Big Oak SEO Blog » Google

Google’s April Fools Joke

Shell Harris — Thu, 01 Apr 2010 21:10:54 +0000

Google has always added their fair share of April Fools shenanigans to the popular search engine. In years past they have made fun of Yahoo and Microsoft. Currently Google has renamed itself Topeka in honor of a return gesture the Kansas town made to acquire a special Google project.

As part of the ongoing Google April Fools jokes they have adjusted the the search time from seconds to a host of odd units for measuring time.

You can see the full list below in the screen shots. Look to the right to see the time unit. The first one is my favorite, from Monty Python’s The Holy Grail Fame, “times the velocity of an unladen swallow.” Other time units used include microweeks, microfortnights, jiffies, parsecs, centons, centibeats, epochs, nanocenturies, hertz, warp, and 23.00 skidoo

Click each image for a larger view.

Seo Predictions for 2010

Eric Gehler — Wed, 23 Dec 2009 15:58:38 +0000

SEO Predictions for 2010

Another year of search engine madness is about to come to a close. In 2009 we have seen the Google search engine display many variances and ranking fluctuations. So before we put on the swami cap and bring out Nostradamus SEO quatrains into the light, let’s recap some of the major Google changes and initiatives.

In 2009 The Google Search Engine:

Put more weight toward the keywords in the domain. In fact, keyword-rich domains could achieve top 10 rankings in less competitive phrases just on the weight of the domain name and a few onsite optimization tweaks.

We saw Google increase the visible space for the Adwords Sponsored PPC displays. The money maker for Google is encroaching more and more on the organic search results territory.

We saw name branded companies get extra weight in the organic results, not from normal SEO algorithm enhancements and features, but from manual Google manipulation.

Searchers’ IP addresses were instrumental in displaying Google Local results for major keyword terms in various 1 box or 4 box positions in the organic search results.

Customized Search and IP captured-related searches made search results for the unknown more focused on what you have visited in the past rather then the “true” organic listings.

The introduction of Caffeine by Google displayed more real time results from news, Twitter, Facebook and other sources and was displayed in various locations on the organic search results page.

There were many other factors that changed in 2009, but the ones above are the most prevalent (in our eyes) and affect the potential customer click through rate.

Now for the 2010 predictions:

With the introduction of the Caffeine Google Search Engine enhancements and the ability to display real time results, and more of the old “Universal Search” parameters of images, news, videos, et al. traffic from first page SEO results will decrease for organic results if you are not in the Top 3 for that respective search term.

Google will be displaying so much more data and manipulating the organic displays with their data enhancements that normal percentage click through traffic for front page results positions of 4-10 will dramatically decrease. Here’s what this should mean to the average reader and company: it’s time to increase your SEO budget now rather then be caught with your search engine traffic results in the gutter and scrambling to attempt to catch up.

Social media’s impact on search results will be misguided. Many will attempt and are attempting to divert budgets to create social media campaigns to attract visitors and catch the wave of potential search traffic. Organic search results in the future will display social media mentions in a live format. However, they will only be displayed for milliseconds as their display order is chronological. Link values from social media campaigns will have little impact on the organic ranking results.

Social media done correctly and for branding awareness and bringing like-minded people together is a great concept and can improve your marketability. But in terms of SEO rankings, the affects will be dismal at best. Your ROI will be your measuring tool to determine if social media is effective for you or not.

Google will continue its push to become a Broadcast Network for the Internet.

Many in the industry view Google as a Search Engine with products and services to display websites and enhance a webmaster’s efficiency. Unfortunately, that view is misguided. In 2005-ish this prediction was made, and every year Google positions itself away from a Search Engine environment and into a source to view data online. The broadcast network business model is like the major television networks (ABC, CBS, NBC Fox etc.) that display shows to attract viewers. Commercial advertisers pay for that model.

Google will continue to promote, provide, and display data to attract viewers. They are targeting IP addresses to identify your location. They have brought the Google iPhone application to capture your mobile consumption. Google wants to know as much about you as it can so that it can tie advertisements directly to you. In terms of advertising dollars, knowing you can get your message directly to a “buyer in need” rather then a “channel surfer” will pay huge dividends in the end.

As Google continues to move forward and push the envelope of data distribution, Search Engine Optimization will become more target-focused. The ROI in SEO is up for grabs and will remain significant, as long as your budget, focus and SEO company can see the big picture and be able to adapt.

When going the extra mile pays off

Eric Gehler — Wed, 08 Apr 2009 10:20:44 +0000

Big Oak’s Client Success

Search Engine Optimization, known as SEO, is the ability to rank a website in the top search results. That’s what we do here as an SEO Company. However there are times that clients need more than SEO, they need marketing, website functionality, and a plan to increase their ROI.

Clients either are well versed in Search Engine Optimization and need someone to do the heavy lifting, or they come with no knowledge of the subject, but know they need exposure to their websites and heard SEO is the way to go. The bottom line for most clients is an increase in profits. That’s what is measurable to their business. Increased web site visitors or traffic normally increases the bottom line or profit.

Big Oak SEO Company took on a new client in February 2009. The client had a successful brick and mortar store and ventured into the online arena. The client operates a Yahoo Store with over 300 products in a niche market. As their SEO Specialist along with our Keyword Researching Specialist we optimized their Yahoo Store for their keywords and started a link building campaign.

The net results in just over 1 month was an increase in $2,000 of sales, and a doubling of orders from the prior month. Under normal circumstances we would consider this a huge success. However the client was lacking a fundamental marketing tool for their website, namely a presence in Google Shopping.

This was beyond the scope of our SEO contract, but Google Shopping presence for this clients products would positively effect the clients ROI. After all ROI, Return on Investment is what the client is really after. Being ranked #1 for a term that doesn’t bring in sales will not benefit the client nor keep a happy customer.

It took a several hours over the course of a few days and several tweaks to establish, create and optimize a Google Base Feed for Google Shopping. (BTW this extra effort was free of charge – no extra billing.) In just 3 days after the first Google Feed went live, the Client reported their first sale from Google Shopping. I am still tweaking the feeds for Higher Google Shopping Results and the client is adding more products to the feed, but this is definitely a case where going the extra mile pays off.

In SEO it not only what you know, but who you know at times as well. Having a SEO Company that is well versed in Google Shopping, Google Adwords, Google Maps, Web Design and Web Functionality can mean the difference between Ranking and Rankings along with Increased ROI.

Google’s Estimating Algorithm

Chris Alexander — Thu, 12 Feb 2009 20:45:26 +0000

As always you have to take anything from Google with a grain of salt, espeically since most of their ranking algorithms are closely guarded secrets.

However you really have to wonder when their estimating algorithm has trouble counting to 17 as illustrated below with screenshot snippets from the first two pages of results I witnessed today.

Youtube surpasses Yahoo Search Engine

Shell Harris — Fri, 19 Dec 2008 20:42:26 +0000

Youtube.com has more searches than Yahoo!

Video search on YouTube accounts for a quarter of all Google search queries in the U.S., according to the latest search engine numbers from comScore. Its monthly qSearch report, which was released on Thursday night, breaks out the number of searches conducted on YouTube. If it were a standalone site, YouTube would be the second largest search engine after Google. More searches are done through YouTube than through Yahoo, which has been the case for the past few months. – From TechCrunch

Wow, Yahoo! has certainly fallen from those halcyon days when they ruled the Internet. But this news is really more important because it tells the SEO community that you should not be overlooking the video world of YouTube.com. Big Oak SEO has been stepping up its efforts into the video marketing world and this is a sure sign that it was a good move on our behalf. Are you using the power of video for your product or service? It would be a mistake not to and it is a lot more affordable than you think.

And lest you think your videos would only show up if someone is searching on Youtube.com, take a look at the screen shot below. I did a search for cheap wine (don’t ask) and the screen shot shows the last results on page 1 of Google’s search results. Yes, you see two videos from Youtube.com. Wouldn’t it be nice to have your video there if you are a wine seller.

Results for Cheap Wine. Notice the last results are videos from Youtube.com

I have also seen video results in the #4 position on Google’s search results and I’m sure this will only continue to happen more in the future. Don’t sell your service or product short, anything that can be marketed on the web can have video marketing to support it. Make sure it is part of your Internet marketing plan.

Twas the night before Google

Eric Gehler — Wed, 10 Dec 2008 14:52:00 +0000

Twas the night before Google

Twas the night before Google when all through the net
the users and SEO’s were all upset,
Search Wiki, and GMail Themes were rolled out in style
Lively was nuked and GOOG sat with a smile.

Matt Cutts and the Spam team were out on the prowl,
with visions of Black Hatter’s on a moonlight howl.
Comments and Blog post were active indeed
Tweets and Diggs until some fingers did bleed.

Pushing the Chrome, the browser of GOOG
Collecting the data of the unknowing newb.
Signed into Google for a Search Wiki rating
Seeing spammers explode like a round of speed dating.

Knowing that Search Results are the victims of Change,
Exploring the options and manipulating the range.
There is a way to succeed with out a Adwords Budget
Social Book Mark Me Please for a Link Back, Nudge (it)!

Webmaster tools now showing me data,
my info is delayed come, back Later.
The Capcha’s not working on Signups for things,
Google Local Maps verification not giving me rings.

Twas the Night before Google and Tool Bar Page Rank still not Updated
the Indian outsources were on alert for some projects we stated.
The Ranked Hard Seo Comic issue explains it all well
It’s all Will‘s fault, What the…

So Digg me, Tweet me, This Link Bait attempt
At humor towards Google et al, I am feeling a little “verklempt!”

Whatever Happened to the Google Killer?

George Perry — Fri, 14 Nov 2008 20:43:18 +0000

Back in July of this year, the internet was buzzing with news that a new search engine was coming, a Google-Killer that could unseat the giant of the search engine world. Part of the buzz surrounding this product was the fact that it was being designed by former Google employees Anna Patterson, Russell Power, and Louis Monier. This supposed Google-Killer was called Cuil (pronounced cool).

So what happened? Google is still the giant of the search engine world, and most people probably don’t even remember Cuil since its launch at the end of July of 2008. Did it collapse? Has Cuil shut down? What happened to this highly touted search engine that was supposed to draw us all away from Google?

Like most of those that attempt to overtake Google (see MSN Live, Yahoo, Ask, Excite, Alta Vista, really just about anybody), Cuil just didn’t have what it took to draw users away from the search engine that has quickly come to dominate everything we do with the web. Some blamed the preponderance of irrelevant search results that Cuil seemed to like displaying. Others blamed the unconventional style with which Cuil displayed results (see image below). But what really killed Cuil?

Cuil's unorthodox way of displaying search results.

In the end, the only thing that killed Cuil was Google. Not by actively battling them, but by simply doing what they do – being the best. Sure, Cuil claimed to have more sites indexed than any other search engine, but by returning irrelevant search results, it didn’t matter how many websites they had indexed, nobody could find what they were looking for.

Google continues to capture around 80% of the search engine market, while Cuil has slipped to roughly less than half a percent (0.005% of total search traffic to be specific). Cuil isn’t the first to try and claim the title of being a Google-Killer, and they certainly won’t be the last, but one thing is for sure…there is no such thing as a Google-Killer. At least not yet.

Google Analytics Gets an Update with Motion Charts & More

Shell Harris — Tue, 28 Oct 2008 20:08:07 +0000

Google already had the most user-friendly analytics program (you are using it, right?), and now they have added even more features to this wonderful and free tool. Yes, Google Analytics is free and it is invaluable in helping you understand your website’s traffic. You can find more videos showing off these new features, but I have included my favorite below which shows off the new motion charts in Google Analytics.

Checking a Webpage for SEO Quality (According to Google)

Shell Harris — Fri, 17 Oct 2008 16:11:43 +0000

My colleague, Will Paoletto, wrote an excellent post about using logic to prove that directory submission was still a valid SEO tactic, despite what you may have heard from other SEO companies. I thought I would take this a bit further and help you decide if the directory submission is really worthwhile by showing you how to judge the quality of the placement page your site would be listed on in the directory.

We’ll start out with idea that you have an accounting site and you are looking for quality directory submissions.

While a directory may have a decent PR ranking (3-5) you also want to check to make sure the page your listing will be placed on is a quality page. You can use this method for any potential page you are requesting a link for, but this is especially helpful when deciding whether a page within a directory is worth your money.

Here is an example:

The URLZ Web Directory (http://www.urlz.net/) has a home page PR value of 3, which is respectable if not great. If you are considering purchasing a link from this directory your next step should be to identify the exact page your link will live on.

After searching the categories you would find that this is the most likely category for your accounting site: http://www.urlz.net/Business_And_Shopping/B2B_Services/

After finding this page we want to evaluate the importance of it to the search engines, particularly Google. To do this we want to check and see if it has any PageRank value of its own. If you have installed the Google Toolbar you can see the toolbar is empty (no green fill, see screen shot) and therefore the page in question has either no rank or a PR0. Both options are equally negative for deciding if a link on the page would be valuable.

You can go further and see if Google has included this page in its search results. If Google has included it, but is giving it a PageRank value of 0, you may still wish to place link on the page if the content surrounding it is of a similar theme to your site and if the link would be low cost-free. To check if the page is in the Google search results, or cached by Google, you would click the button in the Google Toolbar and select the dropdown option labeled “Cached Snapshot of Page” as seen in the screenshot below.

After choosing this option the following screen will show, displaying any information Google has about this page in its cache or if it isn’t cached. Good news, this page is cached and was last visited just a few days ago from today’s date (Oct. 17, 2008) so Google does have this page cached and possibly is visiting it frequently. Is this worth a submission? That is up to you and your budget. But at least you know it can be realistically considered because it is cached by Google.

If you were to see a message stating the page has not been cached you can deduce the page would be practically worthless for SEO and thus should be avoided. You can use this method on any page you are considering for link acquisition. If the page doesn’t have PR value use this method to determine if Google has the page in its database of searched sites. If not, keep looking. And you can find a short list of directories our SEO Company has used in the past on this post about directory submissions for SEO.

Google Chrome – Does it Bling?

BigOak — Wed, 03 Sep 2008 15:26:03 +0000

I think it’s fairly safe to assume that if you’re reading this, you already know what Chrome is, and unless you’re a Mac- or Linux-only user, you’ve probably already got a copy installed on your current machine. If so, consider yourself an early-adopter and likely not the target audience for Google’s latest advance into wresting the digital world away from Microsoft.

What Exactly Is a Modern Browser?

When Blake Ross set out to create Firefox, he did so with the explicit intent of making a browser that his mother could use. At the time he was going up against Microsoft’s Internet Explorer 6 (IE6) and the internet was still largely pulled into our homes through tiny little dialup connections, and was thus largely pushing through static content. Mind you, the web had progressed beyond frames and (to a large extent, tables) but that internet was vastly different than the internet that has developed under the lumped, umbrella title of Web 2.0.

The modern web is a fast, fluid entity. It’s interconnected. It relies on a handful of technologies that were advancing sometimes faster than the browsers that were meant to display them. And one of those technologies, JavaScript had grown from a simple client-side scripting language to the linchpin behind many of the web’s more desktop-application-like websites typically blended with other technologies (AJAX anyone?). Yes, it seemed that the internet was attempting to blow through the knee in an exponential growth period and the two primary browsers (Internet Explorer and Firefox) were attempting to keep up through incremental updates.

These incremental updates, landed us with our two modern choices – Internet Explorer Beta 2 , and Firefox 3, both of which made large strides over their previous iterations, but still paid a great deal of respect to the browsers that that they sprung from. Google took a path very similar to Steve Jobs’ decision regarding the change from OSIX to OSX – they scrapped everything and started from the beginning to build a browser custom tailored to meet the needs of the modern internet.

A Look at Chrome – the Browser that Thinks it’s an OS

With Chrome, which was roughly two years in the making, Google was doing the same thing in the browser that the major operating systems were doing on your PC – striving to balance efficiency, security, and a beautifully intuitive GUI. And Google has decided to use some of the same tricks that Vista, OSX, and many Linux distros use to achieve the same results.

For efficiency, Chrome maintains each of its tabs as a separate instance. This means that if one tab crashes (as tabs are wont to do) the rest of the browser does not go with it. This also means that you can fully recover ram without fragments from former tabs and websites clogging up your system.

For security, each instance is sandboxed. This means that tabs can’t accidentally leak information to each other, helping to insulate the user from spyware. Google also reduced the privileges that the individual tabs have, stopping the browser from being hijacked. To quote the folks at Google, each tab has effectively been placed in jail.

And for the third goal, Google stripped back the interface that we’ve grown to associate with a web browser. According to the press conference, and the accompanying Wired article, the kids at Google got rid of every aspect, and started fresh, keeping only what was simple, clean, and hopefully intuitive. What’s left is a browser with a scant few navigation buttons and an integrated Address/Search/Bookmark bar that Google is calling the “Omnibar”.

Google also did a little more to bolster Chromes identity issues. As noted in the efficiency section, each tab runs as an independent process. These processes can also be accessed through an internal Task Manager like one would expect to find on an operating system (accessible by hitting Shift and Escape simultaneously). Much like Windows Task Manager, the Chrome Task Manager stays on top of your other windows. And as a little side note, Task Manager also displays the system resources of your other currently operating browsers in a link so warmly titled “Stuff for Nerds.”

Pushing things one step further, Google is using Chrome to invade the desktop. It seems that while Adobe is using Air to enable developers to largely code OS-independent web applications, Google is using Chrome to turn web apps directly into desktop-esque applications. If the term seems a little blurry, and misleading, so is what Chrome does. Through a simple click on a flyout menu, Chrome Users have the option to “Create Application Shortcuts…” This option, for all intents and purposes, snags a favicon and scales (sometimes rather ungracefully) that to a desktop icon. That icon opens up a further stripped down instance of Chrome that only contains the web page (no navigation buttons, no tabs, no Omnibar).

And last, but not least, Google’s Chrome is fast. When handling raw information, specifically pure JavaScript, it screams thanks in no small part to the custom built V8 JavaScript virtual machine. The other speed factor is WebKit, the Open Source rendering engine also used by Safari, that can be three times as fast Firefox’s Gecko rendering engine. The combination, when run on benchmark tests, can provide results touted as being a factor of ten faster than other browsers, and “56 times” faster than Internet Explorer 7 and other tests.

All This Would Be Great If…

For Google’s part, they have put together what seems to be a rather solid beta. However, they seem to have released the browser two years too late. Many of the unique features in Chrome have already been established in the latest browser war salvo.

The Omnibar, which as mentioned earlier, bears a great deal of similarity to Firefox 3’s Awesomebar and IE8’s Smart Address Bar. Like both, the bar keeps track of the user’s history, offering up matches in real time. And like the Smart Address Bar, the Omnibar even subdues the majority of the URL, keeping only the fully qualified domain in black. The Omnibar’s touted integrated search functionality, which is not limited to mere Google searches, seems to be a slightly more intuitive version of the Keyword Search functionality that has been standard in Firefox since at least sometime in the Firefox 2 builds, and is streamlined in the Firefox spin-off browser, Flock.

Chrome’s Incognito allows the user to surf in relative privacy. This feature bears a great deal of similarity to IE8’s InPrivate and Safari’s Private Browsing. None of the above allow for true privacy, in that web surfing can still be traced back to the user by way of IP address or other such similar identifiable features which are best muted through a proxy-server. No, these privacy features simply mean that porn and similar sites won’t show up in your Omnibar / Awesome Bar / Smart Address bar. These built in privacy features aren’t so much about privacy as they are about protecting you from accidentally exposing something you might otherwise be ashamed of should your significant other happen to open a new tab.

Even Chrome’s homepage technology, which creates large and visual bookmarks, links to recently closed tabs, and your most commonly used search engines, bears a very distinct similarity to Opera’s Speed Dial.

It’s Not the End of the World

Chrome does a lot of things well. Though it hasn’t gone head-to-head against Firefox 3.1 yet, Chrome’s V8 Javascript Virtual Machine seems like it will give Firefox’s Tracemonkey at least some serious competition. The sandboxing of tabs, which shares a lot of similarities with how IE8 handles them, is a strong step in the right direction and should be adopted by Firefox as early as possible. And perhaps the most important part, Google is shaking up the current browser playing field, helping to prevent stagnation, and showing that a browser can act like an operating system without reaching the bloated beast that Netscape Navigator reached in its final days. And, in accordance with the famous Google Philosophy of “Don’t Be Evil,” all of Chrome is Open Source, which means that as it cherry picked ideas and implementations; others can continue the trend, building on the work of the search giant and perhaps creating the world’s most perfect web browser.

The browser should be a means, not an end. For me, Firefox is damn near irreplaceable due in no small part to its ability to be customized. I have my browser setup exactly how I want it, with plugins that aide to my effectiveness. Until Chrome can conform to my exact workflow, letting me surf, learn, explore, and create in my own natural manner, it will not become my primary browser. So, for the time being, Chrome will be relegated to my second fiddle, sharing the side of my desktop’s stage with the likes of of Flock, IE6, IE8, and Opera.

Like I said, Chrome isn’t for the early adopters. Nor is it for the users who have customized their browser to the point where changing that would mean a sacrifice. But Chrome is a ideal for a large segment of the internet population. It’s great for those who wish to move further into cloud computing, but still wish to tie themselves to one machine (a lack of online profiles means maintaining the same Chrome on numerous machines nearly as installing all of the applications your workflow is tailored to). And Chrome is specifically tailored for the those on older machines, older users, and those who mentally equate Internet Explorer with the Internet.

I give you this fact: 25% or so of the traffic still online is using Internet Explorer 6 or older. These are the users that Chrome should be going after.

All in all, while Chrome might not be the greatest browser ever, but it does represent a lot of good things and shows extremely positive examples of what the future holds. Like in the console wars, the true test of Chrome will not be this generation, but how will Internet Explorer 9, Firefox 4, and the next iteration of Chrome impact our surfing habits.