Anyone in SEO worth their pay may have, this week, noticed that Google has been changing the code used to display their search results. Unfortunately these changes, and repeated tweaks to the SERPS code over the past few days, have had the knock on effect of wiping out a good portion of the web-based search ranking analysis tools, as well as some locally run ranking software.
SEOBook are one of the first to report that they have recently updated their online rank checking tools SEO for Firefox and Rank Checker and according to Aaron Wall of SEOBook.com “Both should work as of now, and if any more SERP changes happen we will try to update the extensions as soon as possible.”
The changes however do beg the question. Are the SEO community, and their tools, responsible for so many requests on Google’s servers that they need to take action or are we looking at a simple backend HTML layout update?
The very act of querying Google with automated software is wrong, and according to Google’s webmaster guidelines…
“The sending of automated queries of any sort to our system without express permission in advance from Google. Sending automated queries absorbs resources and includes using any software (such as WebPosition Gold) to send automated queries to Google to determine how a website or webpage ranks in Google search results for various queries.”
So, was it a simple backend update that caused a blip or a deliberate attempt to slow down the SEO community. Lets hear your thoughts?
August 24th, 2008
I have been playing around recently with Google Insights for Search, a brand new search data analysis tool for search marketing specialists.
Just like Google Trends, this new Google search marketing tool offers seasonal and historical trends with search volume shown distributed across regions and cities. Google Insights for Search however goes even further by allowing you to narrow search data to specific categories, location subregions and even user specified date ranges.
Once your search parameters are defined Google Insights for Search not only presents you with historical trend data and regional interest statistics but, in a similar manner to the Google Adwords Keyword Tool, also offers you the top search terms related to your query and a list of the hottest related rising searches.
As wonderful as this search marketing tool is, I do however have to question the validity of the representation of the data. For example: A search for the term ‘Gifts’ with the filters of United Kingdom / All Subregions / Last 12 Months / All Categories produces the following demographics.
Compare this to the same search on Google Trends and the data starts to get a little confusing.
As you can see from the Google Insights for Search results it appears that the Isle of Man may be a market worth exploring for our particular term. For those who are not familiar with the Isle of Man - it is an island nestled between England and Ireland with a population of around 75,000 people. Approx 1/100th of the population of London.
But wait a minute? Google Trends is highlighting Scotland as a popular search market for our term! Both tools, by default use the broad matched version of a keyword so where does the difference in statistics lie?
All-in-all a wonderful search marketing tool, which is still in Beta, so possibly the results may be distorted at this time.
August 7th, 2008
