Steve Johnston
The Google Blog of a Google Consultant

BBC Radio Wiltshire Google Love Interview. I had fun this morning talking about how Google users search for 'Wiltshire' related information with BBC Radio Wiltshire presenter Olly Dearden and managed to plug the fundraising Google Love Lecture too! I have YouTubed the audio of the interview which you can listen to below; it is only seven minutes long. The list of Wiltshire terms we discuss in the interview are below.

1. wiltshire county council
2. wiltshire times
3. wiltshire college
4. jobs in wiltshire
5. schools in wiltshire
6. wiltshire police
7. wiltshire farm foods
8. wiltshire gazette & herald
9. bbc wiltshire
10. wiltshire news
11. wiltshire buses
12. wiltshire map
13. cottages in wiltshire
14. wiltshire libraries
15. holidays in wiltshire
16. wiltshire football league
17. this is wiltshire
18. wiltshire hotels
19. wiltshire estate agents
20. weddings in wiltshire
Oh, and Olly wanted to perform for the search term handsome radio presenter, so hopefully this link will give him a helping hand.

Update on Upcoming Fundraising Speaking Event: There are tickets still available. The old item page on eBay expired and sadly the relisting has a different item number (I really should pay attention sometimes). So for the relisted Google Love Lecture ticket page - all proceeds going to the school my children attend - can be found at www.johnston.co.uk/googlelove (why, oh why, didn't I do that last time).

Upcoming Fundraising Speaking Event:
I am presenting a '50 Ways to Make Google Love Your Web Site' lecture on the 1st November 2007 as a fundraising effort for the secondary school my children attend - St Laurence School in Bradford-on-Avon, Wiltshire. It is an evening event at the school, from 7.00pm and therefore may prove a little awkward for you if you are not in the vicinity.

The event price is a low £45 and there are only 110 tickets available. All the profits go to the school's major projects, in particular its new library. All attendees get a free copy of the new edition of my ebook (22,000 words, 56 pages), worth £19.95.

For further details and to buy tickets, please visit the Ebay UK page for the event (Ebay item no. 140170041904).

Edition 2 of 50 Ways to Make Google Love Your Web Site: Hot off the virtual press is my thoroughly updated ebook on optimizing web sites for Google search. I confess it is a little overdue and all of my customers who have bought one since the 1st January 2007 will be sent a copy of the new one free of charge. I have kept the price the same as the outgoing edition.

While maintaining the overall structure, I have expanded the content extensively, in fact by almost 100%, going from 12,500 words to 22,000 words. There are around 10 new sections.

For further details and the purchase page: Google Optimization eBook

Google Consolidates Reputation Across Duplicate URLs! In the middle of September, Google's webmaster blog posted a piece of information that is News! The blog URL is under here (it's very long). The crux of the matter is these three sentences:

1. When we detect duplicate content, such as through variations caused by URL parameters, we group the duplicate URLs into one cluster.
2. We select what we think is the "best" URL to represent the cluster in search results.
3. We then consolidate properties of the URLs in the cluster, such as link popularity, to the representative URL.

It is point three that is so interesting. Consolidation of the link popularity (or Reputation, as I like to call it) is not what we have been assuming they did. That's very clever, if its really happening. I don't recommend you stop worrying about this as an issue, though. Google can't get this right all the time, better for the problem not to be there to solve in the first place.