Blind Five Year Old

Did you implement your Recipe markup correctly? Is your review microformat being recognized by Google? Does Google understand your address mark-up? The best way to find out is to run it through Google’s Structured Data Testing Tool.

Structured Data Testing Tool Bookmarklet

I used Google’s old Rich Snippets Testing Tool heavily as I helped readers diagnose Authorship markup issues. One morning I was reviewing an interesting post by John Doherty about Google Author Search. In his post he provides a handy bookmarklet.

I realized I should create a Rich Snippets Testing Tool Bookmarklet so I don’t have to continually go to the page manually. So I dusted off my limited javascript skills and after about 10 minutes half an hour of trial and error had it figured out.

This old bookmarklet worked wonders (saving me countless hours of cut and paste) but Google recently migrated the Rich Snippets Testing Tool to the more developer-centric Structured Data Testing Tool. So I quickly updated the bookmarklet to use this new resource.

Structured Data Testing Tool

Drag the highlighted link above to your bookmarks bar. Then click the bookmark whenever you want to test a specific page. It will create a new tab with the Structured Data Testing Tool results.

This makes it ultra-easy to validate any page for a variety of rich snippets and other structured data. Be careful though since there are still some false negatives within the results.

You can also find this bookmarklet on SEO Skeptic. I strongly encourage you to visit there regardless since it’s a fantastic resource for semantic search.

As always, please let me know if you find this helpful and report any incompatibility issues or bugs you might find with my bookmarklet code.

What is SEO? The acronym stands for search engine optimization. But the definition of SEO is a more difficult question.

It’s not what it once was, that’s for sure. It is not just a niche edits service, but much more.  The problem is, I see references to outdated definitions of SEO on a fairly regular basis.

If you have arrived here thinking SEO is a sham, snake oil and/or dead then a) you are grossly mistaken and b) let me disabuse you of that notion.

SEO Definition

Here’s my definition of SEO in 2012.

Search Engine Optimization is a multidisciplinary activity that seeks to generate productive organic traffic from search engines via technically sound and connected sites by matching query intent with relevance and value.

It’s a bit of a mouthful, I know. I’ve emphasized the areas that I feel are particularly important and deserve a more in-depth explanation.

Productive Traffic

The goal of SEO is not to increase traffic willy-nilly. You increase traffic by 30% but it makes no difference to the bottom line. Who cares!

Productive can mean different things to different companies. Productive may mean leads or subscribers or revenue or page views. Whatever it is, it’s important to define and track productive traffic rather than simply focusing on increasing traffic overall.

I might be able to generate more traffic by adding ‘Nude’ and ‘Free’ as keyword modifiers but is that really going to bring productive traffic to a site?

This goes (way) beyond brand versus non-brand traffic, which I find to be the most rudimentary of divisions. This is having a fundamental understanding of the traffic that makes a difference to that business.

That may mean moving away from high volume terms and generating less traffic overall. Don’t get saucer eyes when it comes to keyword volume. It’s about the right keywords, not the biggest keywords. (That’s what she said!)

Yet, even if you’re driving the right traffic there are other factors that contribute to a productive visit. If the focus is leads, you might realize that the call-to-action is weak, doesn’t match the query intent or competes with other elements on the page. Perhaps the lead form itself isn’t very good either.

If the goal is page views, you may realize that the design is confusing, the text hard to read and the content without a structure that allows for easy navigation.

Because productive traffic is the goal an SEO needs to understand design, user experience, information architecture and conversion rate optimization. Otherwise it’s like a chef who creates a menu but then has no input on how the food is cooked, the quality of ingredients, decor of the establishment or the presentation of the meal.

It’s okay if you’re in the business of driving any old traffic at a website and then shrugging your shoulders when it doesn’t really do anything for the business. But that’s not SEO. You’re just a burger flipper at some fast food joint.

Technically Sound

As an SEO you need to have very strong technical skills. What does this really mean though? At a minimum, it means you need to know how the Internet works and how search engines crawl and index the web, for that we suggest visiting websites like https://victoriousseo.com/blog/how-to-measure-seo-visibility/.

You should also be comfortable analyzing HTTP headers and know your status codes cold. Get good using Firebug or Chrome’s Developer Tools. Mine those weblogs, because there’s gold in them there data. (Sorry, I just watched True Grit.) Bonus points if you can code something up yourself to extract it.

Understanding how to diagnose and solve accessibility and crawl efficiency problems is critical.

SEO is about knowing enough about … everything. HTML, CSS, JQuery, AJAX, Flash, JavaScript, XML, JSON, RSS, PHP, SQL. Experiment with and understand these technologies.

But you’re not done yet because you still have to understand the technical side of specific search engine directives including (but certainly not limited to) noindex, nofollow, rel=canonical, rel=author, rel=publisher, rel=standout, hreflang and various competing schemas of microdata.

SEO is about knowing all of this to ensure technical issues aren’t obstacles and to create positive relationships with engineers. You must speak their language. You don’t have to understand everything and you should never bluff, but you damn well better be able to carry on a coherent conversation.

You should know the difference between a GET and a POST; between server side and client side scripts. An SEO should be able to convey when and why to use a cookieless domain. You shouldn’t get a deer-in-the-headlights look when engineers talk about CDNs or minifying code.

I haven’t even touched on diving into the details of information retrieval, natural language processing, machine learning and other methods that inform modern search engine algorithms.

The more technical you are the more effective you become. And there’s always something more to learn.

Connected

What do I mean by connected? Today it means links to and from other sites and connecting with and through others on social platforms. In plain language it’s about links and social.

I’m not a huge fan of link building and prefer a link gardening approach. Mind you, I understand the value of links but too often link building is done for the wrong reasons and weighted far to0 heavily in the scheme of things.

It works a fair amount of the time. I can’t deny that. But I’m never sure at what expense. Too often I see those companies on a treadmill of link building efforts. Frankly, you should reach a point where link building isn’t something you’re working at.

Oddly, linking out is an overlooked and underrated tactic. Tadeusz Szewczyk was an early and strong proponent of this practice. Linking out is a form of built-in reciprocity. You wind up getting back links from those to whom you link out. It’s a way of connecting to and engaging with people in your niche.

That sounds a lot like social doesn’t it? Social takes on a number of dimensions. First is producing content that is worthy of sharing and then doing everything you can to make it portable. That includes an interaction design that promotes sharing and ensuring that the shared content is optimized.

Of course there’s also really being social and getting out on these platforms and connecting with your users and customers. I don’t mean public, glorified customer service but actually socializing with some of your users and customers. This is both extremely tough to do at scale but also valuable for a variety of reasons.

Today it also means understanding how social is being integrated into search (it’s not the other way around) and learning Facebook SEO and Google+ SEO.

Intent

Now we finally get to the real heart of SEO and the initial reason I started this blog post. Query intent is perhaps the most critical part of SEO.

You should understand the syntax of your user and the motivations behind their search and queries. At the bare minimum you should understand differences between navigational, informational and transactional queries.

No, this is not about personas. All too often time and money are spent creating personas that create artificial divisions in the long-term, a type of stereotype that others glom onto to as a way to promote their own views. “Remember, that’s not what Sally Searcher is about.” (Ugh, kill me now.)

Instead this is about doing the hard work of understanding how and why people are searching for your content and products. It’s about syntax, psychology and consumer behavior among other things.

Intent is also informed by context. Geography, time of year and platform (i.e. – mobile) can all play an important part of understanding intent. It’s never something you can just copy and paste from one site to another.

For instance, here’s a real search that wound up coming to this blog.

how to change the blue link title of your website

I find these types of queries fascinating. It forces me to think different. SEO is about knowing how people are thinking and searching, not how that business thinks their users should be searching. SEO is an advocate for the user.

Relevance

Not too long ago SEO was about matching keywords with relevant content. This is why content farms became so popular and profitable. All you needed to do was take a long-tail keyword and match it with relevant content. It also meant you could shard a keyword concept into a large number of pages.

So you might find a different page for ‘how to squeeze orange juice’ and ‘how to squeeze fresh orange juice’.

Was the content relevant on these pages? For the most part, yes. But it was the content equivalent to empty calories.

That doesn’t mean that relevance isn’t important. Nothing could be farther from the truth. It’s still incredibly important. A fair amount of on-page SEO is about making relevance obvious. Because it doesn’t just need to be relevant, it has to be perceived as relevant at a glance.

Relevance must be seen through the lens of intent instead of a simple keyword match. Relevance is the beginning, not the end of SEO.

Value

Relevance is always coupled with value. Is value subjective? Sure. But it gets easier when you trace it back to intent. Does that page truly satisfy the query intent? Not that it’s relevant. Not that it matches the keyword. Did the page provide enough value to satisfy intent.

You’ll notice that I’ve used satisfy twice and that’s not by accident. Search engines (and SEOs) are increasingly concerned with user satisfaction. An SEO might not talk about ‘delighting the user’ (eye roll) but we’re measuring satisfaction through both qualitative and quantitative measures.

Is it readable? Was the user experience positive? Were they able to find the information? Did it lead them to other related content? Was it easy for them to subscribe or buy? Were they able to print or share the page? How many pages did they view? Did they convert? What is the bounce rate?

We’re also there to call your baby ugly and identify gaps in a site’s content. That might mean the content produced isn’t valuable enough or that there is unsatisfied query intent (i.e – you don’t have the right content).

SEO is about producing positive and satisfying interactions that support the brand and flow into other marketing channels.

What About Rank?

You’ll note that I didn’t talk at all about rank. Rank can be important but only in the context of driving productive traffic. In many ways rank should take care of itself if you’re doing everything else right.

In addition, rank becomes less important when you’re working on large sites with more than, say, 100,000 pages. There are ways to measure rank in these situations but I don’t often find that of great value except in communicating with clients obsessed with rank.

Rank is also losing it’s fidelity with the continuing personalization of search results. If Search+ is here to stay then rank will become increasingly fractured.

SEO vs Inbound Marketing

There are many who probably look at my definition and explanation and believe it better matches ‘inbound marketing’. This new umbrella term created by Hubspot works for a lot of people. They find it easier to describe and convey to clients. It’s more palatable and allows them to distance themselves from the poor reputation SEO has acquired. I get it. But I don’t like it.

I’m an SEO and I’m proud of it.

I use SEO as a client filter. I can skip those who think it’s snake oil, find the ones who ‘get it’ and help educate those who might be on the fence. In many ways these are the clients who are most thoughtful and can contribute and collaborate on SEO efforts. Those are my kind of clients.

If I were trying to sell into the Fortune 100 or have thousands of clients under contract at a time I might decide inbound marketing was a better term. I wouldn’t have the time to explain and educate.

That’s not Blind Five Year Old. While the company is expanding, I still have the ability to create personal relationships with clients.

In the end, I’m not sure I want to work with a client who would accept my help under the guise of inbound marketing but not as an SEO. Perhaps that’s my own type of elitism.

SEO 2012 Example

So lets take my SEO definition and apply it to an example. Suppose you have the query ‘eureka lightforce 300 manual’. What do you suppose the intent is behind that query?

Are they really looking for that vacuum’s manual? Or are they instead having a problem with their vacuum? If you were able to look at query reformulations you’d see users cycle through modifiers like troubleshooting, repair, problems, information, solutions, manual and parts. In fact, you can use Google’s related queries to see how these are linked.

Two years ago you might have been able to get away with creating a page with a highly optimized Title, dynamic boilerplate text, a generic product description and a link to a PDF download of that manual. It would have been relevant but you wouldn’t have truly satisfied intent or delivered real value. More to the point, the value that you delivered was a commodity.

What would a SEO page for this term look like?

You’d still have a solid Title, product description (and specs), and a link to the manual. But you’d add a list of common problems with that vacuum along with potential solutions. These might include step-by-step DIY repair guides.

You’d provide links for replacement parts. You might dynamically serve them local vacuum repair shops. You may even have a section dedicated to buying a new vacuum. Maybe you even have a calculator that tells you whether it’s worth fixing the old vacuum or buying a new one. Heck you could even provide links to house cleaning services.

A well designed page with these elements would provide relevance and value, thereby satisfying query intent.

TL;DR

SEO is about generating productive organic search traffic by matching query intent with relevance and value. The implication of this definition is that SEO must draw upon an increasing number of disciplines including design, user experience, information architecture and conversation rate optimization.

This comprehensive Google+ SEO guide covers every aspect and angle of Google+ and how it impacts search. My normal TL;DR has been replaced with a Google+ SEO Best Practices section located at the bottom of this post.

I will be periodically updating this post (updated January 23, 2012) as things inevitably change. Please don’t hesitate to comment or contact me with observations or when certain features change. I also thank the many people (on Google+) who helped in the research phase of this guide.

Google+ Search

Most of the attention is on the integration of Google+ in Google search results. However, internal search on Google+ is a fascinating product and lays the groundwork for search integration.

Google+ Search Facets

Google+ search queries return results with a standard selection of facets.

Sometimes Google selects these facets for you. Specifically, it will default to People and pages for many queries. These are generally category or head terms like SEO, Photography, Chef, CEO, Gardening etc. But a query for something like ‘banana bread’ will not return a preselected People and pages facet but just provide an Everything feed of content.

You can select certain types of content using what I call the content facet.

This is all pretty self explanatory. I’m still not certain why Sparks has survived though. Next is what I call the universe facet.

Here you can select what universe of results you want to search. The ‘From you’ option is extremely handy in finding your own Google+ content. And finally there is what I call the location facet.

At present you can search for Google Check-ins in certain cities. This facet does not get trigged when you use a location modifier. This isn’t super useful right now but it does point to future local search opportunities.

Google+ Search Results

The actual results are a live stream of Google+ content.

Most recent is just what it sounds like. So the real-time search everyone thought was going to transform the world is a small feature in Google+ search.

You can switch to Best of which delivers results based on a combination of who is in your Circles and engagement (+1s, comments and shares) on those items with some Sparks content thrown in for good measure. There’s some sort of time component at work here as well that skews results to more recent content.

I see this in action when I search for ‘I did not wake up in‘ which returns a number of posts from my personal travel meme, the first few of which are from this week. (Please note that your results may look vastly different than mine.)

Google+ People and Pages Results

The content results are, therefore, pretty straightforward from and SEO perspective. It’s the People and pages that are far more interesting and potentially valuable. The question is how these People and pages are selected.

Google+ search results are personalized but through some crowdsourcing I’ve been able to determine the search signals.

The most important signal is whether the query term appears in the Introduction, Employment, Education or Places lived section of your profile. Danny Sullivan rarely shows up in a search for SEO because he doesn’t have the term in any of those fields. He does in his tagline but that’s not used in the internal search algorithm. Or if it is, it’s not heavily weighted.

After the query match it’s all about who you have in your Circles. If you have more than six people in your Circles who also match the query then it comes down to a mixture of Circle count (heavily weighted), name verification (moderately weighted) and engagement (lightly weighted).

Occupation is not used. How do I know this? I’ve had Purple Jellyfish Farmer as my occupation for months. A search on this phrase returns no results.

Bragging Rights is also not used for People and pages search.

At present results also seem to favor People over Pages. But if you don’t have enough People to fill out these results Google backfills with Pages that have that query term in the name and a high Circle count.

Circle count is clearly important but some sort of engagement metric might be at play when the set of people returned is low. It’s difficult to say if or to what degree engagement plays a part right now.

Using a new Google+ account I was able to see ‘unbiased’ results.

While Jonathon has SEO in both Introduction and Employment (having it both places seems to help a lot) and enjoys a solid Circle count I find his inclusion here over others to be curious. These results point to a slight added weight on those who are verified. How you get verified is still a mystery to me. I’m hoping to figure this out in the very near future.

Google+ search results can change quickly. Here’s my search for SEO the day after my initial research.

Danny Sullivan is now appearing instead of Bill Slawski. Why?

Yup. Including SEO in his Introduction now ensures that Danny will be returned for internal Google+ queries on SEO.

The Places lived section is also used for internal search purposes.

The problem here is that I haven’t lived in Elkins Park in the last two decades. And if users are looking for people and pages using Google+ then there will be a lot of false positives.

Google+ Search Spam

Clearly there’s also an invitation to spam the Places lived section. If I wanted to show up for searches in numerous cities I could just say I lived in all those places. In fact, there are a lot of areas ripe for spam right now.

Arpeet is ranked well up in a search for SEO. I don’t know Arpeet. He might be a fine SEO but I found it curious that he was ranked among some of the better known folks in the industry.

Clearly Arpeet is dropping every SEO related keyword in his Introduction but he’s also spammed Google+ by claiming his Other name is SEO.

Education can also be spammed.

The Google+ spam cop (who is not Matt Cutts) will need to keep an eye on these and other methods of spam and over-optimization. Right now it seems way too easy.

Search+

Sorry but I am not going to use that silly name or acronym and instead will refer to the new integration of Google+ into search as Search+. While I will speak to the controversy  surrounding this integration my focus will be on the implementation and what it means for SEO.

In a nutshell Search+ transforms your search results based on the connections, interactions and activity you have on Google+. It is the largest search personalization effort ever attempted by Google.

Search+ can be turned on and off using icons near the top right of the page.

This helps to address critics of the filter bubble phenomenon. You can set the default view by clicking the gear icon and selecting search settings.

Among other things on the page you can set your Personal results preference. This doesn’t mean that you won’t be able to access one or the other, it simply sets one as the default view for your search.

People and Pages

One of the bigger features of Search+ is the promotion of People and pages for certain topics.

A search on SEO returns the profiles for Rand and Danny. The screen capture above is in a logged out session. If I were logged in I’d see whether these individuals were in my Circles. If they weren’t I’d be given the opportunity to add them right from the search result. Powerful stuff.

So, as it stands the rich seem poised to get richer.

Because Circle count is a primary factor in how these People and Pages are selected. It’s not the only thing as I’ll soon show you but it’s a large part of the equation.

But first, how useful is it to see People and Pages that are already in my Circles? Might it be more interesting to show People and Pages I don’t have in my Circles?

Danny and Rand might be the most relevant results but are they relevant if I’ve already ‘found’ them. If search is about discovery, then you’d think that the default should be to present people you don’t already know. This would actually make this feature interesting for a wider audience.

The assumption here is that all search is about discovery. But it’s not. Prior attempts at personalization provided Google with insight into how we use search to re-find content. This can be as simple as navigational search or as detailed as searching for a phrase in hopes of it returning ‘lost’ content.

While I believe that Search+ tries to address this intent I’m not sure the People and Pages section should be applied to that task. But I digress.

How are People and Pages selected?

First you can click the See more link and look at the list of people.

This is the same personalized list you get when doing an internal G+ search. But the order doesn’t map to the selections for People and Pages. In fact, we know that Danny wasn’t even optimized for SEO until just recently. Yet, during that time he was being presented in People and Pages for SEO.

So is it just flat out Circle count? No. Here are the People and Pages for Social Media.

Makes sense right? But if I click See more I find that Robert Scoble is returned.

And we all know that more people have Robert in a Circle than Brian or Chris. In fact, he has more than them combined. So it’s not just about Circle count. Instead they feel like curated lists. Yet, that flies in the face of Google’s steadfast reliance on algorithms.

But it’s pretty clear that there is a list of people for each of these terms. Some lists are longer than others. For ‘blogger’ you can refresh and get a few different people.

But try as I might, no matter how many times I refresh, only Rand and Danny are returned for SEO and Brian and Chris for Social Media. I’m left to conclude that People and Pages are defined, curated lists of people by topic. That means there’s nothing you can really do to optimize for these slots. Cue the torches and pitchforks.

[Update 1/25/12] The lists for both ‘seo’ and ‘social media’ have been expanded to include a handful of other people. Hit refresh a few times and you’ll see them cycle through the list for that topic.

Google+ Posts

Of course what we’re paying the most attention to is the actual Search+ results.

My search for great science fiction returns two personalized results in the 2nd and 5th position. Each of these posts contains a link to a site outside of Google+, as well as a those that lead directly to Google+. While a lot of attention is focused on the latter (Google is biased they scream!), I’m more interested in the former. Because here’s what the non-personalized version of this query returns.

The two sites in my personalized results do not appear in these results. In fact, a site I’ve already visited (NPR) appear below these personalized results. To optimize for Search+ it is vital that sites produce relevant content that is easily shared. Of course the other element is the reach of those sharing that content. Those who are in more Circles and get more engagement will provide greater exposure for that content.

And if it tips and turns up in What’s hot, the reach for that item could be quite substantial. As an experiment, do a Google search for OCD and see if I am one of your personalized results.

This is where Ripples provides some insight. How is your content transmitted through the system? Which users helped to provide your content more reach? Identifying those people and engaging with them could help give your content more search visibility.

Search+ Algorithm

The current Search+ algorithm seems fairly rudimentary and is composed of only a few factors which can sometimes produce results that are less than desirable.

This humorous post by Steven Hodson won’t help me if I’m looking to purchase a mirror.

One of the over-riding factors in the Search+ algorithm is a simple text match on the query. There is no real determination of context or intent which can often produce these types of irrelevant results. This is a real achilles heel in the current implementation from my perspective.

This text match only occurs on those who you have in a Circle. This does limit the potential for spam since you’d hope you haven’t Circled a spammer. This also means that your Search+ results will, in large part, be a product of the number and type of people you Circle.

I have a fair amount of people Circled so my Search+ results can often look chaotic. Someone using Google+ just for family might have fewer personal results. Will they be more relevant? Well, think about posts on Google+ (or Facebook) from your own family and decide for yourself.

Where those results rank within Search+ results is another matter. It’s clear that engagement, both with that person and on that specific piece of content, is important. Content from people you engage with more often or content that is more popular overall will rank better. 

When content was shared on Google+ also seems to be an influence with Google placing a moderate to heavy weight on recent content. We’re still in the beginning phase of the integration so I’m not sure exactly how much weight is being put here yet.

Anecdotally, I’ve also noticed that non-Public content seems to be given a lesser weight. I’ll look to validate this moving forward since this, in some ways, seems backward.

Looking forward I would think that Search+ would need to better understand context and intent to deliver the type of relevance most users are seeking. Don’t get me wrong, it works well sometimes but the signal to noise ratio can go sideways quickly, particularly if users are increasing their Google+ Circles and usage.

One way Google may think about solving these issues is by using and automatically filtering by Circle, particularly if they start to provide self-organizing Circle suggestions based on their acquisition of Katango. So instead of searching all your Circles Google may identify the query as being about photography and personalize those results based on your ‘Photographers’ Circle.

But we’re a long way off from that. For now it’s all pretty much spaghetti against the wall.

Google +1 Button

The prevalence of explicit social annotations has diminished since the introduction of Search+. The +1 button on search results is now only shown when you hover or rollover that result. The implication here is that the primary use of +1s is to deliver content into the G+ environment where it can then be used for Search+ personalization.

So instead of getting a bunch of visual cruft about how many people +1 this result and that result, they’ve decided to leverage all that data to deliver personalized results.

That doesn’t mean the +1 button isn’t important. It is. You want people to +1 your content so that it shows up on Google+ where it can drive traffic and engagement. The total number of +1s may be a social signal, but I’m unsure to what degree.

The +1 button number only reflects +1s from that URL. It does not take into account the +1s that occur on Google+ as a result of that initial +1. I sense that the latter metric might be more important to Google than the former.

Though if Google wanted to boost the adoption of +1 they could match Facebook and base this number on the +1s of that content from that URL and on Google+ as well as the total number of shares and comments. A higher number presented on the +1 button creates stronger social proof and may actually create additional +1s.

Either way, having the +1 button prominently available is vital for Google+ SEO optimization.

Google+ Social Snippets

I mentioned above that making content that is easily shared is vital. This means that you should make your +1 (and other) buttons easy to find and use. I’ve had great success with the floating share bar on this blog and on client installations.

Making them available is only half of the battle. How those snippets look is the next part of the optimization process. I have a detailed guide on how to optimize social snippets but will provide a few examples of why it’s important to get this right.

Google is actually one of the worst offenders when it comes to snippet optimization. They can get away with this but you can’t.

eConsultancy might not be getting as much social engagement on this item because of the poor snippet. The description here is clearly not related and the image, while branded, does nothing to tell me anything more about the story.

Optimizing your social snippets leads to more clicks, more comments and more shares. This is your content on the go and presented in an environment where people are scanning very quickly. Forget the 5 second test, this is the 2 second test.

This isn’t even that bad of a snippet since they do have their brand image. Worse is when you see a big RSS or Facebook icon. It happens. It happened to me before I decided I no longer wanted to shoot myself in the foot. So if it’s happening to you, get up and do something about it.

Google+ Content

It’s not just about content being shared on Google+. Content created on Google+ can also rank well under certain circumstances. This was true well before Search+ was launched. I innocently asked if people would know what I meant if I said ‘half measure and full measure’.

Sure enough, there I am as the 7th result for this query with an Authorship treatment that is likely to get me a fair amount more clicks than a normal 7th place result. This Google+ post has been as high as 4th. Now, it’s a long-tail query but make no mistake, you can create content on Google+ and get it to rank without personalization.

But now we’ll look at this same query with Search+ personalization turned on.

That post ranks 9th in personalized results but only because of the research I did recently for this very post which now ranks 2nd.

In fact, the speed in which Google+ posts are indexed is incredible, sometimes showing up within minutes of being published.

Google+ Formatting

Also notice that the Titles for Google+ posts are optimized in the personalized environment.

Compare that to what it looks like without personalization.

That prefix is pretty ugly from my point of view and reduces the chances that someone will click on that result. But let’s think about this for a moment.

Most users really just scan Titles to decide which result is most relevant or will satisfy their query intent. What would happen if users clicked on a Google+ result without knowing it was going to Google+?

That prefix is a very big and loud sign that tells users that the content is different. Sure, the result is in a SERP leading to Google+ and it has a fancy Authorship treatment but Google is also making it very clear where that click leads.

You should also format your Google+ posts to optimize for this presentation. That means creating a title for each post using bold formatting. You do this by placing a * at the beginning and end of what you want in bold (i.e – *This is the title*). When you share that post the * will disappear and the text between will be in bold (i.e. – This is the title).

Make your Google+ posts as readable as possible.

Google+ Brand Pages

You want to grab one of these and use it for, at a minimum, reputation management. The issue here is how much interaction and time you’ll need to dedicate to this social media outpost.

Managing a Facebook page (the right way) is actually a lot of work. A Google+ page would be just as much work, if not more. The major difference between the two is that Search+ can deliver a lot more people to your Google+ brand page.

A branded search for AT&T brings up the AT&T Google+ page. This only occurs for a very small select group of brands right now. The question brands have to ask is whether they want that much exposure? Conversations are right there on the search results. A lot of negative sentiment could then be just one click away. So if you’re not prepared to really be social, I’d be wary about this type of implementation.

Of course, brands can also show up as People and Pages suggestions.

The actual conversations aren’t visible which is less scary in my view. I should note that Ferrari and BMW are the only two that show up for this query, further supporting the idea that these are curated lists.

I see this as a war of attention or perhaps a war of resources. How much time is a business willing to spend maintaining a social presence on both Facebook and Google? Surfacing the brand pages in search forces that issue.

Google+ Page Optimization

Optimizing your Page is far more difficult than your personal Profile. There are fewer fields to fill out, the current algorithm relies heavily on the Page Name and verification via rel=”publisher” is rather confusing.

The first thing to understand is that Pages do seem to be second class citizens from a search standpoint.

Here you can see that I don’t get a full set of People and pages results even though there are others that could qualify here (both People and Pages.) But in nearly every instance Pages are trumped by People.

That might not always be the case though so we’ll explore the current ordering by clicking View all.

I’ve switched to a ‘link building’ query and am showing the second page of results after a host of people such as Eric Ward, Julie Joyce, Ivan Dimitrijević, Jim Boykin and other notables. These folks are all doing a bang-up job of optimizing for this term by having the keyword in their Introduction and often in their Employment as well.

But once I get past those in my Circles it really becomes about the Name field, even more so if it’s a Page. That’s not surprising since the only relevant fields for a Page are Name, Tagline and Introduction. While all of these fields do seem to be used the Name is given an enormous weight for Pages.

That doesn’t mean you should change your Page name to rank. That’s short-sighted and won’t help your brand. But you should be cognizant of this current limitation and ensure you fill out the Tag Line and Introduction thoroughly to boost your chances of being returned as this algorithm evolves.

The other reason not to change your name willy-nilly is that you will break your Page verification.

Rel=”Publisher”

A Google+ Page can and should be verified.

Verification badges helps users to confirm the authenticity of a profile or page. This way when you find a profile or page about a celebrity or popular business, you can be sure that the profile or page actually belongs to them.

Jon Ray got me pointed in the right direction about the mechanics and requirements of getting verified. The first step is linking your Page to your website. This is actually pretty straight-forward.

So far so good. But now you have to link back from your website to your Google+ Page.

Two things to understand here. First, the rel=”publisher” link must use the canonical version of your Google+ Page. The problem is that the canonical URL is never actually presented to users. Here’s what my Page URL looks like.

https://plus.google.com/u/0/b/105091680524136911230/105091680524136911230/about

But here’s what the link must look like.

https://plus.google.com/105091680524136911230

This isn’t a big deal for me but it certainly introduces a substantial area for user error.

More importantly, you should only place the rel=”publisher” link on your site’s home page. Yet, there are instructions on the Google+ Pages help page and within the badge generation code that tell you to place the rel=”publisher” link in the <head> section of your page. That essentially places the rel=”publisher” link on every page of your site.

If you implement it in this way and are also using rel=”author” (which you should be) then the Rich Snippets Testing Tool will give you this error and warning.

So instead you need to find a way to place the rel=”publisher” link only on your home page. Thankfully my sidebar is dynamic and I’m able to present a link just after my Blog Roll list that contains the appropriate mark-up.

To confirm that you’ve set this up correctly you then drop your home page into the Rich Snippets Testing Tool.

This is what you want to see. You’ll want to test both your home page and a post page to make sure that you are verified appropriately from a publisher and author perspective.

Done right? Wrong.

The last step is to submit a Google+ Page verification request. But before you do make sure you meet all of the requirements.

1,000 people must Circle your Page to be eligible for verification. Not a trifling amount for a small business. While I still recommend implementing the rel=”publisher” mark-up, you’ll have to decide whether it’s worth the time and investment to get to that 1,000 mark.

Google+ Authorship

Google+ is an identity platform. One of the primary benefits is the ability to confirm authorship of your content.

Authorship delivers a rich presentation that increases the click-through rate on that result. The image immediately draws the eye, just as other rich snippets do on search results, while the Circle count delivers additional confidence via social proof.

There is a clear short-term SEO benefit. But it’s the long-term benefit that might be more important. I’ll get to that a little later on.

If you’re interested in Authorship (and you should be) I have a Google Authorship guide to help you set it up.

Authorship Links

The Authorship presentation also has links to that author and a link to More by that author.

The author link just goes to the profile page but the More by link does something different.

The More by link produces a compound search of sorts with your name and the keyword term. In this instance it does a nice job of pulling up some contextually relevant posts from my blog, a random Tweet that was archived by Buzz and my own post on Google+ that contains a link to the Bounce Rate vs Exit Rate post. Overall, I’m pretty pleased and it’s mildly compelling for users.

But it doesn’t always work that way.

If you were to find my post on Tom Wilkinson and then click More by AJ Kohn the compound search would provide the above results.

The two other posts referenced from my blog are not related except for the fact that they were the previous and next post. The remaining results match on some or portions of the compound search but are not at all related. And more to the point, they are not authored by me.

This seems like a bug that should be fixed since the intent of that click is to see more by that author. More by author links do not deliver on the implied promise or fulfill query intent.

I’m doing all of this without Search+. Turn it on and in some ways this gets even worse.

The photo with Billy Idol and the Beastie Boys is on another post and makes it here because of the previous and next text attached to that image. That’s not relevant but it is authored by me. But down below is a result from Matt Cutts. I like Matt and it’s not a bad thing to be associated with him but that post is not authored by me. Nor is the one below it (not pictured) which comes from Quora.

I am participating in conversations on these other sites, but that’s just not the same. I’m not thrilled with this but from a personal brand standpoint it might not be terrible. I stand behind the dialogs and conversations I have on other sites.

If I’m a publisher I’m probably freaking out because you could potentially be sending users to other destinations. But before we freak out lets think a bit more about intent.

Authorship and Intent

If I’m searching for ‘bounce rate vs exit rate’ my intent is to learn about the difference between these two metrics. The idea that a substantial number of users would click on the author name or More by link instead of the link that fulfills their query intent is, well, ludicrous.

Some users might click those links by accident. But what do you think happens then? If they click the author link and wind up on a profile, that doesn’t fulfill the query intent. The majority will likely return to the search result and click the correct link.

Click the More by link and the odds are that they’ll wind up at the same end destination link because it’s at the top and it’s the most relevant to your initial query intent.

The number of clicks that are lost to Google+, other sites or abandoned searches as a result of the Authorship implementation is extremely low when you layer on query intent. That tiny loss is more than made up for by the increase in visibility and click-through rate.

Google+ Influence

I’ve written a number of times about Google creating an influence metric that will impact how content is ranked within search. Google+ and Authorship are at the center of this effort. The long-term potential for AuthorRank is not a fantasy. We’re not talking about some Klout number that is essentially a reflection of activity. No, this would be a far more nuanced metric that would never be made public.

Not only will Google be looking at the quality of the content you produce, they’ll look at how it is received. Google+ allows Google to mine the engagement graph. Who shared your content? How many +1s did it receive? How many comments? How many shares? What was the sentiment of those comments? Were those comments valuable? Who made those comments? Were those comments from people influential on that topic?

Remember that Authorship is attached to content created on Google+ as well, both posts and comments. So your +1s and shares and comments are all being analyzed. The push for more engagement on Google+ is, in part, to expand the engagement graph and acquire more data so it can implement an AuthorRank algorithm with confidence.

Panda separated low-quality and high-quality sites. AuthorRank would do the same for people and their associated content. As the tidal wave of digital content roars in Google’s ears finding ways to sort the good from the bad quickly will be of increasing importance.

Content without Authorship could become a second-class citizen.

Circle Count

What can you do, aside from Authorship and creating great content, to increase your Google+ influence. First and foremost is to have a large following or Circle count.

Circle count isn’t as easily gamed on Google+ because of identity. While the pseudonym debate has gone silent I wouldn’t be surprised if Google didn’t assign a confidence score to each account. If you have a large following from accounts that Google doesn’t fully trust, your large Circle count will be less meaningful.

Obtaining a high Circle count means sharing and creating a lot of great material. One personal tip I can share is that your content doesn’t need to be on just one topic. If you look at my Google+ stream I’m all over the map. It’s essentially a look at what I come across and am thinking about from day to day.

That means you’ll get what I feel are the best articles on SEO, UX and other professional disciplines as well as inspirational images and a healthy does of LOLcats.

What that really comes down to is sharing more of yourself. Be human.

Engagement

I am sure that some people will say they do all that but no one engages with them. The truth is, this isn’t easy and it takes a lot of work on your part to make it happen. You can’t just post and think the world will engage with you. I see far too many experts claiming that Google+ is a ghost town because of this phenomenon. I don’t often say this but, those people are doing it wrong.

If you’re in the 1% of Internet celebrity then engagement will follow you from platform to platform. Robert Scoble, Ben Parr, MG Siegler, Danny Sullivan, Thomas Hawk are established and will see engagement no matter where they go. They’ve put in an enormous amount of time and effort to get there.

The 99% of us left have to do the same and earn engagement. So how do you do that? There’s no real formula but here are my personal observations and tips.

Post to Public. By not doing so you limit yourself and the ability for others to find you and your content. This means you should be aware of what you’re posting. You can be personal but you should have boundaries.

Respond to engagement. If someone +1s your post go and Circle them if you haven’t already. If they comment, reply to that comment using their @name. If someone shares your content go and +1 that share and add a thank you comment if appropriate.

Flag people down. Use the @name function wisely to reference people who might have a view on that content or to which you want a response. Do not over do this or you will piss people off. But done right you can actually bring the right people into a great debate.

Create conversation. Comments meant to engage should not be of the ‘great post’ variety but should be valuable. Thoughtful comments that bring up issues and add value are more likely to get a response.

Cultivate engagement. Keep track of the people who engage with your content most frequently. Put them in a Circle and you can share directly with them, kick-starting engagement on your post and increasing the probability of more engagement.

Circle people. Circle people in your area(s) of expertise. You’re not looking for them to follow you back (though some will) but instead you’re looking to interact with the content they produce. It’s that engagement that will translate into more people Circling you.

Monitor real time searches. You can quickly find, monitor and engage with specific content by searching by keyword and jumping into the real time stream of results. Yes, real time can be useful in this instance.

Find some searches that work for you and save them so you can access them again and again. This is the way I was able to monitor and respond to those who were sharing this guide.

Google+ SEO Best Practices

Here’s a quick checklist of 9 items critical to your Google+ SEO success.

Optimize your Google+ Profile

Fill out your Introduction, Employment, Education and Places lived understanding that the text in these sections is used for Google+ search. If you want to be returned for the term ‘SEO’ you need to have that term in one of these fields.

Placing the term in two or more fields seems to deliver some added benefit. Do it if it makes sense but don’t go overboard.

Get Verified

A verified name with that small checkmark icon seems to have some influence on Google+ search. When I figure out exactly how to make this happen I’ll let you know.

Confirm Authorship

Google+ is an identity platform that allows you to claim Authorship of your content. Doing so delivers a type of rich snippet in search results that will increase the visibility and click-through rate on your content today and may put you in the catbird’s seat when Google implements AuthorRank.

Use the +1 Button

Put the +1 button on your site prominently so users can deliver your content to Google+. Not only will this result in traffic to your site, it allows Google to understand how people are engaging with your content.

Optimize Social Snippets

It’s not enough to just create content and have the +1 button on your site. Optimize your social snippet to ensure you’re getting the most engagement out of your content.

Create Great Content

Put this in the ‘no duh’ category, but really, create great content. It’s not enough on its own but everything gets easier if you do this.

Share Great Content

Great content takes time so you won’t always be sharing your content. Instead, share the great content of others. Make your Google+ feed valuable and interesting and you’ll be rewarded.

Format Google+ Posts

Just putting a URL as your Google+ post won’t cut it. Create a bold title for each of your (longer) posts. Not only is this easier to read it’s what Google will use as the browser Title on Search+.

You should also start to use hashtags, sparingly, to ensure your posts are aggregated appropriately.

Use Google+

Really use Google+. Using it for the express purpose of SEO won’t be successful. Do or do not. There is no try.

It’s time again to gaze into my crystal ball and make some predictions for 2012.

2012 Predictions

For reference, here are my predictions for 2011, 2010 and 2009. I was a bit too safe last year so I’m making some bold predictions this time around.

Chrome Becomes Top Browser

Having already surpassed Firefox this year, Chrome will see accelerated adoption, surpassing Internet Explorer as the top desktop browser in the closing weeks of 2012.

DuckDuckGo Cracks Mainstream

Gabriel Weinberg puts new funding to work and capitalizes on the ‘search is about answers’ meme. DuckDuckGo leapfrogs over AOL and Ask in 2012, securing itself as the fourth largest search engine.

Google Implements AuthorRank

Google spent 2011 building an identity platform, launching and aggressively promoting authorship while building an internal influence metric. In 2012 they’ll put this all together and use AuthorRank (referred to in patents as Agent Rank) as a search signal. It will have a more profound impact on search than all Panda updates combined.

Image Search Gets Serious

Pinterest. Instagram. mlkshk. We Heart It. Flickr. Meme Generator. The Internet runs on images. Look for a new image search engine, as well as image search analytics. Hopefully this will cause Google to improve (which is a kind word) image search tracking within Google Analytics.

SEO Tool Funding

VCs have been sniffing around SEO tool providers for a number of years. In 2012 one of the major SEO tool providers (SEOmoz or Raven) will receive a serious round of funding. I actually think this is a terrible idea but … there it is.

Frictionless Check-Ins

For location based services to really take off and reach the mainstream they’ll need a near frictionless check-in process. Throughout 2012 you’ll see Facebook, Foursquare and Google one-up each other in providing better ways to check-in. These will start with prompts and evolve into check-out (see Google Wallet) integrations.

Google+ Plateaus

As much as I like Google+ I think it will plateau in mid-2012 and remain a solid second fiddle to Facebook. That’s not a knock of Google+ or the value it brings to both users and Google. There are simply too many choices and no compelling case for mass migration.

HTML5 (Finally) Becomes Important

After a few years of hype HTML5 becomes important, delivering rich experiences that users will come to expect. As both site adoption and browser compatibility rise, search engines will begin to use new HTML5 tags to better understand and analyze pages.

Schema.org Stalls

Structured mark-up will continue to be important but Schema.org adoption will stall. Instead, Google will continue to be an omnivore, happy to digest any type of structured mark-up, while other entities like Facebook will continue to promote their own proprietary mark-up.

Mobile Search Skyrockets

Only 40% of U.S. mobile users have smartphones. That’s going to change in a big way in 2012 as both Apple and Google fight to secure these mobile users. Mobile search will be the place for growth as desktop search growth falls to single digits.

Yahoo! Buys Tumblr

Doubling down on content Yahoo! will buy Tumblr, hoping to extend their contributor network and overlay a sophisticated, targeted display advertising network. In doing so, they’ll quickly shutter all porn related Tumblr blogs.

Google Acquires Topsy

Topsy, the last real-time search engine, is acquired by Google who quickly shuts down the Topsy API and applies the talent to their own initiatives on both desktop and mobile platforms.

Yesterday Google launched a new Authorship home page and Author stats within Google Webmaster Tools. The continuing emphasis on Authorship is a clear signal of the importance of this feature within Google.

Before reading up on Author stats, take a moment to learn how easy it is to implement Google authorship on your site or blog.

Author Stats

Author stats is available directly from the home page of Google Webmaster Tools under Labs.

Click on Author stats and you’ll see statistics for pages for which you are the verified author.

I’m showing you page 2 of my own Author stats in part because it makes it easier to demonstrate that Google is assigning authorship to Google+ posts. Not only that, but they’re showing you that these Google+ posts are being presented in search, gathering both impressions and clicks.

I vaguely knew this was happening but it makes it a lot more real when you see the numbers and real impact.

Stats by Profile not by Site

A bit giddy with this new source of information, I wanted to see what this looked like for one of my clients who has multiple authors.

There again is the Author stats link under Labs. But when I clicked on it, I got the same pages from my own personal site. I followed up with Javier Tordable, Google Software Engineer, who confirmed that Author stats are by profile and are not aggregated by site.

The Author Stats feature is independent of the site (that is the reason it appears in Home, before selecting a site). It also appears in the Labs menu for a site, but that’s only for ease of use, rather than because it depends on the site.

That makes sense though I am putting in a request now for an aggregated view of all authors by site. That would make it easier to see the impact and more compelling for sites to implement authorship.

Specific Author Statistics

The statistics shown under Author stats are Impressions, Clicks, CTR and Average Position with the percentage change for each in that given timeframe.  These are nice basic numbers.

However, it’s clear based on the average position number (very high) that a wide variety of terms and platforms (specifically image search) are being included here. While you can filter by platform you still don’t have the ability to see the average position by query term.

In addition, the big metric everyone is looking for is the impact an Author result has on CTR, similar to what Google attempts to do with the +1 Metrics search impact report.

My posts haven’t reached a statistical level of significance but I appreciate what Google is trying to provide here. I’m not sure Author stats search impact would work the same way since that would mean Authorship would need to be turned off for a substantial set of users. I can think of a few ways they might quantify the impact but it may expose too much data to users.

Don’t get me wrong, this is a great start and Google seems committed to improving Author stats.

This is an experimental feature so we’re continuing to iterate and improve, but we wanted to get early feedback from you. You can e-mail us at authorship-pilot@google.com if you run into any issues or have feedback.

I’m happy to see these Author stats and look forward to future improvements.

TL;DR

Author stats are now available in Google Webmaster Tools, showing statistics for pages for which you are the verified author. The continuing emphasis on Authorship shows the importance Google places on the feature and how Authorship might be used to improve search quality.

Matt Cutts says good content is more important than SEO.

Good Content?

There is actually a lot of truth to that. The problem is that too many people don’t understand the definition of good content. This goes double if it’s content you’ve produced. Nobody likes to hear that their baby is ugly.

This video set off a number of anti-SEO threads with the most egregious being from ReadWriteWeb. Adam Singer’s reaction to this post is at once both hilarious and sad.

But that’s the thing. People will take this video (or the writing of pundits who will selectively extract what they want from it) and misconstrue Matt’s message, deciding to avoid SEO and instead crank out content. Gobs and gobs of content. Much of that content will be unfocused, poorly formatted and have no sense of what query intent it is supposed to fulfill.

Then these same people will wonder why they’re not getting a lot of Google love.

The Truth Doesn’t Matter

What Matt says in this video is true, but the truth doesn’t matter. Because it’s how people interpret and execute on this information that will ultimately make the difference. Sadly, most won’t do a good enough job. I might not be making many friends with that statement but I call them like I see them.

It’s the same reason why I dislike the stern advice people give to ‘write for people’. The problem? Most don’t really know how to do that effectively. Instead, I tell people to write for search engines. The result? People write better content for people and, by extension, for search engines.

TL;DR

A good SEO serves as a guide to help you to both produce and get the most out of content, ensuring that it is valuable and satisfies query intent.

The fact that Google frequently uses synonyms to boost search quality is nothing new. But Dan Petrovic brought an interesting example to my attention via Google+ which spawned a dialog that included Bill Slawski, Wissam Dandan and Steven Baker, Principal Software Engineer on the Search Ranking team.

It is conversations like these that make search so enjoyable. Hopefully you agree.

The Query

Dan’s question revolved around the query ‘the dreaming void plot’.

This query returned results for The Temporal Void as well as The Dreaming Void, both books by Peter F. Hamilton. The question was why?

Bold Words

First things first. Bold words in search results usually reflect the query terms. It’s one of the strongest signals of relevance that Google can provide to the user. Your eye naturally gravitates to those bolded words and they reinforce the fact that the result(s) matched your query.

Synonyms

However, Google has also been bolding synonyms when they’re returned in search results. The easiest way to see this is to combine a synonym operator (~) with a negative operator (-).

Here it’s easy to see that fantasy and sleep are bolded and are thus synonyms to dream according to Google. This makes complete sense.

The Diagnosis

Here’s where it gets interesting. The terms dreaming and temporal are not … regular synonyms. By that I mean that if you try the operator scenario above for dreaming you will not see temporal in bold.

A cursory look at your favorite dictionary will also tell you that these are not ‘grammatical’ synonyms.

The next thing I did was conduct a search using the root query: The Dreaming Void. The result did not yield results for The Temporal Void. I then looked at related searches, one of my favorite search features.

Lo and behold the ‘first’ related search is ‘temporal void’. This tells me that Google sees a very strong relationship between these two terms based on query patterns.

The related search for the full ‘the dreaming void plot’ query does not yield any temporal void terms. That’s not entirely unexpected for reasons I won’t go into here for the sake of brevity. Finally, I remove the related filter and then test the query using the new verbatim search.

Poof. All results for ‘The Temporal Void’ disappear. Though obvious, this confirms that the results for ‘The Temporal Void’ are either synonyms or match similar terms.

Query Synonyms

This is what I refer to as a query synonym. The science behind these is actually incredibly interesting and complex. Because synonyms are not just about simple grammar, they’re about language, syntax and context as well.

Wissam Dandan offered this excerpt from a recent Google blog post on search quality changes.

Related query results refinements: Sometimes we fetch results for queries that are similar to the actual search you type. This change makes it less likely that these results will rank highly if the original query had a rare word that was dropped in the alternate query. For example, if you are searching for [rare red widgets], you might not be as interested in a page that only mentions “red widgets.”

Could this be related to Dan’s query? It might. The idea behind related queries is similar to synonyms. (Irony, huh?) The example provided by Google is that it will return results for ‘floral delivery’ when you search for ‘flower shops’. The change above will reduce the likelihood of false positives which may allow Google to increase the use of related query results refinements.

In the case of ‘the dreaming void plot’ there don’t seem to be any rare query terms. In fact, most documents in the content corpus contain all of these words and the word ‘temporal’ as well. There’s a high degree of co-occurrence for the terms ‘dreaming’ and ‘temporal’ which makes sense since they are part of a series of books.

But that’s the thing, what seems easy and straightforward to us is actually quite difficult for a machine.

The Science of Synonyms

Then the always smart Bill Slawski joined the conversation providing more examples of why synonyms are so difficult.

For instance, while we may often consider the words “auto” and “car” to be synonyms, that’s not the case when you set an alarm on “auto.” Even within longer phrases, words that we might consider to be synonyms might not be. So, “automobile” and “car” are synonyms when we search for a [ford car], but not when we search for a [railroad car].

Bill went on to reference a number of patents that describe how Google might approach synonyms and related query refinement, five of which list Steven Baker as a co-inventor.

Search queries improved based on query semantic information

Identifying a synonym with N-gram agreement for a query phrase

Determining query term synonyms within query context

Identifying common co-occurring elements in lists

Longest-common-subsequence detection for common synonyms

Document-based synonym generation

Machine Translation for Query Expansion

While Bill and I sought out other science fiction series that might display this same behavior Steven joined the conversation. While he wasn’t able to provide much detail he did reference his blog post on synonyms.

An irony of computer science is that tasks humans struggle with can be performed easily by computer programs, but tasks humans can perform effortlessly remain difficult for computers. We can write a computer program to beat the very best human chess players, but we can’t write a program to identify objects in a photo or understand a sentence with anywhere near the precision of even a child.

The last statement is a odd sort of synonym for my own SEO philosophy and name of this blog. The post also answered my question as to whether query synonyms are provided the same bold treatment. (They are.)

TL;DR

Google is actively using complex methods to identify synonyms and related queries to improve search results. While this type of query results refinement is usually spot on and unnoticeable it can sometimes be flawed. In those instances, you can remove these results using the verbatim search tool.

I recently blogged about Google changing my Title tag and using the URL instead. While this particular variant was new to me, I’ve been tracking how Google changes Titles for quite some time.

Google reserves the right to change your Title and has been experimenting with different Title algorithms for at least eighteen months. Here’s a quick primer on when and why Google changes Titles.

The Title Tag

First things first. What is the Title tag? The <title> tag is placed in the <head> to define the title of that document (aka web page.)

The Title determines what is shown in a browser tab and is prominently displayed in search engine results.

The Title shows up as the blue link in search results. Not only is the Title a very strong search engine signal, it’s what users see first when scanning search results. Getting your Title right should be near the top of your SEO checklist.

Why Google Changes Titles

The reason Google changes Titles is almost always to better serve the query and aide the user. Sometimes these changes are made for obvious reasons and other times the reasons are more complex.

No Title Tag

Sometimes people screw up (big time) and a page doesn’t have a Title. If the content is solid and useful, Google steps in to provide you with a Title.

Duplicate Title Tag

The bane of many an SEO, sometimes each page on a site has the same Title. Once again, Google steps in to provide assistance for this blunder while the SEO curses the developer.

Generic Title Tag

Sometimes Google feels like it knows better and will replace a generic title tag with something it believes is more appropriate. For instance if your Title for the home page is, in fact, ‘Home Page’ then Google may decide to generate a more specific Title that will be more useful for users.

This is probably how Google began testing their Title algorithms, starting with the least focused Titles and seeing how they could change them to better match queries and increase click-through rates.

Title Tag Append

At times, Google won’t completely change your Title but instead will add to it by putting the domain name at the end of your Title. The notion here is that the domain provides some additional and valuable context to users.

This is more important then it looks in my opinion. It tells me that the URL is not being used by mainstream users. They’re simply not seeing the URL most of the time because they’re scanning the results, not reading them.

Moving the URL directly below the Title (something Google did recently) means that it is likely more important than the meta description. The domain can be a signal of trust if a user has an affinity for that site through personal experience or other marketing efforts.

The domain append is Google’s attempt to help you brand your result.

Specific Title Tag

That finally leaves us with the last and most drastic Title change. Google will actually switch a very specific Title tag with something it believes might be better for the user. This means they’re changing a perfectly good Title you probably spent time carefully crafting.

Specific Title tag changes are most often related to the query. Google is looking to increase the perceived relevance of that result by using the search term in the title, much as PPC professionals understand the need to have keyword terms in their ads.

This practice takes advantage of the natural scanning behavior of users. They’re not reading every search result, they’re scanning those results and are simply looking for their search term.

If your Title doesn’t have the search term (but it is a match for that query based on the content) Google wants to give that result a fighting chance.

Without the search term in the Title, a substantial number of users will simply not see your result. They’ll skip over it since it doesn’t seem like it’s relevant. Remember, users are doing this at breakneck speed and making nearly instantaneous decisions as to whether each result is relevant or not.

Google changes your Title because they think it’ll help increase the click-through rate on your result.

Of course, I’ve also seen Google change Titles even when the keywords were present in the original Title. Most often they replaced a shorter keyword with a keyword phrase. I haven’t seen much of this lately so this may have been a test that didn’t pan out.

How Google Changes Titles

Google is changing Titles based on a series of on-going algorithmic tests. While I don’t know the specifics, I do know that they are first looking for a candidate pool – documents that should be returned for a query based on their content (but aren’t) or documents that score well in relevance but have very low click-through rates for specific queries.

These are but a few ideas of how Google might be defining a candidate pool, but the object is to find under-performing but valuable content and see if a different Title improves user satisfaction. This might be measured for that specific result or for the entire SERP for that query.

Once Google identifies a candidate pool they work on constructing their own Title. Most often this is done by extracting words from the on-page content of that page. This is similar to what Google will do when they write their own meta description.

Of course, we’ve now seen that Google might also use the URL to construct a Title. Perhaps this is part of Google’s on-going Title algorithm experimentation? Creating readable Titles from on-page content isn’t easy. So maybe Google’s thinking the URL might be a shortcut when it includes the target keyword. A parsed URL might actually conform to natural language better than extracted and combined keywords or keyword phrases.

The research performed for the URL Titles post also shows that Google can dynamically change the Title based on the query. So unless you’re really paying attention, Google could be changing your Titles and you wouldn’t even know it.

Is Changing Titles Good or Bad?

Should you be outraged or thanking Google for changing Titles? Both probably.

Google is only doing this because it wants to improve search quality and user satisfaction. Not only that but Google can measure the impact of these changes in a very holistic way. It’s not just about improving click-through rate. They’re looking at the pogosticking behavior and other user satisfaction signals to calculate the real impact of these Title changes.

This means you might get better and more focused traffic to your page because Google is refining and calibrating the Title.

On the other hand, Google is essentially providing help to certain pages within a SERP. So the site that can’t figure out how to create proper Titles might wind up getting more traffic because Google took pity on them. (Sure the user is better served but … cold comfort for you eh?)

You’re also trusting that Google does know best. Sometimes they do and sometimes they don’t. Unfortunately we don’t have transparency as to how or how many times our Titles are changed, for what queries and to what outcome.

This may also drive marketing managers absolutely bananas since they want complete control over their brand. (You know the type.) That lack of control could be troublesome and also send the wrong signal to site owners. The last thing you should come away with is to think Google will simply fix your poorly conceived Titles.

TL;DR

Google changes your Title for a number of reasons when it believes it can improve relevance and user satisfaction. The emphasis on changing the Title, particularly in matching the Title to the query term, reinforces its importance and supports the scanning behavior users employ on search results.

The other day I noticed something strange happening. Google was using my URL as the Title instead of my own Title tag.

Upon seeing this I kind of freaked out and immediately went to check the Title settings on this post. Everything was in order but I was using the original ‘Stop Whining About (Not Provided)’ Title tag.

At the time I was not the first result for this query. But I changed the Title to ‘Not Provided Keyword In Google Analytics‘ and a day or so later I bounced up to number one for this term. The URL as Title still remains though, which is pretty annoying.

URL Titles

So I started to poke around looking for other examples of this URL as Title behavior. It didn’t take me long to find one.

I checked to make sure I hadn’t botched the Title and found , again, that everything was in order. The Title I had for the post was ‘Is Information Overload Really a Problem?‘ But here’s the thing, I can get that Title to display on a search result.

That’s the same post but I used the search term ‘information overload not a problem’ instead. So what’s going on here?

Google Title Match

Google wants to match the Title of a result to the query when it believes the content of that result is relevant to the query. So if someone is actually searching for ‘cut up learning’ Google has determined that my post is highly relevant. However they replace my Title, which has none of those keywords in it, with my URL which actually does.

Here’s another example.

My Title tag does not include the word ‘metric’ so Google decides to use my URL for the Title instead. Again, I can get my Title to display using a different query.

Titles Matter

If you haven’t figured it out yet, Titles matter … a lot. So much so that when Google wants to return a result it will change the Title to better match the query. The reason for this is simple. Users scan for and assign higher relevance to Titles that include their query.

Just between you and me, I believe that exact match query Titles are perhaps the most underrated SEO tactic. I’ve actually got some research to back that up which I’m hoping I might get to share in the future.

Can’t Google Parse URLs?

While I appreciate that Google is trying to do me a solid here and get my post in front of the ‘right’ queries, it would be nice if they could parse the URL and make it readable.

So cut-up-learning would become ‘Cut up learning’ or ‘Cut Up Learning’ if they used title casing. This would certainly be a better experience for users who are quickly scanning search results. Playing my own devil’s advocate here, the odd URL as Title could actually break the visual flow and create more emphasis but … I doubt it.

How about it Google, can we render the URL as Titles so they’re a bit more readable?

Using URL Titles

At this point you might be interested or outraged depending on your perspective, but what can you do with this newly acquired information?

First off, you should look at the keyword clusters for your popular content. What you’re looking for are terms that aren’t in your Title but might be in your URL. Based on what you find you can then change your Title so that it is capturing a greater breadth of matching queries.

The other interesting idea is to use this as a dual targeting tactic. You can deliberately target one keyword term or modifier in the Title and another in the URL. Then watch to see which one drives more traffic and adjust accordingly (or not if you’re happy with things the way they are.)

At the end of the day when you see this URL as Title behavior Google is telling you, clearly, that it wants to return your content for that query. So pretend Google is EF Hutton and listen … closely.

TL;DR

Google is replacing Titles with the URL when the URL delivers more relevance based on the user query. This URL as Title behavior reveals just how important Titles are to users and, by extension, to SEO.

Do I think Google’s policy around encrypting searches (except for paid clicks) for logged-in users is fair? No.

But whining about it seems unproductive, particularly since the impact of (not provided) isn’t catastrophic. That’s right, the sky is not falling. Here’s why.

(Not Provided) Keyword

By now I’m sure you’ve seen the Google Analytics line graph that shows the rise of (not provided) traffic.

Sure enough, 17% of all organic Google traffic on this blog is now (not provided). That’s high in comparison to what I see among my client base but makes sense given the audience of this blog.

Like many others (not provided) is also my top keyword by a wide margin. I think seeing this scares people but it makes perfect sense. What other keyword is going to show up under every URL?

Instead of staring at that big aggregate number you have to look at the impact (not provided) is having on a URL by URL basis.

Landing Page by Keywords

To look at the impact of (not provided) for a specific URL you need to view your Google organic traffic by Landing Page. Then drill down on a specific URL and use Keyword as your secondary dimension. Here’s a sample landing page by keywords report for my bounce rate vs exit rate post.

In this example, a full 39% of the traffic is (not provided). But a look at the remaining 61% makes it pretty clear what keywords bring traffic to this page. In fact, there are 68 total keywords in this time frame.

Clustering these long-tail keywords can provide you with the added insight necessary to be confident in your optimization strategy.

(Not Provided) Keyword Distribution

The distribution of keywords outside of (not provided) gives us insight into the keyword composition of (not provided). In other words, the keywords we do see tell us about the keywords we don’t.

Do we really think that the keywords that make up (not provided) are going to be that different from the ones we do see? It’s highly improbable that a query like ‘moonraker steel teeth’ is driving traffic under (not provided) in my example above.

If you want to take things a step further you can apply the distribution of the clustered keywords against the pool of (not provided) traffic. First you reduce the denominator by subtracting the (not provided) traffic from the total. In this instance that’s 208 – 88 which is 120.

Even without any clustering you can take the first keyword (bounce rate vs. exit rate) and determine that it comprises 20% of the remaining traffic (24/120). You can then apply that 20% to the (not provided) traffic (88) and conclude that approximately 18 visits to (not provided) are comprised of that specific keyword.

Is this perfectly accurate? No. Is it good enough? Yes. Keyword clustering will further reduce the variance you might see by specific keyword.

Performance of (Not Provided) Keywords

The assumption I’m making here is that the keyword behavior of those logged-in to Google doesn’t differ dramatically from those who are not logged-in. I’m not saying there might not be some difference but I don’t see the difference being large enough to be material.

If you have an established URL with a history of getting a steady stream of traffic you can go back and compare the performance before and after (not provided) was introduced. I’ve done this a number of times (across client installations) and continue to find little to no difference when using the distribution method above.

Even without this analysis it comes down to whether you believe that query intent changes based on whether a person is logged-in or not? Given that many users probably don’t even know they’re logged-in, I’ll take no for 800 Alex.

What’s even more interesting is that this is information we didn’t have previously. If by chance all of your conversions only happen from those logged-in, how would you have made that determination prior to (not provided) being introduced? Yeah … you couldn’t.

While Google has made the keyword private they’ve actually broadcast usage information.

(Not Provided) Solutions

Don’t get me wrong. I’m not happy about the missing data, nor the double standard between paid and organic clicks. Google has a decent privacy model through their Ads Preferences Manager. They could adopt the same process here and allow users to opt-out instead of the blanket opt-in currently in place.

Barring that, I’d like to know how many keywords are included in the (not provided) traffic in a given time period. Even better would be a drill-down feature with traffic against a set of anonymized keywords.

However, I’m not counting on these things coming to fruition so it’s my job to figure out how to do keyword research and optimization given the new normal. As I’ve shown, you can continue to use Google Analytics, particularly if you cluster keywords appropriately.

Of course you should be using other tools to determine user syntax, identify keyword modifiers and define query intent. When keyword performance is truly in doubt you can even resort to running a quick AdWords campaign. While this might irk you and elicit tin foil hat theories you should probably be doing a bit of this anyway.

TL;DR

Google’s (not provided) policy might not be fair but is far from the end of the world. Whining about (not provided) isn’t going to change anything. Figuring out how to overcome this obstacle is your job and how you’ll distance yourself from the competition.