Is organic search dead?

Google has been busy this year with several small changes to the search results being made a various times throughout the year. Basically what they have been doing is trying to devalue organic listings and make PPC listing more valuable (after all this is how they make their money).

So what have they done? Well for a start the organic listing have been crammed into a smaller space with them now just taking up half the width of a page (before it was 3/4). This lead to more people clicking on PPC ads, which generates more money for Google.

The next change was to add a map into certain searches (eg hotels in edinburgh brings up a map with 10 hotels in edinburgh on a map). The map started small at the top of the page but it has now been enlarged so that you now have to scroll to view the first organic listing. This means that the click rate for the top listing will be decreased.

These changes all are aimed at making organic listings less valuable, it begs the question what is the next step? If Google had their way we would pay for every click, after all then they would make more money. It makes you wonder if there is a future for organic listing and SEO techniques. It used to be that only 30% of searchers used PPC listing but i get the feeling that will be rising steadily over the years which mean the big companies are going to be dominating search results and the smaller ones will probably disappear, which is a shame as the internet was a great medium for new starts competing against the big guns.

Hostels in Scotland

I just finished my latest web project a website which promotes hostels accommodation in Scotland, hopefully it will eventually list all the hostels that are in Scotland.  I have combined a mix of affiliate marketing and free listing which should offer good value to clients and still make a little money to pay the web costs for me.  Feel free to check it out at http://www.hostelsinscotland.com.

Spam Mail

I like everyone get a lot of spam mail each day, party because i have about 30 email accounts!  Occassionally i take the time to read through a few and some are actually quite funny.  One is example is a message i got today, it is from a firm the does webdesign.  They apparently want to redesign my website for me beacause according to them i “deserve a better website”.  Now i happen to have designed the site myself and so what they have successfully done is insulted me by saying my site is crap (its really not by the way!).  I would say that is not the best way to go about getting business.  Needless to say they wont be getting business from me, just like the other 6 companies who want to improve my google rankings even although i am No1 or 2 for all my top keywords (not sure how you improve on No1 ranking!)

Google PR Update (June 2009)

I noticed a surprising Google Toolbar update in currently in progress, one of my new websites Rooms in St Louis was only launched last month and now has a Pr3.  There has been fluctuation on my other websites as well with mostly upwards PR improvement.

This is surprising as the last update was only a few weeks ago and they usually only occur every quarter, i wonder is Google is thinking of having a more frequent update process.  Dosent really matter that much ofcourse as high PR does not mean high rankings (i have a pr2 website at no2 for its main keyword).  But it is still nice to see that green bar moving to the right!

Pagerank Sculpting

I have to say i was as surprised as anyone on what Matt Cutts had to say about Pagerank sculpting, for all those who have not heard this basicially it relates to the internal use of the “nofollow” attribute to control the flow of pagerank on a website.

So basically what we all though was the if i have 10 links on a page and i put the “nofollow” attribute on 5 links then the remaining 5 links would pass 2 points of Pr.  But this is appartnely not the case, nor has it been for around a year!  The links in question would only pass one point of PR and the remaining pr point would be wasted.

I have yet to find anyone who is happy with this and it dosent really make much sense to me, it has made me reconsider what links are on my homepage for example and instead of using the “nofollow” attribute i am looking at ways of using less links on a page.  The full story is on Matts blog at http://www.mattcutts.com/blog/pagerank-sculpting/.

Do editors have too much power?

I have to say editors have definitley been getting on my bad side lately and i am sure many people have had similar unpleasent experiances.  I was recently submitting some sites to JoeAnt, a couple of local community websites and a hotel site.  The process of getting them approved really was shocking, the amount of time making the most minimal change was ridiculous.  I actually got a listing denied because i had a capital C instead of a small c.  I mean what the hell?  is it not the editors jobs to edit the bloody lisitings instead of typinga long message to tell me to edit it!  It would have been easier for them to just change the thing or to “edit” it.

Then there is everyones favourite directory the DMOZ, i have to say it is little wonder that people get frustrated as the legthof time and near impossibility of getting a listing is a real problem.  I have been unable to get my site listed and i have been trying for 3 years, every single one of my compeitorsare there and some even have multiple listings.  Its not so much the not getting listed the annoys me its the lack of communication, if an editor decides that you should be listed then the must be a reason for that and would it really be such as problem for them to share those reasons with the rest of the world?

Well i have to say editors will not be on my christmas card list, just to finish off my problems my site is apparently blacklisted from wikipedia now.  I have information on castles and walks in Scotland and so added some of those pages to wikipedia throughout the last year.  No with no warning or reasons they are all removed and appartenly my site is a SPAM website.  Well im sorry but business.com, the yahoo directory and Google dont see Rooms in Scotland as spam.  I am pretty sure of the hundreds of people who visit each day and those who book accommodation would disagree.

So as for the DMOZ, Wikipedia and Joe ANt well i could care less about them now, they preach to being free and trying to keep the spirt of the Internet alive but while there are volunteer editors, who are unpaid they will inevitably abuse there power and generally piss people off.

Latest Google Update

Google update the visable PR a few days back and i have to say for my established sites there was no real changes in PR value.  My new websites have gained PR with http://www.standrewshotels.org going straight to a pr3 but really i have to say its not a major priorty of mine to get pr.  After all you dont rank in Google with high pr, you rank with a well optimised website with good incoming links.  The real value for getting links is not in getting high pr links but getting trusted links from relevant or trusted websites.  Places such as business.com and yahoo directory offer quality links, while relavant links can be found by typeing your keyword into google and adding either “links.htm” or “add url” into the search.

Hasta la Vista baby!

So i eventually got an external hard drive for my laptop and can now finally destroy Vista, in favour of the might XP. HP have made it almost impossible to rid the lap top of Vista(even a factory format failed to destroy the beast) but now i can have XP up an running and make full use of the functions of my laptop. welcome back my ram and graphics power (i will actually be able to run games like GTA and Half Life 2). No more waiting for way too long for the bloody thing to boot up! No more internet exploring crashing every 10 mins. Ah such bliss

Outsourcing -More money, Less Work

I have recently been trying my hand at outsourcing some web projects to India, via the Get a Freelancer website and i have to say it is the way forward. I think like anything its important to start small and work upwards, which is why my project was for one of my newer websites but i have to say the quality of the work was excellent. I basicially got some t10 Google rankings of the back of the project and for a cost of $110 it was pretty much a bargain. #

The good thing about GAF is that there is a rating system so you can check up on a prospective outsourcers previous work and also performance. This mean you are more likley to find a reliable and honest person. The other good thing is payment, you pay the money for the project into Escrow via GAF. But you retain contol of the money until the project finished to your satisfaction, so in otherwards if they dont finish then you dont lose any money because you can cancell the payment.

I have to say with the work load that i have outsourcing will become more prominent in my business model, eventually i envisage a cocktail, a beach and a load of other people doing all the work for me…

Cuil- The new kid on the search block

The buzz in the search industry right now seems to be revolving around Cuil which is trying to rival Google for the search top spot. Many have tried and failed to do this but with former Google engineers working on this and more pages indexed than any other search engine the people at Cuil seem optimistic.

I have to say it does look pretty cool, the three colum layout and the integration of images give a unique search result layout. But it not enough to look cool its the end product that counts and when doing some searches it does provide different results from Google and the results are pretty good for relavancey.

The main issue however is that the inner pages of a website seem to appear to frequently, i did a few searchs and found the 8 out of the top 20 where the same site! The whole point of searching is to compare other products and services not just a single product.

But it is important to remember that this is a new system and there will be bugs to be ironed out over the coming months. Will it rival Google? It may not be impossible but it will certainly be a tall orderafter all look at Microsoft, with a billion dollar backing and several years in the search industry they only account for 5% of the market. That shows the scale of the task facing Cuil.