Squareoak Search & Social Media Blog - Brendan Picha » Google

469 SEO & SEM Blogs – Google Custom Search Engine

Brendan Picha — Wed, 28 May 2008 16:59:36 +0000

I wanted to create and easy way to search for the things I sought within a targeted list of sites. This translates into a customized search engine. I know Google’s had an app like this for a while but I wanted to give Rollyo a shot. I was reminded of this service when reading SEOmoz’s Web 2.0 award winners. Rollyo allows you do create your own little search engines. I say “little” because unfortunately Rollyo only allows you to add 25 sites to your custom engine. I have 469 SEO and SEM blogs that I need to enter into a CSE and Rollyo couldn’t cut the cake. So I went over to Google’s CSE app and created my own. I’ve pasted the search box code below. Have fun!

Google SERPs – Barack Obama vs Hillary Clinton

Brendan Picha — Wed, 27 Feb 2008 20:35:41 +0000

Undoubtedly it’s a tight race so I wanted to see how Google (the largest gatekeeper of online information) was treating the Democratic front runners. Let’s take a look at Hillary’s rankings first. After all, she is the candidate who gets asked all the questions first

Some up-to-date news worthy information from mlive.com, Michigan Election News
This ranking seems totally fine and makes sense
Hillary’s campaign website.
Displaying a really nice array of site links. Very impressive.
Hillary’s splash page.
Also being indexed. Doesn’t make a whole lot of sense to be indexed twice AND have site links but hey, she’s taking up some nice real estate here.
Hillary’s Wikipedia entry under en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hillary_Clinton
Good, fine, makes sense.
Hillary’s second Wikipedia entry under en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hillary_Rodham_Clinton
Ok guys is this really necessary? Don’t get me wrong it’s great for Hillary but rather redundant.

Now for Barack

Barack’s Books
Of course. This is keeping in line with typical Google protocol. Nice.
Some up-to-date news worthy information from NPR
Good, fine, makes sense
Barack’s Campaign website
Good, fine, makes sense
Barack’s Wikipedia Entry
Good, fine, makes sense
Barack’s Illinois Website
Good, fine, makes sense

Barack’s rankings seem to be more appropriate and less redundant than Hillary’s however Hillary is taking a nice chunk of Google real estate with the site links and the dual Wikipedia entries. Why doesn’t Barack have site links? I mean BarackObama.com has 537,000 pages indexed in Google and Hillary has only 53,200! If anyone should have site links it should be Barack!

Let’s look at some stats yeah?

HillaryClinton.com
G: Indexation – 52,300 pages
G: Backlinks – 9,460
Domain Age: 2001
PR6
Alexa: 14,392
Compete: 1,746

BarackObama.com
G: Indexation – 537,000
G: Backlinks – 15,500
Domain Age: 2004
PR6
Alexa: 4,060
Compete: 877

Barack is definitely kicking Hillary to the curb with indexation, backlinks, Alexa, and Compete stats but Hillary has the 7 year old domain and the Google SERP real estate. With Candidates however, they are both authority names and so Google SERP real estate doesn’t really matter a whole lot since we’re searching for their names specifically and not something like, 2008 president of America…I wonder what those results are?

Press Releases: Watch Your Rankings Drop and Get Deindexed

Brendan Picha — Sun, 14 Oct 2007 15:17:10 +0000

Submitting press releases is a small part of an overall SEO campaign. Usually beneficial, especially if you opt for some of the paid services from more popular sites like PRWeb.com or PR.com. If you’re generating new, unique, and original content, you’ll want credit for it in one of two ways. You can either post it to your blog or post it through the press release and article networks but not both. I used to think both was ok as long you posted the content to your site first and allowed it to be indexed and then syndicated it throughout the PR and article sites. I was wrong. Duplicate content and authority enter into this indexing equation. Even if you post the content to your site first and allow it to be indexed, not only will Google display and give credit to the site with the most authority but it will also deindex your site’s URL that the content is on.

Here is a timeline of content generation, publication, and syndication:

Generated press release
Posted to corporate blog
Release is now indexed in Google
Submitted press release to 4 free press release sites (Backlinks included)
Press release sites have been indexed for content
The Release’s original URL on the corporate blog has been deindexed
Overall site rankings dropped for two keyword phrases found in the title of the release

This obviously stinks but all may not be lost here. There are Backlinks that are contained within the content of the release on the PR sites. These have not been processed yet by Google so I’m not sure if the presence of these will hurt or help. So even though we’ve been hurt content-wise we may still gain rank from the anchor text in the links. I’ll have to return with an update on this.

To spread the word and get indexed for your content, post to your site or the press release sites but never both. Where and when you post first doesn’t seem to matter.

Is the Mongolian Invader Gaming Google Trends?

Brendan Picha — Wed, 19 Sep 2007 20:02:15 +0000

For some reason ‘Mongolian Invader’ is number four over at Google Trends. I say “for some reason” because the the news articles that accompany this search query (that being one single news reference since June 16th) is a spammy site. Could it be that someone is repetitively searching the keyword ‘Mongolian Invader’ to game Google Trends and gain traffic? Interesting bit of manipulation if this is the case.

Backlink data: Yahoo & Google server lag and just being weird

Brendan Picha — Wed, 19 Sep 2007 16:55:08 +0000

I’m sure I’m stating the obvious a bit here but has anyone else noticed that Google’s backlink data within webmaster tools isn’t displaying any data? It lists how many links are pointing back to each page but when you click on the link list it doesn’t display anything. Additionally, whenever I attempt to do a site: or link: request within Yahoo, it churns forever and isn’t returning results. I’m not sure what’s going on in the world of backlink data but when a reporting mechanism works 99% percent of the time and then suddenly doesn’t, especially within the two major search engines, it’s a bit disconcerting.

Also worth noting is the weird Google results mentioned over at Search Engine Land and by Aaron Wall.