Google Search Upgrades

While I was writing in the previous blog post on basic SEO for Local Search – Google was quietly introducing new search formats, make the life of SE optimizers and marketers more interesting. Depending on how users take up different search formats will determine the utility of these options, but understanding the differences, and getting into the game early will be an advantage.

As an exercise, go to Google, and type in a search term that relates to your website – hopefully you rank in the top 10. For demonstration I will once again use a client – Adam’s Fishing Charters, and show the screen shots. My keyword search term is “fishing charters victoria bc”

Look at the new set of search option links on the left side of the screen. Google now offers various ways of viewing the results of the search terms entered. The classic result – as in the screen shot above – shows the page ranking, map and description. Note that Adam’s Fishing Charters is top organic rank, and listed on the map for local businesses.

Now click on Image Search on the left side bar.

What happened? Adam’s lost the top ranking and shows up second on the list! Google parses the images on the listed pages, and ranks the websites according to both the number of quality images on the page, and the SEO tags (like alt and title). Island Outfitters ranks first has it has more images in the index page than Adam’s (note – add more images!)

Now try the More Text option

This illustrates how good, keyword optimized, visible text copy enhances page ranking. The page appears similar to standard search, but see how much text appears on the Adam’s Fishing Charter listing, and the keywords in bold. For now it seems between 400-500 words will be parsed as an enhanced page description. The lesson is clear – keyword optimized text at the top of the visible page code makes a big difference.

Next is the Recent Search option.

This brings up a list of websites, blogs and news feeds which feature the search term – as I blogged about Local Search yesterday, and included the search term “fishing charters Victoria BC”, that post appears in the list. This is where your own blog, which supports your website, can provide an advantage.

The Wonderwheel

My feeling this feature is there just because Google could do it – showing off. There may be an SEO utility IF the visual tree of related search terms show the top used search strings. You could then see if you rank well on those terms.

The other options – Reviews, Forums and Videos – are relevant. A video of your business, correctly keyword tagged obviously helps in this case. Reviews and Forums are more complicated. The reviews option only applies, for now, to cafes and restaurants – but expect this to roll out soon for hotels, services and products. There is not much the average business website can do to affect Google review listings, except to monitor what is being mentioned around the web, same is true of forums to some extent.

So what are the lessons? This illustrates that SEO and online marketing is a fascinating, constantly changing, field. It is not enough to assume a good keyword page rank on standard search is equal on all options. You never know how your potential clients will use search engines – which option they prefer.