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Comments
Hello Aaron. Can you please elaborate on " too many pages relevant to brand footprint?". I really wish you talked more about panda updates. Thanks a lot.
...it seemed to hit larger sites with higher page counts. There are some exceptions to that, where some larger sites with either brand or some great user experience metrics slid through (and then as Google got more confident with the Panda algorithm they eventually applied it to some smaller sites as well).
We do discuss Panda updates quite a bit in our member forums, but there isn't much financial incentive to discuss certain bits publicly (in fact, I would argue that discussing certain bits publicly would cost us far more than we would earn from it). This is sort of a tricky area for us. While many competing sites sell tools, we mostly rely on selling information & the community interaction. If we share some bits publicly, then we commoditize our own business model by making the product & service free.
And some of that knowledge comes from costly tests as well. If the competition doesn't share their test results with us & we make all our test results public for free then we bear a lot of cost and risk & get nothing in return for sharing it. What's worse is how stingy the SEO industry is with links...it doesn't really back out to share certain things. I wish it did, but I don't see how it does.
In instant search, Google most likely suggests terms that make them more money. Everything is quantifiable so it's easy to make to see what keyword is more likely to make them money and then lead the sheep to it. Now you have to type it a few times before Google lets you choose your term.
I don't search as much on Google but many are reporting that ads are much more enticing than unpaid (directly) results, without even accounting for Google's title changes to lower your CTR and increase theirs.
Remember folks, Google makes money when people click on ads, and not on your links/ If their earnings are increasing ask why. Did the query number increase that much? The ad price, or just the number of clicks? A guy like Matt Cutts is probably taking home a few million a year in RSU (Restricted Stock Units) not counting the stock he has from 2000 - 2010. Other managers and engineers too want Google stock to go up this year because you never know, they are like the traders on Wall Street.
...for a guy like Matt I don't think it is about the money at this point. He simply flat out loves his job & has plenty of money to last generations (assuming the Dollar doesn't go to 0).
You're absolutely right with the "the clicks have to come from somewhere" framing...RKG highlighted how their % of branded traffic clicking on AdWords ads (relative to the organic results) for one of their clients went from 40% to 140% in 17 months...so that is effectively more than doubling the paid ad's share of search clicks from 28.6% to 58.3%. Is that incremental or cannibalistic? That largely depends on channel conflict, but where there isn't channel conflict, it is likely mostly cannibalistic.
I wouldn't rule money out so fast. Even billionaires yearn for more, let alone tens-of-millionaires, it depends on the life plan and life is long. Retiring in a quiet MI farm is quite different from retiring in Jupiter island.
Lets leave it with stress is taking a toll on Mr Cutts and that it isn't like it was before.
If I search for Sears, 90% sure I want to go there so if I click on a Sears ad instead of scrolling down for 12 minutes to reach it, Sears got screwed and Google won. Sure a JC Penney add might change my mind but it's not unlikely.
Thank you so much for taking the time to reply, Aaron. Really appreciate it.
hi, thank you for such a great information about the long tail keywords and Google procedure about keywords
Killing Long Tail means Killing the Accuracy of Search Results..
To some extent it will work but..
As soon as people recognize that Bing is better and targeted , Some engineers will run away with long-tail between legs.
Excellent article I think a good idea, and will follow your advice to work, best regards
Google has always maintained that the changes they make are for a better search experience. With recent changes they have continued to make it is apparent that the balancing act between proving natural relevant searches and advertising revenue driven searches is skewed to the revenue income side. On many searches I am half way down the results page prior to finding the first organic result. As a stock holder its great, as a SEO consultant it is not so great...
When I search for 'weight loss estimator' I am given the results for 'weight loss estimator'. there is no substitution.
...even if it doesn't state it in the search results, behind the scenes it is (at least to some degree) converting that search query over. Read this post & then compare this to this (and notice how the one that uses "estimator" shows vastly different results than the one which does not wrap estimator in quotes).
great post here on this infographic - learned two new items on same...but I also see that even this kind of great post attracts spammers....sigh...I've no idea who this Marc Jacobs "is" but I'd never ever buy whatever the heck this spammer offers via this affiliate/spam site, eh! Idiots.... ;-(
We try to remove them quickly, but I was working on the monthly newsletter...and that typically is a couple days of solid work.
Feckin' brilliant analysis. I'm almost convinced to become a member.
Fantastic Infograhic, Aaron.
There have definately been some changes to way search results are being returned.
I would say I have noticed some of the factors you have outlined in your infograph over the past 2 or 3 months(Moreso in recent times).
Google threw in 500 Algorithm changes in the past 12 months alone. At that rate it is beoming increasingly difficult to tick all the right boxes, as far as websites performing well in the google search results is concerned.
Yes, Aaron, long tail is one important factor in keywords research we must consider to work on!
Helpful and insightful material.
Michael Locker MD
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