Category: Google

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Search Engines – What You See Is Not What I See

Just this past week I’ve had two prospect call saying they need to be number one on Google and what would it cost to get them there. Sigh, this is a “brave new world” people! What you see on a search engine is not what I see, nor what your neighbor sees, nor what someone in California sees. There is no longer owning top organic spots. We used to be able to do this, but not any more.

Welcome to the new world of personalized search history and pervasive cookies. In many ways, in regards to personally satisfying search results, personalized search is a huge step forward. It makes results focused on what you have searched for before and is targeted to your location. What it makes for website owners is a big headache.

To learn more about this topic, I recommend that you read this interesting and insightful article that explains in depth why what you see will be different than what I see.

Search engines collect users’ browsing history in 2 major ways:

(1) by tracking signed-in users’ activities and
(2) by planting cookies into signed-out users’ browsers.

So even if you’ve signed out of your Google.com accounts, Google still knows who you are and where you live and continues to deliver personalized results. Besides logging out of all Google accounts, logging out of all social media accounts, clearing your browser of all cookies and your cache what you see then on Google.com would be data that no one else may ever see as they are logged in to everything!

Top placement organically is now a target you can strive for, but one that is hard to document and reproduce across varying users platforms due to our new world of personalized search.

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Have You Spent Time With Google Insights?

With the world of organic search optimization having changed significantly and few really good keyword research tools for website placement on the Web, Google Insights has become a very important tool as you consider making changes on your website. Personally, I use the Google AdWords keyword tool hand in hand with the Google Insights tool. What the Google Insights tool helps me to understand is if a keyword phrase I am thinking of using for optimization on a website or for creating a new content page for a client is worth the expense and trouble.

Here’s an example, I have a client in California who wants to do a page on their website for climate controlled warehouse space. I used the AdWords keyword tool to find phrase variations that are popular for clicks in the United States. Then I used the Google Insights tool to review which of those phrases were important and in what locations since 2004. The information has helped the client access how much they want to push this service.

As it turns out climate control keyword phrases are not important to his local or state customers but for the East Coast and Southern markets it is. If he does not have clients in these eastern and southern areas, it may not be worth the time and trouble to do a new service on his website nor promote the service on AdWords. In fact based on the information, he may not move to a new warehouse with climate controlled space.

That’s how powerful Google Insights can be to a business which is developing a new strategy or service. If you want to check out the tool yourself, visit Google Insights now. I think you’ll find the tool useful and very interesting.

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Google Allows You To Block Websites

Just this past week Google enabled a new feature that you will see in the search results underneath the website you clicked, did not find what you wanted, and want to now block from your personal search results. The link just to the right of the “cached” page link will read “Block all example.com results”. When you click this link Google will not show results in the future from this domain in your personal search results.

What is extremely interesting to me is that now Google will incorporate these “block this” votes in their organic algorithm. Google’s whole focus is on improving search quality for readers. The “block  this” votes are recorded in your personal search history settings. Here’s exactly what Google says on this important new ranking topic.

“You’ve probably had the experience where you’ve clicked a result and it wasn’t quite what you were looking for. Many times you’ll head right back to Google. Perhaps the result just wasn’t quite right, but sometimes you may dislike the site in general, whether it’s offensive, pornographic or of generally low quality. For times like these, you’ll start seeing a new option to block particular domains from your future search results. Now when you click a result and then return to Google, you’ll find a new link next to “Cached” that reads “Block all example.com results.”

If you’ve made a mistake and blocked a site by accident and want to see the search listings again, you will need to login to your Google account and make the changes from there on your new blocked sites page. For the full information as well as screen shots, visit the Google Webmaster blog.

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Keyword Density on Your Page Best Practices

It used to be for websites that needed to be competitively placed on search engines that we would strive for about a 7% keyword density of one or several search phrases per page, but now search engines are getting smarter. 7% density when you read it, is very repetitive. In fact for some clients simply unreadable and unacceptable, however at this point in time on Google it can still get results.

As I watch the Web, Google’s algorithm changes, and chatter from other webmasters, I feel that high keyword density website may be eventually filtered out by Google and maybe even this year based on the information Google is putting out on there various blogs. Over the last several years we have seen a direction less of strong keyword density to more readable text with good content and link building programs (typically the links will come from blogging on-domain.)

I recently reviewed an attorney’s website where I considered the content on his page bordering on excessive keyword density and to the level of keyword stuffing. He told me that his site had been dropping since the Google Panda/Farmer update had rolled out. As a savvy professional, I see the writing on the wall, it is time to review your content and start minimizing keyword dense content in advance of algorithm changes that will drop your organic placement.