An interesting article appeared in The Telegraph newspaper, a few days ago, about why having too much choice can leave us bewildered and depressed. The article relates to research carried out at Stanford University and can be used broadly across every instance we meet in our day-to-day lives and that includes using search engines.

To quote a piece from the aforementioned article..

People can become paralysed by too much variety and wracked with uncertainty and regret about whether they have made the right decision.

I tend to think, just how do people navigate a Google search result page, nowadays. I see a muddy mess, sometimes, when a certain search query is run. For instance I could get all the following types of results shown on a Google results page against my search query:

• Google Sponsored Links (top and right of the page)
• Google News Listings
• Google Local Business Listings
• Google Live Search Feed
• Google Shopping Listings
• Google Image Results
• Google Organic Listings (normally a maximum of 10)
• Google Blog Listings
• Google Video Listings
• Google Related Search Listings

Have I missed anything? Err, what about the kitchen sink from Google’s cafeteria, why not throw that in as well.

Now, if you think I’m being pedantic, let’s run a search query and see what a typical user might be up against.

Google Sponsored Listings

Google News Listings

Google Organic Listings

Google Live Search & Google Shopping Results

More Organic Listings

Even More Organic and Google Search Related Results

It’s a bit of a pic n’ mix. Don’t get me wrong, I like Google having these Eureka moments – I just wish there was a better structure to the layout in which they displayed on the page.

So, what’s your thoughts. Have Google got it right! Does their Universal buffet of search variety agree with you or are you frustrated by too much choice and yearn for the days when search result pages were easier to navigate and you got what you wanted quicker. I’d love to hear your comments.

Quite a few weeks ago I noticed the Daily Mail run a cheeky little script on its web copy that when you copied and pasted an excerpt from one of its articles you also included a link back to the page where it was lifted from, for example :

The dementia affecting hundreds of thousands of Britons may be a legacy of the Second World War, a scientist has claimed.

Read more: http://www.dailymail.co.uk/health/article-1213703/Dementia-caused-Second-World-War-claims-scientist.html#ixzz0RGlrjtMy

Now, this script is free and available from Tynt Tracer – www.tynt.com – you have to sign-up, but it is all done in a matter of seconds.

The dashboard shows the number of times paragraphs, words or images get lifted from your site, as below :

Go ahead, try it, copy any text from this site and paste it into notepad or your preferred WYSIWYG and see if the attribute link is copied with it.

Of course there are always ways around these things, most modern browsers you can turn javascript off and on in a few seconds and be away with all the copy you want from a site and Trynt Tracer, if it’s installed, will not have the foggiest that you’ve been. Also you can always just view the source code as well.

Anyways, i’m going to roll with it for a few weeks and see what information I can pick up about the users visiting this site, you never know I might even get a few attribution links generated in this time.

Also, I have another site that gets tons of traffic from Google’s image search that would be ideal for using Tynt Tracer on.

They say in life that timing is everything, with this in mind and the looming anniversary of 9/11 this Friday, you can understand why I balked when I saw the below ad. I have thought long and hard about publishing this blog post also the closeness to the 9/11 date itself but at-the-end-of-the-day thought it should be aired.

I have to highlight that I find the ad repulsive and FAIL to find any link between the two events that the ad is supposed to represent.

All it highlights to myself and others whom I have showed it too prior to this post, is that sometimes ad people, marketers can get it so very, very wrong.

Here’s The Ad :

Ad taken from : www.adverblog.com

Did you notice who’s name is stamped all over it? Yep the WWF (World Wildlife Federation), although the WWF have released a statement saying ‘They approved neither the ad’s production nor its publication’.

Instead all the responsibility has been sloppy shouldered back onto the Brazilian agency that created it. Seemingly, it is known in the industry as a scam ad. Which you can view more of here.

Instead of a scam ad, I know what I’d call it – How Can You Sleep At Night You Lowlife Ad

Today, this morning especially, I was really irritable when checking some Google local serps I became as grumpy as sin, and for anyone who knows me or has worked with me, I have an over-active grumpy gene which flares up every-now-and-again. Anyway, being absolutely baffled by the results Google were supplying myself, hardly any sleep and it being ‘that time of the month’ for me grumpyitis to kick in, I made the following Tweet on Twitter…

And so the day toiled on, without me really needing the services of a search engine, I had clients work to get on with and one of them was a nice bit of php/mysql that kept me occupied for some time. Then came the blog posts. I like to research before I write, sometimes not at all, but today needed some background info that I wasn’t confident about, so I turned my attention to Bing.

It didn’t take me long to find the info I was after, I wasn’t timing myself against my recent activity with Google against Bing because my search term brought up what I was after in the first page. Even when I was hunting down images for the post Bing served them up to me a treat.

However, I can be a stickler for checking out how my sites (clients) are getting on and I also like to monitor conversions, esp. on ecomm carts. That’s where the whole ‘Give Up Google For A Day’ fell flat on its face. So many of my sites have Google wrapped around them for analytics, data feeds, webmaster tools etc … that my efforts were doomed from the beginning.

I won’t say searching with Bing was like ‘Taking A Bath With Your Socks On’ because it wasn’t, really. Bing delivered! I got my posts out and my research was a doddle. However, my reliance on Google for finding out the data about how the sites were behaving was way too much to ever even contemplate walking away from Google, even just for a day.

All in all, it was a good excercise, that also opened up to myself just how dependent for information, on the day-to-day running of my business do I owe to big G.

I really like Google, I really do, but sometimes it throws out a curve ball, that catches everyone trying to understand how this goliath search engine works off balance. The most recent was the invasion of american .com sites into the Google UK SERP’s (Search Engine Ranking Positions). It lead to many optimising companies and commentators blogging about this update.

From SEOptimise, to the Search Cowboys, to SEO Design Solutions … each trying to work out why Google would dilute UK businesses from their own geo-targetted Data Centre. Some even came up with quite interesting conspiracy theories like the guys from Fresh Egg.

However, this aint something new and bold from Google, as a similar, but not as largescale (or as widely commented) occurence happened last year as this Webmaster World post indicates.

When things like this happen I like to think in analogies to try and understand the situation better. It’s my own little trick and I’m sure there are many others like myself which apply simplified imagination to help understand a problem better.

This time I have morphed Google into a ‘Game Show Host’, inside my tiny mind. And us poor boys and girls working, finger-to-the-bone, optimising sites for our clients are Google’s contestants. Google as the ‘Game Show Host’ is a cross between Jim Bowen and Bruce Forsyth, combover included.

At every twist and turn the ‘Game Show Host’ is in complete control, toying with the poor competitor (optimiser, webmaster) as they speed up or slow down the conveyor belt full of prizes. He’ll ask you to jump through hoops, build a site to the rules of the game, then tell you to do it again blindfolded while they litter the place full of Hot Spots, all the time your chances of spinning off The Big Wheel, grow greater with each cycle.

Remember, the principle of the ‘Game Show Host’ is to make the contestants take chances of winning bigger that way the show becomes much more emotionaly charged. In the end Google never say, “Smashing, Super, Great … Didn’t he do well?” Nah, it’s much more fun to reveal, “Here’s, what you Could Have Won!”

Please fill in the Blanks to find out MY answer to the recent .com Google UK Serp invasion…

Because its Google’s search engine and they can do what the [blank] they like.

Having read one of Shaun’s latest blog posts on “Some Google Toolbar Grey Pages Do Not Pass Anchor Text Value Or PR?” from Hobo Web I decided to put a few of the methods spoken about, to use with my own Page Rank Grey bar conundrum.

On NSM’s SEO page, it is completely greyed out! At the beginning of the year I had a PR of 3 on the page and also a sitewide link pointing to the page on Google’s UK Search Engine. Around end of January / beginning of February I noticed the dissapearance of the sitewide and then not long after, the pages’ PR 3 turned to grey.

The page wasn’t copied from anywhere, the text was unique and written inhouse. There wasn’t a great depth of external backlinks pointing to the page, but it was linked well from forums and article sites. It was also linked throughout internally and in web copy not just footer and sidebar links.

Google webmaster tools now doesn’t even have the page registered with any incoming links whatsoever. Yahoo shows the page of having just 8 links and Majestic SEO has it linked 10 times from 4 domains.

The other thing about the page was that it was a 301 redirect from an earlier version (seo_services.html) which was updated last August (2008). The old version had around 37 external backlinks and having gone back through those links I can see that none of them carry much weight.

On the plus side, I have, once again reworded the full page, making it read more like a guide rather than a marketed page to selling seo services. It does rank for some keywords, such as, “Organic SEO Services” on Google UK. Although, who the heck searches for that! According to Wordtracker about 14 a day. Probably all vanity searches.

Synopsis, is that although the page is fresh and unique content, it has been 301′d and the value of the links that were previously pointing to the old page have pretty much been discounted. Internally, it seems stable enough. It does rank, for long-tail searches but unless I earn some trusted links to the page, that’s all it will ever do. Perhaps, Google will again learn to love the page and pass some of the green juice and even a wee sitewide link but in the meantime I just have to keep on working on it.

If you have similar problems with any internal pages that are greyed out then check Shaun’s (Hobo-Web) post – link is at the top of the page – it might, just might, help you wring some extra internal juice from your site.

I like to think I add something refreshing to my own social media accounts, for one I don’t just sell myself or NorthSouthMedia permanently on any of the social media platforms I’m involved with. In an unrelated discussion with a fellow seo marketer, on Twitter, the other day, it became aware of how many companies are sitting there idly waiting for resources to be posted so they can go ahead and create their own blog post, basically ripping of someone else’s content, but done with the care-in-mind that their disemblance of the original post ain’t going to catch the attention of the OP (original poster) or even the Google Duplicate Content trawler.

To those that rip off the posts, that I carry-off either badly or with sometimes a wee bit of of initiative, don’t think for one second I haven’t clocked your like-for-like intentions. It’s crap blogging, with all the bits n’ bobs happening around the search marketing industry right now, I’m sure you can create your own take of the search marketing world without skimming my content like some bad repeat of the Trumpton kids series.

Words, are just that, words! Ideas, are a different discipline, not that I do in real life come up with many, but to copy idealistic content just for the sake of a blog post, that’s just a toilet flush away from being a complete sh!t provider. Is that what you want? People to check your blog and then hear on the grapevine your ripping of content elsewhere? I understand, more than most, just how difficult it is to produce fresh, linkable ideas into a search marketing format. But just because Copy Blogger says its OK, doesn’t make it right. Think for yourself, and I’m sure at least you’ll gain the respect from us here at NorthSouthMedia if nowhere else, heck at least it’s a step in the right direction, if nothing else!

For those of you who manage and run feeds through Google Base then you will have noticed that Google has been busy adding additional functionality to the admin control panel. The new tab called, Data Quality, allows you to oversee any problems you might have with your feed identifiers.

The above example is taken from a clients xml feed, and highlights to me that the information I am subitting via the EAN xml node is wrong. Luckily, it hasn’t stopped the shopping feed from displaying on the most promiment positions.

I am a massive fan of Google Base, I run and manage feeds for all my eCommerce clients and think its a great way to get targetted traffic quickly. In some cases your sitting above the organic traffic on Page 1 for a high traffic volume search term with a feed from a relatively new site.

My tips for anyone who is looking to start their own Google Shopping Feed is give Google as much information as you possibly can about a product. Don’t try and rip off some other websites content and manage your feed update correctly.

I am aware of companies that upload a new feed every other day as their stock and prices change dramatically. Their error in their submission is that they just keep on reusing the same file name convention. I like to spread a few weeks between submissions, some feeds run the full 31 day max submission time. When its time to re-upload, a whole new file is registered with the day, month and year included in the naming convention as well as the site name.

I’d like to see the headers in the Active Items clickable and sortable, so I can quickly view my feeds via impressions vs clicks. Also what would be nice, as well, if we could search within the item, see which time it was clicked, what search term displayed the impression. Or even better if Google Analytics could handle data coming through from a Google Base impression. Mmm, does anyone know how to write a custom Google Analytics filter to show and monitor Google Base impressions, now, that would be awesome.

Today, I’m gonna stand-up and speak about that ol’ friend we call the blog post – remember, when the majority of us used to blog constantly – until micro-blogging platforms such as Twitter and Plurk came along. I know there are some amongst us that continue to blog, as their main portal for spreading information – and you know what? More power to you, is what I say! Recently, I have witnessed first hand, several clients websites capturing their main targetted keywords from the power of the blogpost. They haven’t bought the services of an SEO company or a link building specialist… sure, they might have done so in the past, but it is only when they turned to producing unique, well-worthy blog content within their site, have they, overtime, at last reaped the benefits they were after all along.

Now, it may be that, the blog posts, where the icing on a very well-made cake, and that they finished off the job perfectly i.e. gained the sites the #1 position for their desired search terms. Like I said earlier, all of the sites have been optimised in the past, but never gained the seedings that the owners desired.

So, I’m going to sit-on-the-fence for the moment, because I am not 100% certain what has made these sites irresistible in Google’s eyes. But they all have some correlation which I feel needs highlighting.

The sites, in question, are over or nearing the 2 years age mark, the keywords that they are now performing to are NOT ‘low-hanging-fruit’, half have had some off-page link building in the past while the other half have been exposed to both on-page and off-page. All of the sites, decided to switch to content generation and blog promotion instead of continuing with a SEO or Link Building campaign. The blog posting was delivered between 2 /3 posts per week (mostly during the 5 working days) NOT everyday and all posts were unique content specific to their niche market i.e. the content was 100% relevant. Finally, the blog posts were promoted via RSS subscriptions and linking on a handful of social media bookmarking sites, some posts were never bookmarked — all posts were never spammed!

I have a test pilot running right now, where the recipe of the website is similar to the above. If it cooks up a number one position in the same fashion then I’m going to get myself a nice big white hat and you can all call me Gordon ‘Effing’ Ramsay

The other night there, when I was being Dad’s taxi picking up my eldest, on the road home I thought I’d try some conversation to help cut into the journey, however no matter how I tried to converse, it fell foul to her undue attention to her mobile phone. ‘What you doing?’ I quipped. ‘Browsing the web’, she replied. ‘Can you bring up my site?’ I asked. ‘Nah!’ She responded (*sigh* I hate teenagers!) But it got me thinking, no, not how much I hate teenagers, but how more-and-more of us are interacting with the web via our mobiles, and why mobile seo should be wrapped with any website project.

One of the things I wondered about mobile browsing, was how websites appear on-screen. I have written about this in the past via articles but never touched on it here in any depth at NSM. Frankly, if your site has been validated to the W3C Standards by your SEO Company or Web Design agency, then you have a visible site via mobile search. If not then you may be losing out on some valuable traffic, but just how much volume of traffic, I hear you wonder, are you missing out on with this fast, emerging search application?

The Rise of The Mobile Machine

In 2008, the UK market share saw that 10% of the people searching online were accessing from their mobile (source : Search Engine Land.) When you consider, that almost half the UK population, roughly, 34,104,175 people have internet access (Source: Nielsen/NetRatings), then this equates to 3,410,415 mobile browsers. Suddenly, mobile seo, takes on a whole new importance, and sites that don’t measure up should take heed, this marketshare is expanding at a record rate.

In-House Joke

I have being validating sites for a number of years now, too many tbh, and I remember some aged old gurus in some-far-off distant forums, proclaiming that W3C Validation was a nonsense and their site still ranked without ever attempting to pull their sites up to the required standards. Obviously, they never even attempted to think about mobile browsing then, neither did I, but I’ll bet when you raise the question to them that today, they are potentially blocking out 10% of their marketshare with having antiquated web design code driving their site, they’ll at least consider the question instead of responding with ‘ROFLMAO’ quotes, as a croaky singer once said, ‘the times they are a changing’, … mobile coverage will one day reign supreme!

Images courtesy of Lynne from Polr Web.