It has been buzzing around the search community for a while, but now it’s official, Google has (again) made changes to how the search results are presented. The long awaited change is mostly focussed on the navigation which moves from the left side to the top.
With the new design elements Google wants to give the search results “a bit more breathing room” and more focus on the actual answers people are looking for, which basically means Knowledge Graph gets more attention. (more…)
As Head of SEO for Mediacom, I am fortunate to have access to a wide array of research studies. Recently one in particular grabbed my attention. The research piece in question was a research piece between Kantar Media/Compete and delved into the search behaviour of natural search – however perhaps more interestingly that of the paid search results as well.
The data itself was collated by Compete and analysed 10′s of millions of search engine results pages generated by a US panel in Q4 2011. That in itself presents a significant sample base and took into account a range of sectors and subjects. (more…)
When Google+ rolled out first we all knew it was about more than just a social network. Sooner or later it would be about integration of that social element into the search engine result pages (SERPS). Step by step we have seen that happening and we now know for sure Google+ is more than ‘just’ a social network.
The latest addition to this integration is one which shows how ‘social’ Google has gotten in the past few years. We all are familiar with the birthday reminders you get on Facebook, showing you which of your friends has a birthday. It does help me sometimes to remind me of birthdays I forgot. Now Google is integrating that same functionality. But not ‘just’ into Google+, into Google.com. (more…)
As someone living in the Netherlands and as someone who is keeping a close eye on what is changing in the industry and with the search engines I have one big problem: localized search. Google tends to localize your search results based on where you are, which means for me in the Netherlands it is quite difficult to see how State of Search is doing in for example Australia or even closer, Spain or France.
There are tools working on solutions for this problem, because for SEOs who work internationally it is difficult to see where you rank. One tool which looks at just this issue is “I Search From“. Here you can see what results you get from a query in any country in the world, in any language you choose. (more…)
Two more new design tests by Google have been ‘spotted’ in the wild. The first one is a follow up to the one we saw last week. The second one show more mixture in the local results but also might just be a bug.
As you know Google tests out a lot. Many of these tests just ‘disappear’ into nothing. A few people see the tests, they didn’t work, and then Google pulls them. When tests start returning, sometimes in a little bit different format, it’s an indication that something is up. Google now seems serious about the tests on their new design without the left sidebar and is changing their local results. (more…)
Google wants Google+ to be a succes, after all it is the idea that everything Google does moves over to the Google+ infrastructure. That means the more people use it, the better. Also because that is the data that Google gathers to then give us back information in for example the search results which is tailored to our needs.
As Maile Ohye explained in a video earlier this week one thing which is important here is trust. As searchers we want to see what the people we trust are sharing. As a website owner we want people with authority to share our content. And in search all the identity and trust levels are integrated.
Today I did a search on Google and found the result below:
So you are now ranking where you want to be, but you simply are not seeing the results that your research tells you to expect. It could be that you suffer from having weak meta description tags. Don’t listen to the “experts” that say it doesn’t matter – let’s billboard your page!
A lot of search marketers now believe that the meta description is meaningless. They say that since because it is not a part of the algorithm in determining rankings that they will shift their focus from it. I ask why, they give reasons, and we both end up feeling unfulfilled from that conversation. So during my drive from Michigan to Florida, I got some motivation for this months article. (more…)
Google is on the move again making minor adjustments to the SERPS. Usually that means within reasonable amount of time we will be seeing more bigger changes at Google, so it is time to keep our eyes open again.
Yesterday we spotted that Google is now offering you the possibility to thank your Google+ friends who +1-ed an item so it would show up in your search results. Today we can highlight another three changes to how Google displays personalized results in the SERPS. (more…)
In case you didn’t notice, there is a big discussion going on whether or not Google is pushing their own properties too much. And with the new “Search Plus Your World” that discussion focusses mainly on Google+. And with reason, because the suggested users in the right pane are all Google+ users.
You would expect those users to be, to say the least, active on Google+. But as pointed out before on other blogs, people like Mark Zuckerberg still are suggested even though they don’t actually use the service. This however is not a real big surprise, because it is about relevance and Mark Zuckerberg is relevant to the search term “Facebook” so it kind of makes sense. They should however maybe also show his Facebook account, but that is the discussion and I don’t want to focus on that here.
There is something else. Suggested connections do not only turn up in the right pane, they also show up underneath ‘regular’ search results. And it seems the connection doesn’t have to be relevant or because of Google+. (more…)
We know that Google is pushing Google+ as much as they can, trying to make Google+ the center of everything they do. And they would love it to be the center of everything they do. And as I highlighted right after the launch of Google+: we will be seeing integration with search results sooner or later.
Today Google has taken a next, very important and very big step towards just that: “Search Plus Your World”. From now on you will not just find content from the web, your search results will be mixed with personal results which have been shared with you personally. (more…)
We know that Google is pushing Google+ like no other. We also know that they are more and more focussed on person. Which means that on one side personalized search is playing a bigger role and on the other side they want to know more about us, to give us that personalized feeling. On top of that they all want us to use Google+.
Now that people search is something which search engines would dive on we already predicted a few years back. Back then we thought a specific profile page would show up at the top of the results, a page you could manage. I even adviced Bing to make such a page. But Google has beaten them on it. Google+ now is that page. Today I saw something which gets very close to what I predicted a few years ago. And the center of it all is Google+. (more…)
Google has decided it wants to share more often the changes it makes to improve the search quality of their SERPS, which means algorithms and SERPS. Last month we already mentioned several changes. Google now feels we should be updated each month. That’s why they will be giving a monthly update on their blog.
This month they again made clear they have improved their search. Another ten changes, some more important than others. The most important ones? More autocomplete predictions, fresher and more complete blog search results and original content. (more…)
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