SEO Moves Blog - Search Engine Optimisation and Internet Marketing Tips and Resources » Google

Google’s New Search Design

Phil — Wed, 21 Apr 2010 05:40:32 +0000

Have you noticed that your Google results page is a little different than it was a few months ago? The changes aren’t that obvious, but they’re significant, and they can help you get the information you need quicker and easier. The key to it all is the “Show Options” link right above the top search result. Click on that, and a whole menu of options opens up in the left column of the search page. You can refine your searches based on how recent they are, whether you want only pages you’ve visited before, only pages you haven’t visited before, more shopping sites, fewer shopping sites, and many other options.

If you’re trying to refine a search, but you’re not exactly sure how to refine it, you can click on the “Wonder Wheel” option. This generates a graphic representation of search results that show up as spokes coming off a hub that contains your search terms. If one of the spokes looks interesting or relevant, you can click it and it will generate its own little Wonder Wheel. The Wonder Wheel has actually been around for almost a year now. I admit I never saw it until recently.

These changes to Google results pages are more evolutionary than revolutionary, but they are generating some excitement, as you can see if you search Twitter for “new Google results design.” For researchers in particular, these tools make finding stuff out quicker, easier, and more efficient.

Branding as a Part of Google’s Algorithm

Phil — Sun, 28 Feb 2010 12:24:56 +0000

In early 2009 Google started giving more weight to brands when it came to search engine results. Quite naturally, a lot of people predicted doom for organic search results. Fortunately, any damage to unique, high-quality non-”brand” content appears to be minimal so far. The ones who have suffered have mostly been those with thin affiliate sites – sites that have very little actual content but push affiliate programs.

Google’s goal in doing this was to keep the first SERP from being dominated by low-content sites. It is easy to see how some people would fear that SEO suddenly wouldn’t matter anymore, if you were going to search on, say, boots and have a first results page dominated by Uggs, Kenneth Cole, Kate Spade, and Tod’s. This wouldn’t do you much good if you wanted work boots.

But what seems to have happened is that there is more of an eclectic mix on the first SERP with searches on broad keywords, like health insurance. You can see in the three screen shots that the first results page has a mix of sponsored sites, big brands, informational pages, news results, and book results. The sky hasn’t fallen yet, but those who run hundreds of thin affiliate sites may want to be looking over their shoulders.

Twitter and SERP Standings

Phil — Sun, 14 Feb 2010 09:27:47 +0000

Google is starting to use real-time search results, including Twitter tweets relevant to search words, which means your tweets could show up on the first page of the search engine results page (SERP)! You can see this in the screen shot of a Google search on “iPad.” The tweets themselves are indexed, and the first 40 or so characters of your Tweet (depending on how long your username is) will make up the title tag when your tweet shows up on Google search results, so choose the first two or three words of a tweet carefully, including at least one important keyword for your website.

In your profile, make sure there’s a link to your actual website, not just your Facebook or MySpace page. Use your profile’s bio line, which is 160 characters, to your best advantage by making it relevant to your website and using keywords. Your bio is indexed, and what’s in your bio is what will or won’t give your Twitter profile its relevance. Additionally, your Twitter bio is your meta description, so make it count.

When you develop followers, don’t abandon them. Make sure to engage them and don’t just use your tweets to constantly push your products on people.

Google Quality Scores in Adwords

Phil — Thu, 11 Feb 2010 07:13:04 +0000

Every keyword in your Google AdWords account has associated with it a Quality Score. The Quality Score is a way to tell whether a keyword is relevant to the ad itself, and relevant to search queries. There are many factors that go into an individual keyword’s Quality Score. The higher a keyword’s Quality Score, the higher the position where your keyword will trigger ads, and the lower that keyword’s associated cost-per-click. Therefore, you want your keywords’ Quality Scores to be as high as possible.

The overall Google Network is made up of the Search Network and the Content Network. Your ads will appear on the Search Network if you have so chosen this in your campaign settings. In these cases, the user’s search query words determine where the ads are targeted. These are the ads that show up in a column next to search engine results, like the ones seen in the screen shot. The higher the keywords’ Quality Scores, the higher ads show up in these columns.

As for the Content Network, the eligibility of your ad to show up on a particular content site, and its location on that site are determined by your keyword’s Quality Score for content, which is based on past performance of your ad on this site, and on similar sites. The Quality Score for Content is also based on relevance to the keywords and those of the ad group on this site.

Using the Google Keyword Tool, and optimizing your ads so that they are highly keyword-specific will help boost your keywords’ Quality Scores.

Site Links – What They Are And What They Mean

Phil — Sun, 31 Jan 2010 09:14:09 +0000

Sometimes results from a Google search contain a few links shown below some of the sites, as you can see in the screen shot. These are called site links and they are automatically generated to help users get around on your website. If your website structure doesn’t let the Google algorithm find good site links, or if adding site links isn’t relevant to a search, they aren’t shown.

Google only displays site links when there are at least three available. If your site only has two or fewer site links, they won’t show in search results.

At present, site links are automatically generated, but if your site has site links that you find to be inappropriate or incorrect, you can block them. To block site links, go to the Google Webmaster Tools home page and click the site you’re interested in. Under “Site Configuration” click on “Sitelinks.” If there are site links for your site they’ll be displayed here. You can click on “Block” next to any site link you want to delete.

If you do this, Google would like your input about why you wanted to delete the site link so they can improve the site link generation algorithm. The effect of blocking or un-blocking a site link can take a while to be implemented.

Check Your Site Speed

Phil — Wed, 13 Jan 2010 07:37:57 +0000

The faster your web pages load, the better the user activity. Lower costs (for bandwidth) and higher revenues are also associated with faster-loading web pages. Google’s goal is to get every page to load as quickly as the average person turns a page in a magazine.

People dislike flash-based “Enter” pages that come up to escort you into the real meat of a site, and they don’t like pages that are slow to load. This is often a make-or-break proposition for web users, with faster sites getting more attention than slower sites.

Google’s Site Performance tools will tell you how quickly pages load based on actual data from actual users. The results are filtered so that “outliers” like the person in rural China using a dial-up connection’s page load time doesn’t unnecessarily weight the real average load time for the “typical” user of your website.

Keep in mind that the performance stats aren’t calculated unless there is sufficient data to get meaningful numbers. So if your site experiences very low traffic, you may not get site speed data reported.

Keep in mind that the speed data may also include pages that are not crawled. That means if non-crawled pages make up a substantial part of your visitors’ experiences, the performance data may not be accurate.