SEO Rocks

Groupon has become Google Offers in the US, having checked it out a little, its only available in the US as the moment but its quick to detect that you are logged in and ask to spam send you offers.

NOTE****** I have just realised that Google didn’t buy Groupon! I thought they did but it seems they rejected the offer for $6Bn.

My auto presumption that it was Groupon was because it was so familiar as the Groupon website…. Naughty Google!

Not everyone knows this, but Google actually holds information on you… no serious they do! And with that information, they target adverts through their network straight to your screen.

But did you also know, you can change what info they have on you and you can also block it. Its all located in the adsence add’s preferences.

Navigate to https://www.google.com/ads/preferences, on this page there is a ‘remove or Edit’ link, click this and be exposed to what Google knows about you!

I’ve recently deleted my data to see how fast it re generates, its been about a month and the data isn’t quite as accurate this time round, however, its not far of, the gender and age range is correct, im located in Manchester so that’s correct. Dance music and radio is spot on, i check the swimming pool opening times a lot and check my online banking.

The only thing i cant agree on is the Northeast Brazilian category, not sure what that is… honest!

Doing a search this morning i came across a Japanese listing in google.co.uk, These updates from Google are getting better and better

I little pointless blog post today. Google recently announced that it was improving its indexing of common symbols, which include the ‘+’ symbol.

Im sure its no coincidence that this is now a priority when google + doesn’t rank for the search term ‘google +’!!

Google has announced a change to its page layout algorithm in a change that instantly made me think Google were being very hypocritical. The new layout will affect pages that have little content but lots of advertising above the fold when a page loads.

I instantly thought of me using my netbook, or the millions of people now using 10″ tables or smaller, the amount of times a google search has been assessed with only PPC on show and loading youtube with ridiculously large adverts across the top.

When you read into it more however, this is not what Google is gunning for, Google are penalising website that make it hard to find the content on the website, if the page loads and the content isn’t visible with a scroll or makes it hard to access content then they are dropping.

Google has said that 1% of searches are effected, initially a small percentage, but this is still a large amount of searches. Thinking more about it, it dawned on me that it’s mainly file sharing websites that use this trick. The download links are generally at the bottom of the page, they have a timer on them to use, the links are always smaller than the adverts, adverts generally dominate the top of the page.

This seems a little coincidental that on the day Megaupload is taken down by the Americans, Google directly affect the rankings of most other popular file sharing websites.

I did try to fight this idea with myself by thinking all they are going to do is improve the page layout of these websites to make it easier to download from them. I don’t think this could be the case, most of these websites will have enormous running costs which are being paid for by advertising in prominent pages on the website. If the download link becomes clear, then massive amounts of revenue will be lost on these websites and who knows if they will be able to sustain operation. I dont believe enough people would pay for the service to cover the loss in advertising revenue.

I did try to perform a few searches to screenshot for this blog post, but i couldn’t even find the websites im talking about in a search, all i got presented with at the end of the search as this.

In a recent video Matt Cuts has confirmed again that Google will be toning down the importance of keyword rich domains. In the video Matt talks about whether a webmaster should use a keyword rich domain and his response to that leans more towards using a domain that can be more brand-able instead of keyword rich.

This does not mean however, that google will not still weight keywords in domains heavily. At the moment it’s not impossible to see a blank web page ranking number one with a keyword rich domain. Proof of this is the following search term and results ibz.cc/h6ZNOB (image below for when it changes)

Caution also needs to be taken when interpreting  what matt says about using a brandable domain or a keyword rich domain. The examples he used were extremely large brands and although he makes a very good point, it may not necessarily apply to small companies trying to get a look in their online market.

What it all means is you can’t be a lazy SEO, this is nothing new though, your SEO campaign can not rely on one factor e.g. keyword rich domain, if this is all you are doing then i would put some work in now.

Jump To: Google Penalty | Filter | Duplicate Content | Hacked | Google Is Wrong!

You have a website so people can use it, for that to happen it needs to be found, to be found, you really have the best chance being in Google (other search engines do exist).

You spend months, years building up your website then one day you realise that the amount of pages Google has indexed for your site is going down. Your first reaction is to panic and shout at someone, then you might perform a google search about de indexing and why!

There are many reasons why your website may start to be de indexed, below are the most common reasons i have seen and how to fix them.

I need to say to this point that there are several levels of penalty that i refer to, I have been told that ‘google filters’ do not exist and they are simply penalties, however i disagree and below you will see my thinking as to why there is a difference.

Google Penalty

A google penalty is when google have withdrawn your website from its index. The main reasons for this is a direct breach of Google’s guidelines, serious things like, Cloaking, being part of a link farm or generally using any aggressive black hat techniques. If you have been penalised then the chances are its for something you have done and you would normally know what has happened.

How To Detect

Detecting a penalty is easy, simply do a site command and it will show you if you have received a penalty. if you wanted to check this website then simply past the code below into google.

continue reading »

A few days ago i showed people that Wayne Rooney was close to leaving Manchester united through the magic of Trends.

I said that Rooney will leave the club when he becomes bigger than the club, after all no player is bigger than Manchester United.

After i wrote the blog post, it was announced that Rooney was to leave Manchester United. Today is the 22nd and it has now been announced that Wayne Rooney will stay at Manchester United. I didn’t believe believe sky news, or BBC news, or the statement on the clubs website, i had to go and check with old faithful for my confirmation, and yes it was correct, Rooney had in fact announced he is leaving and then perform a U turn and it was confirmed by Google trends. It was confirmed by the chart showing Rooney becoming bigger than united but today he came back now which coincides with him not leaving.

This morning i have been seeing some strange looking search results in Google.fr, They made me think back to Patrick Alofts blog post about site previews in the search results.

This seems to be something similar except it doesn’t seem to work!! I am using Firefox, this is only appearing on Google.FR, i have not updated or installed any plugins since yesterday when i last viewed Google.FR, I DO have JavaScript enabled and i am NOT logged in.

Hovering over a search result adds a blue border around the result and there seems to be a magnifying glass icon, These results are slightly different from the reports on Blogstorm, however, Google is deffinately testing something again.

When i click on the magnifying glass nothing happens, i have checked i have got JavaScrip turned on which it is.

The screenshots are not as impressive as seeing the full site preview but something is being tested on Google.fr today

With the guardian finding it suitable yesterday to publish 14 different news articles online about Rooney it made me wonder weather Rooney was actually bigger, and more important than God, after a moment i decided that maybe wrong!

A lot of the articles are basically evolving around Rooney and Alex Ferguson who is known for bringing down the axe on greedy money grabbing w**r*s and people who generally cross him. One thing i like about united is that no player is bigger than the club. But is Rooney bigger than Ferguson? is Ferguson and Rooney as a tag team bigger than the club?

There is only one way to find this out and that is to ask Google, People may remember Google predicting Obama becoming president so surly it cant be wrong?

Google trends is the answer to any question based on popularity, to prove this as fact i ran a very simple query.

Daddy or chips?

As you can see below, Daddy wins and apart from the blip daddy has always been more popular than chips. (probably financially driven but still a fact)

Now proof has been shown that Google Trends tells the truth the whole truth and nothing but the truth its time for the big reveal.

Is Wayne Rooney bigger than Alex Ferguson, or Manchester United?

As we can see, Rooney has always been a notch above Alex Ferguson but not by far, this will corrolate to youth, if we remove the amount of searches made by Rooney himself then it will be even more even. In all this time it has been clear that nobody is bigger than the club.

However, over the last few days Rooney has started to climb, he has almost become bigger than the club which as we know is not aloud, Being so much bigger than the boss will rustle feathers.

If no player can be bigger than the club then once the blue line crosses the orange line, Rooney will definitely be leaving the club, if it happens before January then Rooney will leave in the January transfer window. If the blue line stays below the orange line, then Rooney will stay.

Personally i hope the lines never cross.