Steve Johnston
The Google Blog of a Google Consultant

The full Google Consultant entry on Wikipedia has now been properly indexed in Google and, as I kind of expected, it is now sitting atop the SERPs for a Google Consultant search and has unseated me. As this is all a fairly new phenomenon, I am going to test a theory that the anchor text I posted on the 8th November pointing to the Wikipedia entry has had a significant effect on the outcome of this search, by removing it from the post below and seeing what happens.

Some interesting search-related retail data in from Hitwise this week.

Hitwise Search Terms data reveals that 28% of people used a single word in their search, 30% used 2 words whilst 42% used 3 or more words.

32.9% of visits to shopping websites during October 2004 came from search engines and directories.

'ebay' is the most successful search term for the retail sector; with 10 different variations of 'ebay' appearing within the top 100 shopping search terms. 'Amazon' and 'Argos' are the second and third most popular keywords respectively.

And this is the bit I found most interesting: Of the top 1,000 most successful (my emphasis) shopping search terms, 63.7% were brand specific (e.g., 'ebay'), 27.5% were generic product searches (e.g., 'mobile phones') and 8.8% were specific product searches (e.g., 'nokia 6260').

Okay, so November is 'obsessed by GreetStreet' month. I promise to move on shortly, but a site search of Google today elicits a very satisfying 655 entries from the GreetStreet site.

Neil Slater has asked me to explain why the GreetStreet SERPs (see below) include and entry for an organisation called Greenstreet - currently in third spot. Well, the answer lays in the Google Cache for the Greenstreet home page. The last line in the boxed cache area at the top says: These terms only appear in links pointing to this page: greetstreet.

In other words, somewhere along the line someone has introduced a typographical error into the linking text to the greenstreet site. Or, conversely introduced a typo into the URL of a link destined for the GreetStreet site. Either way, the combination has produced this oddity in the results which can be very puzzling if you are unaware of the power of anchor text. Now, if I really cared, I might even go looking for which it was :-)

Following on from my post of November 8th, the effect of my linking to the Wikipedia entry for a Google Consultant, has had an initial impact on the Google consultant SERPs (Google consultant screen grab in case the results have moved on when you come to read this).

This exercise demonstrates how careful strategies and tactics regarding your outbound linking can deliver a clear competitive advantage. The SERPs for one of my marketing objectives just got thinner in terms of competitors and thicker in terms of empirical evidence that supports my specialism.

From the horse's mouth, Google confirm what's going on with 'link:'
Example of a link search:
http://www.google.com/search?&q=link:www.google.com. In recent times, the use of a 'link:' search on Google would show all sites with a PageRank of 4 or above that linked to the target URL of your search. This data changed in the last few months to something that appeared random and fairly useless in terms of its reliability. Google, through their unofficial mouthpiece GoogleGuy, let the following be known to the world on this subject.

Google doesn't return all backlinks in response to a link: command. In the ancient days, it was because there was a finite amount of storage space on the machines that served link: requests. So we only kept the backlinks for the top N pages. Later as we moved to a different indexing system, we kept backlinks for the top M% of pages. This was helpful for important pages, but it meant that Mom and Pop sites with lower PageRank wouldn't have as good a chance to see their backlinks.

At SES London, it was suggested to us: why don't you give all pages an equal chance of seeing backlinks? That's good for users, who will have a greater chance of seeing backlinks for a given page, and it's especially good for smaller websites--they'd have a chance to see backlinks. It seemed like a good idea, so we implemented it. In fact, in order to give each page a better chance of seeing backlinks (instead of just the top M% of pages), we doubled the amount of backlinks that Google exports to the outside world. So users now have access to twice as much link: data as before; it's just not all the top PageRank pages.

Q: Ah, you know, I hadn't noticed that all those "I don't see any backlinks for my site" threads were getting more and more rare in the last few months. So there are twice as many backlinks available, but from a broader spectrum of pages instead of just higher PageRank pages? A: Yup.

So now you know. Quote taken from the marvellous SearchEngineWatch.com.

A recent feature on the BBC news site compares the leading search engines. It is a lightweight piece, but one that helps us keep our end-user perspective.

Greet Street cured! Please read my posts from October 20th, 29th and November 5th, detailing the attempted resolution of a Google blind spot. I am pleased to announce that Google can see again! At least one particular site, anyway.

GreetStreet.com has appeared in the Google SERPs this evening for the first time in years, and, most importantly, for the first time since the new Greet Street business started trading back in May 2004.

On Sunday night and Monday morning (7th and 8th), the Googlebot obediently visited the main-home.php and 25 other pages, following the blog link I posted on the 5th. Google had never, in the 250+MB of log files that exist for the site, ever crawled like this before. And true to its form, when finding robust new content, published it to the index within 48 hours.

At the time of writing, I am not convinced that all of Google's datacentres will have the new data live, so I have captured a screengrab to celebrate the occasion. Otherwise you can try it for yourself: http://www.google.com/search?&q=greetstreet

With this kind of solution replacing the sort of 'Google's banned me' hysteria I hear far too often, I am beginning to seriously doubt many of the sandbox/ban/penalty stories I hear. For GreetStreet, though paranoia is over and we have one happy customer. Or at least she would be if she'd answer her phone at 11.00pm in the evening :-)

As a self-styled 'Google consultant', it seems my particular specialism has been formally embraced into the industry vernacular. A Google Consultant Wikipedia entry (link removed due to test mentioned in 30th November post) arrived yesterday with a helpful pointer to the Google search I currently have the good fortune in winning: Google Consultant.

For those of you who are interested, I believe the outbound link from my site to an authority site defining what I do, will add extra weight to the relevance of my pages to such a search on Google.

And yes, it has occured to me that by re-inforcing the Google Consultant definition in Wikipedia with a link from my site, I may actually be helping the page beat me in the search for a Google Consultant. And why wouldn't I mind about that? With any new sector or market definition, having a third party confirmation that what you seek is legitimate and actually exists, is more likely to make you buy within it. And if the Wikipedia page doesn't beat me, it may beat some of my competitors, making them appear lower in the results. Either way, I am happy.

We seem to be getting some movement on the Greet Street front. The offending Kyotee URL, see Oct 29th post, has disappeared from the Google SERPs. Hooray. The Kyotee page listed is a normal directory entry for Greet Street, which is fine.

Now to get the Googlebot onto the GreetStreet.com site again, to provide a fresh index entry. This I am attempting to do by changing the link again in my right hand links column, direct to the main-home.php page. The Googlebot has been very Greet Street shy, so I am a little anxious about how soon we can get it along, and then what will it do when it gets there. More soon.

Hardly news, but I realise I have never brought your attention to the fact that Google has its own blog. It actually reads like a Googleplex news page - little more than the Google house style with a bit of personality thrown in. There are snippets of interest in there, I particularly liked the story about a recent acquisition, the inspriation for which was a movie. Yeah, right. The official Google Blog then is worth the occasional read, but my unofficial Google Blog is more informative, I hope :-)

Google have released an updated version of their Cheat Sheet.