Renegade Search

On October 18th, Google announced that they have decided to make the default method for searches encrypted. In layman's terms, this means that, when a user is logged in to a Google account, through Gmail, Google+, or any other of their services, site owners will no longer be able to see exactly how a user found their site. While this change will rouse annoyance from quite a few site owners, it actually presents a great opportunity for attentive SEOs who do high-quality work, and might even put a dent in the prominence of so-called 'content farms'.

Before this change, site owners using Google Analytics, Adobe Omniture, or any other decent web analytics package, could track the actual search term that a user entered into Google to get to their site. On our own site, for example, we could track how many of our visitors had searched for 'chicago search marketing' before coming to our home page. Beyond that, we could track their behavior once they landed on our site; Analytics would let us know if those visitors were likely to click around to various pages of our site, and how they differed from users who entered something like 'chicago internet marketing'.

CONTINUE READING »

On par with their biennial report, earlier this year SEOmoz released their search engine ranking factors for 2011. The finished product is a collection of in depth ranking analysis, correlation-based data, and opinions from some of the most well respected SEOs in the community. And while many of the predominant factors that Google uses in their ranking algorithm have remained steady influencers, the sudden impact of social signals on ranking positions, while all things considered still relatively weak, cannot be overlooked. As we move in to 2012, it is evident that Google is honoring social relevance and user experience, and finding ways to incorporate those elements on a greater scale in to their algorithm to impact SERPs for the better.

CONTINUE READING »

Unless you've been hiding under a rock for the last few months, you've probably heard of Google+, the search giant's new social media service. If you were interested in finding out more about the service, a logical first step would be to search Google itself for 'Google+'. As expected, the first result for that phrase is http://plus.gooogle.com, the main page for the service. But if you weren't familiar with the exact branding of the service, and typed 'Google +' (note the space) as a search, you wouldn't find that URL anywhere in the first few pages of the results. Strangely, the latter search term is actually seen by the search engine to be exactly equivalent to simply typing in 'google'; the first result is http://www.google.com.

So what is happening here? Why does adding a single space to the search term drastically alter the results that a user sees? Shouldn't Google know that what you really want is the Google+ homepage? Why is it so confused by such a small difference?

While the details are too tedious to really get into here, what ends up happening is that Google's software interprets a plus sign as an operator. In computer science, operators are shorthand ways to give very specific commands. In this particular instance, a plus sign at the end of the word is (correctly) interpreted as part of what you're looking for. But a plus sign after a space is actually translated to mean the word 'and'. So, searching for 'Google+' is interpreted at face vale, while 'Google +' is understood to mean 'Google And'. (Check out the images below to see what this means).

As it turns out, search engines actually scan every search query for special commands. And even though the special command can cause annoyance as in the example above, they can also be extremely useful, if you know how to use them. With that in mind, here are some special commands that can really help you find whatever it is you're looking for:

CONTINUE READING »

Something that consistently presents a challenge to SEO professionals is striking the balance between optimizing a website for search engines while maintaining effective on-page optimization for user experience. More often than not, a website will do one very well and neglect the other. The question arises, “If you could delegate your resources for optimizing a site for only search engines or humans, which is the better approach?” My immediate response to such a question has in the past been - what is the purpose of having a beautiful, user friendly website if nobody can find it in the first place? And while there may be substance behind that line of reasoning in certain situations, the issue is far more complex than that and such a reaction doesn’t capture the breadth of the problem.

CONTINUE READING »

If your business is currently engaged in an SEO campaign, than its safe to say that you periodically check your search engine rankings for some of your more competitive terms. It's great to keep an eye on your organic rankings, but what if I told you that the rankings you are looking at for your site might not be accurate? That's right, the search results you view on your personal computer could be different if you have visited any of the websites that are showing up.

This is due to personalized search: Google tweaking search results on an individual basis due to user's internet history. This might be great for the average search engine user, but it is of zero help when you are trying to manually check your rankings. With a simple change in your Chrome browser settings you can permanently get rid of this headache and start seeing search results as they should be - depersonalized.

CONTINUE READING »