On Monday 13th September 2004 I wrote on my professional blog (matt.ultralab.net) about winning on the ‘Premium Bonds’. Here is the entry.

On Tuesday 25 April 2006 the Premium Bond blog entry had been read 1373 times and commented on once by somebody called Bob Balser who suggests purchasing block numbers of bonds increase chances of winning.

Anyway, what I’m really interested in understanding is why my entry simply titled ‘Premium Bonds, I won’ has attracted so many readers.

I explored the site statistics for this past seven days (18 - 25 April 2006) and have extracted the following sample example, which I’ve numbered in red the entries I am researching further:

Each line above represents a hit on the ‘Premium Bonds, I won’ page, each hit has a date and time stamp. I’m interested in the hits that have come from search engine results.

The following explains what each of the above image links (referenced in red) represent:

Link 1: Google.co.uk Search: premium bond syndicate
My page returned as a search result: Google Page 1, 2nd Result

Link 2: Google.com Search: PREMIUM BONDS FORUM
My page returned as a search result: Google Page 4, 2nd Result

Link 3: Google.co.uk Search: looking for lists of premium bond winners
My page returned as a search result: Google Page 1, 6th Result

Link 4: Google.co.uk Search: premium bonds my i won
My page returned as a search result: Google Page 1, 2nd Result

Link 5: Google.co.uk Search: premium bonds
My page returned as a search result: Interesting, I’ll explain in a minute

Link 6: Spam bot (I think?)

Link 7: Google.co.uk Search: premium bonds worthwhile investment
My page returned as a search result: Google Page 1, 5th Result

Link 5 proved the most interesting, and works positive against a theory I think about Google.

I think the following:

A Google searcher will enter a search looking for specific information or answers on Google. Google will return in it search results what it considers are links which will provide the right information. It is up to the searcher to click the suggested links (the top link being the one Google considers most relevant) which they think will answer their question or provide the relevant information required, Google provides short summaries to help support this decision making process.

If a searcher types in keywords and then chooses a search result Google provided which was not a ‘top link’ Google understands that link to be more relevant to the requested search string.

So, this would help explain why when I clicked link 5….

Link 5: Google.co.uk Search: premium bonds

…and was taken to the following Google search result page, which happened to be a page 6 for the ‘premium bonds’ search:

Notice how there is no link listed there through to my blog entry on Premium Bonds.

How can this be?

On page 5, a link to the entry is listed, I’ve highlighted it in a yellow box:

So what has happened? Why was the search result not showing on Page 6 like the Drupal blog statistics showed it should?

I believe it once did.

Look at this later search result (in red) five days later:

The search was for exactly the same words ‘premium bonds’ and it links to the 5th search page results for Google.co.uk

So that solves the mystery, the Premium Bond blog entry improved in search power from Google.co.uk’s page six for ‘Premium Bonds’ to page five in a period of five days.

So here I conclude that by visitors digging deep into Google search results and clicking lowly listed links, they help pages improve in their search returns.

Every time I explore ideas, both mine and others on how Google works I’m left with more questions. Today I’m left with…

Why has my blog entry on Premium Bonds returned in searches for ’syndicate’ and ‘forum’ search strings? Surely Google is giving out the wrong results here?

What about searchers who change their mind while searching? For example, say you were searching for a ‘Premium Bond Syndicate’ and was faced with a Google search result for ‘Premium Bonds, I won’? Would you click the link out of curiosity, and at the same time confuse Google to think that ‘Premium Bonds, I won’ is a good search result for the ‘Premium Bond Syndicate’ search string?

Or has this investigation been a waste of time? Maybe my search improvement for ‘Premium Bonds’ results was simply due to falling search results for other pages? Why did those pages fall?

Lots of questions, no rock solid answer….

Ideas? Thoughts? Opinions?