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Posts Tagged ‘Search Google’

While working with a client this morning, I logged into Google Webmaster Central to take a look at the top search queries driving traffic. What I discovered was one heck of a useful upgrade!

Rather than simply providing keywords, positions and click-throughs, Google has upgraded the interface to a Google Analytics-style interface. Since ranking now varies based on personal search profiles, Google now provides you with the range of positions your URL was found in, as well as total number of impressions and the click-through rate.

Too many companies ignore their search rankings and the click-through rate off the search engine results page (SERP). Just as you would optimize your page to increase conversions, you should also optimize your page title and meta description to increase conversions. If you’re ranking #1 through #3 and getting under 10% of the clicks, you’ve got some work to do. You should be getting 50% and up!

This new interface is a great visualization of the data. Once I was able to review the page with my client this morning, we could see the incredible opportunity ahead of us for driving high volumes of traffic to the site with improved optimization and ranking.

Don’t settle on analytics to optimize your site for conversions – take it a step back and ensure you’re fully leveraging search engines first. Analytics only provide you with details for visitors who actually clicked-through… not the ones that were left behind!

This post was written by Douglas Karr

Douglas Karr is the founder of The Marketing Technology Blog. Doug is President and CEO of DK New Media, an online marketing company specializing in social media, blogging and search engine optimization. Their clients include Webtrends, ChaCha and many more.

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That sinking feeling in your stomach may actually be coming from your browser. Don’t look now, but Google plans to release a browser plugin that will allow users to opt out of being tracked by … Google Analytics.

Um, what?

Google, leading search provider and the horsepower behind the popular Google Analytics web traffic analytics tool, is going to allow users to avoid being tracked by their own tool.

This brings up a number of questions and possible implications for webmasters and web marketers who use Google Analytics to track website traffic, primarily how usage of the plugin will affect collection of site traffic data. This begs another possibly more important question: why would Google do this when Google Analytics doesn’t collect personal data in the first place?

First things last, it depends on what can be considered “personal” data. Does your ISP information and geographic location count as personal? Google Analytics does not collect individual IP addresses, meaning that all information tracked is completely anonymous.

Does this put Google in the category of “total hypocrites” since they can keep an indefinite record of users’ search history? Perhaps. Search history allows Google to deliver those amazing personalized search results, and while they have made it easier to opt out of this feature with their Privacy Center, they don’t exactly go out of their way to advertise this possibility. It also bears mention that a privacy group has asked the Federal Trade Commission to open an investigation into Google Buzz, so Google may be stinging just a bit on the privacy front.

The uproar has been voluminous and high profile, but my first reaction was “So?” How many people are even aware they have a Google Profile, let alone that they can edit this profile and adjust their privacy settings and ad preferences? I was not able to quickly locate any empirical data, but what is the total percentage of web users who use the AdBlock Plus plugin for Firefox? It’s probably not great enough to put it outside the standard deviation.

My basic point is that for webmasters and marketers, this move may sell more subscriptions to Omniture and WebTrends as those of us behind the curtain want access to as much data as possible. But that move may be a knee-jerk reaction to a problem that doesn’t yet–and may never–exist.

This post was written by Matt Chandler

Matt is the Vice President of Content Strategy for Raidious Digital Content Services. He has over 10 years’ experience managing online content for enterprise organizations including NYU Langone Medical Center, Community Health Network and the Indiana Higher Education Telecommunication System. He also has a ridiculous vinyl record collection and a pug named George Benson.

Thanks for subscribing! download Doug's eBook on Blogging for SEO on us!

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Last April, I did a post about Google Local business. This weekend, I picked up my daughter from her hair appointment. The salon was beautiful and the folks working there were fantastic. The owner asked me what I did for a living and I told him I helped companies with their online marketing.

We were standing at a computer and he shared with me that his point of sales provider also did his website. I asked him to search on Google for “Hair Stylist, Greenwood, IN“. Up popped up a nice map with all of his competition… but no entry for his salon. I walked him through publishing his business on Google Local business and it took all of 10 minutes.

If you’re in the business of selling websites for regional businesses or doing local search engine optimization, how can you leave this out of your strategy? It’s free, it’s at the top of the search results page, and it’s easy to use! Google has even added local status updates to the page.

Even if you’re not a regional business, I would still advise you to use the service. Businesses like to utilize local resources because they’re easier to communicate with, visit, and get support from. Shop local, buy local, search local… and list your business so that you’re found. Bing also has a Local Listings Center

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• Google Enhances Local Search With “Nearby” Filter (techcrunch.com)
• The Rise of Google Local Business Listings (blogstorm.co.uk)

This post was written by Douglas Karr

Douglas Karr is the founder of The Marketing Technology Blog. Doug is President and CEO of DK New Media, an online marketing company specializing in social media, blogging and search engine optimization. Their clients include Webtrends, ChaCha and many more.

Thanks for subscribing! download Doug's eBook on Blogging for SEO on us!

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Does commenting on other blogs help my search engine ranking? Google’s ranking algorithm weighs heavily on relevant links back to your site. Since links back to your site help, wouldn’t it make sense that commenting and leaving your links everywhere would benefit your site? Not exactly.

In this recent video, Matt Cutts (Search Quality for Google) discusses the potential risks of allowing users to post comments with link spam on your blog. You have control over the content on your website, and if Google catches you linking to spammy websites, they’ll likely consider your website spammy as well.

He also touches on the reason Google typically doesn’t penalize your website for spammy in-bounds links. If Google penalized websites for any type of in-bound link(s), then competitors would be building the worst links possible to each other attempting to remove competition from the search results.

There are still plenty of blogs that do not add the rel=”nofollow” attribute to comment links. Why would a blog owner want to do this?

A dofollow blog comment link is a simple reward to users that add valuable comments and feedback. The blog owner gets valuable user-generated comment and the visitor who leaves a good comment gets a dofollow link. Most blogs that allow dofollow comment links strictly moderate those comments and links, so you’re not likely to get away with posting a link unless your comment contributes and adds value to the blog post.

Another reason a blog might allow dofollow comments is if the blog has been around for a long time and the owner doesn’t update the platform often. Believe it or not, there are thousands of blogs that have not been updated since the rel=’nofollow’ attribute was invented. Many of the blogs are still used and new posts are added regularly. Many of these blogs are moderated closely or filled with blog comment spam.

If you’re trying to build your backlink profile I would stay away from blog posts with other spammy comments. You’re not likely to get penalized from posting links next to spammy links, but Google often identifies these spam riddled pages and filters them from their link graph.

In most cases the effort of building your backlink profile by posting blog comment links is not worth the effort as these sites normally contain so many comment links that the PageRank value is divided too much to pass substantial value. Blog comment links with the rel=’nofollow’ attribute will not pass any value to your website.

This post was written by Jeremy Dearringer

Jeremy is the Search Engine Optimization Director of Research and Development for Slingshot SEO. Slingshot SEO is an Indianapolis SEO company, employing over 80 search engine optimization experts both in Indiana and around the United States. Building on more than a decade of search engine research, Slingshot has ranked clients’ websites on the first page of Google and other major search engines for thousands of competitive keywords.

Thanks for subscribing! download Doug's eBook on Blogging for SEO on us!

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Erik Deckers read my mind when he wrote a post on Laughing Stalk about the real ending to Google’s Parisian Love advertisement from the Super Bowl. I had lunch with him today and we decided to add our own twisted, demented ending to the commercial. Without further ado, I present the Parisian Love Affair, avec Part Deux.

And yes… I understand why I’m single.

This post was written by Douglas Karr

Douglas Karr is the founder of The Marketing Technology Blog. Doug is President and CEO of DK New Media, an online marketing company specializing in social media, blogging and search engine optimization. Their clients include Webtrends, ChaCha and many more.

Thanks for subscribing! download Doug's eBook on Blogging for SEO on us!

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Yesterday was a whirlwind of reactions, mostly overreactions, to Google’s latest concoction, Google Buzz. I posted a quick video tour to help people know how to get started before spending the day busy with client meetings. When I was finally able to catch up to the blog posts, Twitter pronouncements and, yes, the Buzz itself, I needed a couple of hours to soak in all the information and do a gut-check to make sure I was the only sane person left.

The biggest “WTF” moment for me has been all the talk that Google now is suddenly a social network and is a Facebook killer. Perhaps I’m wrong, but I see nothing Facebook-like about Buzz, Google has always had a loosely structured social network underlying its communications utilities and both platforms serve different primary purposes. In essence, when people like Jason Calacanis declare Facebook’s value dropping in half because Google suddenly now has a social network, I have to wonder how many stock options he’s got and whether or not on that day he had all his marbles.

Don’t get me wrong. I like Jason a lot. But his “Breaking News” was more sensationalistic and irrational than weather reporters spelling the end of the world because a few inches of snow is predicted for the area.

Google is a communications utility built on an organizational structure of search. This is why Google applications like Gmail and Google Reader are never-ending scrolls of information. The Google mindset is not to scroll, hunt and peck like the majority of the free world. The Google brain says, “I know what I want to find here. Let’s just use the search box at the top of the page.” The user experience is driven by the search box. Because most people want to browse around and find what they’re looking for, Google is too much information, not organized well and often overwhelming. Buzz takes that quality and magnifies it because so much social information is coming in at hyper speed.

Facebook is a social network built on connections with people you know, trust or want to. Communications in Facebook is mostly public, which is a relatively new phenomenon and still the shiny, new object in most people’s minds. Because its infrastructure is built on connections and its functionality forces people’s actions to be mostly public and shared with their friends, it is an intrinsically viral platform as well.

Google is a communications utility. Facebook is a social network.

What Google Buzz accomplishes is that it amplifies social functionality within that underlying, but long-existing Google network. It is a nice bell/whistle to drive more social connectivity in the Google platform. But it does not replace Facebook or Twitter nor does it have to.

You don’t play Mafia Wars in Google. You don’t email anyone you want, regardless of network, in Facebook. (Yeah, I know they’re announcing that, but you get the point.)

Both are borrowing nice ideas from each other and making their platforms better for the users, but I don’t see Buzz as a Facebook killer. In fact, I see it as proof that Google’s search-first mindset continues to baffle the majority of users who want to navigate and (ironically) find things easier. Don’t throw information at us like seeds at pigeons, Google. That’s what Buzz is doing.

Some Finer Points On Buzz

After watching Buzz for a few hours yesterday, I did a couple of things I would recommend you do. First, I disconnected the ability for my Twitter posts to be imported into Buzz. I have conversations with people on Twitter and having those same messages posted on Buzz would mean I now have to monitor two places to engage with people reacting to my posts. Not paying attention to the reactions on Buzz is disingenuous to my network there. It’s the same reason I don’t auto-post my Tweets to Facebook. I don’t monitor Facebook as regularly and would then do that group of friends a disservice by ignoring their reactions to the auto-posts. I’m considering not posting SME items on Buzz for the same reason, but am monitoring it to see.

I also un-followed over 100 people. Buzz is simply a fire hose of information that is impossible to follow, filter or organize because Google thinks you’ll just search for what you want to find rather than browse for what might catch your eye. In order for Buzz to be useful, then, you really have to limit who you follow to the small group of people you either want to engage with more frequently or who provide you the greatest value in what they share, post, etc., on Buzz.

It’s Still New

Keep in mind Buzz is less than 48 hours old at this writing. Initial reactions are going to be extreme one way or the other to get attention, drive traffic and tabloid-ify the news of the day. What Buzz will be for you is exactly what you make of it. If it’s too much, too fast, you won’t use it. If you get in an poke around and set it so that you are seeing a manageable amount of information and interacting meaningfully with those providing it, you’ll like it a lot.

But apparently not as much as Jason Calacanis. Heh.

A penny for your thoughts. The comments are yours.

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Read Write Web has an article on content farms and the impact on search. We discussed content farms at an executive roundtable at Webtrends a bit as well… real-time analytics will definitely play a role.

Content farms are publications sites that publish content to grab search engine traffic for profit. Hmmm… sounds a little like blogging for search to me. I actually think content farms are a great idea and will probably improve Google’s search engine results.

Google doesn’t care.

They’ll act like they care (just like they act like they aren’t evil), but they don’t care. Here’s why:

• The fact is that Google’s search engine sucks and continues to get worse. If content farms drive answers to the top of the search results that answer my query, I’ll be happy. Google has conditioned us to click on a result, back up, click on a second result, back up, click on a third result, requery with different wording and do it all over again. The volume of content Google is able to index is mind-blowing, but the results suck.
• Google’s revenue model is to sell advertising, not produce quality search results. If Google produces a result for you that isn’t what you were looking for, but the results page has a couple pay-per-click ads that are compelling, Google just got rewarded for its crappy result. There’s a lot of pay-per-click inventory out there… and Google needs somewhere to put it.
• As long as Google sustains its market share, it’s going to hang onto that market share for a very long time. Once again, Google has conditioned its users to work around its shortcomings. They have done so successfully – it’s why Bing may be a better search engine but is having a difficult time peeling away market share.
• Every blog is a content farm, and most bloggers who understand search seed blog posts to target greater search engine traffic. I absolutely observe my search engine traffic, track keywords, and work to place great content that will drive more traffic. How do you distinguish a content farm from a quality publication? I’m not sure you can.

I think content farms are a solid business. Heck – I just launched Marketing Tech Vendors… it’s basically a content farm of Marketing Technology tools, products and services. I have one exception, though. There are a ton of aggregation sites out there that seed content but provide no value of their own.

One such site is actually well-known and beloved by the Silicon Valley boys… Mahalo (link intentionally omitted). Aaron Wall has done a fantastic job in tracking Mahalo’s continued strategy of pushing content that isn’t their own. Additionally, Jason Calacanis also knows – since he pushes those trending topics and Mahalo pages through social media to drive more traffic.

What does this mean for Marketers? It’s not good news… it means that you’re not only fighting the competition for search engine ranking, you’re also competing with content farms who wish to divert traffic to their sites for profit.

When content farms attract enough search engine ranking and traffic that they are able to support their own ad distribution system that is more profitable than Google… only then will Google cry foul and begin doing something about this.

This post was written by Douglas Karr

Douglas Karr is the founder of The Marketing Technology Blog. Doug is President and CEO of DK New Media, an online marketing company specializing in social media, blogging and search engine optimization. Their clients include Webtrends, ChaCha and many more.

Thanks for subscribing! download Doug's eBook on Blogging for SEO on us!

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Google is going extension crazy here lately with the release of site links, then location extensions, and now contact form extensions!

I got an email from my Google rep asking if I wanted to participate in a new beta from Google called, ‘contact form extensions’.

The gist of the beta is if you’re running a PPC ad in Google, and you’re in the top position, you can click on a plus sign next to a call to action (the name you give your contact form) and Google will drop down your contact form to be submitted right there in the Google search results.

According to Google, the rules for the contact form extension are as follows:

1. Only the position #1 will be available for the drop down contact form
2. Leads will be priced with your maximum cost-per-click bid during the beta test.
3. Google will be collecting the phone number and name from your contact form
4. You can provide Google with up to 3 custom questions they’ll include in your contact form in addition to basic information like name, address, phone, etc.
5. Google will show ‘some’ or ‘all’ of your custom questions based on a ‘quality algorithm in which they did not mention the details of.
6. Here’s the kicker, at the current moment, they’ll only take phone leads, so you must provide a contact phone number in your form in order for people to call in and ‘hopefully’ become a lead. In the future they do plan to provide leads through email or live chat.

How it all works:

When someone does a search in Google, and if your PPC ad is in position #1, the user will have the ability to click on the plus sign icon to drop down your contact form. If the user fills out the form by hitting the ‘please give me a call’ button that lead will be submitted to Google.

Once Google receives your lead, they’ll send you an email with the lead ID and information requested by the user.

However, you can’t contact the user yet, you have to call a special Google phone number and provide it with a lead ID, which will then re-route you to your potential customer.

If you get to sign up for the beta, or when it comes out of beta, Google will provide you with a list of questions you can put in your contact form, and Google essentially builds the contact form for you.

Some participation guidelines are of course recommended:

• You must contact your potential lead within 24 business hours.
• Only US based phones numbers are accepted so your campaigns should only be targeting the United States.
• Submission forms should be submitted by January 18^th, 2010. Late submissions are not guaranteed to be active in the first round of the beta.
• You can opt out at any time.
• There may be hiccups since it is a beta.
• Your account manager will give you reporting on your contact form extensions on a monthly basis.
• Provide Google with feedback!

So there it is, I’m super excited to be a part of the beta for some of my accounts. I really, really hope to see some good results from this. Of course I have to put this all in perspective as your ad has to be in the #1 position in Google in order to even show the contact form extension.

Check out The Adventures of PPC Hero: Heroic Feats of Pay Per Click Management at http://www.ppchero.com/. Copyright © 2007-2009 Hanapin Marketing, LLC.

Now that Chrome is available for the Mac, I’ve been messing with it all day and absolutely love it. The ability to troubleshoot sites with it is incredible… whether it’s a CSS or a JavaScript issue.

One thing I always like messing with is the default search engine or list of engines – regardless of whether it’s Firefox or Safari. I search my own site often enough that I usually add that to the list. In addition, it’s always fun to do things like make Bing your default search engine on Chrome to keep the monsters battling (I really do like Bing!).

I even built my own Add Search Engine form for Firefox to make things easier. Chrome isn’t quite as simple, it doesn’t use the AddEngine component that Firefox does so you can’t simply build a link. As well, there’s no dropdown for selecting the search engine.

However, there is one fantastic feature with the omnibar… you can add the keyword of your choice to add a search engine. Here’s how to add a search engine:

1. Either go to Chrome Preferences and click manage on the Search Engines or right click on the Omnibar and select Edit Search Engines.
2. Add the name of the search engine or site you’d like to search, a keyword to easily distinguish it, and the search engine URL with %s as the search term. Here’s an example with ChaCha:

Now, I can simply type “ChaCha” and my query and Chrome will automatically encode the URL and send it off. This is actually much easier than hitting a dropdown and selecting the search engine. I have each of my Search Engines keyworded… Google, Bing, Yahoo, ChaCha, Blog… and just use the omnibar to quickly get results! Once you start typing, Chrome autocompletes and provides the search info:

You could even update your Twitter Status using the omnibar since Twitter has a querystring method of populating a Tweet. Or you could add a keyword shortcut to search twitter with http://search.twitter.com/search?q=%s.

For developers, you can do code searches on Google Codesearch with language specific queries like PHP http://www.google.com/codesearch?q=lang%3Aphp+%s and JavaScript http://www.google.com/codesearch?q=lang%3Ajavascript+%s. Or you could do a function lookup on PHP.net with something like: http://us2.php.net/manual-lookup.php?pattern=%s. Or jQuery http://docs.jquery.com/Special:Search?ns0=1&search=%s.

Disclosure: ChaCha is a client of mine. They’ve got some incredible results, though… especially when you’re seeking something simple like an address, phone number, trivia question, or even better… jokes. They do have some incredibly robust pages on celebrities and topics, too.

This post was written by Douglas Karr

Douglas Karr is the founder of The Marketing Technology Blog. Doug is President and CEO of DK New Media, an online marketing company specializing in social media, blogging and search engine optimization. Their clients include Webtrends, ChaCha, Compendium Blogware and many more.

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In March 2008, I wrote that Twitter was becoming my new search engine. Thank goodness Matt Cutts and the folks at Google were reading my post!

Kidding of course… I never saw this coming but the answer was right in front of me – combine your social network with your searches to provide more relevant results based on your network. Very cool indeed! Via @jessenewhart on Twitter.

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