July 7, 2004
In
This Issue:
1. Top 10 Rankings Within a Week?
2. In the News - Microsoft's New Search Engine, MSN's and Yahoo's
New Look
3. More News Headlines
4. This Week's Q&A - Is Google Showing Different Results Based
on Search Preferences?
5. Wrapping It Up
_________________
Top 10 Rankings Within a Week?
How would you like to launch a new product on your web site and
rank in the Top 10 in Google for the appropriate search terms within
a week? And I'm not talking about buying advertising that puts
you in the top AdWords position. I mean ranking well in Google's
regular search listings. Not possible, you say? Sure it is.
A client recently added new material to their web site. The material
is about a hot, new product that's just hitting the market, and
our client's main competitor was already advertising this product
and appearing at the top of the Google SERPs on several searches
related to this product. The competitor had a running start and
we had to play catch up.
We added the new material, making sure it was presented with
both user-friendliness and search engine-friendliness in mind.
The material
is "deep" -- in other words, there's a lot of quality
information to be read by users and search engine crawlers. But
we still needed to get Google to find this new material, and fast.
All it took was one link. We linked from our owtweb.com home page
to the new material, and within a matter of days Google had found
the link, found the new material, and crawled it all. And, for
a week or two, our client surpassed their competitor to rank No.
1 in Google for the important search terms related to this product.
At the moment, the new material is still ranking very highly (Top
5 on most keywords) in Google, but the SERPs have settled into
their regular pattern of ups and downs.
Admittedly, we were helped in this case by the fact that there
are very few web pages about this product. But the point is
still valid. And the point is? Google loves web pages that are
updated
regularly with fresh content.
Google loves our home page, owtweb.com, because we post news
headlines and articles there almost every day. At the moment,
Google is crawling
our home page about every 2-3 days. And when you have a web
site that Google crawls regularly, you have power. We helped
our client
rank in the Top 10 in less than a week. You can have similar
power -- to launch a new product and get good rankings quickly
-- by
keeping your web site updated regularly with fresh, quality
content. We talk about this briefly as Point #5 of our Search
Engine Success
Checklist, and we'll expand on it soon with a more in-depth
article. Until then, ask yourself if you're updating your
web site as
often as you should. If not, isn't it time to start?
Search Engine Success Checklist
_________________
In The News
Microsoft Search Arrives ... Sort Of
Last week we discussed Microsoft's plans to develop its own search
engine. This week, you get a sneak peek. Microsoft has made public
a "Search Technology Preview" that offers the first
glimpse at their search engine -- and the first proof that it
actually exists! If you want to play with this and see where
your own site(s) rank, keep in mind that it's very much still
in development. It doesn't do a good job (yet) of dealing with
multiple listings from one site or with web page spam. And it
has no clue about "authority sites" -- how else do
you explain that eBay isn't in the Top 15 on searches for "auction" or "auctions".
But these are things that can be improved over time. Here's the
link if you want a peek, but Microsoft has warned this preview
won't be available too long.
Microsoft Search Technology Preview
Meanwhile, Over at MSN Search...
Microsoft also introduced last week a facelift for its current
search engine, MSN Search. The new home is very spartan, very
Google-esque, with little more than a search box. On the search
results pages,
advertisements are now more clearly separated from editorial
listings. MSN Search continues to use a truncated version of
Yahoo's search
index, but with the new facelift MSN is not showing sites that
have paid to be included in Yahoo's index.
MSN Search
Meanwhile, Over at Yahoo!...
Yahoo! is now doing a "test drive" on its new layout,
which -- don't tell me this surprises you -- looks quite similar
to Google. The main search page looks the same, but once you do
a search, the SERPs you get are where you'll see the new stuff.
New Yahoo Search
_________________
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.
Search tangles
July 06, 2004 - PC World
Search results are being manipulated to a greater degree than
ever.
MSN Search gets new look; Microsoft gets new search engine
July 01, 2004 - Search Engine Watch
More headlines: http://www.owtweb.com/news/
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This Week's Q&A
Matt,
I've noticed something in Google that I can't explain. Normally,
I have my Google preferences set to show 10 listings per page.
But sometimes I like to change that to show 100 listings at
a time. But when I do, the search results appear to be different.
Is Google using two different ranking systems, and showing
one
or the other based on how many listings you want to see per
page?
Jill
Hi Jill --
No, I don't think that's the case. There are two reasons why
you might see different results at 10 listings per page
compared to
100 listings per page:
1) Every search you do may end up being routed to a different
data center, so it's very possible to see slightly different
results
within moments of two exact searches.
2) When Google finds two listings from the same site
in the SERPs to be displayed, it grabs the second listing
and moves
it to
an indented position right after the first listing.
That happens much
more often when you set your display to 100 listings
then
when you're at 10, for example. Ergo ... it often appears
as if
the SERPs are different, when in reality all you're
seeing is the
clustering of results from the same site throughout
your 100 listings.
(Have a question? Email questions@owtweb.com)
_________________
Wrapping it Up
I hope you've never been called or contacted by a search engine
optimization firm from Las Vegas called Traffic Power. They're
apparently in more than a little bit of hot water.
http://www.seoconsultants.com/traffic-power/
If you're considering hiring someone to make your web site more
search engine-friendly, that's a good learning experience. You
may also want to check out an article on our web site, Choosing
an SEO/SEM Company.
See you next week! Thanks for reading,
Matt McGee
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