing:

From 1/1/04 through 9/30/04 Google posted expenses of $1,820,329.
From 1/4/05 through 9/30/05 Google posted expenses of $2,771,829.
An increase of $951,500.

From 1/1/04 through 9/30/04 Google posted revenues of $2,157,722.
From 1/1/05 through 9/30/05 Google posted revenues of $4,219,168.
An increase of $2,061,446.

Basically for every dollar extra dollar they spent they made $2.17. Not too shabby.

Besides the commentary that says “hey they made more money, cool�?, there is a deeper observation to be made. A basic axiom of good business is that you always want your revenues to increase at a faster pace than your expenses. In other words, make more money with the resources that you currently have – increase productivity – don’t incur unnecessary expenses. It sure seems that they are meeting this goal.

This result usually stems from good management. It can come from other means, but that is usually not a long-term thing. It will be interesting to see if this trend continues.

I will cover in my next post the question of what are they doing with all of this money since they don’t pay dividends out to shareholders. It will be an interesting look at their balance sheet.

Google Financial News
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January 25, 2006

Pontiac Takes a Swing at Domain Deafness

According to Media Post, some regionally targeted Pontiac television commercials have begun recommending a Google search for Pontiac.

Near the end of a commercial for the G6 Sedan, following the expected laundry list of G6 features, the voiceover says, "Don't take our word for it. Google 'Pontiac' and discover for yourself."

The article does a nice job of explaining the potential motivation behind such an ad, but it didn't address a key question I had: Why use the voiceover to suggest a Google search instead of merely plugging the Pontiac URL? (Note: The pontiac.com URL does appear on the closing screen with some other fine print.)

Suggesting a Google search virtually guarantees that Pontiac won't get every click. True, they'll get most of them, either via the top Google listing owned by Pontiac, or the premium Adwords ads it's purchased. But they can't buy every Adword, and they don't own the full top 10 organic spots.

My theory is that Pontiac believes in something I'll call "domain deafness," which is television's equivalent of the web's "banner blindness." In other words, major brands plugging their URLs in commercials is so common now that our ears naturally filter it out. Pontiac is gambling that even with clicks lost to enthusiast sites and competitors, they'll still get more clicks by suggesting a Google search than they would by merely suggesting "Go to Pontiac.com and discover for yourself."

So "domain deafness" is my theory. But don't take our word for it. Google [domain deafness] and discover for yourself.

You can see the actual commercial here. (Question: In the freeze-frame, does that look like an actual Google screen shot to you? To me it looks like a Google front page with a Photoshop combover. Where are the links to Advanced Search, Preferences, and Language Tools? Where's the copyright notice? Madison Avenue, you superficial tart...)

Pontiac Takes a Swing at Domain Deafness
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January 20, 2006

Google vs. Government

I've been reading about the good ol' Bush Administration trying to force Google to cough up a week's worth of search queries in a recent subpoena. It's said that the subpoena is an attempt to resuscitate an Internet child protection law that was overturned a couple of years ago.

Hmmm...I don't know about y'all, but I find the subpoenaed request by the US Government quite bothersome for a number of reasons.

1) It may very well lead to, at some point, blowing the lid off of all searches conducted by any one of us and thus, profiling individuals based upon search strings and search behavior in general. Forget the fact the searches done on any individuals computer could have been conducted by any number of people in a household with or without their knowledge.

2) It's yet another prime example of the "Big Brother" mentality that is the US Government today.

3) Should the US Government succeed in this request now, it may be a prelude to them requesting more information such as associated IP addresses with search strings at a later date. That said, people may think twice about using search engines to find stuff and certainly may cause Google to lose market share traction due to privacy concerns.

I'm not sure I'm totally sold on the fact the subpoenaed request is just about protecting children from pornographic material and other questionable sites. I think you all know where I’m going with this.

Anyway, I’m glad to see that Google flat denied the request and hope they can fend off the government permanently on this issue. I hope Google stands their ground and puts up the good fight. Too bad MSN and Yahoo! already rolled over like submissive dogs on this request:

Google rivals including Yahoo Inc. and Microsoft Corp. have received similar subpoenas from Justice, but say that they have complied with them.

I can only imagine it now. MSN & Yahoo! to USG - What's next, Uncle Sammy? Oh, you want to see the IP addresses associated with these searches?... Uh...OK!!

Good for you Google!! Keep it up!

Google vs. Government
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January 18, 2006

New Search Engine Market Share, Popular Search Terms Announced

Via Search Engine Watch, we find that Nielsen//Netratings has just released (PDF) November tallies for search engine market share and most popular search terms, as of November 2005. Without further ado:

Search Engine Market Share, November 2005

Engine	Share %	Total Searches (x1000)
Google	46.3	2,365,998
Yahoo	25.4	1,194,519
MSN	11.4	583,304
AOL	6.9	350,899
MyWay	2.5	129,555
Ask Jeeves	2.3	119,679
Earthlink	.6	32,172
Dogpile	.6	31,563
Netscape	.6	30,434
iWon	.5	27,670

source: Nielsen//NetRatings MegaView Search, January 2006

My initial thoughts here are that while the top three engines more or less maintained their share, Google's growing involvement with and potential influence over AOL could do real damage to Y and M and cause fewer and fewer people to believe it's still anyone's game. (And believing may be all it takes, as John suggested on Monday.)

In addition to the search engine market share numbers, N//N also released the top 10 search terms for November:

Top Search Queries for November, 2005 (US)

Search Term	Total Queries
"ebay"	13,871,000
"google"	13,301,000
"yahoo"	7,997,000
"mapquest"	7,431,000
"yahoo.com"	6,528,000
"pogo.com"	4,062,000
"walmart"	3,688,000
"ask jeeves"	3,389,000
"msn"	3,166,000
"ebay.com"	3,125,000

source: Nielsen//NetRatings MegaView Search, January 2006

I guess I shouldn't always be so shocked at the number of people who use the Search box to type full or partial URLs.

Ken Cassar, chief analyst for Nielsen//NetRatings, had an interesting analysis of this segment (my emphasis added):

"There are two types of online searchers that type a Web site’s URL into a search engine rather than into the browser’s address bar: Those inexperienced enough not to appreciate the difference between the two, and those that are so experienced they have become habituated to using the search engine as their portal to the Internet.

Try as I might, I'm not sure I will ever buy the last part of that. It's like saying that I'm pushing my car down the street because I'm too savvy to drive it. I believe that truly savvy users have come to view the browser - not the search engine - as the portal to the Internet.

But Cassar ends with a note we can all live with:

Whether this behavior is driven by ignorance or savvy, the end result is the same: The search engine is the focal point of the online experience for Internet users across the spectrum.

Amen to that.

New Search Engine Market Share, Popular Search Terms Announced
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January 12, 2006

Google Still Crazy After All These Years

I met my old lover on the street last night. She seemed so glad to see me; I just smiled. And there seemed to be confusion, but I thought it was the beers . . . Still crazy after all these years

So there I was waiting on a friend's arrival as I sat in this bar with Google and her friend, who began discussing power ballads and hi infidelity. When the two asked me who cleverly named the tuna fish album, I lost it.

"Google, how can you still not know who I am?" My impatience was intensifed by the fact that we already had this conversation once before. "I am SEO Speedwagon damn it"

Google responded, as if I were confused, "Did you mean REO Speedwagon?"

"I am absolutely positive that I meant SEO Speedwagon." I thought the emphasis would show that I know who I am.

Google didn't budge. "Are you absolutely positive that you didn't mean REO Speedwagon?"

I tried to calm down a bit. "Please listen to the exact words about to come from my mouth: SEO Speedwagon."

"Are you sure you did not exactly mean to say these words: REO Speedwagon?"

That didn't work. I tried again. "OK. I want you to remove REO from your head, and think Speedwagon."

"OK?"

"Exactly! So keep REO out of your head and just think about SEO Speedwagon!"

Google backstepped (yes, I mean back stepped). "Did you mean keep REO out of my head and just think about REO Speedwagon?"

I thought about asking Google to remove REO from her obsessive head and think about the exact words "SEO Speedwagon." I feared her response would lead to a new level of absurdity and heartbreak, so I walked away.

But then I just had to ask, "What is it about SEO Speedwagon?"

"Well, I just know so much about them."

As I wiped away tears, I thought of starting conversation with her friend as a way to get through to Google. As we made eye contact, Wiki asked me, "What about your friend? Shouldn't he be here by now?"

"I don't think Godot is coming," I said.

Google started to tell me that she knows Godot, but I interrupted. "I know you do, Google. Good-bye."

Now I sit by my window and I watch the cars. I fear I’ll do some damage one fine day, but I would not be convicted by a jury of my peers . . . Still crazy after all these years

Google Still Crazy After All These Years
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January 09, 2006

Historical Search Traffic - Are You Missing The Boat?

In my last post, I asked the question: "Is your Search Traffic growing Big Time?"

Notice I didn't ask, "Are your search engine placements growing Big Time?" Why? Because your search engine placements are just a means to an end for what you should really be seeking ... target audience visits clicking through to your site from your search engine placements.

If you're not analyzing your search engine traffic at least monthly, the boat has left the dock without you. Make sure you have a web analytics program that provides search engine referrer data. This way you will always know exactly how many visitors find your site through each search engine. Then meticulously track your Search Traffic at least monthly over the long haul.

Here's an example from a client who fits my "7 Characteristics Of Companies That Have Committed To Ongoing SEO". Let's take a look at their Search Traffic for Google, Yahoo, and MSN in 2005:

If you're analyzing your Search Traffic monthly, then you have the advantage of being able to compare it to prior years. Here's what this client's search traffic looked like the prior year (2004):

Now let's go back another year and look at 2003:

There are many observations that can be made from analyzing three years of historical search traffic. Here are just a few:

* Google brings significantly more visitors to this site than Yahoo and MSN. In fact, currently Google traffic is approximately the equivalent of Yahoo and MSN combined.

* Since January 2003, traffic from Google has grown from under 50,000 to nearly 800,000 monthly visitors.

* This client definitely has a seasonal trend to it's Search Traffic with small decreases in search traffic in January and February that recover in March and April, flatten our over the early part of the Summer, then take off in the Fall and reach their peak in December.

The analysis and observations can go on and on. My main point is that we can use this data to make significant strategic decisions about our SEO efforts. And our client can use it to make meaningful e-business decisions that affect their bottom line.

Every site owner should be analyzing their Search Traffic and using whatever intelligence this brings to the table. Be happy about good search engine placements, but be excited about Search Traffic that is growing big time!

Historical Search Traffic - Are You Missing The Boat?
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December 20, 2005

Google Search Results in a Wiki Thicket

Oilman got a hot tip about a new UI test involving Google results pages.

He points out that appending the terms "information" or "info" to simple concepts (such as [typing info], [driving information], and so on) often triggers the serving of the Wikipedia definition of that term as the top Google result.

I did more poking, and not only does it occur in a ton of different searches, but that result is also given a font size boost, and in some cases, a placement boost (see the Adidas example later in this post). For example, a typical Google descriptive "snippet" has a font size of "-1". The Wiki results don't have that attribute, resulting in text size that is the same as the blue title text. Following is the top result at Google for [airline information]:

It's hard to get excited about this; the result above is unlikely to be helpful to anyone older than nine.

Historically, Google has had an interesting relationship with "information"-based queries, often producing pages from Answers.com or Business.com in the top spot for brand-focused queries such as [adidas information]. (Note that in this search, the Wiki result surpasses even the Froogle results.) But Wikipedia appears to be the new authority in town, doubtless leaving Answers.com wishing it had ... answers.

Due mostly to its raison d'etre of offering real-time edits by anyone, Wikipedia has had its share of negative press this year, including controversies surrounding former MTV veejay (and current Podcast evangelist) Adam Curry; former assistant to Robert Kennedy, John Seigenthaler; and even Wikipedia's founder, Jimmy Wales.

A bit of good news came recently, however, when a study by the journal Nature put Wikipedia on par with Encyclopaedia Britannica in terms of accuracy:

The exercise revealed numerous errors in both encyclopaedias, but among 42 entries tested, the difference in accuracy was not particularly great: the average science entry in Wikipedia contained around four inaccuracies; Britannica, about three.

So for better or worse, Wikipedia isn't going anywhere. For SEOs and their clients, the pressing concern is whether its rise to fame hinders their branding message, and if so, how they're going to handle it.

Google Search Results in a Wiki Thicket
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December 12, 2005

A PPC Manager’s Christmas Wish List

Tis the season for Santa to deliver his gifts to kids young and old across the globe and I for one am willing to admit that I’m just a big kid at heart. So Search Engine Santa, here’s one humble PPC Manager’s Christmas wish list.

1. A Google desktop API that will allow me to monitor my PPC campaigns in real time. {Hint: A lot like the one they’ve got for AdSense users}.
2. For Yahoo to get rid of the archaic random image input at login.
3. For Yahoo to allow us to combine all of our accounts into one central place instead of having to log in and out for each account.
4. More computing platforms for Google so they can meet the demand for Analytics requests.

As you can see my list is short because I don’t want to be greedy and get any virtual coal in my inbox this Christmas. But these are a few of the things that I run across on a daily basis that would sure make great Christmas presents from Search Engine Santa.

I am collecting “wish lists�? from others to give to Search Engine Santa and would be happy to deliver yours with mine. Feel free to contribute to the list by adding your comment to this post.

A PPC Manager’s Christmas Wish List
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December 06, 2005

To Tag or Not To Tag Your Vegetables

Coming on the heels of the much ballyhooed Tivo announcement that ads will now be searchable, it was titillating to follow David Berkowitz's prognostication of where this would all spill.

In the second-to-penultimate paragraph of this erotic thriller we reach what has to be a climax for all in our industry:

Searching within a map, a PDF, and even a PC desktop was much more cumbersome only a few years back. A former iCrossing colleague, Sara Holoubek, often illustrated the imminent pervasiveness of the Internet by noting how computers will one day be commonly built into refrigerators. By that example, searching the contents of your kitchen from a refrigerator-based console is hardly far-fetched (and given the difficulty I had finding ingredients when baking a kugel last weekend, it's a development I'd welcome).

The cold water splashed on this rock and roll search fantasy? I suspect spam will be a problem.

To Tag or Not To Tag Your Vegetables
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December 05, 2005

The Google Discussion Panel You Shouldn't Miss

Charlene Li wisely suggests that we take a look at SiliconValley.com this week. Some of the best known minds in search are coming together - online - to discuss the "Googleverse."

If you haven't at least heard of most of these people (or what they're involved in), I'm not sure how you ended up here:

• Stephen Arnold
• John Battelle
• Michael Bazeley
• Nicholas Carr
• Cindy Cohn
• Doug Edwards
• Paul Ford
• Gautam Godhwani
• Charlene Li
• Om Malik
• Matt Mullenweg
• Gary Price
• Rich Skrenta
• David Vise

The discussion is read-only for people like you and me, but looking at the crowd above, it's hard to imagine that they'll leave any major topics unaddressed.

Following is the day-by-day agenda. You can access any day's posts from this page:

• Monday: Search and Ads
• Tuesday: Google and the Desktop
• Wednesday: Google as a Network
• Thursday: Ethics and Trust
• Friday: The Big Picture

If Google affects you (or perhaps, if you're interested in knowing how to affect Google), this is a discussion you probably shouldn't miss.

The Google Discussion Panel You Shouldn't Miss
Posted by erik at 11:24 AM | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)
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November 18, 2005

Google Sitemaps Tests Your 404 Error Codes

Today, Google unwittingly unleashed an entirely new service. It motivated thousands of webmasters to validate their error page code.

Back in September I posted about the importance of making sure that your 404 pages deliver a true 404 error code; many sites unknowingly (or knowingly) pass a 302 or 200 code instead. At the time, I wrote

In the health checklist of SEO, this issue isn't equivalent to a broken leg or clogged arteries. It's more like an old football injury that flares up at inconvenient times. The most likely results of a deceptive header code on your error pages are search query results that return error copy in the SERP description, and possibly an artificially inflated index count. Neither one will kill you, but it's something you shouldn't ignore.

Today, something strange happened. Sites that both fail to give the correct 404 error code AND that have Google Sitemaps files in place became vulnerable to a security breach. Anyone else with a Sitemaps account could look at the clickthrough stats of your Sitemaps-based pages. It's not akin to dumping your customer credit card database into the street, but it's certainly data you don't want just anyone to know about.

The moral of this story is not my prescience (I was afraid to buy Google at $85, after all). Instead, the take-home lesson is that today's C-list site dev priorities can become tomorrow's raging infernos - through no fault of anyone at your organization. No one predicted that Google would use a security measure that relied on your site spitting out a certain error code - why would they?

References: Although this story was buzzing at all the usual haunts today, I first saw it at SERoundtable, and as usual, Danny has an authoritative summary.