Google Results - Arizona SEO | Phoenix SEO

Google “Answer Highlighting” Upsets Webmasters

On January 25, 2010, In SEO, by rustybrick

Google announced two new features in their web results. First is called “Answer Highlighting” and the second is an enhancement to the Rich Snippets feature.

Answer Highlighting in short basically uses Google Squared technology to highlight in the search snippet the answer to your search query. For example, and I don’t see this in the live Google results right now, if you search for [empire state height], in the past (current) you would have seen this:

With the enhancement, you would see the answer:

Getting the answer in the search results, is a goal of Google, but that means, or can mean, less click throughs from Google to your web site. Webmasters often live off traffic and conversions, so this can be a bit upsetting to many webmasters.

Brett Tabke said in a WebmasterWorld thread:

Taking another page out of the WolframAlpha play book, Google introduces Serps with answers. You may never need to visit any site again.

The other enhancement is allowing event data in rich snippets. How does that improve the feature? Just look at this snippet:

Forum discussion at WebmasterWorld.

Google announced two new features in their web results. First is called “Answer Highlighting” and the second is an enhancement to the Rich Snippets feature.

Answer Highlighting in short basically uses Google Squared technology to highlight in the search snippet the answer to your search query. For example, and I don’t see this in the live Google results right now, if you search for [empire state height], in the past (current) you would have seen this:

With the enhancement, you would see the answer:

Getting the answer in the search results, is a goal of Google, but that means, or can mean, less click throughs from Google to your web site. Webmasters often live off traffic and conversions, so this can be a bit upsetting to many webmasters.

Brett Tabke said in a WebmasterWorld thread:

Taking another page out of the WolframAlpha play book, Google introduces Serps with answers. You may never need to visit any site again.

The other enhancement is allowing event data in rich snippets. How does that improve the feature? Just look at this snippet:

Forum discussion at WebmasterWorld.

Study on Google Personalized Search & Re-Ranking Shows Minor SEO Changes

On January 20, 2010, In SEO, by rustybrick

In December, Google announced they will be personalizing all Google results by default. SEOs rightfully were a bit on edge after that announcement, but we did link to an old study on how personalized results impact rankings, overall.

The study has been revised and posted at the Huomah Blog. I won’t go through all the points, but the conclusion is that currently, the personalized changes are so minor that it is not worth SEOs freaking out about them. The overall conclusion of this study stated:

We shouldn’t be changing how we approach things ultimately… Above the fold is the real estate that’s prime (what else is new?). It may be the measuring that we will have to adapt. You will need to find ways to check rankings from a few locales and discern a mean average instead of a definitive placement.

It is worth while reading the whole report at the Huomah Blog.

Forum discussion at Sphinn.

In December, Google announced they will be personalizing all Google results by default. SEOs rightfully were a bit on edge after that announcement, but we did link to an old study on how personalized results impact rankings, overall.

The study has been revised and posted at the Huomah Blog. I won’t go through all the points, but the conclusion is that currently, the personalized changes are so minor that it is not worth SEOs freaking out about them. The overall conclusion of this study stated:

We shouldn’t be changing how we approach things ultimately… Above the fold is the real estate that’s prime (what else is new?). It may be the measuring that we will have to adapt. You will need to find ways to check rankings from a few locales and discern a mean average instead of a definitive placement.

It is worth while reading the whole report at the Huomah Blog.

Forum discussion at Sphinn.

The Google Search Screw: Google Knows Best

On January 15, 2010, In SEO, by rustybrick

Imagine you have been in business, operating on the web for years now. Your name is unique and it ranks number one in the Google results, since it is unique. But then imagine a new site pops up that is similar to your name. Then soon after, Google decided that your name is really not what people want, instead, they want the other name.

In other words, they type in your business name and Google say – no no, you spelled it wrong, you want a competitor or another web site. Google then hides your web site and shows the competitor. How would you feel?

That is the story of a Google Webmaster Help thread. The owner of BrandFreek no longer comes up for a search on [brandfreek], instead, Google shows a result for BrandFreak and shows BrandFreak.com in the first spot. Here is a picture:

This can be pretty upsetting to the owner of the company and also hurt them financially. Google knows this. JohnMu at Google replied to the thread saying:

Thanks for posting! I’ll pass your feedback on to the team to review.

I am not sure if Google will change the behavior of this search in the future, but I think they should.

Forum discussion at Google Webmaster Help.

Imagine you have been in business, operating on the web for years now. Your name is unique and it ranks number one in the Google results, since it is unique. But then imagine a new site pops up that is similar to your name. Then soon after, Google decided that your name is really not what people want, instead, they want the other name.

In other words, they type in your business name and Google say – no no, you spelled it wrong, you want a competitor or another web site. Google then hides your web site and shows the competitor. How would you feel?

That is the story of a Google Webmaster Help thread. The owner of BrandFreek no longer comes up for a search on [brandfreek], instead, Google shows a result for BrandFreak and shows BrandFreak.com in the first spot. Here is a picture:

This can be pretty upsetting to the owner of the company and also hurt them financially. Google knows this. JohnMu at Google replied to the thread saying:

Thanks for posting! I’ll pass your feedback on to the team to review.

I am not sure if Google will change the behavior of this search in the future, but I think they should.

Forum discussion at Google Webmaster Help.

Google Bug Removes Web Designers in Local Pack

On November 24, 2009, In SEO, by rustybrick

Now, if you do a search for web design, web development, or most digital agency like queries, with or without a local qualifier (i.e. web design new york), Google won’t show the local 7 pack. Mike Blumenthal covered this well, but it needs more attention.

In the past, a search for [web design, suffern, ny] or a search for [web design] when Google knows your location, would trigger a 7 pack that looks something like this:

Now, the same search triggers no local pack, just search results, like the old Google results. Here is a picture:

There are two large threads about this at the Google Maps Help thread. In one of those thread, Googler, Linda said on November 11th, “Thanks for your reports. I will look into this issue and get back to you.”

Then Brian B from Google explained on November 18th what is going on. He said:

This looks like it’s closely related to the issue going on at the thread I’ve linked below. We realize there’s something going on here, and we initially pushed out a fix a while back. There was a little hiccup with the fix, which is probably why the results in Fresno may have gone back up and then back down as addoctane mentioned above.

The team is working on this issue. Stay tuned to the thread below where I will post an update as soon as I hear one.

Thank you all for your persistence!

Back in late October, there was a bug we covered where Google would show a single one box instead of 7 business results. Google fixed this bug in early November, which seemed to trigger a new bug with [web] related local queries.

Google seems to be working on a fix for this bug as well and hopefully it will be resolved shortly.

Forum discussion at Google Maps Help.

Now, if you do a search for web design, web development, or most digital agency like queries, with or without a local qualifier (i.e. web design new york), Google won’t show the local 7 pack. Mike Blumenthal covered this well, but it needs more attention.

In the past, a search for [web design, suffern, ny] or a search for [web design] when Google knows your location, would trigger a 7 pack that looks something like this:

Now, the same search triggers no local pack, just search results, like the old Google results. Here is a picture:

There are two large threads about this at the Google Maps Help thread. In one of those thread, Googler, Linda said on November 11th, “Thanks for your reports. I will look into this issue and get back to you.”

Then Brian B from Google explained on November 18th what is going on. He said:

This looks like it’s closely related to the issue going on at the thread I’ve linked below. We realize there’s something going on here, and we initially pushed out a fix a while back. There was a little hiccup with the fix, which is probably why the results in Fresno may have gone back up and then back down as addoctane mentioned above.

The team is working on this issue. Stay tuned to the thread below where I will post an update as soon as I hear one.

Thank you all for your persistence!

Back in late October, there was a bug we covered where Google would show a single one box instead of 7 business results. Google fixed this bug in early November, which seemed to trigger a new bug with [web] related local queries.

Google seems to be working on a fix for this bug as well and hopefully it will be resolved shortly.

Forum discussion at Google Maps Help.

Google Rich Snippets Coming To Smaller Sites?

On November 12, 2009, In SEO, by rustybrick

Back in May, Google launched rich snippets that enabled webmasters to markup their HTML with richer data for Google to display. For example, you can often see results from Yelp and other sites like it for reviews that display reviews in the Google results. Here is a picture:

In fact, most webmasters said they will markup their HTML to take part of this richer snippet experience. Then in September, Google added a rich snippet testing tool because although many marked up their HTML, they never knew if it was actually working because Google rarely displayed the richer snippets for smaller sites.

Now, I am hearing via a WebmasterWorld thread that some smaller webmasters are now noticing rich snippets being displayed for their sites. I tried a few sites myself and was not able to see it myself, maybe he is hitting a different Google data center. I do hope that rich snippets do make its way down to more sites so that the playing field is evened up a bit.

Forum discussion at WebmasterWorld.

Back in May, Google launched rich snippets that enabled webmasters to markup their HTML with richer data for Google to display. For example, you can often see results from Yelp and other sites like it for reviews that display reviews in the Google results. Here is a picture:

In fact, most webmasters said they will markup their HTML to take part of this richer snippet experience. Then in September, Google added a rich snippet testing tool because although many marked up their HTML, they never knew if it was actually working because Google rarely displayed the richer snippets for smaller sites.

Now, I am hearing via a WebmasterWorld thread that some smaller webmasters are now noticing rich snippets being displayed for their sites. I tried a few sites myself and was not able to see it myself, maybe he is hitting a different Google data center. I do hope that rich snippets do make its way down to more sites so that the playing field is evened up a bit.

Forum discussion at WebmasterWorld.

April Sandbox Update!

On April 19, 2009, In Link Building Strategies, SEO, by Patrick Gavin

This is the closest thing to the old Google Dances for me: when Google releases a batch of sites from it’s Sandbox and it appears to have happened this weekend! A number of sites that I was tracking busted into the live results on Friday/Saturday and it was fun to see and a long time [...]

This is the closest thing to the old Google Dances for me: when Google releases a batch of sites from it’s Sandbox and it appears to have happened this weekend! A number of sites that I was tracking busted into the live results on Friday/Saturday and it was fun to see and a long time coming for some of the sites. The anatomy of a site that is living in the Sandbox to me is a site that is highly ranked in "non live" Google datacenters (there are many places to check, I currently use DCcheck.com) but when you search on "live Google" it is no where to be found. I recently wrote about the continued existence of a Google sandbox and I was comparing notes to Rand’s recent article and found this point interesting:

You never "pop out" alone – it seems that Google has certain internally triggered events where a bundle of sites suffering from this issue all "emerge" to their expected rankings on the same day. You’ll sometimes see forum threads and chatter about these "sandbox releases."

I didn’t realize Google releases sites from their Sandbox in batches but then again I was previously only tracking one site at a time. This time I was tracking a number of different sites that were in the Sandbox and saw them all released this weekend I can confirm Google releases in batches. So for those of you who use to sit around like me and watch new results roll from dev databases to live Google results this phenomenon is back in the form of a Sandbox Update! So what is the key to getting a site out of the Sandbox? Quality links + Time.

Google “Answer Highlighting” Upsets Webmasters

Study on Google Personalized Search & Re-Ranking Shows Minor SEO Changes

The Google Search Screw: Google Knows Best

Google Bug Removes Web Designers in Local Pack

Google Rich Snippets Coming To Smaller Sites?

April Sandbox Update!

Categories

Recent Posts

Seth Godin: Sliced Bread

Malcolm Gladwell: Outliers

Anthony Parinello: Your Price is Too High

Google “Answer Highlighting” Upsets Webmasters

Study on Google Personalized Search & Re-Ranking Shows Minor SEO Changes

The Google Search Screw: Google Knows Best

Google Bug Removes Web Designers in Local Pack

Google Rich Snippets Coming To Smaller Sites?

April Sandbox Update!

Categories

Tags

Recent Posts

Seth Godin: Sliced Bread

Malcolm Gladwell: Outliers

Anthony Parinello: Your Price is Too High