Search Engine Workshops UK

Posts Tagged ‘Google’

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.

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.

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!

Google is testing out a big new idea – Google Social Search – and it could have big implications for how it ranks pages in its search listings. Google Social search was announced at the Web 2.0 Summit in San Francisco at the end of October, it’s still under development, but even just its existence gives a clear indication of how Google’s mind is working.

In essence, Google is planning to offer content from the searcher’s social network in addition to its normal listings. So if I have published content on Twitter or a blog on, say, a basketball match that I have watched and someone in my social circle searches for something on basketball, then my content will appear at the bottom of the page under the heading “Results from people in your social circle.” Of course, you will need to be signed into your Google account to see this feature.

Apart from the privacy implications (!!) it does show how important Google thinks social networking is. That might not be exactly news but Social Search does take it to a new level.

Google first has to determine who is in your social circle. It is planning to do this by looking at places like

• FriendFeed
• Feeds you are following in Google Reader
• Gmail contacts
• Youtube
• Picassa
• Sites you have listed in your Google Profile
• Twitter

and any other social networking sites that you are subscribed to and on which you are connected to friends.

Google will go one degree of connection further, so will include content posted by friends of your friends.

Whether or not Social Search proves popular is not really what is important. What is perhaps more interesting is that it shows Google is increasingly tracking your social profile – and knowing Google, it would be very surprising if this information does not end up being used in its rankings algorithm.

So it strongly suggests that you – or more importantly from an SEO point of view – your website needs, more than ever, to work on developing a good social profile. Put another way. Google looks like it is developing a system whereby connections could become as important as links. For company websites, that translates into how many people read your blog or have your RSS feed in their Google Reader or follow your Tweets.

Of course Google is keen to assure us all that only content that we have proactively put in the public domain will be used, but even so the whole idea is pretty scary.

Matt Cutts, the human face of Google search has put out a video explaining exactly how Google will be trawling our social networks to work out our social circles. He also reassures us all that, as always, Google is doing this to “improve your search experience”. And yes that really is a direct quote from the video.

Google looks at a web page via the source code, not through a browser.  This means that sometimes we see a very different page from the ones that the search engine spiders do.  Of course, we too can look at the source code but unless you are extremely well versed in working with HTML code then a rather more insightful method is to turn off images, javaScript and Flash.  This will show in a way that is meaningful to us, something of Google world.

For details of how to turn of images, javaScript and Flash, see our article on How to your web page through Google’s eyes.