SERP Comparisons Articles by SEO Speedwagon

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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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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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 01, 2007

Descriptive Snippets for News Sites

On the heels of Google noting the importance of a strong meta description, I felt compelled to remind you that while I agree with that in theory for most sites, not all Google properties are using it the way publishers would like. Old media is a big enough ship to turn around, and it has finally swung around to see that search is important (see John's post about Times Select), so while they're feeling nimble, I want to offer them some additional advice on click-throughs from news sites such as Google News.

Descriptive snippets on news sites have a tough job. Newspapers need their descriptions to be the "hook" that entices readers like me to click through. They need to be written to fully reside in the confined character quarters that news SERPs allow them. They need to short enough to tease and convince me that I won't get the full story by skimming headlines, but they need to be long enough that I believe THIS SPECIFIC SITE has the full story.

But the problem is that Google News doesn't consistently pull descriptive data from the meta description. Instead, it tends to pull characters from the byline, wire data (if applicable), graphics captions (if applicable), and the first paragraph of the story.

Take the Houston Chronicle as a site that just doesn't get it. In looking through my customized home page of Google News, the algo determined I might be interested in the articles shown here:

The Chronicle messes up because the first text the engine sees after the author's byline is the error text belched out by the Flash sniffer. Not exactly your article's best foot forward.

In a situation like this (an algo-generated list of stories I might like), the Chronicle has the only article about Franchione (the Texas A&M football coach). So the headline itself might be enough to convince me to click through. But if I'd searched Google News for [Franchione], the Chronicle's article would be one of many, and due to the lack of description, my click would almost certainly go elsewhere.

So what's a poor paper to do, beyond making sure its no-Flash error text gets buried out of the way? Is the rest of the article set up to give your description maximum exposure? Take a look at the following headlines and descriptions and see who really gets it:

In the shot above, the green text is descriptive text about the story itself, while the yellow text is author/byline/wire information. The LA Times gets it because they bury the byline AFTER the story's lede, as shown in the shot at the left. Only the Times gets its WHOLE abstract on the SERP. The other papers' abstracts get cut off because they lead with author bylines. On the actual article page (shown at left), notice how the Times' placement of the intro paragraph followed by the byline is mirrored on the actual Google News SERP above.

Unless your story's author IS PART OF the story itself or is part of the brand (think Dowd, Ebert, Buckley, etc.), you'll need to experiment to ensure that your byline doesn't distract readers and keep them from getting the full benefit of the description you've written. Test, test, test, and make sure your readers get the most tempting view of the story you can manage.

Descriptive Snippets for News Sites
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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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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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July 11, 2007

SEO Tools: SEO For Firefox

One of the tools I'm using more often these days is the "SEO For Firefox" extension/add-on created by Aaron Wall. SEO For Firefox provides site information including:

* Google PageRank
* Google Cache Date (date Google last cached the page)
* Cached (number of pages indexed at Google)
* Yahoo Links (incoming links from other domains according to Yahoo)
* Google Supplemental (number of pages in Google's supplemental index - see Erik's last post for an update on GSI)

One way to use it in Firefox is by selecting Tools > SEO For Firefox > Lookup Tool and entering a URL. Here's what the result looks like (click thumbnail image):

I use SEO For Firefox more often when searching at Google or Yahoo. Under each site listed in the search results, site information appears directly below each search engine result. Here's what it looks like (click thumbnail image)::

Each of the individual site "info blocks" are clickable if you want to dive in deeper and each can be turned on or off via the Options Menu. I recommend only turning on the info blocks that you are most interested in analyzing or monitoring since the more you have turned on, the longer it takes the program to pull all this information for every search engine result.

Also, when you're not needing this comparative site data, you can click the button in the lower right corner of Firefox to turn the program off.

SEO Tools: SEO For Firefox
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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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April 05, 2007

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 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 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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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
Posted by doug at 03:43 PM | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)
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August 29, 2006

Keywords In URLs - Not Just For Search Engines

Is it just me, or are you also paying more attention to the URL listed in search engine result pages?

Let's say you're searching for a new memory stick for your child's PSP. The top two results at Yahoo have equally compelling listings, however, the URLs displayed are:

www.seospeedwagon.com/psp_memory_stick.htm

and

www.seospeedwagon.com/store/Other_W0QQsacatZ21189QQsocmdZListingItemList

Which might you be more persuaded to click on?

Boy, that first one may be just what I'm looking for eh?

Apparently the first site refers to a PSP memory stick as "psp_memory_stick" whlie the second site calls it a "Other_W0QQsacatZ21189QQsocmdZListingItemList".

I think this is a good example of how URLs displayed in search engine results pages are becoming more and more valuable as CONTENT that may affect the clickability of the entire listing.

But what about you? How are the search engines displaying your URLs? How about the URLs of your competitors? Do they qualify as keyword-relevant or as keyword-jibberish?

I'm a firm believer in keyword-enhanced, logical URL structure because:

A. There is some (no one knows exactly how much) benefit in search engine performance when keywords are included in the names of your domain and/or pages.

B. From a usability (and common sense) aspect, a URL that displays my searched keyword or similar tells me a click will likely lead me where I want to go.

Keywords In URLs - Not Just For Search Engines
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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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May 09, 2006

Pagejacking and Vanilla Ice

Word Pictures – Yeah!!!

I know they wouldn’t admit it, but I’m sure some of my friends say I have a slightly irritating knack for comparing things and noting similarities. I call them word pictures and it’s something I learned a long time ago in sales training. I have yet to meet someone who doesn’t like or appreciate even a moderately good word picture. If you’re the first one, feel free to comment below.

Sometimes when explaining the intricacies of the world of SEO, I like to use word pictures. Technically stated, a word picture is defined as a graphic or vivid verbal description. Simply stated, a word picture explains something in a way that makes it easier to understand. When you hear someone say, “Let me put it this way…�, it’s highly likely that a word picture is about to follow.

If you’ve read some of my Wagon Posts, you can probably tell that music and SEO are two of my loves, thus the “musical SEO� posts and accompanying word pictures. Hey, it stays true to the “SEO Speedwagon� name coined by our very own quick-witted Link Building Director, Tom Lustina. Tom, I continue to salute thee!

And now that I can’t disappoint my adoring throng of readers (thank you, all six of you), here we go again.

Pagejacking

Plagiarism is a word that most people are familiar with. A much cooler, hip, web version of plagiarism is called pagejacking. Pagejacking is basically copying/stealing content or code from another web site and putting it on your web site with the intent of also stealing some of the other site’s traffic. The word “pagejacking� is a combination of “hijacking� and “web page�.

If it were me, I would have called it “pagelarism�. But, as usual, no one asked me. Sigh.

So, a pagejacker sees a page performing well at a search engine for a particular phrase they also want to do well for, they grab some or all of the content on the top performing page and copy it to their web page, hoping to also perform well at the engine. Sometimes pagejacking is exact copying and sometimes there is a minuscule change to tweak the hijacked page’s code or content, of course, in the pagejacker’s favor.

Pagejacking really caught fire with the Internet’s boom in the late 90s and is still very common today. In fact, when we perform our comprehensive site analysis of a web site prior to optimizing it, we spend much time investigating if our client’s site has any hijacked content on other web sites. We’ve seen some pretty wild cases of pagejacking over the years – even on Intrapromote’s web site.

In a 1999 case of what I’ll be kind and call “blaringly ugly pagejacking� which was settled out of court, one pagejacker found himself up against the FTC who charged him with violating the FTC Act. This particular case was of the variety mentioned above where there was one small change in the code which redirected the visitor to, let’s say, a highly undesirable site.

And now, what you’ve all been waiting for….the pagejacking word picture.

No, My Version Goes “Da, Da, Da, Da, Da-Da, Da-Da�

“It’s that extra Da at the beginning that makes it different!�

Those were basically the words of Robert Matthew Van Winkle, a.k.a., Vanilla Ice when asked about his music sampling of David Bowie and Queen’s song Under Pressure. He argued that one little note added to the beginning of Queen and Bowie’s version made his only hit Ice Ice Baby different than Under Pressure. There was no album liner notes thanking the writers or giving credit to the original song.

Today’s pagejacker is yesterday’s Vanilla Ice. As with the 1999 pagejacking case mentioned above, it has been long rumored that Bowie/Queen vs. Van Winkle was also settled outside court walls.

If you find the content you suffered Blood, Sweat, and Tears to create has been pagejacked, I recommend spending a few minutes reminding yourself that some of the greatest writers, both authors of book and song, have had their compositions copied.

Then, ask the pagejacker to remove the jacked content within 48 hours or they’ll find themselves "under pressure" from your attorney.

Pagejacking and Vanilla Ice
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January 11, 2006

Same Subdomain Results in SERPs: What is Excessive?

Sean asked me how long Yahoo had been positioning more than two URLs from a given subdomain on its SERPs, and I didn't have a good answer.

In the Yahoo query for [apple], for example, eight of the ten results come from the www subdomain of apple.com. There's little doubt that Apple has earned a top placement for that search, but I believe that relevance is questionable when the algorithm shows links to the French, Japanese, and German home pages as well, from a computer with a US IP address, set to default English.

(And I'm not trying to be Americentric. If I were German, searching from www.yahoo.de, I wouldn't want a bunch of English-language results either.)

Where are the trade mags devoted to Apple technology? The blogs? The Apple section of Slashdot is the only non-apple.com URL listed. Is that enough?

MSN is similar, but with different apple.com URLs from the www subdomain. The only non-apple.com page is the Wikipedia page for Apple.

It's not confined to Apple. Try searches for other major brands and see what comes up.

Typically, Google doesn't place more than two pages from any given subdomain on one SERP. (You could argue, though, that there's little difference between Yahoo showing more than two instances of one subdomain and Google's habit of showing up to two instances per subdomain, but from multiple subdomains.) While I know that no single engine dictates the gold standard for "mix" of domains on a results page, I have become accustomed to Google's ratio. I'm not saying there's a right and wrong ratio, but the Yahoo/MSN situation seems unbalanced. What do you think?

Same Subdomain Results in SERPs: What is Excessive?
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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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September 27, 2005

We're #1! We're #1!

The fascination with a number one ranking has been part of the American psyche since the AP first named Minnesota the top hit in 1936. The fact that it was Minnesota likely wasn't the primary factor in catapulting rankings to the forefront of the collective mind, I'm guessing, although some allowance has to be made for a potential disproportionate preponderance of Minnesotan thought-leaders influencing the culture of the time, however unlikely that may seem today. Rather, and more likely, the phenomena of having a third party point to a single entity as the best of a list was the rub that our competitive spirits just couldn't help but notice, and immediately believe to be legitimate.

Almost 70 years later we find the same inability to ignore a top ranking digitally, and not just by the companies who covet that spot; it is the fans here too, the searchers searching for the most efficient route to the best answer to their queries, who seemingly cannot look past the top spot. 42% will click nowhere else but there, according to the latest study amplifying what most search marketers routinely see in client logs.

I believe this phenomenon stretches back to polls like the one I mentioned because I have seen it to be this way digitally across the lifespan of this industry and across every industry that we have ever tried to help gain a top spot at Intrapromote. When we have succeeded we really never even needed the confirmation of a rankings check the traffic surge was so obvious, and when a top spot slips even to number two there also is the same obvious reason to try to quickly regain, as the likelihood of a click plummets to 8%. 42 - 8 is a point spread Minnesota circa 1936 would even have had a tough time surmounting, black hat or non.

We're #1! We're #1!
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September 06, 2005

Hurricane Katrina and Fast-Acting Search Results

When I added the Red Cross ad to the blog recently (please give to some type of rescue organization if you're able!), I was curious about the flurry of activity surrounding Katrina over the last week, and to what extent it had affected organic results pages. Unlike specific news engines (where I typically get my news), the organic algos are generally a little more sluggish (or stable, depending on your worldview). Still, when comparing results for [katrina] at large engines, I noticed several interesting results.

First, an analysis of the first page of Google results for the query [katrina]:

1. Red Cross root page (www.redcross.org). The #1 ranking for this site is due in large part their massive viral banner campaign (which we found out about thanks to Threadwatch). Also at play here, in my opinion, is the phrase "katrina" in close proximity to the link to redcross.org in blogs and news stories. For example, "To help victims of Hurricane Katrina, please give to the Red Cross." This "proximity credit" is an ages-old part of the algo that accounts for web coders who use "click here" as anchor text instead of the nearby money phrase.

2. National Weather Service's National Hurricane Center and Tropical Depression Predictor (nhc.noaa.gov). In case you're curious, the NOAA stands for National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration. If you're familiar with American bureaucracy, it should be no surprise that the NOAA is part of the US Department of (wait for it...) Commerce. The NOAA site, an XML/RSS smorgasbord, is to serious weather chasers what Slashdot is to 30-year-old gadget freaks living in their parents' basements. Plenty of legacy link pop here, probably using link text like Hurricane Katrina, since weather enthusiasts are keen to note (and anchor) the difference between tropical storm, tropical depression, hurricane, and so on. Also note that this site ranks in the top spot for [hurricane katrina] and [tropical storm katrina], so it's been building momentum for a while.

3. Wikipedia entry for Hurricane Katrina (en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hurricane_Katrina). Yahoo shows over 24,000 links to this page, and at least right now, Wiki can do very little wrong in Google's eyes.

4. Home page of an on-the-ball web developer whose name is actually Katrina (katrina.com). She's had the domain for the better part of a decade, and probably had the top rank until about a week or so ago. Kudos to her - she's taken advantage of her rank to show tons of missing persons and disaster relief information. (Question to self: What's the moral and semantic opposite of a scraper called?)

5. Weather.com homepage (weather.com). Certainly helped by current radar images, slide shows, and the accompanying incoming links to those features. And it doesn't hurt that a "synonym search" at Google for [~hurricane] shows "weather" as a bolded phrase - meaning that Google's algo considers them very similar terms. LSI, anyone?

6. A Red Cross credit card contribution page tied to a specific site. Hard to say why Google picked this specific iteration of the "Contribute" page without further investigation. The link redirects from www to give.redcross.org, so the second subdomain (or maybe the https protocol) is probably the reason it's not an indented entry under the first Red Cross result at #1.

7. Official site of Katrina and the Waves (katw.com), '80s pop group behind such hits as "Walking on Sunshine" and ... um ...

8. See #7, but this time (katrinasweb.com) it's the personal site of the band's lead singer. Entries 7 and 8 are like the Moe Green of [katrina] - making their bones when the Red Cross and National Weather Service were going out with cheerleaders.

9. FEMA (fema.gov), likely helped along by some linking discussing their handling of the hurricane aftermath.

10. Local New Orleans TV station (wwltv.com) offering a prolific blog about events in the city as they happen. Yahoo shows about 16,000 links directly to this page, and over 72,000 to the domain.

So what's the moral here? Google loves links - all shapes, sizes, and locations. Linking during national crises is a hyperbolized version of natural linking. It happens more quickly and in greater numbers. Still, there appears to be no temporary link devaluation (TLD) or backlink over-optimization devaluation (BLOOD) going on here. Is the onslaught of new links spread out over enough sites as to appear natural (which it is), even with the accelerated timeframe? Apparently so, assuming there's no manual intervention going on.

In my next post, I'll tear apart Yahoo's SERP for the same query.

Hurricane Katrina and Fast-Acting Search Results
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