How Google penalises sites with too many of the same URL – Tested!
Last week I got an insight into how Google penalties work if you use a URL too many times in a blog entry.
In my recent article, I covered how scammers target Sedo users.
The article was included in the Google index within the hour, as it usually is for my blog, and for the following three days I had 80-100 daily unique users reach it through Google.
Then on the fourth day - all traffic to the page from Google stopped. Nothing. Nada.
After a quick investigation, I found that that particular page was no longer included in the Google index. The rest of my site was unaffected.
I looked at it in more detail and theorised that because I quoted the correspondence with the scammer, which repeatedly included his email address ("murphy@eliteinvestment.net"), Google must have decided that this was a spam message and excluded it from its index - probably because Google ignored the "@" sign and treated the companyname.com part as a URL, thus viewing it as being repeated many times over. The other option is that it doesn’t like too many repeats of the same email address, although i like my first theory better.
I decided to test my theory, and reduced the total number of references to the company from a total of ten URLs/emails (eliteinvetment.net) to only three. I then updated my sitemap and pinged Google to re-crawl my site.
Sure enough, a week later my article has been re-indexed, and is hitting traffic again. An insight into the mind of the (fluffy) beast.
It also shows that my pages were first ingested and indexed, and only a few days later the penalty was applied.
Oh Sh*t – Google Chrome Doesn’t Really do THAT?!
Your passwords and indiscretions for world+wife to see.
OK - I admit it's a problem that's also inherent in Firefox, but Google’s new browser, supposedly built from the ground up, should really NOT do this. It's absolutely effing bonkers!
What am I on about? Google Chrome allowing users to view ALL their saved passwords for different websites, without any credentials. Not stars nor asterisks – the whole blooming thing in plain ascii, letters, number and pet names alike!
If you are viewing this in Chrome, click on the little options wrench on the top right, then select Options, and click on the Minor Tweaks tab.
Here you will see a button called "Show all passwords" - which does exactly that. I repeat – it shows ALL your passwords to anyone who uses your PC.
Your husband's secret site communications, your daughter's online diary, your co-worker's MySpace account - all there – all just a few clicks away. And if you happen on an Internet cafe using Chrome - you may well find Mr Ignorant’s most secret passwords for his email account: the same ones he uses for his bank and eBay accounts and for buying books on Amazon, and the rest of the poor unfortunate’s life (now over).
Oh - and for those who missed the obvious: if it's stored in a way that's visible to your naked eye, it's only a matter of time before some exploit/trojan/bad-thang will access it too. Passwords should not be visible. End of.
Call me melodramatic - but that's plain stupid!
Footnote: Firefox users - for info on how to protect your passwords click here.
The VPAMAZON Voucher – A Story of Missed Opportunities (or: “how not to market on Google”)
Enter "VPAMAZON" or “VPAMAZON2” into Google to get these great offers, said the promo slip, that arrived with my Amazon book in the post today. It was advertising premium business cards.
I was intrigued by this marketing tactic. Was the advertiser sure that no one else would muscle in on his preferred search terms? So I went and searched for vpamazon, and what I found was even worse than someone muscling in on your turf: it was the advertiser themselves not using their own term in an effective way:
If you look carefully, you will notice that there is a paid ad at the top promoting 90% off business cards, which is where the promoter wanted you to look. The problem with this approach is that most people's eyes are trained to skip ads, and would look at the organic search results first. There they will see a link to an empty website (a Wordpress tag that is empty), and probably now this blog entry.
Even as a savvy web user I went to the Wordpress entry first. Only when I was confused by not finding anything, did I look at the advertising at the top, though some people would miss that altogether. Organic results tend to get most of the eyeballs.
And how to remedy this problem? Easy - just create a page on your site using the terms vpamazon and vpamazon2 like I did here. Duh! Why the advertiser didn't think to do this before launching an expensive Amazon campaign is quite strange indeed... Perhaps now they will...
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Google Launches “LIVELY” – The Virtual World to Embed into Your Website
Lively Google - Google Lively: Google launches Google Lively 3D Service.
Note: If you are looking for an article on how to embed Google Lively into your website go here.
Not a day passes without a new 3D world start-up launching, trying to cash in on the new 3d world fashion. The aim (apart from getting some of that free-circulating funding cash) is to try and make something usable out of a technology that is still ahead of its time and of the hardware we use in our homes.
It all started when Linden Labs created a great PR success out of Second Life, although the PR didn't quite match up with usability and user enthusiasm. Most Second Life users would come in, play with it for a day, and then leave. Either their computers weren't up for the job, or they found navigation and moving around a bit too clunky.
Another take on the 3d Worlds proposition is to create an embeddable 3D room, which webmasters can add to their portals or websites, and decorate as they wish. In effect, the 3D element is a plug-in to enhance sites, and thus it appeals to the Long Tail as well as corporates.
Google has now joined this trend and launched "Lively", a 3d room you can create in minutes and add to your site. This is where Google's principle that their engineers can work on a pet project 20% of their time really comes into its own. Niniane Wang, Engineering Manager at Google was responsible for this one, and in the official Google Blog said:
A while ago, I looked around the social web and wished that it could be less static. Sure, you can leave a comment on a blog or write a text blurb on your social networking profile. But what if you want to express yourself in a more fun way, with 3D graphics and real-time avatar interactions? I started asking this question as a 20% project, and I'm excited to announce today's release of Lively by Google - a 3D virtual experience that is the newest addition to Google Labs.
The Lively team wants to help people experience another dimension of the web. We hope you will use the product to express yourself with and without words, and to do this in the places you already visit on the web.
If you enter a Lively room embedded on your favorite blog or website, you can immediately get a sense of the room creator's interests, just by looking at the furniture and environment they chose. You can also express your own personality by customizing your avatar's look, showing people who you are without having to say a word. Of course, you can chat with each other, and you can also interact through animated actions. In our user research, we’ve been amazed at how much more poignant it is to receive an animated hug than seeing the text “[[hug]]”. (source).
As this is a "20% project", I wouldn't read too much into it as Google's attempts at entering a new niche or making another world domination statement. It is simply one of their engineer projects that actually worked out as a good usable product. Whether our hardware is still a little too rigid for navigating 3D is a pertinent question, but it's better than quite a few others that I've seen out there.
UPDATE: Google Lively has announced that it is shutting down its service on 31 December 2008. More details here.
How to Write for Google – SEO Article #2
This is a continuation from: How do I get my site into Google? - SEO Article #1
SEO Article #2: “How to Write for Google“ (and some stuff about toads).
I'll start with my usual caveat: you should write content that people would like to read, or as Google puts it: 'Always focus on the users and not on search engines'. Even if you are one of the scum-of-the-earth spammers who create pages just to trap innocent people (who searched for Niagara, and you gave them Viagra instead) - you should entertain the notion that they're not going to buy your overpriced-counterfeit-drugs -that'll-probably-kill-them, unless you actually give them some information that they would like to read, or that is useful to them -- and neither will Google (include your site, that is). Remember also that content is king and the better your content - the better you will rank.
But there are other things you could do to improve your positioning: You will be better noticed on Google if you have two things:
1. Get links from other websites to yours - Google treats every link to your site like a 'vote' of confidence. Not only that, but if the websites that link to you have many other sites voting for them, then they have a higher ranking, and therefore you have a higher ranking. This ranking is referred to by Google as PageRank. And you can see a site's PageRank in the Google Toolbar, if you have one installed (Read more about PageRank here and here).
IMPORTANT NOTE ABOUT PAGERANK: when you first start publicising your website, don't worry too much about PageRank. It can take months until Google calculates your PageRanks, and by then, hopefully, you would have worked on getting lots of links from people who love your excellent site. This site, for example, was launched in May 08, and (at the time of writing) has still not been pageranked. It doesn't stop it from appearing at the top of Google search results many times over, and that all has to do with its content, and how it is presented (See below).
2. Write well for Google. No one outside of Google HQ knows exactly what formulae Google uses to assess whether your content is good. It is safe to assume that it tries to weed out spam, and that it looks for signs that your page grammar indicates a proper language article, as opposed to just a succession of words. But there are things that will help your writing appear higher in Google rankings. I say this from my own experience in getting to the very top of search results, even if your site is new and your PageRank is zero:
- Go niche - if no other site on the web uses the word combination "What are hulk frogs?" and your site does, then when there is a sudden interest in hulk frogs, your site will appear at the top of search results. It's as simple as that. If, on the other hand, you try to write about "The Movie Hulk", you will be competing with millions of other hulk sites, and are much less likely to reach top position. Once you've digested the consequences of this effect, you will realise that if you cover a niche area, use niche expressions, or tackle niche questions and topics, you are much more likely to get noticed. Of course, if your website is all about Britney Spears (you
- Consider word density - word density refers to the number of times a word or expression appears in an article. If you write about cane toad feeding habits and you repeat the term "cane toad feeding habits" and the expression "cane toad" many times, Google will conclude that your article is about cane toads and their feeding. If your article has more of these words than another article written by someone else, Google may well conclude that yours is more relevant to the search term "cane toad feeding", and place your site above the other. (See what I did there?).
Of course things aren't as straightforward as a count of the number of words, and your search-results position depends on other factors as well, but this is a very useful method, and works well for me. I should probably also warn you (again) not to try and trick Google here. Use a word or expression too much, and you might be under suspicion -- and Google will penalise your site or ban it as spam. My advice thus is: bear in mind the words that people will search for to reach your kind of content. Then use them often, and use them in expressions that are likely to appear in searches.
- Consider word weight and importance - Google gives more weight to elements on your page that are enclosed in title tags like h1, h2 etc. By using these tags you are saying: this text carries more weight. In the same way, Bold and Italics can signal that a word, expression or sentence is important.
- Consider word positioning - The closer to the top the more important. If you start a paragraph, the closer a word is to the start of the paragraph the more weight it has, etc. It is better to say “The feeding habits of the cane toad – is today’s topic” rather than “today’s topic is the feeding habits of the cane toad.”
I know it is very difficult to bear all these things in mind when writing, but after a while they become second nature. In some articles you pay them more attention, because you want to hit your niche harder, and in some you don't, because you are writing for volume, or for fun.
It’s worth noting that this article may prove its own point in rather an unfortunate way, by attracting a lot of zoologist in search of the feeding habits of the cane toad. To them, I apologise. It’s just the way search engines work.
There are further writing tips for Google, and I might get back to them in a later article. For now though, thanks for reading.
UPDATE: To prove that I wasn't just talking nonsense, search Google for the keywords 'feeding habits kane toad' by clicking here. Now re-read the article and you will see why this is.
Do come back to ThatDanny.com for the next article in the series (or subscribe to this blog to get notified when it is published).
SEO articles in this series:
How do I get my site into Google? - SEO Article #1
How to Write for Google - SEO Article #2
How do I get my site into Microsoft Live Search? - SEO Article #3
What’s a “NO FOLLOW” tag?
How do I get my site into Google? – SEO Article #1
Getting your site into to Google is the easy part, getting it to appear in relevant Google searches is quite another. But let’s start with how you get your site into the world’s most popular search engine.
SEO Article #1: "How do I get my site into Google?".
Step one: create your website before you submit it, and before you promote it in any way. Make sure you follow these important rules:
- a. Your site should include content that people would actually want to read. If people find your site engaging and informative, they will link to it. If they link to it, you stand a better chance to rank high in Google search results (more about rankings in a future article). If you only follow one piece of my advice – the above should be it. As Google itself advises: "Always focus on the users and not on search engines." This is very true when you create content, although there are many ways to get even better exposure. In this series I will cover the things you need to know, to get you ahead of the pack.
- b. When you create your engaging content, make sure it includes a lot of text. Google loves text, and is much more likely to include your site if it is text-rich. But refer back to point 'a' above. Create text-rich content that is interesting, not just text for the sake of text. Content is king. Good content is the emperor.
- c. Make sure you know how to write for Google. This involves using the right keywords in your content, putting them in the right places and in the right way.
- d. Don’t spam or use any dirty tricks. There are a lot of dirty tricks that people use to try and get higher Google rankings for their websites. Sometimes they make it to the top, but more often their site will get penalised by Google or even blocked as spam. And there are legitimate ways of getting ahead of the crowd, so don't sweat it. Do it properly and the rest will follow.
- e. Unless you absolutely know what you're doing, avoid the following: frames, Macromedia Flash, iframes, content inserted by JavaScript and image maps. All the above may be difficult for Google to read when it checks your site. It uses an automated indexing system (known as "Googlebot") to read your site and rate its content, and if it can’t – you’re stuffed.
So you've created your site, it abounds with great text content and is appealing to visitors. Now you are ready to start what is referred to as SEO or SEM.
What is SEO? SEO= Search Engine Optimisation.
What is SEM? SEM= Search Engine Marketing.
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Step two - Let Google know that your site exists:
- a. Submit a sitemap - now is the time to finally tell Google about your site. One of the most effective ways of doing this is by submitting a sitemap.
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What is a Sitemap? a sitemap is a file that tells Google about your website's structure, what pages you have on your site and some further useful information. You can see what a Google sitemap looks like by clicking on the "sitemap" link at the bottom of this page.
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The easiest way to create a sitemap is by using this free website. You need to save this file to your hosting space using the name "sitemap.xml" (without the quotes).*
*This tutorial assumes that you know how to upload a file to your website. If not, look for instructions from your web hosting company on how to do this.
- b. Got a sitemap? Great stuff! Now go to the Google Webmasters website and sign up. If you already have a Gmail account you don't even need to register, just use the same details. Once registered, follow the prompts to tell Google about your new site (you have to enter your site's URL and follow the verification process, which is explained very clearly there).
- c. Now that you're in, and you've proved to Google that you are the rightful owner of your site, click on the "Sitemap" link on the left-hand navigation bar, and choose to "add a sitemap". Follow the instructions, and voila, you can sit back smugly. Google knows about your site.
NOW WHAT? If you followed all the advice in this article, and your site has good content as described above, it will be included in Google within a few days. As you'll realise very quickly though, this is just the start of your journey. You've created a website and you want the world to see it, not for it to languish in search results page number 33. You want it to rank high and appear in Google searches. You want it to be visible. We’ll cover the next steps to achieve this in SEO article #2.
Come back to ThatDanny.com for the next article in this series (or subscribe to this blog to get notified when it is published).
SEO articles in this series:
How do I get my site into Google? - SEO Article #1
How to Write for Google - SEO Article #2
How do I get my site into Microsoft Live Search? - SEO Article #3
What’s a “NO FOLLOW” tag?
Oh dear, Google Trends #1 Hot Search today is “what to do if inside of girl gets wet”
Apologies in advance for this post. It is presented here for scientific reasons only...
And I kid you not. Here is the screenshot:
There seem to have been some problems with Google Trends over the last 24 hours with the content not updating for a while, and then this one rose to the top, circumventing any sanitation filters.
According to the Google Trends "About" page:
"Hot Trends reflects what people are searching for on Google today. Rather than showing the most popular searches overall, which would always be generic terms like "weather," Hot Trends highlights searches that have sudden surges in popularity. Our algorithm analyzes millions of web searches performed on Google and displays those searches that deviate the most from their historic traffic pattern. The algorithm also filters out spam and removes inappropriate material." (The emphasis on the last bit is mine-DD).
You may wonder how this all came about, and like a lot of things it started, innocently enough, when someone who was obviously in the midst of a barbeque, ran the following search: "what to do if inside of GRILL gets wet." Google offered an alternative search, replacing "grill" with "girl":
The guy obviously thought it all hilarious, and hurried to post it on Reddit, where it made the front page. The rest, as they say, is history...
To be fair to Google Trends, the terms "wet" and "girl" do not necessarily stand out as filth on their own. But it is still late afternoon in California, and you would have thought someone would notice. And while we're on the subject, the copyright issue at the bottom of the page is a bit out of date, and still reads "2007".
Update: I dropped Google Trends an email at 22.57 UK time, and within ten minutes I got a thank you back, and they removed the entry. I also noted to them the wrong copyright date. I should get a Google award, or something.
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