Over the weekend I was looking at Google Webmaster tools and looked at the details for one of our websites Desire Solutions. This website is where we have put the details of our in-house content management system which we, of course called Desire Solutions CMS. (I am updating the website this week to take account of the further features available now that the product has formally been released) Continue reading “The Street, Spellings and Search” »
Right we all, I am sure, search ourselves or our websites and it is helpful for SEO to know where we come in the search.
Well here is a wonderful tool to help you easily see where you figure in searches because after all Google Webmaster Tools only gives you the global view really, averaged over time. Using this you can plot your search position day by day.
Number Google Results (for Internet Explorer)
click on this link with your right mouse button and then click ‘Add to Favorites…’. Then put it as a link in your Favorites bar. Don’t worry about the unsafe message – I have checked it and it’s fine!
To use simply Search Google and then then once the page is loaded simply click on the ‘Number Google Results’ link. Scroll down the results and then you will see what number position you are even if you have to go to the next page.
The Google blog has an interesting post about how the Google algorithm takes into account different versions of the same word depending on the context of that word within the search term. See Google Search and Synonyms.
I found this free resource on the internet which could be useful for analytics. Must say I don’t understand all of it! Credit to Conversation Marketing for this.
Current discussion regarding Google’s new real-time search seems to suggest that Google will rank Tweets in a similar way it ranks websites currently.
Website pages are given credit by Google by looking at the external links to that page and looking at the relevancy of those links taking into account the keywords for that page and the importance of the websites linking to that page.
For Twitter this will work slightly differently. For websites inbound links are seen as votes for the page, in Twitter the number and type of followers will be seen as votes for that account. The type of follower you attract will govern how Google views you and again it will be based not just on the number of followers but also the relevancy of those followers to what you do. As with websites we cannot directly control who links to us or follows us but we can indirectly control this by making sure the content of your Tweets is relevant to our business, and then hopefully the RIGHT people will follow.
With Google’s algorithm for websites, the reputation of the websites that link to your website is important. Google takes into account the popularity of the linking website ie its PageRank and who links to it and, in addition, looks at the relevancy of the content on that website in relation to your own site. With Twitter it is thought that Google will not only look at how many people follow you but also will look at how many followers they have and how closely their “content” is relevant to yours.
Therefore it is not just a question of the number of followers but the quality too.
Remember too to be mindful of who you follow, that too indicates your content or “theme”. In addition, if you have a good number of followers and start to follow someone with very few followers you are passing some of your credibility to that Twitter person. Question whether you want to pass that amount of credibility to them.
Spam is obviously something that Google needs to take account of in its algorithm and it is thought that hash tags # will be used as a possible indicator of spam. I have written a post on hash tags in another blog. Google I understand are studying hash tag behaviour and no doubt over the next few months many changes will be made to adjust to the spammers ability to find loopholes in any spam minimising tactic by Google.
It is thought that geo-location data will also be used to refine search results to ensure that the most relevant tweets are shown in the search results.
Although I have just talked about Twitter here, Google will no doubt be applying the same or similar principles to real-time results for blogs, news and press releases.
Bad news for anyone working in the web or design or seo industry as Google have decided that as a result of customer needs they will not list any of these businesses with the map at the top of the search results if you put “web design town” into the search box. Sometimes it will list the map entries at the top of the search results if you write “web design IN town” but how many searchers will know that!! Isn’t this just clear discrimination by Google against anyone involved in the web design business. Why would they do that particularly when we very effectively were selling Google’s services to our clients. Are we really going to promote Google’s services when they make our industry invisible in this way?
I found particularly disturbing the response in the thread below from Joel a Google employee; (my emphasis)
“Hi Folks -
Earlier thread, Brian (BB- baseonballs) noted that this may be related to a known issue regarding the display of local search results on google.com. After further investigation, they are slightly different, and I’ll explain our intent.Today, we’re intentionally showing less local results for web design / SEO queries. For example, [web design sacramento] doesn’t display local listings today. We believe this is an accurate representation of user intent. In some cases, we do show local listings, however (as NSNA/php-er noted) [web design in bellingham]. I’m sure some of you feel we should be displaying local results for queries like [Web Design Vancouver]. I understand that concern, but based on our understanding of our users, we feel this is the right decision for now.I’ll give the usual disclaimer that we’re constantly working on improving the user experience and results will vary over time. So, this could change in the future, but I wanted to be explicit about what we’re doing today.”
Discrimination-Google confirms it no longer lists local map results for web design, seo unless the word in or near used!! http://goo.gl/4a52
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10:38 AMJoel H: “some SEOs/web designers want their website, not a local listing, to be the primary destination”The local listings link directly to businesses websites, how could any SEO / web designer not want users to see their business shown in a group of local listings???Joel H: “we think this is a better user experience”“Using words in or near seem to be suggestive of a different intent”In what way is a search for something like “website design sacramento” any different at all from a search for “website design in sacramento” ??? The first search is just shorthand for the second one.Google gave users on screen hints for years and years along the lines of “in is a very common word and was not included in your search”, that’s how users have been educated to search and so now they quite reasonably expect to not have to use common words like in and near. They don’t have to when they’re searching for other businesses so why would it occur to them to use those words when they’re searching for SEO and web design companies???The other thing that hasn’t been addressed is why some searches for website design and SEO are still working as before? Why on earth would user intent differ from country to country?Working examples:Italy -website design romewebsite design milanowebsite design parmaAustralia -website design sydneywebsite design melbournewebsite design brisbaneFrance -website design pariswebsite design bordeauxwebsite design lyonIn short, how can any of what’s been happening with local listings possibly be considered a “better user experience”
Sorry Joel that is rubbish as said above everyone knows NOT to use “IN” that’s how Google has trained users. You are now using that to discriminate against the webs design and seo trade. This IS discrimination.Web design is the hardest area to seo for due to the number of businesses. All of us except the very large companies rely on local business so we optimise our sites for our business say website design but then rely on the map listing to bring us to the local areas attention. Now we will have to dilute our seo’ing to include local area place names.