Articles: Search Engines & Directories

Google + changes

Google have been under continuing pressure from large sites about how “Google pushes it’s own barrow in its search results”.
eg much of the space on the 1st page is taken up with Google Adwords and / or Google Local Search results, Google Images etc.

So Google has recently succumbed to some of this pressure and changed a few things in the Search Results pages (Serps). We don’t know if these are permanent or just an experiment (they won’t tell anyone of course).

Changes they have made are mostly in Local Search results, which have been a good way to get on page 1 for free. They were showing up to 7 results here, but have now reduced this to 3. This is also to make results more mobile friendly – 3 fits better than 7.

And your business’s Google + page is not linked directly from these anymore.

That makes it even more important to try to ensure that you are in these Local results and that your Google + page is effective (it affects this). And Google reviews can affect this – more good reviews on your Google + page affects if you are in the top 3 local results displayed. So keep on focusing on encouraging customer reviews for your business on your Google+ page.

Google has also split out the photo component of your Google+ Page into a standalone product called Google Photos.

For more information see https://moz.com/blog/google-local-snack-pack-shakeup or a more recent article
http://www.searchenginejournal.com/google-links-and-reviews-dropped-from-google-search-results/141262/

And talk to us if you need to know more on this.

Google General, Google Plus, Local search

Google Analytics and Robots

We have reported in the past about visits from some robots recording in your Analytics statistics reports and biasing your sessions and referrals data.

We are seeing more and more of these escaping Google’s methods to try to exclude them. For one client these amounted to 30% of their traffic!

If you are seeing lots of sessions from Brazil it is probably visits from semalt.com and not real visitors
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Google Analytics etc, Our Services, Tips & Tricks

Google Now Favours Mobile Friendly sites

Google has started informing site owners via their Google Webmaster Tools account if it thinks their site is not mobile friendly or has mobile usability errors. Whilst they are not penalising non-mobile friendly sites as such, they are promoting other sites over these. The effect is the same – your competitor’s mobile friendly site is likely to appear in search results above yours. Google’s new algorithm that will increase the use of mobile-friendliness as a ranking signal is due out on 21 April 2015.
Continue reading →

Google General, Mobile Sites, The future?, Web Marketing

Google Analytics Benchmarking

Clients have often asked us if there is a way to compare their site performance against others in the same industry.

Well, since May 2014, Google Analytics has had a benchmarking report that we have been testing for several clients.

Unfortunately it seems that this is way too broad to be of much use – it is only NZ wide and only breaks down to quite broad categories like “Hotels and Accommodations” or Car Rental & Taxi Services” .

So it seems to be too general really to see anything very useful.

Hopefully Google will get much more specific in the future and it will be something that is more meaningful as a benchmarking tool.

Google Analytics etc

Google Analytics – Robots

It seems that Google is still having problems excluding Robots from their Analytics statistics. Robots are automated “crawlers” that are indexing websites, usually for search engines – they are not real live users so can bias your site usage statistics.

Previously Semalt.com was the main robot Google was trying to exclude. We monitor our clients’ Analytics stats regularly and have also identified unwanted visits from 7makemoney.com and buttons-for-website.com. Urlopener is another that is appearing (this is not really a robot but it is not wanted in stats data).

For one client, visits from these robots has amounted to almost 1/3 of their recorded traffic in a period, while for some other clients it is minimal. It can vary from month to month.

We are adding manual filters for these for clients in order to keep their statistics as accurate and meaningful as possible. But there is a limit to how many filters are worth adding or are reasonable to do.

Google needs to find a way to resolve this before their statistics become really meaningless. In the meantime we can help you to exclude these robots if you wish.

Google Analytics etc, SEO

Google Top Searches 2014

Google recently released its list of top 2014 searches – unsurprisingly much the same as the 2013 list apart from topical news items.

Most Googled terms for kiwis: –

On the ‘How to’ list:
how to dream?
how to twerk?”

Number one on the “who is?” list was Jesus.

On the ‘Where is’ list:
Where is Gallipoli?
Where is Glasgow?

Other top searches

The referendum for Scottish independence. Fifa World Cup, followed by actor Robin Williams, Malaysia Airlines, iPhone 6 and actor Jennifer Lawrence

Kiwi news searches included

Malaysian Airlines Crash, Cyclone Lusi, Ukraine News, Robin Williams’ Death and Ebola Outbreak.

Lorde topped the list of most searched Kiwis, and Mona Dotcom made the list but Kim didn’t – I guess he was in the news so much that people already knew what they wanted to about him.

For food it was pancakes, banana cake, chicken recipes, cupcake, mince, chocolate cake, lasagna, brownie, slow cooker and cheesecake

For more on the Google 2014 list and trends see
http://www.cbsnews.com/news/googles-top-2014-search-terms-may-look-familiar/
and
http://www.nzherald.co.nz/internet/news/article.cfm?c_id=137&objectid=11375297

General Interest, Google General