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On Oct 27th Google announced a major change in local search results. The changes give more prominence to the Google Places results.
Like the old map search results, the Places results are placed near the top of the page. The map overlay has been enlarged and placed in the right column, previously reserved for Adwords (PPC). Surprisingly, the map overlays the PPC, so as you scroll down the page – the top PPC listings are hidden ‘behind’ the map.
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I have been visiting the UK for the last few weeks. It was a bit of a “whirl wind” tour “5 cities in 14 days”. There was so much to see that 14 days per city wouldn’t have been enough.
Among the items waiting for me when I got back was a request to do a SEO audit on a website that had recently been updated. One of the problems was so common that I thought I would pass it on.
I first checked the robots.txt file. This is the file that tells the robots (search engines) which pages pages you want them to exclude from their index. Google, and the other major search engines, take the robots.txt as gospel and obeys all the entries. Getting the robots.txt wrong is the quickest way to get your site ignored by the search engines.
Unfortunately, it is a sad fact that many, dare I say most, people claiming to be web designers either don’t know about or forget to check the robots.txt. In this case the txt was blocking the search engines from a directory that no longer existed – not a problem. And, pointing to the sitemap.xml file.
The sitemap.xml, or sitemap, is a complete listing of all the pages that you want the search engines to index. And, while the search engines have a method of submitting sitemaps, they can also ‘discover’ the sitemap if it is listed in the robots.txt.
IMHO, all websites should have a sitemap, with ONE BIG PRIVISO – IT MUST BE KEPT UPTO DATE!.
One of the key pieces of information provided by the sitemap is the last time a page was modified. The search engines use this as a short cut. If the page hasn’t been modified since the last time they indexed the site – there is no reason to check that page for new content. It saves the search engines time, and reduces your bandwidth usage. But, this works only – ONLY if the sitemap is upto date.
Sadly, it hadn’t been updated since 2009.
Fortunately, the major search engines were ignoring the “last modified” tag and viewing the new pages. They new content apperared to be indexed as the new description meta tags were appearing in the SERP. However, this is sub-optimal.
A current sitemap is the best way to ensure all your pages are at least being indexed. Don’t forget to update it when you do your next site update or add new content.
Those of us ‘of a certain age’ will remember MAD magazines ‘Spy VS Spy’ cartoon feature. (MAD may still be running the cartoon – it has been a LONG time since I bought a copy.) The cartoon features the black and white coloured spies. Inevitably, one or the other would come to some terrible end. During the early 60′s a third character, ‘Lady Grey’, was introduced, ‘Spy VS Spy VS Spy’. Both the black and white spy were in love with her. And, she always got the best of both of them.
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A few years ago I saw an article saying Google had applied for a patented on the concept of basing search results on the users response to the items. The particular application quoted in the article was to base future results on how long a user spent on a page before returning the the search engine. Since then Google has refined the technique to what we now see as personalized search.
Personalized search means your search results are based on your past searches. For example if you are trying to determine the position of your website on the search engine results page (SERP) and continually click on the page once you find it, you may see it rise to a higher position. The search engine has learned your preference for that page when used with a specific set of keywords. Now, the SERP you see has no relevance to that seen by other users searching for the same term.
This means that a high SERP position can no longer be used as the ultimate measure of a websites success in bringing traffic to a site. As personalized search becomes more refined the differences between what you see and what your neighbour sees for the same search results will become more varied.
Search engines are already doing a good job of geo-targeting search results. (see Island Pizza Beats Pizza Hut ) So, a search for a plumber here in Comox is not going to give the same results as a search for an plumber in Victoria or even Campblell River.
So, how do you measure the success of a site? Qualified traffic!
Traffic by itself is a rather useless measure of a sites success. Qualified traffic, users that remain on the site, view at least two pages or, better yet, take some action that will lead to a sale, is the only true measurement. of success.
We still need to use the tools to view the SERP position for someone who doesn’t have a history with your page or keywords. And, we still need tools to get the results of searches from different geographical areas. But, these results now have to be viewed through the lens of personalized search.
Pinbud – An Interesting New Service
I got a comment from Lucien at Pinbud.com. He pointed out a spelling error in one of my posts. Spelling mistakes happen, even when you are using a spell checker. In this case the mistake was in the title, which I hadn’t run through the spell checker.
I hadn’t heard of PinBud before – so I checked out the site. It is a search engine for finding trades people within your geographic area. And, it is REALLY good.
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