Dangerous Thinking

A few weeks ago I asked Is localisation affecting your search engine performance? Obviously, moving a site with a .com domain to a UK-based server will solve the problem of getting the google.co.uk UK rankings.

But my colleague Paul Silver wondered if we we could find another way of establishing this blog’s UK provenance. We ended up registering Dangerous Thinking on Google Local, so Google knew that the blog had a real physical UK location.

We sat back and waited to see if Google Search picked up on the Google Local registration. Some six weeks later, it hadn’t, so we’ve concluded Google Search does not reference Google Local.

Whether Google will join up the two services in the future, I don’t know – it seems very logical to. But they don’t appear to work together now.

Edit (20 November 2007): Burrowing back into my RSS feeds (I always read the most up-to-date ones first), I found Google’s answer to search localisation in a post on the Webmaster Central Blog back in August called Server location, cross-linking, and Web 2.0 technology thoughts.

Here we go:

Does location of server matter? I use a .com domain but my content is for customers in the UK.

In our understanding of web content, Google considers both the IP address and the top-level domain (e.g. .com, .co.uk). Because we attempt to serve geographically relevant content, we factor domains that have a regional significance. For example, “.co.uk ” domains are likely very relevant for user queries originating from the UK. In the absence of a significant top-level domain, we often use the web server’s IP address as an added hint in our understanding of content.

So, there we are. IP and top-level domain.

Search Engine Journal reports that Yahoo Tops Google in Customer Satisfaction Ranking. The data comes from ACSI (The American Customer Satisfaction Index), whose Q2 2007 ACSI Scores show Yahoo up 3.9% to 79% satisfaction and Google down 3.7% to 78% satisfaction.

SEJ suggests the following as drivers for the results:

What could have influenced the rise in customer satisfaction with Yahoo (opinion)?

* Implementation of targeted Yahoo Shortcuts
* Serving Yahoo Answers in Selected Results
* Consolidation of various services into one package (Yahoo Photos/Flickr)
* Cutting back on fluffy Weather or News shortcuts where they are not needed
* Better ad targeting via Yahoo Search Marketing Panama
* Better Image Search with live Flickr photos

Why may have customer satisfaction at Google fallen (opinion)?

* Confusing Google Universal Results inserting video & news into content
* Changing of AdWords Background Colors
* Outdated homepage
* Personalized search results
* Dropping of Froogle

I wonder if we’re seeing some simple anti-Google backlash, too, as it dominates the Web.

It’ll be interesting to see if the commonly-perceived failing Yahoo maintains its challenge to Google in other surveys in the coming months.

By a strange coincidence, after this morning’s entry on My Online Identity Score, and at the risk of getting truly sidetracked from the main themes of this blog, Adam Ostrow tests 6 People Search Engines on Mashable.

Out of interest, I looked for myself on those that weren’t down for maintenance (overload, perhaps?). Mr 10/10 Rosam even doesn’t feature on many of them, so at the moment it looks as if you’re better off starting with Google if you’re trying to track someone down.

If Hollywood can have sequels…

PC World suggests these alternatives to the well-known search engines.

I’ve just bookmarked sputtr.

It’s a site (really a page) that allows you to search on more engines and resources than you could probably name (mutterings of ‘name ten famous Belgians’ are heard from a shadowy corner of the office).

I think sputtr needs something more to make it really compelling, and I’d like the buttons labelled, because even I don’t recognise all the services I can choose from.

The Google Webmaster Blog summarises them:

Quality guidelines – specific guidelines

* Avoid hidden text or hidden links.
* Don’t use cloaking or sneaky redirects.
* Don’t send automated queries to Google.
* Don’t load pages with irrelevant keywords.
* Don’t create multiple pages, subdomains, or domains with substantially duplicate content.
* Don’t create pages that install viruses, trojans, or other badware.
* Avoid “doorway” pages created just for search engines, or other “cookie cutter” approaches such as affiliate programs with little or no original content.
* If your site participates in an affiliate program, make sure that your site adds value. Provide unique and relevant content that gives users a reason to visit your site first.

I think they can be summarised by saying ‘don’t be dishonest, and don’t load your site with junk’. I’d say they were excellent principles to get your site to perform well on just about any major search engine.

We’ve all been looking at the effects of the algorithm tweaks going on at Google. Then, earlier this week, we noticed some strange stuff happening with Yahoo results. Here’s why (from the Yahoo Search Blog):

We rolled out some changes to our index and ranking algorithm last night. So, as you know, throughout this process you may see some changes in ranking as well as some shuffling of the pages included in the index. This update should be complete very soon.

Yep, I got snagged by this post on Yahoo’s blog.

What are the common words that vex our searchers? We applied our best spell checking skills to the data and came up with this list of the top 20 misspelled words in Search…

1. Wallmart (Wal-Mart)
2. Rachel Ray (Rachael Ray)
3. Amtrack (Amtrak)
4. Hillary Duff (Hilary Duff)
5. Katherine McPhee (Katharine McPhee)
6. Britany Spears (Britney Spears)
7. Geneology (Genealogy)
8. Jaime Pressley (Jaime Pressly)
9. Volkswagon (Volkswagen)
10. Wikepedia (Wikipedia)
11. William Sonoma (Williams-Sonoma)
12. Tatoo (Tattoo)
13. Travelosity (Travelocity)
14. Elliot Yamin (Elliott Yamin)
15. Kiera Knightley (Keira Knightley)
16. Kelly Pickler (Kellie Pickler)
17. Brittney Spears (Britney Spears)
18. Avril Lavinge (Avril Lavigne)
19. Rianna (Rihanna)
20. Jordan Sparks (Jordin Sparks)

I have to say all it proves is teens can’t spell selebrety names.

OK, I know it’s a bit of fun, but I’d love to see the Top 100 misspelled non-celebrity words worldwide and in the UK, and the Top 100 misspelled brands. That may just be interesting.

Last week, Google announced it is to unify its search results into a single search, called Web. The news made the mainstream media.

On its blog, Google said:

Here’s the challenge in a nutshell: Until now, we’ve only been able to show news, books, local and other such results at the top of the page, like this example for [trends in education]. But it’s a tall order to earn placement at the top of our search results, so plenty often we end up not showing these kinds of results even when they might be useful. If only we could smartly place such results elsewhere on the page when they don’t quite deserve the top, we could share the benefits of these great Google features with people much more often.

and concluded:

This is just the tip of the iceberg in making Google results more comprehensive and useful. It has involved launching a number of new systems that will make it much easier for us to continue making improvements so you get the most relevant information from our varied content areas. We hope you like it. And finally, we’re especially happy to know that Google is still very much a place where we can get big things done!

At Web Positioning Centre, we’ve seen some shuffling and inconsistency in Google results for some of our clients recently. Internally, we predicted some upcoming changes in the Google algorithm. I guess we were right.

It’s difficult to know exactly what implications Google’s unified search will have. One immediate response is that with more results competing for each search, you may have to invest more in SEO to get on that first page. Google takes a positive spin on its Webmaster Blog and makes some suggestions on how to take advantage of universal search.

We’ll be keeping a close eye on the effect of the changes following the launch on Wednesday. It’ll almost certainly take a few weeks for things to settle down and it should start becoming clear what kind of sites and content Google is giving highest weightings to.

The Google Sandbox is the part of the Google algorithm that keeps new sites out of the top pages for popular natural search results. If you have a new site, you’re potentially sandboxed for up to 12 months – we give 9-12 months as a rule of thumb. That’s maybe up to a year of investment in Organic SEO, with little immediate to show for it.

But, like most things on the Web, you’re not 100% certain of being sandboxed. It’s only for the really high traffic key phrases that the sandbox operates. Somewhere, there’s a line, below which Google will be happy to list you up there on the first page.

In fact, we’ve discovered that as we dig deeper and deeper in key phrase research for our clients, we have found ourselves recommending key phrases that it later turns out they have not been sandboxed for – in some cases to our great surprise. So we find ourselves recommending a mix of high-traffic key phrases as an investment for the future – they’ll kick in when the site emerges from the sandbox – and some that we might just get some immediate results for.

If we do succeed, then maybe we can save our client some PPC click-through budget.