A really interesting read from Bizreport
“and” and “or” in search strings produces different results.
…
“Traditional search engine optimization methods may have worked to increase website traffic in 2005 or 2006, but users’ search habits are changing and marketers may need to change how they target the market through search.”
If I’m new, with a brand new site I am almost certainly listed with a reputation of zero by the search engines.
Over a period of months and years my sites reputation might increase, depending on how ‘valuable’ as ‘information currency’ my ‘content’ actually is. The result of that increase would be a higher return in search term results on search engine pages.
I have some questions:
When I move a website to a new hosting server with a new IP address will the search engines note the move and think that the site might have changed hands? Will my reputation within search results be affected?
What about a domain name? What impact will that have on my ranking if I change the domain name along with the name of the site? Content would still be the same, so will the ranking stay the same? Will my search result credibility transfer too? How would I tell the search engines I’ve moved the site somewhere else?
Will the search engines follow the search redirect and understand what has happened? Will I have to start all over again?
If I buy a web domain of somebody else and create a new website on that domain will I retain the old sites search reputation?
When I buy a domain most companies will offer me 1, 2, 5 or 10 years at the point of purchase for the said domain name. If I buy 10 years, I usually get a dramatic reduction in cost in comparison of actually renewing the name every year at the annual charge.
So if I buy a domain name for ten years surely I’m committing to my content being around for a long time? Therefore would the search engines consider that commitment in their page ranking for my pages?
The word on the street is that long term commitment to domains is taken into consideration when working out where a website should be listed in a search result for keywords, so maybe we should buy domains for the maximum period they are available?
What do you think?
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?
I wonder if Google and the other search engines track what searchers actually click and how long they visit a page? Don’t knock me, its a good question.
I think that search engines aim to put at the top of their search results pages what they considers most valuable in content relevant information as the top search results. They use the experience of previous searchers to define page credibility for search results.
What do I mean?
When we search for information on a search engine we are presented with a list of search results.
We’ve all been in the position where we find the ‘top result’ in the search results is not what we are actually looking for, so what what do we do? We click ‘back’ and click another result.
Now, do the search engines notice we’ve returned so quickly and clicked something else?
Do search engines therefore consider the search result we disregarded less valuable as a return for the search string we used to find it? Does that search result get a negative point, and return lower in the table for future search results? What if other searchers find that result valuable?
Complicated? It should be, it helps us find what we are actually looking for.
What do you think?
Back in 2004 I began some research into how visitors find Matthew’s Blog (my personal weblog) which is currently (April 2006) hit by visitors at an average of 1 visit every 30 seconds to the various ‘blog entries’ via links from search engine results, mostly Google.
I undertook an experiment exploring the records provided by the Drupal (the free community software which hosts the blog).
I worked through the Drupal statistics records for 20 December 2004 and stripped out the code for the last 400 searches which had arrived at the blog via search engine results.
The actual search strings can be reviewed here: Search Results for 20 December 2004. Click some of them to understand how people search for information, they might not do it how you do it.
Since I undertook that research, I’ve changed the way I write blog entries.
From the 400 reviewed hits the majority came from Google, this is no surprise really considering Google is central to 95% of internet searchers online lives.
It demonstrates strongly that the likes of Yahoo! and A9 really have their work cut out within the search engine business and the only real way they can compete in this market is to produce better search results for users.
UK television watchers will also recognise regular advertisment from….Ask Jeeves (now rebranded as ‘Ask’). In the experiment, Ask brought me no visitors from its search results.
Out of 400 web searches 374 were Google’s. NTL World produced 10 results, NTL World’s search power is provided by Google! (and is full of adverts hindering the search a bit).
AOL? 13 results were from AOL search users.
From exploring the search results and understanding how searchers find blog entries I conclude the following:
Consider carefully the title of your blog entries. Key words produces links in search results where users are being specific about what they want to know about.
For example, if you are writing your opinion as a movie review blog entry about ‘The Terminal’ movie use relevant search words into the title.
So, instead of writing a blog entry and simply calling it …
‘The Terminal’
Consider:
‘The Terminal Film/Movie Review (starring Tom Hanks and Catherine Zeta Jones)’
I believe that if someone searches on a search engine for ‘Terminal Catherine Zeta Jones’ the chances of the published blog entry returning in the search results is much higher.
The more keywords the searcher uses in their search, the more chances you have in returning as a search result if those keywords are part of your blog entry title. Get it? Confused? I hope so, its not easy.
Not only is it important to have good explanation key words in blog entry titles, but it is also essential if you want visitors to click the link through to your blog entry. Users will scan Google’s search results and click the one they find most relevant.
Here is another example:
I have a blog entry about the ‘Titanic’. Here it is.
If you search on Google for ‘Titanic’ a link through to my page will not return on the first page of Googles search responses. Why? Because hundreds of other people have better pages than I have about the ‘Titanic’ and most of those pages will have more ‘Google Juice’ than I do.
However, if you search on Google more specifically for ‘Titanic 1912′ a link to my page is at the bottom of Googles first page of search results (highlighted in yellow). Bingo, I’ve returned on the first page of a Google Search Results page. Lets have a look:
‘Titanic 1912′ remains a popular search and my statistics show it is a popular search string on search engines resulting in hundreds of hits to my Titanic page. The article was written on Sunday 19th of December 2004 and by Tuesday 25th April 2006 it had been read by 1871 people of which five people left a comment.
Advice: Don’t aim for the general searchers looking for ‘Titanic’, you wont get them. Aim for the more specific searchers, who use more than one keyword, such as ‘Titanic 1912′.
So, look at the above image again. Why do you think visitors clicking the search result on Google to read my blog when it is listed at the bottom of the search page, rather than the top? It could be:
Any of the above could be true, I like to think it is the third point.
I will be undertaking a similar 400 hits experiment soon to research if the decisions I made in 2004 have had a positive effect eighteen months on, I suspect they have.
Don’t forget to leave your comments below….