A short time ago Google officially launched a change to their algorithm targeting websites that are cluttered with paid advertisements above the fold. According to Inside Search the Google update “looks at the layout of a webpage and the amount of content you see on the page once you click on a result”
Sites that have little quality content above the fold will be most affected by the change.

A bad user experience results from visiting a website and being presented with poor quality content, excessive advertisements making site navigation confusing and difficult, or requiring the user to scroll down the page in order to read the website content. This is something Google is trying to punish by introducing this algorithmic update. Moving forward these types of sites might not rank as highly.

The algorithm change does not affect sites that place ads above the fold to a normal degree. The change will affect sites where there is a small amount of visible content above the fold and/or relevant content is pushed down by ads.

Google asserts that websites that implement ads to a normal degree will not be affected by the change, with only around 1% of all searches impacted. But how do you determine a ‘normal degree’?

Google recommends using the Browser Size tool, along with other chrome based tools that demonstrate just how much on screen real estate is being occupied by advertisements.

Impact on SEO

On paper the new algorithm change could be viewed as a good thing, with less ads meaning more relevant quality content, right? But this raises a question about whether or not Ads can be considered irrelevant content.

What about Google themselves? A large proportion of Paid Search ads appear above the fold before the user has to scroll down to reach the natural listings. Using their own logic the Ads would appear further down SERP results.

Danny Sullivan has touched on whether Google’s own search results are top heavy in an interesting and informative blog post on Search Engine Land.

On the above image the yellow box washed out and blends into the white of the natural listings. Is this deceptive or misleading?

The response from Google regarding the algorithm change was that “this is a site-based algorithm that looks at all pages across an entire site in aggregate. Although it is possible to find a few searches on Google that trigger many ads, it is vastly more common to have no ads or few ads on a page.

This algorithm change is designed to demote sites that make it difficult for a user to get to the content and offer a bad user experience. Having an ad above the fold does not imply that you are affected by this change. It is excessive behavior that Google are working to avoid for users.”

Danny asked the question how Google knows what an ad is.

“Google have a variety of signals that algorithmically determine what type of ad or content appears above the fold. It is completely algorithmic in its detection. Google do not use a hard coded list of ad providers.”

Conclusion

This change is one of over 500 Google expect to roll out to search this year. From an SEO perspective the update is another facet in the equation which must be considered.

It is probably too early to consider completely revamping your paid advertisement strategy, but it is worth keeping it in the back of your mind and using common sense. Continuing to deliver relevant content and the best possible user experience is always the best practice recommendation for web users.

Content will always be king, long live the king.

Following on from Google launching extended sitelinks last week, we’ve been doing some analysis to test how you can leverage the most out of this new format. We know that the new Google sitelinks appear mainly for brand related search terms, in particular for results that appear in the top position. Google only shows sitelinks for pages that they believe are relevant to the user search query.

The purpose of this post is partly to help you avoid sticky situations with sitelinks like what happened to DFO a few years back. But my main goal today is to present 3 SEO tactics that may improve the quality of your sitelinks, and the relevancy between your key pages and important keywords.

1. Keyword rich internal links

Sitelinks use an automated algorithm and one of the first indicators that Google looks at is your internal linking; more importantly, the keywords you use within an internal link. Make sure your internal links use keyword rich anchor text and ALT text (if an image link) that is informative and avoids repetition, as stated in the Google Webmaster Help for sitelinks.

2. Relevant metadata, headings and content

Google may decide to use keywords used in your metadata, headings, and content to help decide on the most suitable name to display for your page. An example would be the Outrider Sydney page on our site, which has been displayed as follows due to the phrase being repeated in the metadata and <h1> heading tag:

3. Using GWT to demote sitelinks

If you think that an existing sitelink is not relevant to a user search query, you can ‘demote’ that sitelink in your Google Webmaster Tools account. A maximum of 100 URLs can be demoted and will be effective for 90 days from your most recent visit to the Sitelinks page in Webmaster Tools.

Demoting sitelink URLs may be used to help upweight campaign or promotional landing pages to the top 12 sitelinks of your result.

Example of relevant, helpful sitelinks

Sydney Morning Herald is a great example where a strong internal link structure and purposeful metadata reflects concise but relevant sitelinks when users find their result on Google:

Sitelinks that can be improved

I like Zara. I like their clothes. I like their competitive prices. But what I don’t really like though, are their sitelinks. A Flash based website, extensive URLs with no relevance, and little to no keyword rich content to differentiate country specific sites. It’s no wonder that every page pretty much looks the same in sitelinks:

Name and shame!

Have you seen a site with good sitelinks? Bad sitelinks? Comment below! You know you want to.

2010 has been a busy year for search engines, and it is becoming more and more important for them to provide the most relevant results, as the search volumes has been regularly increasing year on year.

Each year, there have been an increasing number of searches, more searchers, and those searchers do more searches themselves, so one thing is for sure: ranking well for key search terms is more important than ever.

Let’s have a look at the top changes search engines brought in 2010, in order for them to provide more relevant results and drive searchers to their site:

#1 Google drinks too much coffee and brings out the “caffeine” update

What does that mean for results? Where Google used to index pages and sites in regular waves, this update allowed them to update their results incrementally, meaning quicker indexing. If you are working to get your site optimised,

you will see changes quicker, whether they are positive or negative.

This caused quite a stir in the SEO business as rankings changed, pages disappeared and came back, but it quickly stabilised. People following the big Google algorithm updates will know it usually does impact the results quite a bit but it is always an intense moment!

#2 What you say online becomes a ranking factor

Social media is growing at a fast pace, Twitter is going to hit the 200 million user mark early this year, Facebook has already over 500 million users and its founder already has a biography movie after only 20 years of his life. Impossible for search engines to miss out on the opportunity to surf the social media wave and use the huge amount of content being shared to display more accurate results, so they started in 2010!

Google started by crawling Twitter feeds and links, and provided a “Real time” search option which enables us to search for tweets on specific keywords. There was also a debate trying to determine whether links from Twitter provide some benefits to the pages they link to, and some recent findings would lead to believe that engaging in the Tweetosphere has to be on the 2011 agenda. Google also detects when people share links with friends on Facebook.

Bing on the other hand created a partnership with Facebook, in order for them to be able to use “likes” from users to affect rankings for pages using the Facebook “Like” button.

But this is only the beginning, and 2011 will reveal many more social media related algorithm updates.

#3 Slow typers discover the joys of Google Instant

Late 2010, Google added the “Instant” feature, which provides results as you type, without having to hit “enter” for the results to display.

For many, it is more of a gadget than anything else, but I’m pretty sure I’m not the only one having noticed high search volumes for keywords that aren’t complete… For example, if you use the Google Keyword Tool, you’ll notice some keyword suggestions are keywords that aren’t complete such as “car ins” or “seo consu”.

Where this simplifies search for the user, this also impacts websites focusing on some longer tail keywords, so I would recommend keeping an eye open to how this can affect your traffic.

#4 Local results take over

Firstly, Google (again) have made 2010 a year to tackle the challenge of local results. Most queries including a location keyword (city, suburb, postcode, country) now display local results.

After launching Google Places, for every local query, they displayed a map with pins between the sponsored results and the organic results. This apparently was not good enough so they changed the display in order for the local results to look more like organic results, with a map on the top right hand side.

This means owning your business on Google places is very important, as this can provide a valuable spot on the first page of Google, if done and optimised well.

Evidence shows that Google is investing heavily in local search (Marissa Meyer, VP Search, moved to Local, trying to buy Yelp) and wants to use maps in a more efficient manner. 2011 will see some interesting evolutions on that side, that’s for sure.

Secondly, where mobile search tends to blend in with mainstream search, it is still a great platform to provide bespoke local results for mobile. Google Places has been implemented on Android and can be used as a standalone app. More generally, apps developed on mobile platforms are using GPS location to display local results for businesses such as bars, restaurants, banks and more. This is where local online presence becomes key.

#5 Love is in the air between Yahoo and Bing

2010 was the year where they decided to merge their organic results in an attempt to compete against Google in a more efficient way. Bing had been increasing its market share but was mainly taking them from Yahoo so, when the merger took place, Google remained the big winner.

In Australia, Google still has 95% market share while Bing/Yahoo have 4.5%. The remainder is shared among small search engines such as Altavista and Ask. (source: statcounter.com, as of Oct 2010)

As an onside, this merger has affected Yahoo’s Site Explorer quite a bit and as a result it seems like link popularity and saturation have been fairly inconsistent these past few months. So hopefully early 2011 will see this great toll get back on track!

#6 How quick does your website load?

If you feel like your website takes a while to load when on a broadband connection, then it probably is getting penalised in rankings, compared to other quicker to load competing websites.

Google decided 2010 was the year to start applying the rationale “I want my users to find relevant sites which don’t take too long to load too avoid user frustration”. Based on opinions from SEOs all around the world, this has quickly become a key factor to website optimisation.

Using Yslow for example, you will be able to assess your website and get to learn about “minifying”, “css sprites”, “gzipping”, “http requests” and other ways of reducing the page loading time and have a website Google will want to put on top.

I actually think this is positive from a user’s perspective, it makes web browsing so much more comfortable, and it pushes web developers to clean up their code; thus improving the standards of the web.

#7 New guys on the block

2010 has seen the appearance or the discovery of some interesting new competitors to the big G (Google). Instead of replicating, these new search engines are actually innovating how to search for websites.

The first and probably most interesting one for SEO is Blekko, launched in 2010 with an interesting concept using slashtags which Rich Skrenta explains here:

“Slashtags let all of the vertical engines that people define on Blekko live within the same search box. They also let you do a search and quickly pivot from one vertical to another.”

So if you want to shop for the item you are searching, you would type “red dress /shop”.

The most interesting one which relates to social media: the Likes slashtag. Do you want to display results that your Facebook friends liked? Simply type “kitten videos /likes” !

Other search engines generating interest are Yandex in English (biggest SE in Russia) and DuckDuckGo. DuckDuckGo has actually been around for a few years now, but it’s only recently that it has been getting a bit more attention.

#8 Other Google related updates worth reminding

Ever tried converting measures or currencies using Google? Or getting simple questions answered directly without having to click into a website? That’s one of the 2010 added features from Google.

Search for “20 Australian dollars in us dollars” and you’ll get the converted currency below the search box. Search for “how high is the Eiffel tower” and again, you’ll get the answer below the search box (1,063 feet for those who are curious).

Another interesting SEO related discovery is the increased likelihood of getting your website crawled thoroughly if your brand comes up in the online reputable press (such as “The Australian”). It has been discovered that the Google bot will read about the brand in an article and would then go to the brands website and crawl it extensively. So get your PR teams working and you could just see your brand gain reputation online.

#9 Youtube Videos

Youtube is the second most popular social site after Facebook in Australia, and sees 35 hours’ worth of video uploaded every minute. To put this in perspective, Hunter Walk, Youtube’s Director of product management, explains: “If we were to measure that in movie terms (assuming the average Hollywood film is around 120 minutes long), 35 hours a minute is the equivalent of over 176,000 full-length Hollywood releases every week.”

2010 is yet the biggest year for Youtube in terms of popularity, meaning having an online presence using video has never been as important.

With its improved video optimisation options such as video transcripts, 2011 will be the year to jump on the band wagon, if you haven’t already, and get some videos uploaded and fully optimised in order to make sure you are found.

”A politician uses statistics in the same way a drunkard uses a lamppost. Both use them for support, neither user them for illumination”.
Source: Attributed to various people from Winston Churchill to H.L. Mencken.

I love statistics and numbers, I really do. They can make you weep (bank balance), laugh (bank balance, again) or tear your hair out in frustration while being told “your call is important to us” (that’d be the bank balance again). Reading a set of numbers is just like reading a quality investigative news story: the facts are true; they tell a story which leads to a conclusion; and they back up the headline 100%.

Like an investigative journalist working on a story, any numbers should be approached with extreme caution, after all 87.4% of statistics are made up on the spot***. This is especially true if the person trying to tell you the number is trying to persuade you of something. “Beware of people waving numbers” should be printed on every PowerPoint presentation.

Numbers always need context and an explanation of what they are, what they mean, and how they relate to the question you’re asking. They also need a good level of detail on how they were sourced. Without those elements, they are just meaningless figures tossed around to make everyone feel good.

For instance, if I told you the traffic of Website A had doubled, or gone up by 100%, you’d be pretty impressed. However, if I told you traffic had gone from 1 visitor to the heady heights of 2, you’d be slightly less than impressed. Yet all these pieces of information are accurate representations of the same thing and this is why we need context.

One of the frustrations of our job as SEO Consultants is never quite knowing if the numbers we see are true, if they should be taken at face value, or if they should be tossed out with the trash.

Keyword research is an amusing example of groping in the dark with numbers. None of the big keyword research tools use real numbers from Google. Some use numbers from Meta Search Engines, some which seem to come from Ad Networks and some, which seem to pluck the numbers from thin air.

To give an example – we researched a very popular consumer durable for a client recently, and naturally enough we wanted to know roughly what volume of searches were done in Australia over the last 12 months. The request was input, the button clicked, the Keyword Research tool whirred and buzzed and eventually returned the answer “4″. Yes, 4. When search volumes like that are posited as genuine numbers for an electrical item present in just about every home everything else can only be treated with an air of suspicion.

(Despite how obviously ridiculous their figure was for this keyword, the tool’s Technical Support were certain their data was correct, but no they couldn’t specifically tell us how they had come by it, beyond repeating the sales information on their website and the mantra that the numbers are relative rather than absolute.)

So, for the frustrated number-crunchers, there is finally some good news. Even though the Google AdWords Keyword Tool has its limitations (it is an advertising tool designed for Google’s commercial purposes, after all), Google recently announced that its Keyword Tool has come out of beta and while they were going through those motions, they “also changed how we calculate Global Monthly Searches and Local Monthly Searches. Statistics in these columns are now based on Google.com search traffic only. Previously, they also included traffic from search partners.”

This is a move in the right direction and means we can now reasonably include the Adwords Keyword Tool as part of the wide array of tools in our keyword research toolbox, especially for local search volumes. Previous numbers were clearly out of touch with reality and whilst time will tell on the accuracy of these datasets, I’m looking forward to Local Monthly Searches actually being in line with a believable figure. That means my keyword research is more credible and I no longer have to define it as “indicative of relative performance”.

To that end, I’ve just checked one of my clients in the auto industry sector and doing a very quick flit across their keywords shows much better data – at least the “number” of local searches is no longer bigger than the country’s population.  Here’s a before and after shot of the local numbers on a very generic search “cars”:

Before:

After:

Clearly the volume is now far more credible for searches done in Australia.

To sum up: if numbers sound fantastic, there’s a good chance they are just that: fantasy. Or, as I regularly explain to my bank manager, “some mistake surely”.

***As was that statistic.

In previous posts I wrote about some potential changes for Google’s infrastructure which Matt Cutts called Caffeine. Now, Matt did say (I guess we are on a first name basis) that they were going to hold off on this update until after Christmas 2009. This was done because last time a big update occurred it was right before Christmas and it negatively affected online retail sales. So, a bit of love – just in case Caffeine would have a significant affect in the SERP’s.

Then there was a ranking change which introduced the idea of how web page speed is being factored into the ranking criteria. I will reiterate here – relevancy is still the key metric.

But, something significant happened in Q1-Q2 2010 and Webmasterworld, as has always been done in the past, called a new, noticed algorithm changed “Mayday”.

This appears to have affected a large number of webmasters with reported traffic drops ranging from a 10% to 90% loss with a very apparent change on how Google is handling long-tail phrases and how far more spammy sites seem to be appearing in some results. This thread on Webmasterworld is long with a lot of analysis and speculation resulting in 13 pages of posts, so I’d suggest going straight to page 13.

This has had a much more noticeable affect and is apparently not finished yet. As Google isn’t too forthcoming Mayday could be a part of Caffeine; however, this shouldn’t necessarily be so because Google stated that Caffeine would be purely an infrastructure change that most users would probably not notice.

One poster, dusky, summarises on May 12th:

“There are too many legitimate white hat sites being whacked to believe it’s a penalty. Many well established gov and edu sites, large commercial and corporate sites, well known news and media sites that seen a change for the worst so far for the last three months at least and starting MayDay in particular. G* sites themselves are affected as noted above and somewhere else, how many more days or weeks this is going to take is probably everyone’s question, at least the people who join my “total re-index” camp anyway, or shall I call it total-recall. We used to think they lost some or most of the data when this happened, and that’s why the crawl rate and the re-indexing, but it turned out it was due to infrastructure and algo updates, Florida and BigDaddy are best examples.”

We have a theory based on TF-IDF. Ian Lavelle, my colleague here at Outrider, took the time to show us how this algorithm change (and apparent surge in spam pages showing in search results) could affect the long-tail. You can read Ian’s post here.

UPDATE

I thought I’d update this post based on the fact that SearchEngineLand has posted a confirmation of the Mayday algorithm change on May 27, 2010 (see excerpt below):

“Google made between 350 and 550 changes in its organic search algorithms in 2009. This is one of the reasons I recommend that site owners not get too fixated on specific ranking factors. If you tie construction of your site to any one perceived algorithm signal, you’re at the mercy of Google’s constant tweaks……

……However, sometimes a Google algorithm change is substantial enough that even those who don’t spend a lot of time focusing on the algorithms notice it. That seems to be the case with what those discussing it at Webmaster World have named “Mayday”. Last week at Google I/O, I was on a panel with Googler Matt Cutts who said, when asked during Q&A,  ”this is an algorithmic change in Google, looking for higher quality sites to surface for long tail queries. It went through vigorous testing and isn’t going to be rolled back.””

There is a lot of talk in the traps about website page speed. Google (via Matt Cutts and Webmaster Tools) has openly stated that page speed will be a factor into the ranking algorithm for 2010 and will likely roll out with Caffeine – faster the better and you’ll be rewarded for it.

Google Webmaster tools have been reporting sample data from sites that have page speed issues (you can find this in the Labs section under Site Performance). Within Google Webmaster it also suggests the supplied Page Speed Firefox plug-in (installs as part of Firebug) should be used to get more accurate and full data. This has been available since July 2009 so I guess we have had plenty of notice. This is already in play for AdWords where page speed will affect your quality score.

This tools reports in the order of priorities – which things are slowing the pages the most and also gives a suggested size savings if recommendations are carried out and, I mean, recommendations. It tells you specifically what files are problematic, which images should be attended to, which JavaScript files can be combined, which CSS definitions (within an include file) aren’t being used and can be excluded, DNS look-ups, browser caching and more.

Google introduced this idea of page speed officially in their blog in June 2009.

Not surprisingly it has been written up on many sites. Webpronews covered this in November 2009.

The goal here is to make the internet faster and improve the user experience. In turn, it is very likely that this will also improve traffic and conversions. Here’s an excerpt:

“If you’re serious about wanting your site to perform better in search engines, and you haven’t given much thought to load times and such, it’s time to readjust your way of thinking.”

Of course there is going to be debate about this within the industry, with marketers and developers. It’s just a new little layer to make our jobs a little more challenging.

At this stage the Caffeine update has yet to roll out. The last update Matt Cutts posted can be found here: Expect Caffeine after the holidays.

Here are some other sites to read up on this:

Google Page Speed Report Comes to Webmaster Tools
Site Speed Google’s Next Ranking Factor
Google Wants the Web to Function like a Magazine
WebPerformance Best Practices
Should Web Page Speed Influence Google PageRank?

Over the last few days it was announced that Google will be making changes to its algorithm; a sizable modification which we may have not seen since the likes of Big Daddy and Jagger’s 1-3 in 2006.

Google has stated:

“For the last several months, a large team of Googlers has been working on a secret project: a next-generation architecture for Google’s web search. It’s the first step in a process that will let us push the envelope on size, indexing speed, accuracy, comprehensiveness and other dimensions. The new infrastructure sits “under the hood” of Google’s search engine, which means that most users won’t notice a difference in search results. But web developers and power searchers might notice a few differences, so we’re opening up a web developer preview to collect feedback.

Some parts of this system aren’t completely finished yet, so we’d welcome feedback on any issues you see.”

Whilst Matt Cutts claims that most of the change will be on infrastructure, we may see some changes in the search results.

It is certainly an unexpected move from Google, which generally does not give the general public this type of insight, let alone coining a term for it before anyone else does. If you want to see a preview of this work in progress you can here: http://www2.sandbox.google.com

As for searches you will see a reordering of results, however, the change is purported to make searching faster and more accurate – more real-time. As usual Google is not revealing what exactly has been altered. Google have opted to make this change in beta for users to test, calling it a developer’s preview.

Users, as you would imagine, have already begun testing. Mashable has done this and published their results:

- Results did return faster and in some cases doubling the speed at which results are returned
- It does seem that some elements of blended search are further down in the page which could mean that not all elements have been implemented in Caffeine. Mashable even speculate that user activity on some sites may have pushed them higher in the results
- The new results do seem more relevant in some cases and it appears that it could be tightly tied with keywords
- Index size is also increased

In my testing I found that indeed the changes to the pages are not hugely significant. Doing a vanity search the first thing I noticed was that social media sites were more prominent. This may tie in with the result above that user activity may play a role in rankings.

So, what does this mean for SEO?

At the moment it simply means that we must be ready when this change rolls out. Will results have a heavier focus on keywords and user activity? If all elements of blended search are included in Caffeine then it would appear that universal results are being pushed down.

Obviously, as Google has put this out for testing, the end results will likely be very different than the current speculation of changes we are seeing at present.

As Tom Krazit stated on CNET:

“That’s not necessarily indicative of how the results would be presented, once Caffeine goes live, but it is evidence that the update will require those dependent on Google to drive traffic to their sites to study the changes. For now, Google is not sharing many details regarding how it reworked its back-end architecture and indexing process with Caffeine.”

It is still early days – so watch this space.

Further references can be found here:
Google’s New Search Index
Google Caffeine Tests

On the 24th of February, Google made the announcement of two new improvements made to their search results. These Google search improvements included:

1. an expanded list of useful related searches – the terms found at the bottom, and sometimes at the top, of the search results page.

For example, if you type in something like “sydney restaurants guide” in to the search box on Google; at the top or bottom of the results page, you will see ‘Searches related to sydney restaurants guide’ which provides more relevant key phrases.

What Google have done is they’ve deployed a new technology based on the 2006 acquisition of “Orion” which can better understand associations and concepts related to a particular search.

So taking the same example of “sydney restaurants guide”, the related terms shown by Google include “sydney thai restaurants” or “café sydney restaurant”.

This update has been rolled out for other languages too, as detailed in the Google blogs, where they state “We are now able to target more queries, more languages, and make our suggestions more relevant to what you actually need to know.”

2. the addition of longer search result descriptions – so when you enter a longer query (more than three words), usually you are presented with a regular-length snippet which may not give you enough information and context. Hence Google has increased the number of lines in the snippet to provide more information and show more of the words you typed in the context of the page.

Another example to show you how this works; if you look up “thai restaurants found in the city” into Google search, the search results will include a variety of results with two to three line snippets.

Ultimately, these Google algorithm updates have been launched to help users find the information they are looking for, more efficiently.