Happy St.
Patrick's Day!
In This Issue:
1. Local Search Takes Another Step Forward
2. In the News
3. More News Headlines
4. This Week's Q&A
5. Wrapping It Up
_________________
Local Search Takes Another Step Forward
This is what happens when I start to write the newsletter too
far in advance: I'd already finished this section of introductory
comments with some information and thoughts on designing web pages
for different platforms (PC vs. Mac), different browsers (Explorer,
Netscape, Safari), etc. ... when all of a sudden Google decides
to move its Local Search tool out of Google Labs and into "Beta" testing
on their main site. So scratch the cross-platform web design discussion;
we'll save that for next week or some other rainy day.
Local search is the future, so let's get started talking about
it now. Actually, we started last week with Yahoo's SmartView
technology, which is a pretty cool way to implement locally-oriented
search
results. And Google's local search tool is likewise a strong
entry into this aspect of search.
Maybe the first thing to do is clarify what exactly we mean by "local
search". Think of it in terms of putting the yellow pages
online. Sometimes when you search the web, you want results for
a specific area -- hotels in Minneapolis, for example, or plumbers
in the Tri-Cities. Search engines have never been very good at
providing targeted results like this. There are, for example, several "Tri-Cities" areas
in states across the country. Chances are, when you look for a
local business (such as plumbers), you go to the yellow pages first,
not to the Internet.
Well, as Google and Yahoo and others get better at geo-targeting
search results to your location, you may find yourself turning
to the web instead of the yellow pages to find local businesses.
Right now, the major search engines are in a race to provide
the best local search service. Why? Because they see a lot
of dollar
signs from advertising. Think of all the local businesses that
would love to advertise on a page of search results that are
geared specifically
toward the local geographic area....
What this means for us as web developers and business consultants,
and for you as web site owners, is that we will all need
to make sure our web sites have detailed information about where
our
business is located.
_________________
In The News
As mentioned above, Google introduced "Google Local" this
morning. It's a tool geared toward helping searchers find relevant,
local information on the web. It's currently in BETA mode on Google.com,
which means it's a work-in-progress and Google is still developing
and testing the system.
How It Works: When you do a search on Google, and Google believes
that you're looking for geographically-based information, the
top of the search results will offer web sites pulled from Google
Local.
For example, do a search for "richland pizza" (without
the quotes) and the top of the page offers a link that says "Local
results for pizza near Richland, WA 99352" and three smaller
links related to your search. Clicking on the main "Local
results" link takes you to Google Local. (Note: These results
don't always appear in the main Google.com search engine. You
can instead access Google Local directly through its own local
search form:
http://local.google.com/ )
Google Local presents you with a list of local businesses that
it feels are related to your search for "richland pizza," along
with address and phone numbers, and a "Related Web Pages" column.
Google hasn't announced specifically where the local results
are coming from. They only say the results are pulled from third
party
yellow pages and business directory providers, as well as from
Google's main search engine index.
Listings are not displayed in alphabetical order here, nor are
they based in proximity to the city/zip code being searched (although
it appears that way in our "richland pizza" example).
Results are listed in order of relevance to the overall search.
As Google says on its Google Local Help page:
"As with all other Google search results, Google Local
ranks listings based on their relevance to the search terms you've
entered
and
not solely by geographic distance. Sometimes a business that
is farther away is more likely to have what you're looking for
than
a business that's closer."
When you find the business you're looking for, clicking on the
business name takes you to more information about that business,
including a map of its location, a form to get driving directions,
and web pages related to this business. These related web pages
might have reviews or other commentary and information about
the business. And you can zoom in and zoom out on the map as
needed.
Overall, it's a good first step. It doesn't have the pizzazz
that Yahoo's SmartView offers, but Google has always been more
about
substance than style. There are some oddities I've found in playing
with Google Local today: The SERPs are different if you type
in just a zip code, as compared to just a city name ... and different
yet again if you search for the city name and the zip. That's
odd.
And the location information changes, too. Type in the zip code,
and one of our clients is .1 miles away. Type in the city name
and suddenly they're .7 miles away. I asked about this on a web
developers' message board, and a Google employee responded thusly: "I
suspect the city vs. ZIP codes have slightly different centroids
listed, so that could account for small differences." He also
reiterated the fact that it's still a Beta product and improvements
will be made.
Right now, Google Local shows no advertising on the search result
pages. But it will soon enough. And local businesses will then
have a new venue to advertise on the web strictly to a local
audience.
Google Local:
http://local.google.com/
Google Local Help page
http://www.google.com/help/faq_local.html
Google Local Search news release:
http://www.google.com/press/pressrel/local.html
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More News Headlines
Here are a few news headlines worth your time to read.
These are just some of the headlines we've posted
to OWTweb.com in recent
days.
How to spot search engine spam: Doorway pages
March 15, 2004 - ClickZ.com
Search upstarts storm Google's gates
March 11, 2004 - News.com
Rivals are combing over the company's business and technology
for signs of weakness that could cut short its reign as the
king of
Web search.
Diary of a Google Gazumpee
March 11, 2004 - Search Engine Guide
I'm afraid we had been gliding on the coattails of Google for
too long. Sometimes you just need a good kick in the pants.
More headlines: http://www.owtweb.com/news/
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This Week's Q&A
Hi Matt,
We recently did an overhaul of our web site trying to make it
easier for search engines to find us. We concentrated on rewriting
the
content with all of our important keywords and key phrases. We
fixed up our title tags and other things that we understand are
important to getting higher search engine rankings. But we're
still not seeing any results. It's been about six months. How
long does it normally take to see an improvement after making
changes like these? Thanks.
Bill
Hi Bill -- There's no fixed answer to this. It really depends
how often your site is being crawled. If your site is getting
crawled
often, and if you did the right things with your web site overhaul,
you can expect to see an improvement a lot more quickly than
six months.
I took a look at your site and did a little research, and I
believe the main thing keeping you from high search engine
rankings is
a lack of incoming links. I kinda touched on this last week,
but itt bears repeating: the more incoming links you have from
quality,
relevant sites, the higher you should be ranked in search engines.
Right now, it looks like you have no incoming links at all to
your site. All search engines use "link popularity" as a key
element of determining how to rank web sites -- the more links
you have from other sites, the better you'll do. So all the changes
to the web site won't have a lot of impact at this point.
Let me encourage you to read the article we just posted on OWTweb.com,
The
Importance of Links.
(Have a question? Email questions@owtweb.com)
_________________
Wrapping it Up
Bruce Clay is a well-known Internet business consultant and for
some time now he's offered a wonderful "Search Engine Relationship
Chart" that shows all the major search engines, who feeds
data to whom, etc. He just updated the chart recently to reflect
that Yahoo no longer gets data from Google. I shared this link
with others in the OWT office, and the comment came back: "You
should show that chart to everyone thinking about doing SEO on
their own. That'll make them consider hiring an expert!" Hehehe.
It's probably true. See for yourself:
http://www.bruceclay.com/searchenginerelationshipchart.htm
(It's in Flash, but a PDF is also available.)
See you next week!
Thanks for reading,
Matt McGee
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