Archive for the ‘Search Engine’ Category

5 Scary Google Hacks (Or Why You Should Learn To Love robots.txt)

August 8th, 2012 posted by Trevin Shirey 12:08PM | View Full Story

As SEOs, a big part of our job is to create compelling content that is indexed by Google and easy for searchers to find. That’s simple enough, but there are also plenty of things on a web server that you don’t want Google to find.

Log files, configuration files, personal data, customer databases and administration documents are just a few examples of files that shouldn’t be crawled by search engines. Should Google or another engine crawl and index sensitive data, your site becomes vulnerable to all sorts of things.

How does this work? Hackers or curious searchers can use advanced query operators in search engines to specify the type of file and data they are looking for. Typically, they rely on some sort of footprint that will be present on a large number of sites. This footprint can come from text on the page or URL/site structure. The best way to understand this is to execute a few Google hacks yourself.

Below are five examples of advanced queries that utilize footprints left by files and folders that people typically do not want available for the public consumption. None of these are particularly sinister and all have been widely known for a few years. Use these at your own risk for research purposes only

1. View ‘Confidential’ Government Documents
site:.gov type:.pdf “This document is CONFIDENTIAL”

Google’s search operators allow you to specify a bunch of different operators, including TLD and file type. This query returns a list of PDF files on government sites that are ‘confidential’ to everybody but Google.

2. Take Control of Panasonic Webcams
inurl:ViewerFrame?Mode=

This query takes advantage of a footprint left by Panasonic webcams that still use their default settings. Typically, no password is required and you can pan, zoom and tilt the camera. You can also find and control many Axis webcams with this query: inurl:indexFrame.shtml Axis. Fun stuff.

3. Find Plain Text Passwords
“your password is” filetype:log

These log files contain plain text passwords. Most of the time, the password will have been changed, but if not…

4. Gain Administrator Access To Print Servers
intitle:”Network Print Server” filetype:shtm

Toner isn’t cheap … if your printing network is unsecure, somebody from far away can run wild on printing test pages … and that is possibly the ‘nicest’ thing they could do.

5. View College Grades & Personal Info
inurl:final_grades.html site:.edu

Professors oftentimes post final grades online so all of the students have easy access. Unfortunately, so does Google. Professors often use personal information such as student IDs to separate the students.

These are just a few examples of thousands of vulnerabilities that search engines can find. There are far more advanced queries that have been formulated to hack sites, steal credit card information, gain MySQL access and all sorts of nasty things.

Here are a few tips on how you can prevent information leakage like this on your own site.

1. Always hire IT people who are knowledgeable about security. Failing to make security a priority from the start can lead to major problems down the road.
2. Ask Google to remove a URL from their index.
3. Put Robots.txt to use. This configuration file tells search engine bots which pages and folders on your site they aren’t allowed to crawl.
4. Password protect sensitive information. Duh.
5. Setup Google Alerts to signal you when potential information leakage occurs.

Posted in Search Engine 1 Comment »

1 Comment

4 Eternal Truths about SEO

July 12th, 2012 posted by Quincy 12:08PM | View Full Story

In an industry where change is the only reliable constant, it’s nice to know there are a few things we can rely on…

1. The Human Audience Will Always Be The Most Important

This seems like a no brainer, but anyone with experience in search engine optimization (SEO) knows that sometimes it’s easy to forget this major detail once you’ve launched yourself head first into a campaign. But don’t forget. Don’t lose focus. Always remember that your targeted audience is composed of actual humans, not the search engines you’re trying to rank highly in—and this will NEVER change.

The Good News: More than likely the work you’re doing to rank high in the search engines will also be beneficial marketing for your audience.

2. Links Will Always Play a Part in the Rankings

Computers are awesome, but let’s be honest—how is a computer supposed to determine what website is the most authoritative on a specific topic? The answer is links. If websites were people, inbound links would be like votes for Homecoming King and Queen. Search engines see these links and determine the most “popular” websites for the SERPs. While this aspect of SEO is definitely evolving at a rapid pace, it’s around to stay for a long time.

The Good News: Search engines are becoming better at determining whether a link is spam or not. So for those who work hard to create quality links, it’s a win-win situation.

3. You Can’t Optimize Website Content, If the Text Doesn’t Exist.

Even though the web is constantly evolving, text is still a part of every search—even when the search is for a picture or video. It seems like a given, then, that quality content will always be an important factor in determining rankings. Don’t try to ignore it. If you want your site to perform well, do your homework and create quality content, because I can guarantee the search engines are reading it.

The Good News: Why on earth would you want to have bad content on your website? That just seems silly, since your target audience will be reading it, too. This is one of those instances where what you’re doing to rank well in the search engines will also be beneficial to your audience.

4. You will never REALLY know exactly how Google works.

Surprise, surprise! Do you really expect this to ever change? Google averages one algorithm change a day, making the world of SEO that much more fascinating. And just for fun, Google will come out with exciting, new updates to change the game up a little. Panda. Penguin. You know what I’m talking about.

The Good News: You don’t want to know Google’s exact algorithm, because I can guarantee that if you do, so do all of your competitors. If everyone knew exactly what to do to rank #1, websites would become so manipulated that search engines would quickly become useless to the users.

So there you have it. There are a few things we can count on to always be true, even in an industry that thrives on constant change. What are your thoughts on these “eternal” truths—agree or disagree? Leave a comment with your thoughts!

Posted in General, Google, Internet, Link Building, Marketing, Search Engine, Search Engine Optimization, SEO 6 Comments »

6 Comments

Pack Your Bags (and Hide Your Address) – We’re Going to Venice!

April 5th, 2012 posted by Kristin Miller 12:08PM | View Full Story

Rialto Bridge, Venice (National Geographic)

Hide your Address

Google’s policy change for place listings on March 28th confused many, frustrated most and, as always, ended in compliance. Why on earth would you hide your address on your Google Places listing? Well, if you’re a service-based business, you don’t have a choice in the matter.

The policy update requires that all businesses that provide home-based services hide their address from their Google Places listing or risk it not showing up in the results. In theory, most service-based companies have a ‘home base’ or central administrative office, but Google wants to know: should customers navigate to that location using Maps? Google’s motive is to provide a great user experience, showing only business addresses you may need to get to.

What about ranking factors? Removing your address from your listing means your customers looking for a plumber or electrician closest to their home can no longer make their decision based on location.

Which quickly leads me to “Venice”…

City-less Search, Code Name: “Venice”

Have Google’s Panda updates got you down? Feel like lying on a beach in Venice for a few days? Maybe Google is too. They’ve code-named their latest Local update “Venice”, and it’s a big one. Before getting into the positives, the most important thing to note is this update greatly reduces the impact of hiding your address on your Places listing.

Google has switched to “nearly 100% Blended local results” which rely on web rankings. What does this mean? Purely localized, organic search results for broad queries such as “dentist”. Google is able to do this thanks to the Location feature in Google search which captures the user’s location based on IP address (or manual change), and they want to capitalize on this feature because it is estimated that 75% of searches for local needs do not include “San Francisco” or “Atlanta”—they’re in fact city-less. Users have come to expect Google to output local businesses whether they indicate their location or not – and Google wants to deliver. In turn, Google is starting to place more weight on organic rankings than map rankings for localized search queries (ie: “dentist”, “attorney”, “grocery store”, “car wash”, “babysitter”, etc.). Locations with hidden addresses continue to show up in the main SERPs and in the ever-present blended results because these blended rankings are now controlled by organic factors, rather than Places factors.

Tax Day is around the corner, so I used the city-less query “accountant” as an example:

Normal National Results:

Set Location to San Francisco:

Set Location to Portland:

“Venice” Takeaways

The results underneath the map listings used to be traditional, national results for sites that ranked highly for that general query, answering “what is an accountant?” and “how do you become an accountant?” Now, sites that have optimized for “city term” keywords are able to show up off of a general query, whereas before they may have only appeared for queries such as “accountant Portland OR”.

Local business perks? You are now able to appear in global results if you have taken the time to optimize your website (time that is well worth your investment). Mixed results don’t eliminate your competition with national franchises; they do however increase the likelihood that as a local business your website will appear in the results, catching a user’s eye with their city name in your description.
On the other hand, if you are a national franchise, queries for your major keywords will now bring pure local results into play, if the user has their location set in Google. This is something to be aware of, especially in major cities where map listings take up most of the first page, leaving just a small amount of space to compete for.

So … what about hiding your address? As stated earlier, if you service customers at their home, or a location other than your headquarters, according to Google’s new policy you must hide your address from appearing on your Places page. While previously Google would have penalized you for hiding your address from users, “Venice” levels the playing field in this regard. With the “Venice” update, there is no longer a risk that your Places listing’s rankings or even your website’s traditional, organic rankings will be negatively affected as it would have in the past. Ultimately, Google recognizes the fact they can’t penalize you for abiding by their policy. So if you have always hid your address before for privacy purposes – you’re in luck.

Keep in mind, however, that even if you’ve hidden your address, the city and zip code will appear and your location marker can still show up in Google Maps. The location will show up as a round marker rather than the usual teardrop, but it is still unknown whether it will appear above your true location (though hidden), or a generic location in the town or city you select.

How to Capitalize on “Venice”

What does “Venice” mean to your Local SEO efforts? Focusing on Google Places alone is no longer the best course of action for local businesses. While creating and optimizing your Google Places listing is the best way to show up in the listing results, it is not the only way to enable your listing to rank well. Now, Google will be placing a lot more weight on your website’s on-page SEO, so even if you have a well-optimized Google Places page, a neglected website could potentially harm your rankings.

On the other hand, if you optimize you website appropriately, your Places page may acquire a position within the blended results—truly saturating these traditional, localized search results with your local business.

A final thing to note with “Venice” is that if you don’t currently have a website and rely solely on your Google Places listing to keep yourself in front of potential customers, you may do well to finally take the plunge and provide your customers with a very user-friendly and well-optimized website that proves helpful to your customers. Since users want to know you’re a legitimate business, Google wants to know that too. And a website that provides your customers with additional information about your company will only reinforce a positive reputation.

My Conclusion

My main concern with hiding an address in Google Places is that it actually depletes some user experience (contrary to Google’s intent). If my plumbing goes haywire and my basement is flooding as a result, I want need the closest plumber possible. Thus when I perform a search in Google and I’m unable to access the addresses of plumbers in my area, there is no way for me to make a decision short of going to each website to find their physical location. While I understand Google’s desire to show physical businesses in their maps that users actually visit, most service-based businesses reside in commercial office space, and there are customers who want to know where that is located.

On the contrary, the “Venice” update is a game-changer for local businesses, and a win for users, too. Whether you type in a geo-targeted or city-less search, you’re going to get results close by for general localized queries that indicate local intent. It doesn’t go so far as to remove all global results either, which is smart on Google’s end. Searching “accountant” and having my location set does not always mean I want to find an accountant nearby. It could mean I’m interested in what accountants do, or how to become one. Of course, we’d surmise these searches would be more exact – which is exactly what Google is doing.

In conclusion, pay attention to both of these changes, whether you’re a local business or a national franchise. They haven’t rolled out completely, but when they do, they could become the source of your traffic loss—or gain.

Posted in Search Engine, SEO 2 Comments »

2 Comments

Sitting On Top of the PPC World?

February 22nd, 2012 posted by Scott Redgate 12:08PM | View Full Story

My, oh my has the search engine results page evolved over the past few years. Raise your hand if you miss the days of typing in a key phrase to be greeted with a crisp page that presented ten organized and relevant results. Don’t get me wrong, I think the evolution of search to include maps, videos, author pictures, etc. is great (occasionally).

While Pay-Per-Click advertising has gone through its fair share of changes in the past few years, I would argue that the rate of growth as compared to organic results is significantly less. Let’s take a look at the results page that appears when I type in a search for the NBA’s Tim Tebow-like sensation, Jeremy Lin.

Notice the PPC ads include seller ratings, product (shopping feed) pictures, sitelinks and more. At a broader level, you will see the structure of the AdWords ads that appear at the top and side of the page appear differently. What is happening here?!

The actual advertisement text is still there, but Google is simply presenting it differently. The two typical ad formats for PPC advertisements at the top of the page are:

Ad Title – Description Line 1

Display URL

Description Line 2

Ad Title | Domain Name

Display URL

Description Line 1 + Description Line 2

Is this a good thing or a bad thing? It depends.

Typically the click-through-rate for these top advertisements is higher because they more closely resemble organic results, have a colored background that catches your eye and are typically the first item that draws your attention when the page loads.

When choosing the top ads, Google looks at three main factors:

1. Relevance of the advertisement.

2. Historical performance of the ad.

3. The amount of cash you are willing to bid to have your ad shown.

If you are determined to have your ad show in the top position, heed my warning: I have noticed an abundance of ads over the past couple of months where their syntax makes no sense whatsoever. Why would Google format the ads in a way that does not make sense to users?

Well…

As previously noted, Google will sometimes pull in all or some of your description line 1 to add to the title. Google states that this alteration will occur when they have “determined that your first description line is a complete phrase or sentence” in an attempt to create a “more noticeable headline”. The problem arises when Google mistakenly assumes that your first description line 1 is a complete phrase (i.e. you abbreviate a word that Google does not recognize). The result is an advertisement that makes almost no sense. This leaves users confused and unlikely to click on your ad.

The next issue occurs when description line 1 is written without any punctuation. We used to be able to get away with this because the line separation between description line 1 and description line 2 provided somewhat of a pause to the searcher. Unfortunately, this is not the case anymore if your ad appears in the top ad section. Take some time to do some searches for some of your favorite products. Notice that a lot of top advertisements include run-on sentences in the description line because of the lack of punctuation separating description line 1 and 2. Google will sometimes combine these two lines into one without any punctuation to separate.

From here on out, if you write your PPC ads in the AdWords interface, you should be fine since Google provides a live preview of what your ad will look like if it appears on the top or on the side. My advice is to go through your existing PPC ads and make sure that they are not being converted into an ambiguous babbling of words.

Here is how you can use the top ad placement to your advantage:

For most ads, include a short, informative description line 1 that features a call to action so Google appends the description line 1 to the existing title.
If you own a new site and are looking to increase your brand awareness, aim to come close to the 35 character limit for both description line 1 & 2. This will enable Google to attach your domain name to the headline.
Include relevant keywords within the ad text so these words appear bolded when shown.
Be sure to include a punctuation mark at the end of description line 1 to avoid any run on sentence issues.

Lastly, to measure the performance of your PPC campaign, AdWords has an option to segment via the “Top vs. Other” category. Maybe bidding high for one of your medium-valued keywords in the campaign isn’t the best strategy. Perhaps being in position 4 will produce better results for you!

Analyzing this information will provide you with the necessary information to make better informed campaign decisions.

Tags: adwords, google, pay per click, pay per click advertising
Posted in Google, Pay Per Click, Search Engine 2 Comments »

2 Comments

Google’s Search plus Your World: 3 Changes Internet Marketers Will Care About

January 18th, 2012 posted by Breann 12:08PM | View Full Story

On January 10^th, Google made a ground-breaking announcement that Google search will now be integrated with your social signals. The name for this update is Google Search plus Your World which is only activated when the searcher is logged into their Google+ account and searching on Google’s secure search. Google Search plus Your World marks a major shift toward increased social marketing and makes the use of Google+ necessary. With Google’s new social search feature, there are 3 main changes that you will notice on your results page.

Personal Results

The first is that your personal interactions will now show up in the results for related terms. For example, when I type in the term “technology” I see results from some of my co-workers.

Search plus Your World denotes searches that are specific to you with the blue person icon. These results are ones that have been shared with you on Google+ or are public results. Images will also appear in these results if related to the search term. If you are not looking for results specific to you, click on the “See all results” link to be redirected to information not limited to just your personal search results.

Profiles in Search

The second change that you will notice is that personal profiles will appear in the results and autocomplete when you type in a name of a person in your circles on Google+.

When you select a predicted profile you will be shown results from that person’s Google+ profile and relevant results from the web. However, because that person has a Google+ page, their Google+ results will outrank all other information related to them on the Internet.

People and Pages

The last major change that you will notice is the results for people and pages in the top-right of the browser for your search term. For instance, if you type in “movies,” you will see a few Google+ profiles highlighted since they are related to “movies”.

This feature also allows you to quickly add these people to your circles. As a result, this section will become vital for individuals and businesses to generate new traffic to their social profiles through Google. With the People and Pages on Google+ results showing so prominently in the results, who wouldn’t want to be there?

How to De-activate Search plus Your World

Fortunately, if you do not like the changes that Google has made to the search feature when logged-in, you can opt-out of seeing personal results. The first way to do this is with the convenient toggle that Google added to the top-right of your browser.

When Search plus Your World is activated, the person icon will be darkened. To view organic results without personalization, just click on the globe icon.

A second way to opt-out is to update your search settings. You can do this by clicking the gear at the top-right of your browser and choosing “Search Settings” then under “Personal results” choose “Do not use personal results” and save your new settings.

This will de-activate the personal results and profiles in search features, but the People and Pages on Google+ section is an addition to the results that will remain regardless of your settings or being logged into Google+.

What this Means for the Internet Marketer

With these changes being so significant, many of you Internet Marketers may wonder how they will affect you. At this point, the extent to which Google’s Search plus Your World will affect Internet Marketing is still unknown, but one thing is certain; that it is time to focus on Google+ as a serious social engine. So take all the posts you are sharing on Twitter and Facebook share them on Google+ too!

I mentioned earlier that the People and Pages on Google+ will be very important for individuals and businesses today. This section now takes up a prominent place on the results page and appears above pay per click results, so it will most likely take some traffic away from organic and paid search results. For example, look at the results for the term “seo.”

You will definitely want your page to show up on the People and Pages on Google+ section and Google provided some tips on how to accomplish this with the “Learn how you could appear here too” link.

In order to appear in this section, the first and most obvious step to take is to create a Google+ page. Many people and businesses held out on creating Google+ pages because they figured their social media initiatives should be focused on Facebook and Twitter. But they are now realizing how important Google+ pages are with Search plus Your World.

After creating a page, Google recommends adding a photo and filling your profile out completely. Ensure that your Google+ page includes all the information for which you want to be ranked for.

Next, Google suggests sharing information on topics that are important to you. The more content you provide related to the terms you want to rank for, the better you will rank for those terms. Also, the content you shared will then be delivered to people who have added you to their circles when they search for similar queries.

Most importantly, make sure that you are getting added to circles! All of your information will mean nothing if you don’t have people who are interested in it. The more circles that you are in, the more likely it is that you will show up in the results for People and Places on Google+. This is great for the early adopters of Google+, however many influential and relevant people did not embrace Google+ and will not appear in this section. But not to worry, if you follow these steps to create a well optimized Google+ page you will be on your way to reaching out to the over 60 million users and growing on Google+.

Tags: google, plus, search, Search plus Your World, seo
Posted in Google, Search Engine, SEO 1 Comment »

1 Comment

Google Search Algorithm Change For Freshness

November 4th, 2011 posted by Saurav Rimal 12:08PM | View Full Story

Google introduced a “freshness” algorithm update to its search results yesterday. This change will help users find pages relating to recent events, news and products much easier and more accurately. This algorithmic update is based off of their caffeine infrastructure. Google claims this change will make results more relevant for its users, which they believe is what truly sets their company apart from that of their rivals.

The last big update to the Google algorithm, known as Panda, affected only 12% of searches, while this update is will affect 35% of search queries (what users typed in the search bar in Google).

At the moment, you can see these changes taking affect when you search for items involving Basketball, Microsoft and the Wall Street Journal, but eventually this will spread across the board.

Read more about it:

From Google – Giving You Fresher More Recent Search
From Search Engine Land – Google Search Algorithm Change For Freshness To Impact 35% Of Searches; Twitter Firehose Remains Off

Here is a White Board Friday video from SEOMoz I recommend watching:

Google’s Freshness Update Whiteboard Friday

Steps You Can Take:

Add a blog, news and/or articles section to your website (if you haven’t already).
Have an effective presence on Social Media channels. Communicate with your followers/fans directly rather than automating your Tweets/messages.
Facilitate product reviews from the general public on your website. Take Amazon for example. With millions of reviews from real people who have actually used the products, not only do more users trust the products they purchase from Amazon, Google trusts their content more. There is no other particular type of content that has the same impact on the search results; and with the freshness update to Google’s algorithm, this content is a great way to ensure your website is updated on a regular basis.

Note: When you bring together your Twitter followers, blog followers and Facebook fans, you create a community. It is important to enhance that community and continually provide fresh content through reviews, debates, chats, etc.

An example of creating a community:

Pick a product – (i.e. ceramic cookware)
Create a target audience – Moms (target blogs made specifically for moms)
Get in touch with the bloggers of said blogs about your product
Offer free products to the bloggers in return for a blog post dedicated to a review surrounding your product

Return you will experience:

Links from each blog
User generated content
Word of mouth to other mothers and their followers
“Domino effect” links
Tweets and Facebook “Likes”, translated: social signals, (read: even more links)
Example: Type in “ceramic cookware” in Google and you will see “Xtrema” as a result of doing just this!

How to create dynamic content with the tactics outlined above

Blogs:

Let’s say I write a blog post on SEO for the WebpageFX blog. I then make sure to tag the blog post for ‘SEO’. This subsequently creates a snippet on the SEO category page, which brings in the top 3 latest blog posts written for SEO. This in turn not only keeps the blog fresh, but also the SEO category page fresh.

Social Media:

Like Blogs, you can create snippets and ensure continual fresh content in this way. In fact, this will even add to the conversation you are currently having with your followers. All the better, is it not?

Links:

I am not certain whether Google considers brand new links coming into a website to be “fresh content”, but I don’t see why they wouldn’t either. Links have always been an important factor for SEO and will most likely remain one of the most important factors in the future.

Reviews:

Once again you can create a snippet for this type of content. For example, if someone writes a review about WebpageFX’s SEO services, the snippet would automatically pull the review and subsequently place it on the SEO page.

Actual car review:

Snippet:

It’s as simple as that, well for the developers I mean .

Google is certainly rolling these changes sooner than later. Let me know what your thoughts are about this change.

Tags: google, google seo
Posted in Google, Search Engine No Comments »

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