Well, well, just when you thought it was safe, someone goes and resurrects SEORoadshow. Sweet. Pictures of Matt Cutts and Tim Mayer and other assorted SE minions will be issued to security, along with shoot-to-kill authorisation. I hear there’s a strong possibility that Ireland may be the location of choice, to make things easier on the whinging Yanks. Timings are still undecided, but September / October are most likely, subject to UK school holidays, other SEO events etc
If you’ve been to one before, I’ll likely see you there. If you haven’t, start working on getting an invite, now.
Interesting - Google now offer an additional internal search box as an alternative to the “More results from…” option in their results. On current evidence, it seems to only be triggered for sites that already have the SiteLinks behaviour, and without a scrap of solid proof, I’m going to assert that it effectively represents an additional level of dominance over and above SiteLinks.
Now, Google have made an official comment on the new behaviour, and as usual, I think they are talking shit. Specifically, they say :
we found that presenting users with a search box as part of the result increases their likelihood of finding the exact page they are looking for
If you look at some of the terms where it happens, I fail to see any appreciable correlation between sites showing the box and the likelihood of users wanting deeper page data.
Examples :
Cambridge vs Oxford
Tesco vs ASDA
Adidas vs Nike
So users want to deep search the Cambridge University site, but not Oxfords? Or Adidas but not Nikes? It is of course entirely possible that there is some deep, complex algorithm in place that makes these determinations using a depth of rich data I cannot fathom. Or maybe they just slapped in on top of the existing stuff. Who knows?
As a further test, try actually using the function - put “pint of milk” into the Tescos box for instance. How helped do you feel now?
When Google inserts results for a related phrase, apparently. If you check the 2nd page for the original term (I know, who ever does THAT, eh?), the numbering starts from 98. Therefore, Google are definitely actually inserting data from a related term into the SERPs when you see that behaviour, with the implication being that both result sets are being retrieved and amalgamated before being served to the user.
Since this behaviour is only ever really seen on somewhat ambiguous, and in my experience slightly obscure terms, I wonder if it’s a way of indirectly determining what terms Google perform badly for according to their own internal metrics (CTR from SERP, follow-on searches etc), since the positioning of the insertion is variable (ooer, missus!).
What the hell is this shit? Check this SERP for the fairly high profile term “cheap flights”. It may have changed by the time you read this (I hope so), but right now, I’m seeing a wierd URL from Travelocity at #2 in the organic results, which on investigation appears to be their “JavaScript is not enabled” page. Fair do’s, their internal IT team need taking out and shooting for presenting that page to spiders, but why have Yahoo indexed that page at all? How is it that it shows up at #2 for a huge term like cheap flights, but not at all (not in the top 100, at least - I got bored looking) for a site: search? Madness
I took the SEOmoz SEO Quiz thing, and scored 71% - none too shabby, on the face of it, but some of the answers that were given as wrong merely reflect a difference of opinion between myself and whoever set the questions. Of course, a couple were where I was just going too fast, and gave an answer that I instantly realised was wrong, and in one case just flat out hit the wrong answer (well, yeah, 301ing a penalised site to someone else certainly can hurt them - I know this, so WHY did I answer “false”?)
(more…)
Having a good domain name makes SEOing a site a lot easier in many cases. Keywords in the URL are a nice boost to have in and of themselves, and if your key terms are there, it also means you’ll get a lot of good ancxhor text WITHOUT HAVING TO BEG FOR IT.
Look what’s going active - www.seoblog.com. Who wouldn’t love that for their root domain…? If the content is any good (and it should be), that should shoot up the rankings like a rat up a drainpipe. It’ll be interesting to watch.
Logical when you think of it, but even comment spam has trends. That link goes to the Akismet spam Zeitgeist page - just top level data, but it confirms what a lot of blog owners already know.
It’d be REALLY interesting to see deeper drill down data as well. I’ve asked, let’s see what they say.
I just tried this search : site:www.yahoo.com
The first result came back as
Yahoo!
Welcome to Yahoo!, the world’s most visited home page. Quickly find what you’re searching for, get in touch with friends and stay in-the-know with the …
@www.yahoo.com/ - 72k - Cached - Similar pages
Wierd - see the @ symbol before the www? If you click on it, you get the Yahoo home page (I think I got the “you are entering a page with a username” warning too, but I wasn’t paying attention, so I don’t know if it was the SE or the browser that generated it). However, the cached page is broken, and special seaches like link: won’t work because the syntax breaks.
So, where the hell does that result come from? The very similar site:yahoo.com works fine, returning results from other major subdomains. It may be no more than an artifact of Y’s odd DNS policy, but in any case, how the hell does it outrank the main www subdomain?
No, I’m not giving away an uber-tactic (sorry, but I generally want to get paid for that). I’ve just seen John Andrews’ SEO Secret, a pastiche of Postsecret.
10/10, I’m jealous. I think the SEO / SEM community could fill it as fast as Postsecret too
“I started a relationship with a Google algo engineer, just to get more insight. I’ve done filthy things”
“I pretended to have cancer just to get better material to write PPC ad copy”
“Online, I live as a 17 - 25 year old girl to manipulate social media sites. I’m actually 42, balding, and overweight”
It just goes on, doesn’t it?
