I was asked to help out on a website which has dramatically lost rankings since changing from a non-www domain version to the www version – the same domain, I should stress.
The .htaccess file had been setup correctly but as the dramatic drop in traffic happened 2 days after the redirect happened, it had to be the culprit.
Something that stood out, in the Google listings was that the homepage of the domain was still being listed as the non-www version despite other pages now showing up as the www version.
After some careful analysis of the website it transpired that the CMS used absolute links for all internal linking and all of those links were using the non-www version of the domain.
This essentially would be a confusion for Google as the .htaccess file was telling it to use www links, while the website itself was using non-www – in essence, creating an infinite loop.
With this now fixed I am waiting to see how the big G reacts and if this simple yet essential attention to detail is going to get the traffic back to the site.
The moral of this is that you shouldn’t mess around with domains unless it is really necessary – and you know exactly what is required!
This week, Google launched their instant search.
That is to say that Google starts showing results as soon as you start typing, and refines the results as you type more.
Organic Search
My fear for organic search is that if your site is not shown above the visible screen fold, people will continue to refine their search rather than scroll. In other words, people will prefer to click/type rather than scroll. It means that it’s going to get harder to get organic traffic.
This is going to take a little bit of research!
Paid Search
This is a clever ploy by Google as it will likely mean that there will be an increase in people using shorter tail phrases in their adwords accounts which will push the cost per click up. Hey presto, Google makes more money.
Google has also stated that an advert has to be shown for 3 seconds for that advert to be counted as an impression. At least Google has thought about that aspect.
At present, to my knowledge, instant search is only available on the actual Google search page. Typing your query directly into the url bar, or using a toolbar search box will act normally, until you get the results and refine the query on the results page.
As the web evolves, there is talk of Facebook expanding to become a player in search.
Is this really a possibility? I suppose it comes down to how users embrace the technology.
Currently I would imagine that if users are looking for something they will still head over to Google, while if they want to chat to their friends and be social, they will head on over to Facebook.
However, it is fairly easy to change a users’ online habits, so if it were an easy process to search the web whilst chatting to your friends, it may take off.
However, I already have concerns about the ethics of Facebook and Mark Zuckerberg and am unsure how they would improve search.
Whilst Google is having trouble sticking to it’s principle of “Don’t be Evil”, it is still trying, and all the data they collect is to understand how people search and try to improve the results for every unique user.
Yes of course their main goal is to make money – but they have single handedly improved search throughout the last decade and have gradually introduced the money-making ideas off the back of their success. They have never shown a desire to release personal information about their users.
On the other hand, Mark Zuckerberg has stated that he wishes that the default profile of everyone on Facebook was public, and that is how he would implement it if starting it now. He clearly has no respect for keeping data secure, and as such, I cannot help but eye Facebook with increasing disbelief at how the users are becoming a secondary factor in their pursuit of the almighty dollar.
I do think that Matt Cutts’ announcement that he has deactivated his Facebook account was done to deflect interest away from Facebooks’ third party “like” function, but I am starting to worry about my personal data being in the hands of someone I don’t trust.
If it weren’t for the fact that I like to look at the profile of one of my friends who recently died, I would decativate my own Facebook account as I don’t think it adds anything to my life.
Personally I don’t think Google has too much to worry about. They have spent years refining their search algorithms and that is why they are leaps and bounds ahead of everyone else. Facebook will have to pull off a major coo that I just don’t think they are capable of.
Only time will tell!
Firstly, apologies for the lack of blog posts lately, but hopefully I will be able to sustain more entries in the future!
Today I would like to talk about the fact that Google seem to be becoming the thing they seemed to despise in the beginning, when they famously used the slogan “Don’t be evil”.
This blog post at SEOmoz shows how Google are increasingly using personalised search to give you what it considers are results more relevant to you. Now, I suppose on the face of it, it sounds like a good idea right? Who wouldn’t want to see 10 listings all relevant to the search you’ve just made?
But the truth of the matter is that personalised search results can limit your view of the web. If Google is constantly trying to second guess what you want to see returned, we are not seeing true search listings.
Signing out of your account appears to not help, and presumably, Google is now tracking IP addresses and matching them to Google accounts and that’s how they can show personalised results when logged out of your Google account.
Personally Google, I want to see the 10 best results that match the phrase I have typed in – not results based on what I’ve typed in and combine it with my search history. I find it commendable that you want to make the internet easier to use, but I would prefer to have the choice of viewing standard or personalised results.
Now I don’t tend to look at my server logs too much – not unless something odd happens anyway.
Today I did have a look and came across a spider from gigablast.com – another real time search engine. I had a quick scout around, and I don’t think it will make any inroads into Google’s market share, but it does seem to bring back a few different results which is interesting.
I will be playing around with it over the next few weeks when I get a chance, as I think Google’s stranglehold on the internet is getting a little too tight. We need some real competition to ensure we as searchers get the results we want!
Give www.gigablast.com a go and let me know what you think of their results!
To most people this doesn’t mean a thing, but over the last few days Google appears to have rolled out a Page Rank update.
Most of my sites have stayed static, while one site saw an increase, and another site saw a decrease. But does it really matter?
In a word, yes, page rank still has a bearing on the SERPs (Search Engine Ranking Positions), but it is one of many factors. If your website is beating all the competition for your targeted search terms then your page rank is irrelevant. However, if your website has been well optimised, then it could be that your offsite SEO needs work. This is where you can use your page rank as an indicator of your offsite SEO.
If you have a page rank of 0 or 1 then you still have a lot of work to do as far as building links back your website.
I know a lot of people get hung up on their page rank, but it should be used in the same way as the Alexa rank is used – as a guide to give you an idea of the current state of your website.
There are lots of different website statistic packages available for webmasters to use to monitor the use of their websites. But do you know what you are measuring?
There are many different ways of measuring people’s use of your website including pageviews, visitors and unique visitors. Some people only care about showing the biggest numbers to their visitors so will show a visitor count based on pageviews, but is that really how you should measure your traffic?
You shouldn’t use a stats package to show off to others on the internet – it should be used to understand your own visitors. Google Analytics is free to everyone and offers an excellent analysis of your site. Not only that, you can choose to exclude IP addresses. I would always suggest blocking your own IP address to make sure you don’t get artificially inflated figures.
Learning to use Google Analytics to your advantage can take time as there is a lot of information to take in. You need to take time to understand what the different metrics are telling you.
For example, if you have a page that has a high bounce rate*, you can deduce that either the user found what they required on that page so didn’t need to visit any more pages, or more likely the page didn’t answer their query so they just left the site.
It is then down to you to analyse your page and decide if the content is wrong, the keywords you are targeting are wrong etc.
You need to be aware that Analytics will not tell you what to do – only what is happening!
If you only use one stats package, I would suggest using Google Analytics. If you need help analysing the results, there are lots of web professionals out there who use this package everyday. All new websites that are built by SpiderServe incorporate a Google Analytics account.
*Bounce rate – people enter the website on that page and then leave without navigating away from that one page.
