Category — google

How many of you are tired of Google Instant!? I for one am tired of the way Google just shoves Google Instant in our faces with no real way to turn it off. It’s so annoying…they do give you a way to turn it off temporarily, but as soon as you close your browser and then open it again…it’s back…like a bad case of herpes, it never goes away!

I stumbled upon this url in my travels:
http://www.google.com/webhp?complete=0&hl=en, bookmark that url, drag it onto your browser’s bookmark toolbar and use it all the time…you’ll never have to use Google Instant again…it’s so beautiful it makes me want to cry!!

Anyway, enjoy your now liberated online experience without having Google shove what they think you want down your throat!! I actually think Google instant is their way of directing you to sites they want you to visit…it’s another possible revenue stream for them…kind of like when Yahoo started there Search Submission Pro program.

In case you’ve never heard of that, here’s what it is: Yahoo allows you to pay for what used to be organic positioning in their "search engine" results…but now you can pay to get higher listings…I shouldn’t say "now", because it’s been going on since around 2006…I think Google is trying the same thing, but in an underhanded way! Just a conspiracy theory.

I was reading an article about the Google Plus One feature that was rolled out…it’s their attempt to match the Facebook Like button. I noticed that the Google +1 only shows up in results when you’re logged into your Google Account…you could say, it’s the same thing with Facebook…but, Facebook allows your friends to see that you like one thing or another…Google really doesn’t…they do, but nobody really hangs out in their Google accounts!

In their continuous effort to bring you personalized results, I think Google’s +1 button is there for that exact reason…so they can see what you like and then deliver more of that to you. Facebook does the same thing, but their like button allows marketers to use this information and also allows users to get their friend’s recommendations on products, music or whatever.

Bing is trying to bring this to their results, which I think will clutter the results with junk…If I wanted my friend’s opinions on anything, I would ask them…I don’t need Bing, Google or any other website to help me decide what I want…but the World needs ditch diggers too!

Ever since the Panda update has been rolled out, a lot of people have lost rank and are freaking out. Some sites needed to lose rank while others such as this site that specializes in Hawaii Vacations, got sucked into the backwash of the Panda update and lost a lot of solid rank that they’ve had for a long time.

I know that this site produces original expert content on Hawaii because they’re friends of mine and I wanted to help them figure it out.

Here’s my take on the Panda update: I believe this updated has tied everything that Google has been preaching and trying to get across to webmasters for years…Panda is the culmination of all the basic rules that you’ve seen in Google’s guidelines…these things being site structure, content, usability…the basic rules of SEO haven’t changed since the beginning, since before SEO even had a name.

While looking at my friend’s site, I noticed a lot of things that were going on that shouldn’t be going on…all of the things are unintentional as they are not trying to game the index like so many people do. For all you site owners that have legitimate businesses online and that caught in the wake of Panda…STOP asking why big well known corporate sites weren’t affected. Those "big sites" get treated much differently than the "mom and pop" sites…they can and do get away with a lot of things that you can’t. Why??? Because they have trust and authority in their fields…it’s well known that they are not fly by night sites…"mine isn’t either" you say? While that may be true, you’re not as well known as Amazon or Expedia or any other well known sites like that! It does you absolutely no good to compare yourselves to those sites so stop it!

Here’s what you can do though:

• Look At Your Site Structure – Do you have everything thrown in the root or is the site organized in a logical manner that the user will understand easily and also that the search engines will easily understand how to classify each section or page. Or will they have to wade through a bunch of information that they don’t need while trying to find what they’re looking for!
• Navigation – Is your navigation easy to use and easily found?
• Look At The Files On Your Server – When you log into your FTP, do you see a bunch of old files and test pages that your “web developer” was too lazy to remove when they were done testing? I’ve found that a lot of developers are lazy and sloppy…all those test pages and old pages that are left on the server, are most likely being deemed as duplicate content. Start cleaning up the server, but don’t just delete, you may have other sites linking to those pages and they may still be indexed in search engines. Always 301 redirect old pages to their most relevant new page…if they have no relevant new page, just 301 redirect to the homepage.
• Website Content – Do all your pages have unique content on them, or are they blank with images only? At the bare minimum, there should be at least 250 words on each page that you want to get indexed and maybe rank for. The content should be unique and relevant to the page…I’m bashing the word unique into your skulls because it’s important!
• Back To Website Structure – Some people call it Siloing, some call it SEO Site Structure, or SEO Directory Structure, they all mean the same thing and it’s how your sites should be set up. Don’t just throw all your pages in the root…especially if you have a lot of content that can be put into a proper directory structure. You can see an image I created that represents a proper SEO directory structure. An example that is used quite often is that of a Marble Company. Say you have a big bin full of all kinds of marbles, different colors and stripes and every other type of marble you can think of. A person enters the store and asks for blue marbles…you or the customer (Search Engine or User) has to dig through all those marbles just to find blue marbles…there are thousands of marbles in that bin, so the customer (user) may just give up and go somewhere else to find their blue marbles. It’s the same thing with search engines and users on your site…if search engines have to crawl through a bunch of garbage like java scripts that should be externalized and styles that should be on a style sheet, or if they have to crawl through a bunch of pages and other content just to find the blue marbles, they’re going to split because it’s too hard to find the content (blue marbles). You would have had a conversion if your blue marbles were in their own bin and the same goes for the red marbles, green marbles, cat eye marbles and so on. That way the customer comes in, gets what they want right away, you get the conversion, they get their marbles and everyone is happy. All the marbles on your website would be under the main category marbles…maybe you also sell yo-yos, all the different types of yo-yos would be categorized the same way. Entiendes Mendez?

The moral of this story is, Clean up your websites, create a proper SEO Directory Structure, make sure you have original relevant content on each page of your website and add unique and relevant titles and meta tags on each page…don’t let anyone tell you that the meta description tag or meta keywords tag are useless so don’t add them…while the meta keywords tag may not be used by search engines like Google, it is used by a lot of smaller engines and it doesn’t hurt to have it, so use it. I’m not sure what idiot said the meta description tag is useless, but remove all of them from your website and see what happens!! ‘Nuf Ced ’bout that one!

Really the Panda update or Farmer update whatever you want to call it, is about site maintenance…don’t be lazy!

It’s bad enough that Google Instant tries to guess what you’re searching for, but it seems it actually thinks it knows and gives you the results of what it thinks you’re searching for!

Google Instant has a huge ego, here’s an example: I searched El Copo Volcano, and Google instant, like a kid who has ADHD, starts throwing all kinds of queries at you, then when you hit the search button, it gives you this bullshit: "Showing results for el popo volcano. Search instead for el copo volcano".

I did search for el copo volcano bitch! Thanks for thinking that it may have been a typo on my part, but the friggin "C" isn’t even close to the "P" on the keyboard!

Start taking your Ritalin Google and take the ego down a few notches…it started with "Did You Mean", now it’s, "Screw You, This Is What You Were Looking For"
Here’s a screenshot:

I was figuring out, the other day, why my site dropped a bit in rank for certain keywords…wait, I must preface this by saying, I didn’t start wondering what was going on until a few weeks had passed…one of the mistakes that most people do is start changing things on their site right away as soon as their rank slips a bit. You should never do that, because it may just be that the search engine you’re worried about is re-indexing and shuffling things around. Your rank may slip a bit during this period, but will generally bounce back, hopefully to a better position…but, if it has gone negative, then you have to figure out what went wrong…I waited a few weeks because it was my site and I was busy, normally I would wait a week and then start investigating…I digress…

So, I noticed a few weeks ago that I had slipped down to page 3 for one of my main keywords…this has been a gradual thing…I was on page 1, then 2 and now 3…this is over the last 8 months or so. Right about now, you may be asking yourself, What does this have to do with Danny Sullivan’s Blog…I subscribe to Danny’s blog, so I get his posts by email…once in a while, I’ll make a comment if I have something relevant to add…well, the first time my rank slipped was shortly after the first time I posted a comment on Mr Sullivan’s blog…I thought nothing of it because it’s Danny Sullivan…no need to say anything else about that…but then it happened a second time…I still didn’t "really" think anything of it…using the word really here is like when a friend of mine cornered Matt Cutts at Pubcon a few years back and asked him "if duplicate content hurts a site", to which Matt replied: "It doesn’t really…", to me, that tells me it does…it’s a read between the lines thing…sorry, I was typing out loud…

So it happened a second time and now recently a third…I’m checking my site, going over things and finding little things that really shouldn’t affect it like this…so now I’m thinking: "wait, I have a common denominator here…it’s Danny Sullivan’s Blog! The Google doesn’t like Danny Sullivan, and I’m being punished because if it!"

Why don’t you like Danny Sullivan Google?? Did he spurn you at some point and now you punish people for liking his blog? All I did was read a few posts and then comment on them because I could relate to them and thought I had something to add to the story…isn’t that what you want Google, for us to add relevancy to the web?

Well, I’m sticking to my principles on this one, and will figure out how to get back on page one of your silly index!

I feel I must add this disclaimer, because undoubtedly, there will be people who believe this post to be true and that Google actually doesn’t like Danny Sullivan: Danny Sullivan’s Blog DOES NOT taint (get your head out of the gutter…at least for a few minutes) your rank. I’ve been ignoring my site, so I’m sure that is the reason for the slippage; thus, the need for continual SEO Updates!!

Adding Google Analytics To Joomla can be a very frustrating thing…especially when the Joomla help files and the Joomla Help Forum give the WRONG ANSWERS!

I’ve been working on two Joomla sites lately; one of the first things I’ll do is add Google Analytics to a site if it doesn’t already have it installed. The two Joomla sites I’ve been working on have different files to add the Google Analytics code to. I think it mainly depends on the designer and how they name the files and where they put them…they should be in the templates directory in the root…which file though, is another story.

The first site had a file that sat in the templates directory and the other site had the file I needed in a sub-directory of the templates directory…pain in the arse trying to figure that stuff out…it’s not hard, just a waste of time!

The Joomla Help files and forums were telling me to go to (this taken from the Joomla Help Forum):
* Log on to: http://www.yoursite.com/administrator/
* In the top menu select: “Extensions” > “Template Manager”
* Now select the template which is marked as default and click "Edit"
* In the template edit page click "Edit HTML"

The only thing they got right is the first line! There is no "Template Manager", not that I could see anyway…on either site!! I knew the file in question had to be in the templates directory, so I started testing pages, by adding the code to the bottom, saving and purging and then refreshing the page in a browser and looking at the source code…that’s not the most efficient or safest way to do things, but when the company that makes the CMS you’re trying to add Google Analytics to, doesn’t even know their own product…what’s a boy to do!!??

I found the page by going to Components in the top nav =>> eXtplorer =>> templates =>> sub-directory =>> index.php
The sub-directory in that path was the name of the site.

If you’re working on a Joomla site, I suggest you get the name, number and email of the person who designed it…this might save you some time!

I’ve come to dis-like Joomla…it’s not very user friendly…I recommend Magento…it’s much more search engine friendly and you don’t have to save, then purge…Joomla makes it sound like your casting demons out of the site!!

So be patient, keep smiling and you’ll find what you’re looking for! Oh, by the way, one of the Joomla sites just recently switched over to Magento…yaaayy!!!

Is Google Places Making More Money For Google? I was researching some keywords today and while checking to see if a client was ranking for a particular keyword it dawned on me that when Google moved the map into the right hand column, it was pushing down their paid ads; where the map used to be in the oraganic results section itself along with the listings beside it.

So it seems that now it’s more important than ever to be in the number one and two spots if you are running a PPC campaign. The Google Places map that used to be on the left is now pushing paid ads down below the fold. Before they moved the Google Places map over to the right you would see around 6 paid ads…now you only see the first and the top half of the second.

This could create a bidding war for the top two spots, because who wants to be at the bottom of the pile…it could also create an unfair advantage for those with the means to keep those top two spots…tough break for the small business that needs to be able to compete.

Check out the image below; I took a screen shot of my entire monitor and as you can see, The Google Places map is taking up some premium real estate.

Is The Google Places Map Pushing Paid Ads Down Below The Fold On Purpose? Pretty Sneaky Google!

I’ve just turned off Google Instant because it became too annoying. I gave it a fair chance but never clicked on anything it brought up because it was usually wrong. Then this morning, I was searching for something and the next button at the bottom was missing…it was if Google Instant was saying: “We know what you were searching for and if it’s not on this page, then you were wrong!” So I had to click the link next to the search box that allows you to turn it off.

You’ll have to search something first in order for that link to show up because it’s not on the homepage.

Really, has Google Instant improved anything? Has it improved the user experience at all? To this I say NO! What it has improved, is Google’s chance to to direct you to websites that they want you to buy from! I’m not saying that this is what’s going on, but how many of you haven’t already thought that!!?? It makes perfect sense.

Yahoo has Search Submit Pro which delivers paid results in the organic results, which to me is totally screwed…and now that Yahoo and Bing are in bed together, it’s perfect timing for Google to roll out their version of "Search Submit Pro"…again this is all conspiracy theory and I doubt is what is really happening.

It’s also really funny that so many agencies and "SEO" people have used Google Instant to instill fear in people in order to get more business. This is much like the way George Bush instilled fear in the American public in order to get what he wanted while he was "President"

They would use headlines in their posts and emails blasts like: "What Does Google Instant Mean To Your Online Business?", or "What You Need to Know About Google Instant In Order To Protect Your Search Engine Ranking"…it’s all BS, because no matter what, people are going to search how they search and the same results are going come up…it may be more important to be on page one now, but I think that’s it…and really what this is doing is affecting the attention span of the user, as if ADD hasn’t increased enough since the internet has been around…now it’ll be worse…that’s it, now I see what’s happening!! Google has teamed up with the pharmaceutical companies that make Ritalin! That’s the key to their world domination! They’ll turn the human population into a bunch robots and get even more rich in the process by having a stake in the pharmaceutical industry!!

All kidding aside, don’t be alarmed by Google Instant…if you’re doing to the right things now, just keep doing them. If you’re doing things that are outdated and borderline black hat, this may be the time to join the side of good and to stop reading outdated articles and listening to the many so called "SEO Experts" who have recently popped up ever since SEO has become in "vogue", and if Google Instant becomes too annoying, simply turn it off!

I just came back from the SEMPO LA meeting at Google in Santa Monica…it’s a pretty cool building, I love the surfboards they have in the lobby behind the front desk…the meeting took place in the engineering building. I want that Google Surfboard in the lobby! There were also a couple other classics, like a Mark Richards Twin fin, Al Merrick and a board by Pro Surf.

They had a prize giveaway and I won! They gave away 3 sets of Google Bose headphones. They’re pretty cool and they came in a cool Google case.

   

The meeting was cool, they had a live stream from the Google office in San Francisco where all the presenters were. The 3 main presenters were from YouTube, Twitter and Facebook. They could see us and we could see them.

If you’d like to join the SEMPO LA group, their Facebook page is here: SEMPO LA Facebook, you’ll find out when the meetings are if you join. A bit of advice, when you join and they announce the meetings, RSVP right away because the group is growing and the meetings fill up very quickly. It’s A great way to network and meet people in the industry and if you own a business that needs online marketing help, it’d be a great way to meet someone who can help you.

So when is Google’s Birthday? They’re going with September 27th…but apparently there are different dates you could go by, like when the incorporated, September 7th, when they registered their domain name, September 15th, but over the years they’ve randomly celebrated on September 27th, but chose that date to the expansion of the index size.
This taken from the Google blog:

We wanted something special for our birthday…
9/26/2005 09:14:00 PM
Posted by Anna Patterson, Software Engineer

Google opened its doors in September 1998, and we’ve been pursuing one mission ever since: to organize the world’s information and make it universally accessible and useful. For our seventh birthday, we are giving you a newly expanded web search index that is 1,000 times the size of our original index.

I’m proud of everything we’ve accomplished in the years since Larry Page and Sergey Brin set up the first Google data center in Larry’s dorm room at Stanford. Today, along with web search based on Larry and Sergey’s original BackRub search engine, we offer specialized search for everything from satellite images to academic papers, local business info to your own computer. We’ve also built software for email and mobile services, photo management and computer-to-computer voice calling, to name just a few things.

But search remains our heart and soul, so I’m especially pleased by this latest expansion of our index, which makes Google more than 3 times larger than any other search engine. See for yourself how effective the new Google search index can be. Come up with a search query that’s special to you (your name, your elementary school, and your favorite animal, for example) – a combination of words that is likely to exist on just a few web pages out of the billions we’ve indexed, a few needles scattered in the Internet’s endless haystack. Ready? Let’s go.