Why Google Results Aren't All That They Seem

If you're in the healthy habit of keeping a close eye on the performance of your website you might well check its position in the search engine results (Google) on a regular basis.

While it's always good to measure and track as much of your marketing as you can, checking the SERPs (Search Engine Results Pages) regularly can actually be a bad idea.

Why?

Because Google, in trying to serve you the best possible results for your search, actually delivers the results it thinks you want to see - including your own website, and especially if you often click on the listing to make sure everything is working. This means that the more often you look for your own website the more likely it is to come near the top of the results - but only for you.

And this means the results you see are not the same results that anyone else sees, and that can mean that while your website appears on page one for you it might be nowhere to be seen for your potential customers.

That's why it's important to have independent verification of your website's performance and an ongoing 'optimisation' campaign to push it further up your potential customers' results pages too. Optimisation doesn't need to be complicated and it's not a precise science but a small investment (of time or cash) is usually all you need to improve your website's performance.

Needless to say, Cinnamon Edge can help with Search Engine Optimisation for your website.

Call us on 01284 753912 or email info@cinnamonedge.co.uk and let us check your website's performance.

We'll even supply a written website report (value £47) at no cost to you!

Roy

Google Places Update

At our recent Google Places workshops we emphasised how much (and how rapidly) Google likes to change things in local search, including Places, but that it was still important to include as much information about your business as possible. This helps Google to verify the legitimacy of your business and its location as well as its postition in the marketplace.

Well, they've changed things again since then, and a lot of the data you enter in your Places listing is not currently being displayed. However, it DOES still matter, as Google themselves confirmed this week:

"The following info you provide may not appear on your Place page, but it’s all still used to help us understand more about your business:


• Email address
• Menu
• Reservations
• Optional attributes / Additional details
• Service area toggle “Show service area”


So just because we’re not showing it, doesn’t mean it’s not helpful for us to have — it helps our system ensure that your organic listing appears and ranks appropriately on Google and Google Maps when potential customers perform searches related to your service."

So there you have it, from Google themselves: they still use all this data, even if they don't always display it. Keep adding data, videos, images and more to your Google Places page to keep your business in the forefront of your local market. 

And if you need any more help with any aspect of local business marketing you know who to ask.


Roy

PS. Incidentally, Google say that the absence of business descriptions that you might have noticed on some Places pages is a bug that they're working on fixing, not part of their planned changes for Places pages.

Still Time to Get Our Free Course

We created a free seven-part course in connection with our Search Engine Domination Workshop. It's deliverd by email and it's still available on its own search engine domination website here.

The course will help you take control of your market by dominating the search engine results and you'll be taken through all the essential parts of the process step by step.

Once you've started reading the free course you might want to learn more, and you can do this at our half-day workshop on June 9th. You can book your place for the workshop at http://onlinedomination.eventbrite.com but please talk to us about special deals for sole traders and multiple tickets.

With the free course or the workshop, you can start your business' search engine domination this week!

Call us on 01284 753912 for information on the workshop.

Roy

Get up to Date with Google's Changes

We will be running an 'emergency workshop' on the fall-out from the changes Google made to local search in November which are still causing confusion and dismay to local businesses around the world.

By allowing ourselves a couple of months for the dust to settle we have been able to get a firm grip on the implications and the next steps that all local businesses need to make if they are going to profit from the increasing use of local search by customers and clients.

Roughly 80 percent of all searches for local services and products begin online. That means you NEED to be the company your potential customers see when they start that search. We'll show you how.

The workshop - the first of a series we'll be staging in conjuction with the Bury St Edmunds Chamber of Commerce - is this coming Friday at 9.am, at the Active Business Centre (St Andrews Castle), St Andrews Street South, Bury St Edmunds.

Full details and how to book are at http://googlechanges.eventbrite.com/ and the full list of courses is at http://marketingworkshops.eventbrite.com/.

Book now and get ahead of your local competitors!

Roy

Google Places - Another Alarming Anomaly?

Google is still sorting out local search - or at least some local businesses should hope they are.

Here's what happened when I tested Google's idea of 'local' today - bearing in mind that I'm in Bury St Edmunds, Suffolk. Google clearly thinks that local for me (and for local plumbers) includes most of Southeast England:



None of the businesses listed near the top of the page are actually local, despite the fact I've entered my location (on the left) as Bury St Edmunds.

What's more, the map on the right does appear to show one plumber actually in Bury St Edmunds, but it's the one ranked lowest (on the first page) of the Places results (H).

This means that businesses with a more 'effective' Places listing are actually less visible than one with a worse Places page.

Click on that 'H' listing and you do get a 'proper' Bury map with the other local plumbers ranked correctly, but anyone just looking at Google's first page as I did could be forgiven for thinking that there is only one plumber in the town.

Incidentally, you will also see different results if you use the location in the 'search string' - by entering 'plumber bury st edmunds' in this example.

Google's local search updates have had a lot of publicity, not least from ourselves, but they clearly have some way to go before they're a genuinely reliable source of information for UK searchers.

Roy

PS. You can get more help with local search via our Cinnamon Edge website.