It’s been a few weeks since Google made changes to the user interface of its search results. In putting more advanced search options more firmly in front of the user, Google has broken with one of the factors that is widely credited for their success – keeping it simple. Read More
Big news from Google Webmaster Tools! This month, Google unveiled richer data about the search queries your site is visible for in the Top Search Queries section of Google Webmaster Tools. You can now view the number of impressions, number of clicks and clickthrough rate associated with the search queries your site is visible for. And better yet, you can review that data position-by-position, and for each page of your site that was visible for a given query.
Webmaster Tools Screenshot
Managing our clients’ pay-per-click accounts, we’re used to monitoring metrics like “impressions”, “clicks” and “clickthrough rate”. But as an internet marketing company that also specializes in search engine optimization (SEO), we have frequently longed for similar performance data for the organic search aspect of our clients’ online visibility.
Until now, we’ve only been able to track the success of our SEO efforts in terms of website visits or point-in-time rankings. Now, for the first time, Google Webmaster Tools gives us the chance to look at the visibility of a website one step prior to a visitor arriving.
Another Webmaster Tools Screenshot
This sort of data allows us to answer all kinds of questions, like “How much of a difference does position make on clickthrough rate?”, and “Which of the pages on my site do a better job of inviting a searcher to clickthrough?”, “Do I have pages competing for visibility on the same keywords?”, and so on.
Of course, Google Webmaster Tools only offers a look into your site’s performance on Google’s search engine – but given that Google still commands over 65% of all US search traffic, it’s still very useful and relevant information!
Google Caffeine is a major overhaul to Google’s search infrastructure that was announced in August of last year, which aims to deliver faster and more comprehensive crawling and indexing for the Google index.
About the Caffeine Roll-Out
After a developer preview period, Google rolled Caffeine out to just one of its data centers sometime around November 2009, giving a small percentage of users access to search results powered by Google’s fancy new infrastructure. So when do the rest of us get to play!? In a recent Search Engine Land article, a Google spokesperson is quoted as expecting Caffeine “to roll out to all data centers over the coming months.” This is a lot later than the estimate given by Google’s Matt Cutts, who blogged about Caffeine being rolled out after the 2009 holiday season. Bummer.
So Why’s Caffeine a Big Deal, Anyway?
Just to be clear, Caffeine is not a change to Google’s search algorithm, but a new approach to crawling and indexing web pages and content. That said, it’ll almost certainly result in differences on search engine results pages (SERPs), because the new technology will allow Google to index more content (including more kinds of content) faster (think: realtime results). What can we expect to see on Google SERPs powered by Caffeine? Here’s a quick summary of speculations from around the web:
The online interface offered by Google Analytics offers a wealth of easily-accessible, business-oriented data and reporting about the usage of your website. But it has it’s limitations. Recently, when attempting to segment branded and non-branded keyword traffic for one of our larger clients (which, by the way, is a good idea for anyone who wants to understand whether their SEO efforts are gaining traction), we ran into one such limitation. Here’s the scenario: in order to capture all of the possible brand-related terms associated with our client, we created regular expressions matching variations of each (20 in all), and plugged them into two Advanced Segments in Google Analytics (one segment to exclude those terms, and one to match only those terms). After quite a bit of work (identifying the branded terms, writing the RegExes, creating the Advanced Segments, etc.), we clicked the Advanced Segments “on” with eager anticipation. And voila! Here’s the spiffy chart that appeared:
Hooray! Just what we wanted – visitor trends by branded and non-branded keyword traffic! But wait, what about that little yellow box of fine print? It reads: “This report is based on sampled data. Learn more.” So what exactly does that mean to us? Check out the data table that Analytics presented us with:
The numbers for branded and non-branded traffic *should* add-up to 100% of the visits… but they don’t. See those little yellow boxes next to the segmented data? Those depict the margin of error that Google’s data sampling resulted in. Basically, the statement “This report is based on sampled data” means that the numbers aren’t as precise as we might like them to be. In fact, the margin of error on some of our results was over 70%! Kind of a big deal…
After a little experimentation, it became clear that neither the size, nor the complexity, of my Advanced Segments were triggering the use of sampling. Instead, it turns out that the number of visits contained in the selected date range was the determining factor – specifically those instances where the total visits exceeded 500,000. In order to return reports for large data sets quickly, Google employs sampling whenever it generates a report through the online interface that isn’t automatically compiled.
The take home message? If you’ve got large volumes of Analytics data that you want to slice-and-dice, you might be better served to pull the raw data from Google using the Analytics API and perform the calculations on your own!
Ann Arbor is abuzz with talk of A2 Fiber. I first heard about A2 Fiber when Facebook suggested I become a fan of the A2 Fiber Facebook page. I wondered what this was and why all my friends were “fanning” it. Google Fiber is a plan to create an ultra-high speed broadband network in a number of carefully selected communities across the United States. This broadband network promises to deliver data at 1 gigabit per second; almost 100 times faster than the average American’s current cable or DSL provider connection. While at work I am extremely connected through Pure Visibility but away from the office I rely on coffee shops, the library and other hotspots for my internet because I find the monthly rates to be too high – Google Fiber might be able to change all this . . .
Ann Arbor is extremely enthusiastic about being included in this Google Fiber experiment. The University of Michigan and the City of Ann Arbor have partnered to fill out Google’s request for information. Ann Arbor would be the perfect place for Google to run one of their Fiber networks. Google plans to “offer service at a competitive price to at least 50,000 and potentially up to 500,000 people” which will make a huge impact to these individuals but the greater long-term impacts are huge.
By offering “affordable” internet they’ll break up the current monopoly large providers have over certain geographic areas. It’s not a good thing if there is only one broadband provider. The network of fiber could be opened to other providers giving small local companies the option of offering their own services at affordable rates. Google’s “competitive” pricing for their Fiber network would be significantly lower than what most Ann Arborites are paying and the quality of the connection would be far faster.
Ever wonder if your Facebook Fan Page could appear in a search result on Google? Your dreams have come true…if you use Google’s Real Time Search you will now also see Facebook Fan Page posts included.
According to Search Engine Land’s Danny Sullivan, Real Time Search also includes:
* Twitter tweets
* Google News links
* Google Blog Search links
* Newly created web pages
* Freshly updated web pages
* FriendFeed updates
* Jaiku updates
* Identi.ca updates
* TwitArmy updates
* Google Buzz posts
* MySpace updates
* Facebook fan page updates
So what does this mean for your company? Because you have to know about selecting the “show options” link on your Google search results page. I would like to see the statistics on how many people are selecting it, and actually using the Real Time Search Results. I have a feeling it is under utilized because it is so new, however time will tell!
In nearly 15 years of writing for the web, one thing I’ve seen change dramatically is the role of meta tags in Search Engine Optimization (SEO). This post is specifically about keyword tags – and their slow, painful death.
Today, Google doesn’t use meta keyword tags at all, as Google Engineer Matt Cutts explains in this short video:
While this topic has been hashed out in all the professional SEO forums, the death of the keyword meta tag is still not common knowledge – despite Danny Sullivan’s heroic attempt to bury the keyword tag way back in 2002. Here’s a quick history of how keyword tags evolved, and why Danny is right.
Back in the “good old days” when I started optimizing, there were FAR fewer web pages, and even fewer companies cultivating the web into a viable sales channel. Google didn’t exist yet, and neither did paid search. Hand-curated directories were still prevalent, and search engine algorithms were nascent. Back then, title tags and keyword tags ruled. Submitting your site to prominent directories and creating well-written pages with thoughtful keyword and title tags might be all you needed Own Page One®.
Over a decade later, the web is MUCH bigger (here’s a nice Google post on how big the web has become) and consequently the algorithms used to rank sites are far more complex. In addition to handling more content, algorithms have evolved to increase fairness and avoid attempts at gaming the system.
Those attempts include “keyword stuffing”, a practice used by less-than-scrupulous optimizers to gain visibility by showing up for popular but irrelevant searches, such as for pop stars, or (forgive me) porn. So basically, Google gave up and doesn’t use keyword meta tags anymore.
Among other things, one of the more important factors in Google optimization are back links (hence Google’s original name, BackRub). Back links used to come exclusively from other websites – in today’s world, they often come from social media sites. Links from social media sites show recency and relevancy – which are factors currently favored by most algorithms (roughly speaking).
That said, is it possible other search engines use keyword tags? The short answer is “no”. No major search engine uses them. Even Yahoo! – the last holdout – admitted to (nearly) ignoring the keyword meta tag in an industry conference in October of 2009. As with nearly everything in SEO, it’s possible to find an edge case where you might actually want to use a keyword tag, but for all practical purposes, it’s time to put it to rest.
In summary, our advice is to invest in more fruitful SEO activities, and skip the keyword meta tag.
Happy optimizing!
Google announced yesterday that it is acquiring AdMob, the current leader in the US mobile display advertising space.
Google’s no stranger to the mobile space themselves. They have been offering advertising on their mobile search platform since fall of 2005; and the Android operating system (launched in 2008) is a clear play to stay relevant as more and more people use the internet from a handheld device. This year, they’ve doubled down on their mobile strategy, working hard to expand Android to new devices and networks, strengthening their mobile analytics offerings, and now acquiring AdMob.
In North America, mobile advertising is still in its very nascent stages. Traffic is still a small fraction of what you see with traditional search and display advertising, and there is plenty of debate about whether mobile advertising can match the value of traditional online advertising. On the one hand, there is less space on the screen and therefore fewer things competing for the browser’s attention. On the other hand, the small screen can make it difficult to create compelling and effective landing pages.
Whatever your thoughts on the value of mobile advertising, there is no doubt that mobile internet browsing is poised to grow tremendously over the next few years – and there are a lot of reasons to get excited about that.
Most notably, mobile browsing offers the opportunity to geo-target hyper-specific local areas. When users are browsing the internet on a laptop or desktop device, advertisements are geo-targeted based on IP address. IP address targeting is inherently flawed – for instance, anyone using AOL has an IP address located in Reston, Virginia, regardless of where they are physically located. Mobile devices offer the opportunity to target by GPS tracking – which allow you to accurately target not only the user’s city location, but even the specific neighborhood, or street where they’re located at the moment they load the ad. This obviously opens up tremendous opportunities for local businesses. Imagine if you could target ads to users who were literally standing right around the corner.
Also, many people make the mistake of assuming that mobile advertising means cell phone advertising, which isn’t necessarily the case. New non-phone internet-capable mobile devices are popping up all over the place, from the iPod Touch to the Amazon Kindle and Android-driven Nook.
Few question that the mobile internet is one of the “next big things” in the online world. Many businesses are putting off advertising in the space because they believe there just isn’t a mobile audience for their products or services – and they may be right, for now. But the space is growing at break-neck speed, and competition for ad real estate will only get tighter with time. Why not get in now?
It has happened to anyone who watches their organic ranking. One day you are drinking a cup of coffee and you pull up your browser to look at where your site is for your favorite keyphrase. Then you spill your coffee in horror: IT’S GONE! Your website is not there.
How is this possible? You haven’t made any major changes in months. Your website been steady as a rock at the top of the rankings for over a year. How could the site suddenly lose so much visibility?
It probably didn’t. In our experience rankings don’t change suddenly if no major SEO efforts are underway. Instead they slowly shift over time. However, there are a number of things that can create sudden shifts, or the appearance of them. Here are a list of things you can do to confirm whether or not the change in ranking is a real problem, a temporary blip, or even just a trick your browser is playing on you.
Hi everyone,
Megan and I are in lovely Mountain View, California at the GAAC conference. We have been asked to restrict our blogging and tweeting unless the speaker specifically says we can share.
Tomorrow morning the keynote speaker is Avinash Kaushik, so keep your fingers crossed and stay tuned! I will post and tweet if allowed. Our Twitter account is @purevisibility.
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