Search Engine Workshops UK

Archive for the ‘Blog’ Category

An interesting follow up to my previous post about Google adding a new third column is that there have been quite a lot of reports of organic traffic dropping off although rankings haven’t dropped.  An example is the article at the Hobo site which reports a drop in traffic of nearly 90% for a particular keyword when the ranking for it had remained at no 1.

I have also noticed a similar effect.  Organic traffic for many of my clients has dropped in the last few weeks but with no apparent loss in rankings.   Hobo’s theory is that Google’s new layout is driving organic listings further down the page and so getting more clicks for its other types of listing, video, shopping, news etc.

I am also concerned that the way Google has moved the UK only results from the initial search is worrying.  This option is now only available once a search has been completed.  Some of the other changes I can see some benefit in, at least for the user.   Dropping UK only search to me is not a good idea, for either my clients or the user.

This is a particular issue with long tail search terms where Google is increasingly penetrating the search space with more and more local listings for example.

It’s good to know I am not alone in suffering drops in organic traffic even if there is nothing I can do about other than further encourage clients to embrace Universal media.

If you would like to add a comment to this post, please email it direct via the Atracks contact page.

Google has slimmed down its logo in the last couple of days, no shadow effect any more just the simple text.  It also seems to have dropped the TM symbol which is interesting.

But that is not all, Google has made a couple 0f other changes.

Universal search has been around for a while (different media returned in main search results – news, video etc as well as web pages).

Now Google has developed this idea by adding a third column on the left of the SERPS offering different options.  Click the icon and the options highlight what Google now delivers – news from last 24 hours, images – the timeline option is fun.

Looks to me like a modest but significant development.  Google may be way up there high above the competition but it can’t be accused of complacency.

If you would like to add a comment to this post,  please contact Atracks via the contact form.

Google Analytics reports the bid term in its search engine report (paid), rather than the term as it appeared in the actual search.

So let’s say I run a PPC campaign and bid on the term ‘web analytics training’, using broad match.  Someone comes along, does a search on ‘the best web analytics training’ and clicks my ad.

GA will report that search term as ‘web analytics training’ in its search engine report.  To get at the actual search term used, then there is an excellent blog post at http://www.ga-experts.com/blog/2006/11/how-to-get-detailed-ppc-keyword-data-from-google-analytics/

which explains how to do it very clearly – which is good since it is not exactly intuitive!

There have been rumblings about web analytics and privacy ever since there was web analytics and this has largely been aimed at Google Analytics.  Why?  Probably because of the huge quantity of data that Google has accumulated from its free analytics offering and partly no doubt because of it it head and shoulders above any other internet property.

It seems that Google is now planning the release of a plug in which will allow visitors to prevent the  website they are visiting from collecting data via Google Analytics.  It is quite a low key little announcement at this stage and one wonders why Google has decided that that now is the time to do itA very interesting blog post by Eric Peterson suggests it is a way of Google maintaining and increasing its ability to accumulate data – all the world’s data according to Mr Peterson – and I can’t argue with his reasoning.  No doubt it does make financial sense to offer GA free as a way of increasing revenue on Adwords, but call me cynical but I can’t helping there must be other benefits beyond Adwords revenue.

Google itself says the plug in will ‘give more choice for users’ – an interesting variation on ‘to improve the search experience’.

Whatever the reasoning, when the opt out plug in is released it will be very interesting to see just how many ordinary web surfers are really worried about privacy issues and use the opt out.  My guess is that very few have ever even given the matter any thought, are not interested in what GA is and isn’t doing, but are much more interested in how quickly they can find the price/information/music they are looking for or even, if they are UK surfers,  how the meerkats managed to travel across those wastelands to find more grubs.

From as early as next week (beg March 2010), Yahoo! will start closing down its search engine operations and import its results from Bing, the new name Microsoft gave its engine last year.

This comes as a result of final clearance from the authorities in the States to allow the ‘search agreement’ between Yahoo! and Bing.

The result as far as the users of search are concerned is that there will now be only two major players, Google and Bing.  There are still two minor players, Ask and  Hakia though they are lagging far behind the other two.

Is this good news or bad?

If you believe that total domination by Google of the search space is not desirable, then a strengthened Bing could be argued to be in a better position to challenge Google’s dominance.  On the other hand, one of the biggest players has gone the way of the famous names of the 90s that Yahoo! itself subsumed, Alta Vista, Inktomi and AlltheWEb.

As always, we live in interesting times.

Link building is vital to develop good rankings – we all know it but do we really have a good strategy in place for continually developing a good link profile.  I know it is something that sometimes takes a back seat with me when other things seem more urgent – even if they are not so important.

Wordtracker have recently posted a very useful article on the

62 steps to the definitive link building campaign

I do take issue with their Step 59, in which the article suggests buying paid links in the form of PPC adverts.  I cannot see how this could help with natural listings, but apart from that, everything they say makes a lot of sense and gives the whole process some structure.

There is a tendency for websites to get ever more complicated driven by better functionality, better design etc, but this is often at the expense of the site’s search engine friendliness. So have you looked at your site through Google’s eyes recently?

Googlebot (Google’s spider that visits your site and collects all the information on it that Google needs to match a page with a search query), is a simple fellow and can’t cope with images and other fancy stuff.

A quick and easy way of getting a good idea of what Googlebot sees is to

Turn off images

Turn off JavaScript

Turn of CSS

Disable Flash

then see what your page looks like.

Using Firefox

To turn off images and JavaScript

Go to

Tools → Options → Content → untick Load Images Automatically and Enable JavaScript boxes.

To disable CSS

Go to

View → Page Style and tick No Style.

Now just refresh the page.

Using Internet Explorer

I tried to do the same thing using Internet Explorer and my advice is to download Firefox if you haven’t already, it will be quicker. But if you really do want to try the same thing in IE, then

To turn off images

Go to

Tools → Internet Options → Advanced, then scroll down to MultiMedia and untick Show Pictures

To disable JavaScript

Go to

Tools → Internet Options → Security → Custom Level, scroll down to scripting and click disable javaScript.

Now restart IE.

Microsoft removed the ability to disable CSS in version 5 so the only way is to edit the registry files – not recommended!! – just use Firefox.

Using Firefox

To disable Flash

Disabling Flash is rather different. You can download a Firefox extension, FlashBlock.

This will then show a place holder wherever there is a Flash element on the page which, when clicked, will enable the Flash element and the page will then appear as the designer intended. FlashBlock is intended to block Flash generated ads and once downloaded you will need to click the place holder every time you load a page that contains a Flash element. This can be annoying when using Google Analytics, for example, since GA relies heavily on Flash.

Now what does your web page look like?

With images, javaScript and CSS turned off and Flash disabled, then what does your page look like?

If you can’t make head nor tail of the page, then probably Google can’t either, and if you can’t follow the links then you have real problems, because neither can Google and linking, including internal linking is key to search ranking success!

Also bear in mind that Google looks at a page by directly reading the code and not through a browser, so even disabled images, javaScript, CSS and Flash only gives a indication of what Googlebot sees – but it can be quite revealing though.

It seems Google has been experimenting with a different style of listing.  Instead of displaying a listing as

www.atracks.co.uk/training/wa-training.html

there have been results appearings as

www.atracks.co.uk > training > wa-training.html

but only of course if your website uses breadcrumbs.

This is great news because it means that instead of just a single link to the page that has achieved the ranking, the listing includes links to all the breadcrumbed pages as well.

Google is certainly talking about page speed and download times.  There is even a little video that Google has recorded, http://code.google.com/speed/page-speed/index.html

I still like the page page download time tool I referred to in an earlier post, but Google’s interest over the past summer in download times is perhaps best not ignored!

There are lots of rumours circulating at the moment that Google is increasingly using page load time as an important parameter in its ranking algorithm.  That is bad news for those over-engineered sites full of flash, bells and whistles.  But good news for the more simple sites that aim to deliver a simple message, clearly and concisely.

But how quickly do pages load?  Website Optimization offer a free web page analyser tool that will measure download times.  It also provides a record of different object types,

• HTML
• HTML images
• CSS images
• Total Images
• javaScript
• CSS
• Multimedia
• Other

For example, the Atracks homepage scores pretty well on most things except for javaScript.

but for another site, page load times probably are pulling down its rankings!

The download times may only be a guide, but not everyone is using fast broadband.  A quick look at your stats will show the number who are using some kind of mobile device, which will inevitably have a much slower connection.

Website Optimizer goes on to highlight which areas of the page being analysed are likely to be causing problems.  For examples, for my javaScript excesses, it suggests I

Consider optimizing your JavaScript for size, combining them, and using HTTP compression where appropriate for any scripts placed in the HEAD of your documents. You can substitute CSS menus for JavaScript-based menus to minimize or even eliminate the use of JavaScript.

This is certainly a useful tool.  Not only does it indicate areas that search engines may be struggling with there are big usability issues around download times.  Search engine spiders may not be patient enough to wait for a wiz bang page to download, but human visitors are expecting ever faster page loads.  Even if they can find you, your visitor may well be gone and off to your competitor’s site if he has to hang about waiting.

It isn’t an accident that Google has the cleanest, fastest page home page around!