Panda In The Pipelines

There’s a mention of the Panda algorithm update that we wrote about last week, but it also includes a somewhat cryptic reference to being more integrated into Google’s “pipelines.”

We improved how Panda interacts with our indexing and ranking systems, making it more integrated into our pipelines.

Sounds like Panda is baked into things even more firmly than before, which I guess is bad news for any sites that were affected negatively over the past year.

Fresher Results

Google says it made several “minor updates” to the freshness algorithm update that happened back in November.

Date Detection

On a somewhat similar note, the update also says that Google has improved how it detects the date of a web page (document), and that means searchers should see “fresher, more timely results, particularly for pages discussing recurring events.”

Autocomplete

There are two updates related to autocomplete: Google says it’s now faster at delivering predicted queries, and the spelling corrections are now “more consistent with those used in search.”

Speaking of spelling…

Google says it’s doing a better job with “full-page replacement” — i.e., showing an entire page of results for a correctly spelled word and ignoring the searcher’s misspelled word/query. There’s also a change that Google says will help it give more accurate spelling corrections for rare queries.

News queries

Google says it’s improved how it decides when to blend news results into the search results page. The change makes Google “more responsive to realtime trends.”

That’s a quick overview of about half of the January tweaks on Google’s list. Here’s the full list on Google’s Inside Search blog.

The figures come from Net Applications, which says it tracks about 160 million unique visits per month to a worldwide network of more than 40,000 sites.

According to Net Applications, Firefox and Safari also saw market share losses in January. While they were declining, Microsoft’s Internet Explorer gained 1.09%, its biggest monthly gain in at least two years.

One possible explanation is that a lot of people bought new PC computers over the holidays, and Internet Explorer’s market share grew in January because it’s the default browser there. But that didn’t happen a year ago; in January 2011, Explorer’s market share declined nearly a full percent. (IE did gain in February, 2011, as shown above.)

Net Applications ties Explorer’s gain and Chrome’s decline to the Google penalty which removed Chrome from search results for a number of browser-related search terms. Google penalized Chrome in early January after the company’s own botched sponsored blog post campaign ran afoul of Google’s search/webmaster guidelines.

In my searches this morning, the main Chrome page doesn’t appear on page one for “browser,” “web browser,” “download web browser,” “chrome,” “google chrome” nor “chrome browser.” I’m not sure that’s why Chrome’s market share dropped in January, but it’s an interesting theory to consider at minimum.

(tip via Computerworld)

“Why can’t you just give me a straight answer?”

Johanna’s voice showed a trace of irritation.  “All I’m asking is how much you charge for SEO services!”

I smiled. This was familiar terrain. As an SEO consultant, almost every client asks me a similar question. My answer is always the same.

“It depends. On many things. Because SEO is not a turn-key solution you plug in to play.”

“Wait.  You’re an expert – and you can’t tell me what you’ll charge?!”

That’s when I explain why and when SEO matters, and the dynamic process of fixing my price for SEO consulting.

Broadly speaking, here’s what I share – and 3 analogies I use to make it easier to understand – buying a car, an iceberg or a dam!

Why SEO Matters

Every client likes to save money while getting great results from search engine optimization. But by always looking to save money on SEO, you’ll take your eye off the more important issue of intelligently allocating your marketing budget across various tactics, of which, SEO is often the most cost effective.

SEO isn’t simple or easy. Google itself rates websites based on over 200 ranking criteria – and keeps tweaking the algorithm constantly, up to 600 times in a year.

So if an ‘expert’ takes one look at your site and quotes you a “complete price” for SEO, run for the hills (or at least exercise extreme caution). Sure, they may fix some glaring weaknesses, or help you pick the low hanging fruit – but deep and lasting SEO is about a lot more than that.

Simple ‘Gold’, ‘Silver’ and ‘Bronze’ packages don’t work for SEO. SEO isn’t something you install or plug in to your website. It’s not a ‘one-time’ operation. Good SEO is a process. Research and planning are critical components of it.

That’s why no SEO consultant can make an off-hand estimate, or set a ‘price per site’ for their services. Everything depends upon your goals and targets, the nature of your business, your audience, and more.

There’s good reason why, as a client, you shouldn’t focus on the cost alone. It’s better to concentrate on the key performance indicators (KPIs) of your business such as the cost per acquisition, profit per sale, conversion rate and others.

A cheap SEO service may save you a little cash, but you won’t earn a lot from it either. In fact, it’s more likely that you’ll “save yourself into the poor-house!”

So ask yourself these critical questions first:

• Why are you even thinking about hiring an SEO consultant?
• Is SEO merely going to be your alibi instead of your ‘secret weapon’?
• Are you looking for SEO help just because everyone’s doing it, or your marketing department insists upon trying it?
• Or are you developing an SEO strategy to skyrocket your rankings, and along with it your profit?

Then, depending on the type of client, I introduce one (or all) of the 3 analogies.

Analogy #1: SEO Is Like Buying a Car, Your Price Will Match Your Needs

Johanna kept nodding her head, listening attentively to all that I said… but she still wasn’t convinced.

“Well, that’s fine,” she continued. “But I still want to know what it will cost to get my site optimized for search engines. How much does SEO cost?”

I asked her, “How much does it cost to buy a car?”

Johanna was a little confused. “Why, that depends.”

“Exactly” I said.  “The price you’ll pay for a car will depend on the make and model, its size and purpose, where you’ll drive it, and with whom. A sturdy station wagon for your family will be priced differently from a sports car you want to show-off!”

SEO services also range in price depending on what you want from it. The best SEO strategy begins by evaluating needs and problems of your prospective clients. It then deploys SEO as a magnet to attract only the most relevant leads out of the vast ocean of online Web surfers.

Setting up your website to do this effectively and well isn’t easy. Building laser focused landing pages targeted at sub-segments of your audience can draw a flood of relevant traffic that converts nicely into customers. But getting this right takes time and resources.

Cheap SEO is like bargain hunting. You might save some money. But you won’t earn much either. The way I practice SEO is not qualified guesswork that endangers a client’s business. Research and analysis come first, often followed by a face to face meeting with clients to gather all relevant information.

There’s nothing “turnkey” or “standard” about this kind of SEO. You can’t buy it, install it, and sit back. It is dynamic and constantly evolving. The ranking signals are in constant flux, and are impacted by various external factors, not just on-site ones.

SEO is also not about “fixing” things. Viewing SEO as a quick fix for reduced sales or traffic is a big mistake. You’ll only end up leaving money on the table (a lot of it!)

Good SEO must deliver a huge ROI. It is not just about getting high rankings and more traffic, clicks and page views. It’s about converting those visitors into paying customers. What happens before the landing page has a major impact on conversion rates.

SEO consulting of high caliber will help you:

• find your customers’ intent, needs and pressing problems
• identify their expectations from your business or website
• decide how you will deliver value (on the landing page)
• uncover areas of profitability
• pick triggers that convert visitors into customers
• personalize the experience for each visitor

Getting all these elements of SEO right takes a lot of time. Knowing where to begin for the best, fastest results will takes tremendous research. But the investment is worthwhile, because it will earn you a high return.

That’s why SEO should never be viewed as a cost. It’s an investment. One that pays off for a long time.

Analogy #2: SEO Is Like An Iceberg, Mainly Hidden But With Massive Impact

It is said 90% of the mass of an iceberg is under the water, hidden from view. SEO is just the same.

While you might see only the attractive top ranking on Google as the impact of your SEO, there are a hundred unseen elements at play, all working in concert to deliver the collective impact of intelligent optimization.

Like icebergs, SEO has some serious risks to balance the great opportunities it creates. Boats, ships, cruisers and even ocean liners have run aground on hidden rocks under the sea. And countless businesses have paid a steep price for wrongly executed SEO campaigns.

Mainly, such campaigns were put together by amateurs. Business owners wrongly assume that any Internet consultant is capable of “good enough” SEO, and hand it over to a Web designer or developer.

Just because they’re already in there coding or designing your website is not a reason to thrust SEO upon a Web designer or programmer. That’s like saying you’ll just get your plumber to do the wiring because he’s already working on the walls! Web developers are great at developing. SEO experts are best at SEO.

Sometimes, through sheer good luck (or even accident), you may own a great business with top search rankings and a steady flow of traffic coming in. That’s “good enough” – but with SEO, it can become so much more. And only a specialist can deliver great results.

SEO is well known to be one of the most cost-effective forms of marketing. For this reason, SEO should have a larger budget. Yet even after Web analytics data prove beyond doubt that SEO is the absolute winner at driving more traffic, many companies pay little attention to it.

In today’s competitive online arena, SEO cannot be relegated to the status of a secondhand job any longer.

It is not a trivial task to be handed over to a friend or distant cousin who knows how to “fix it”. It shouldn’t be put off until the site is ready to launch. SEO should be the first thing to focus on. And there’s a reason for this.

Not everyone will arrive at your website through the homepage. Search engines will not ask you which of your landing pages you wish to have listed in their directory.  Generic searches on business critical keywords will throw up different entry points into your website. Many visitors will enter through these back doors.

Knowing why they landed at your site, what they expect to find, and what motivates or drives them to seek your solution is critical information if you are to capture their attention, retain their interest and gain their trust.

How will you optimize every page on your large website later on?

It’s far easier to plan for it in advance. This is something I insist upon with SEO clients. After all, if your website (or any section of it) is not important enough for you to do this, why does it even exist in the first place?

Analogy #3:  SEO Is Like a Dam – Open Flood Gates & Traffic Just Keeps Flowing

Dams across massive rivers store water. Think about search engines like Google as huge dams that store your targeted visitors, and your listing on SERPs (search engine results pages) as holes in the dam. Punch enough of them, and you’ll be drowned in a flood of traffic!

That’s a great reason to start optimizing your website right now – and not take it in small steps, but go for a massive overhaul.

No matter what niche you are involved in, there are ‘evergreen’ search phrases with the potential to drive a large amount of traffic to your website for years. And this traffic is free! It will continue without any dent in your ongoing or proposed marketing budget.

But optimizing just one page on your website will only deliver one extra traffic stream. What if you opened the flood gates?

Keyword research will reveal that many searches are carried out on business related and highly relevant ‘non-brand’ generic keywords. These are used by people who have never even heard about you, but are focused on their needs and problems, actively seeking out solutions. That’s the ‘water’ behind the ‘dam’ that you can tap into through SEO.

Or if you don’t like the idea of punching holes in a dam, think of your keyword research as finding a pinata, the decorated papier mache container full of candy, that you can break open to get a treat. SEO is the candy king!

Speaking of candy, a website without strategically planned design is little more than eye candy. If all it does is look nice without providing any value, then it’s like playing trick-or-treat with kids – but keeping all the sweets for yourself!

Elements other than SEO are important. You should use SEO as a way to convert and engage your visitors. Knowing the intent behind keywords that lead visitors to an individual page on your site will be valuable for your Web designer.

But don’t let your designer start outlining your site or your programmer begin coding your pages before you’ve finalized an SEO strategy and done your keyword analysis. That’s the platform upon which you can build your future success.

You may get everything else right. Your inbound marketing strategy may cover all the bases – heavy SEO, social search, local SEO, mobile optimization – and may integrate nicely with other parts of your offline and digital marketing. But without diligent keyword research underlying it all, you’re only building a superstructure upon quicksand. That’s just not smart or effective.

In 2012 or 2013, I’m guessing that search and social media will meld. Researching generic long tail keywords and merging them with local terms like cities, place names and more will become important. The growth of mobile search and the rising awareness and experience of search engine users in general will power this trend.

When you know what savvy searchers are looking for, identify the exact keywords and combinations they use, and map them to individual pages on your website, it will make the difference between a 1% and a 20% conversion rate.

Do you think it might be a good idea to raise earnings from an individual page by 20% or more? Definitely, yes!

Do you think it’s quick and easy work to do this for each page?  Absolutely not!

An extensive e-commerce website with thousands of products for sale will have prospective buyers with totally (or at least slightly) different tastes and needs. Optimizing your site for each of them is important.  The text on your site, the visual appearance, the products and services you present to them – all need to fit into the concept of an “ideal solution” that your visitor has in his or her mind.

If you add value to their lives based on uniquely individual needs, you will boost sales.

Who Should Be In Charge of Your SEO?

Definitely not the information technologists.  The project should be owned by your marketing department.

At a local conference on SEM a few years ago, I heard the term “Business Prevention Unit” applied to the IT department! There was a brief stunned silence. A few seconds later, everyone burst out laughing.

During breaks and in other presentations, people talked about this remark. It’s especially appealing to me because so many of my clients start out thinking about SEO as a purely technical challenge. That’s so wrong!

SEO is about becoming a detective, a hunter, an explorer. You’re out looking for opportunities hidden inside the psychology of your prospects and customers.

This is a mindset that’s totally foreign to an IT manager, server administrator, programmer, Web designer or other technician. If you want to put food on the table, hire a hunter!

At the same time, it is wise to keep in mind that SEO is a team game. One of my clients runs a large website with over 10 million pages indexed in Google. Optimizing each one of them individually is simply not feasible. It would be too costly in time and money. Manually tweaking every page isn’t practical, even if it’s the ideal solution.

Therefore, an SEO strategy is critical.

Where is the highest profit lying hidden? Where should we focus to reach business goals set strategically for the long term?

The answers to those questions are important. And automation is important. So is optimizing the website structure and coding. A comprehensive plan to work on such a big site is mandatory. Having an expert programmer and great server administrator as part of the team is helpful. With literally millions of page views each day, it won’t help to hire just a great SEO strategist.

It also pays to keep in mind that your website is probably the best salesman in your company. But you’re locking him up in a closet! Release him right away.

Knowing that SEO is one of the most cost effective forms of marketing out there, it’s surprising that more companies don’t invest heavily into this. Is it because it “looks too good to be true”? Probably, because so many of my clients seem to think so.

Explaining to them that it’s real, and possible, is quite a challenge.

A part of the problem is technical language, jargon and lingo used by SEO specialists to outline the benefits of their craft to regular business owners.

So, What Does SEO Cost?

If you’ve been watching closely, you’ll notice that I still haven’t answered Johanna’s initial question…  What does SEO cost?

I’ll stick to the same response. It depends.

How high are you willing to jump? How fast are you going to run? I need to know this if I am to estimate how much energy and resources you’ll need.

Pricing SEO is equally difficult. It is complex. There are many rich opportunities. Several external factors and ranking signals skew the scenario further. And then, there’s the natural skepticism of a client to overcome.

Is SEO too good to be true?  Are SEO consultants snake oil salespeople who are out to trick and cheat you?

Yes, there are charlatans and cheats out there, and you ought to keep your eyes open and your feet firmly on the ground.

But any Internet marketing manager or business owner who is still not taking SEO seriously should consider stepping down. Because, let’s face it… the most dangerous person is yourself! Especially if you’re a frugal penny pincher looking for cheap results. Remember, in SEO as with life, you reap what you sow!

In the construction industry, there used to be people who dug with shovels. A company that invented and used the “digging machine” made results happen faster, easier and at lower cost.

Effective SEO is just like that. It can bring you better results faster and at a lower cost. That’s why you shouldn’t even consider letting anyone else handle your SEO tasks.

What does a rope cost?

Asking how much SEO will cost is like asking how much rope costs. It will depend upon how many meters you need, the quality of the rope, what you plan to use it for, or how long you want it to last. You can buy the cheapest rope you find, but will it be good enough?

Hiring an SEO consultant is similar. Just like rope has its per meter price, SEO has a price too – maybe a per hour rate. How many hours you will pay for depends upon all these factors we’ve discussed earlier.

And what you pay for is not what it costs you. That is defined by the return you get on your investment. If an SEO consultant delivers a boost in sales and profit that’s 5, 10 or 25 times what you paid, it didn’t cost you anything!

So that’s how I answer Johanna’s question – which is the same question many clients ask their SEO consultants.

I’m sure you’ve faced some frustrating challenges while trying to explain the value of what you do, to a client who can’t see it as any different from the dozen other marketing and designing tasks underway. Or when you’re called in as an SEO specialist to fix things after the entire website is built and running. Got any interesting stories that come to mind?  Go ahead and share it in a comment.

What do you do when you’re asked about pricing your SEO services? Do you have any personal experiences or favorite analogies you use?  What happens when you’re asked to give a ‘fixed price quote’ upfront? Tell us how you overcome price objections.

As a customer, what do you look for with SEO consulting? What parts do you wish your SEO consultant explained better or insisted upon more firmly? Please let us know, too.

Image credit: Crestock.com

According to the Wall Street Journal, Cutts is in South Korea this week and, in a presentation Monday night for about 80 government officials, webmasters, lawyers and journalists, managed to singlehandedly convince some government reps to let Googlebot crawl and index their websites.

One of those in the audience was Kang Min-koo, a senior judge in the Seoul High Court. When he saw the court’s Web site was on Mr. Cutts’ list of government sites that couldn’t be indexed by Google – and thus couldn’t be found on a Google search – he sent a text message by phone to the court’s webmaster ordering it to be changed.

Since the change can be made by altering just a few lines of software code, the webmaster had it done in no time. When it came time for questions, Mr. Kang asked Mr. Cutts to check if the High Court’s site showed up on Google – and it did.

Cutts’ visit to South Korea comes on the heels of tension between the government and Google. Earlier this month, the Korean Fair Trade Commission accused Google of interfering with its Android antitrust investigation. The commission alleges that Google deleted documents pertinent to its investigation into whether Google is limiting access to local search engines on Android smartphones.

There’s also the matter that South Korea is one of only a handful of countries where Google isn’t the dominant search engine. And, as the WSJ points out, Google isn’t likely to gain market share in Korea if prominent websites aren’t in its index.

While Cutts may have the title of being Google’s chief spam cop, he’s long been one of the companies go-to public faces. A little more than a year ago, Google sent him to Washington, DC on an “educational tour” aimed at telling government officials that Google’s search results don’t need to be regulated.

Since Google’s Caffeine update to its server infrastructure back in June 2010, Google has stepped up the importance of page load speed to its core algorithm. But page load speed has always been important to Google in providing a good searcher experience for Google searches.

And this is a logical stance if you take a second to think it through.

After all, if you consistently found that despite throwing up relevant results your searches continually returned sites which took ages to load, you’d seriously consider using a different search engine too, right?

So what causes slow page load times?

Well, the top five most common causes (in no particular order) which are cited in most large-scale studies of page response times, and which are tackled by all of the tools out on the market today are:

• Poor Caching Controls
• High Request Overheads
• Large Payload Sizes
• Long Round-Trip Times
• No Device Optimisation

The details around each type of issue are well documented elsewhere, for example in Google’s Web Performance Best Practice or Yahoo! Developer’s performance notes, so I won’t run over them again here.

All we need to know is that the number one – and most common – impact to page load times is poor caching controls. However, for multinational sites the very specific caching issue we should look to solve is ‘Proxy Caching’.

Proxy Caching is the practice of storing static resources on public web proxy servers. This is the type of advantage we can leverage in multilingual campaigns targeting multiple territories using a well distributed CDN.

So what should we be looking at to evaluate the quality of a CDN?

1. Well Distributed Edge Nodes

The most important criteria. The location of the CDN’s Edge Nodes should be close to the searcher’s location, this means that having all their servers in just Europe or the US would disadvantage searchers from Asia, for example.

Track down the CDN’s network map and match it against the locations you’re targeting in your search marketing startegy: are all the key countries covered?

If not, you’ll likely still see multiple hops are required for page requests and much of the speed optimisation is lost.

Try testing a CDN’s claims by performing a Ping & Traceroute from an IP within one of your target markets. Use a free multi-territory ping service such as that offered by dotcom-monitor.

2. Configurable Static Caching Of Dynamic Content

You may have noticed that Proxy Caching is concerned with static content.

If your site is built dynamically (and if it’s targeting multiple countries and languages, then it almost certainly is), then regardless of how well your static assets are cached, if big chunks of your body HTML requires dynamic loading then speed gains are for naught.

So make sure your CDN allows you to configure only those essential dynamic areas that should be served directly from your own servers, and dump all the rest of the content to their caching controls.

In 99% of cases, ‘essential’ dynamic areas are often not all that essential, so take time to determine precisely what functionality you need to retain control of on your own servers, and allocate your own resources to focus on its delivery.

For example, updates on your homepage about latest news do not count as ‘essential’ dynamic content.

Depending on your flavour of code, you will likely find a function that allows you to specify CDN information for static files or cache content generated dynamically such as Django’s STATICFILES_STORAGE, which also gives you an easy way to switch providers should you discover the CDN isn’t delivering on its response time promises.

3. Implementation Convenience & Performance Analytics

Many of the more recent CDNs offer superb ease of use when configuring, and speaking as a battle hardened agency-side technical support, that goes a long way in making it into favour with your client’s technical team’s shortlist.

For all the technical sophistication possible with CDNs, the ability to largely hand over the configuration to a few simple WYSIWYG steps in a provider interface has a lot going for it in terms of implementation overhead.

It also prevents errors creeping in to the delivery path, most of which can be critical issues for an SEO’s strategy: a huge benefit.

With such providers, implementation is usually just a case of altering the relevant DNS records to point to their network, which is a 5 minute job.

Making sure the CDN implementation is performing therefore becomes the main criteria for judging if your provider is delivering for you. Look for transparent reporting on traffic location, any user-agent or ‘known threat’ filtering, IP blocking, caching performance, and page load time overview by location.

Ideally, look for integration with your existing Analytics package as this allows you to combine into your standard reporting speed and performance metrics which are business critical to an SEO’s job these days.

Searching For Santorum: A New Surprise

I did a search for santorum a few minutes ago, and this is what I got:

See the YouTube link showing up there? It helps illustrate all that I think many people are feeling is wrong with Google right now. It’s a pretty bad result, and it’s also something getting there probably because Google’s not catching some potential old-school search engine spamming.

Universal Search Picked This?

The video result is showing up as part of Google Universal Search. That’s a system that blends content from Google’s various “vertical” or specialized search engines into its regular search results. It’s only supposed to inject this type of specialized content if it’s deemed especially relevant to the search topic.

Certainly, you can imagine that there’s video content relevant to a search on “santorum” from across the web. The Daily Show and The Colbert Report alone have over ten different Santorum comedy clips that might all be relevant.

Beyond comedy, there are news reports from across the entire web. The same search at Bing gives some examples of this, of how video content from Bing Video, as well as Fox News and CNN is inserted into its own search results for “santorum,” as you can see here:

Out of 20,000 potential matches on YouTube, out of 21 million potential video matches across the web, what does Google’s supposedly sophisticated Universal Search algorithm pick out to display as the top video content to be shown within the top search results?

A cartoon created by a company pitching its SEO software on YouTube as a way for Santorum to solve his Google problem. Wow.

You Couldn’t Have Picked….

That’s the most relevant thing that Google can show? I think most people would agree it’s not. I mean seriously, it’s better than these?

• Any of the Colbert Report or Daily Show clips
• Republican presidential candidate Rick Santorum arguing with a student on gay marriage
• Dan Savage explaining how his campaign against Rick Santorum ultimately caused searches on Google and Bing to show a definition as “santorum” being related to anal sex

You Couldn’t Have Caught A 65% Like Ratio?

It’s embarrassing for Google to be doing this. And it’s worse when you look at the views the video has received: only about 2,000, at this point. That’s nothing compared to some of the other clips relevant to santorum, if you’re considering views to be one possible ranking factor. How does this video get such a boost?

Well, there’s another clue when you look at the number of likes the video has received: about 1,300, at this point. That means about 65% of people who viewed the video also liked it, a ratio that is hugely out of proportion to what you normally see.

For example, the classic Honey Badger video — which is hilarious — has a like ratio of 0.5%. How about the classic Double Rainbow video? Hey, 0.5% again. The Bedroom Intruder song? A tiny bit better, 0.6%.

Either this SEO tool video is something like 130x more likeable than any of these other videos or something abnormal is happening — something that you’d think Google’s spam detection systems would have flagged.

Can I Haz My Relevancy Back?

In this particular example, the poor relevancy isn’t caused by any of the ongoing Google+ification of Google. This result is what anyone would see, even if they are logged out of Google. It’s not caused by Search Plus Your World or anything like that.

But Google has spent so much time and energy shoving Google+ into seemingly every nook and cranny that it can find that this type of relevancy screw-up feels like another bit of evidence that Google’s original core mission, delivering awesome search results, is being forgotten.

Related Articles

• Google 2.0: Google Universal Search
• Google Universal Search Expands
• How The “Focus On First” Helps Hide Google’s Relevancy Problems
• Should Rick Santorum’s “Google Problem” Be Fixed?
• Google’s “Gold Standard” Search Results Take Big Hit In New York Times Story
• How Rick Santorum Is Making His “Google Problem” Worse
• After Santorum’s Win, The Daily Show & Colbert Report Laugh Again At His Google Problem
• An Interview With A Google Search Quality Rater
• Pages With Too Many Ads “Above The Fold” Now Penalized By Google’s “Page Layout” Algorithm
• Google Announces “Megasitelinks,” Image Search Improvements & Better Byline Dates
• FAQ: What’s The Debate About Google’s Search Plus Your World?

I saw reports over the past week or so of webmasters commenting about their rankings. Most were complaining that they lost rankings, but some said sites that were originally hit by Panda regained their traffic levels pre-Panda. This would explain the data refresh, where Google ran the algorithm and updated the sites that should or should not have been touched by Panda.

Google Panda 3.2

Google said this happened about a week or so, so I would place this Google Panda 3.2 update as happening on January 18, 2012.

Why 3.2 and not 2.x? Well, I spoke with a Googler back in late November, they expressed that one of the 2.x updates we labeled as a “minor” update, should have likely been named as a major update and thus labelled a 3.0 update. I personally believe that was an October Panda update, that we did not cover here, but I do not have confirmation on that. In fact, Google does not number their updates, so it is hard to nail down.

The 3.1 update was likely the the minor update from November and now this being a basic “data refresh,” we’d label this as a minor update as well, and call this the 3.2 update.

There was a long gap between this update and the update from November because Google promised us no Panda updates during holidays.

Previous Panda Updates

Here’s the Panda update schedule so far, as we’ve tracked and had confirmed by Google:

• Panda Update 1.0: Feb. 24, 2011
• Panda Update 2.0: April 11, 2011 (about 7 week gap)
• Panda Update 2.1: May 10, 2011 (about 4 week gap)
• Panda Update 2.2: June 16, 2011 (about 5 week gap)
• Panda Update 2.3: July 23, 2011 (about 5 week gap)
• Panda Update 2.4: August 12, 2011 (about 3 week gap)
• Panda Update 2.5: September 28, 2011 (about 7 week gap)
• Panda Update 3.0 : ~October 19, 2011 (about 3 week gap)
• Panda Update 3.1 : November 18, 2011 (about 3 week gap)
• Panda Update 3.2 : ~January 18, 2012 (about 2 month gap)

We are waiting to hear back from Google on exact dates and will update our story with those dates if and when we hear back. But Google has indeed confirmed a Panda data refresh as a week or so ago.

Related Articles

• Taking a Closer Look at the Google’s Panda 2.5 “Flux”
• They’re Back! Google Issues Weather Report For Panda Update
• Google Panda 2.5: Losers Include Today Show, The Next Web; Winners Include YouTube, Fox News
• Confirmed: Google Panda 2.5 Update Arrived This Week
• Google Panda Update 2.4: Panda Goes International, In Most Languages
• Official: Google Panda 2.3 Update Is Live
• Can You Dig Out Of Your Google Panda Hole By Offloading To Subdomains?
• Why Google Panda Is More A Ranking Factor Than Algorithm Update

The new definition will take the average of the top ranking of your site for all searchers, as opposed to all URLs listed and average that. In the past, they would take all the positions of your rankings and average them together, now they are taking only the top positions.

Here is how Google explains it:

Let’s say Nick searched for [bacon] and URLs from your site appeared in positions 3, 6, and 12. Jane also searched for [bacon] and URLs from your site appeared in positions 5 and 9. Previously, we would have averaged all these positions together and shown an Average Position of 7. Going forward, we’ll only average the highest position your site appeared in for each search (3 for Nick’s search and 5 for Jane’s search), for an Average Position of 4.

Historically, this won’t impact the reports but going forward, Google will use this new calculation for determining your average position.

Google said, “we anticipate that this new method of calculation will more accurately match your expectations about how a link’s position in Google Search results should be reported.”

Here is where the average position shows up in Google Webmaster Tools:

Here is where the average position shows up in Google Analytics:

Related Stories:

• Google Analytics Webmaster Tools SEO Reports Now Available
• Google Analytics To Add Search Query Data From Webmaster Tools
• Keyword “Not Provided” By Google Spikes, Now 7-14% In Cases
• Google Webmaster Tools Search Queries Report Now Less Accurate
• Google Webmaster Tools Adds Useful Download Options

The old URL which was at google.com/webmasters/tools/submit-url/ now returns a page not found (404) error. The issue with that is, Google should really use a 301 redirect because it ranks in the top position for [google webmaster tools] and [google submit URL]:

The truth is, the add URL page is actually at google.com/webmasters/tools/submit-url, that is without the backslash at the end of the URL. It must be a bug on Google’s side, either they should redirect google.com/webmasters/tools/submit-url/ to google.com/webmasters/tools/submit-url or make both work.

In any event, now the new place to submit content is at google.com/submityourcontent. The page isn’t new, but it has recently been redesigned. The page launched back in September 2008 with a single page to find out how to submit content to Google’s various portals. It now looks like this:

Prior, it looked like this:

It is now broken down into four categories to submit content:

(1) For Website Owners

(2) For Business Owners

(3) For Publishing and Media

(4) For Public Agency

When you go to each of those landing pages, some of the content submission URLs differ, while some overlap between the four. One example is that all four have the submit URL to Google web search option.

Related Stories:

• Google’s “Submit Your Content” Page Changes Into Content Central, One Stop Shopping For Publisher Advice

Google was actually advertising Quality Rater jobs in late 2004, but today the Quality Raters don’t actually work for Google; they work for contractors such as Lionbridge, Leapforce, Butler Hill and possibly others. According to Lionbridge’s Internet Assessors Program job page, it has more than 4,500 people around the world rating search results. Leapforce’s website doesn’t indicate how many are in its program, but the job listings page includes opportunities with names like “Search Engine Evaluator,” “Social Search Engine Evaluator” and “Search Quality Judge.”

The Quality Raters’ work has become more widely known over the years thanks to a couple occasions when the guideline document that Google provides as part of their work has been leaked online. (See our posts in March 2008 and October 2011.) Webmasters have also noticed unique quality rater referral strings, indicating when one of the evaluators had visited a website.

After Jennifer Ledbetter posted about the program last fall, one current Quality Rater contacted Search Engine Land wanting to explain and clarify some of what’s been written and said about the program. Since then, with a couple breaks for holidays, I’ve traded numerous emails with this person … who, in addition to working for Lionbridge as a Quality Rater, also happens to work for a US-based search marketing agency.

To help ensure that this person, whom I’ve never met, is actually a Quality Rater, I asked for some screenshots from inside the website where the rating work is done. A couple of those are inserted within the interview, and here’s an image of the rating tasks home page showing an empty task queue.

Below, we talk about the hiring process, what Quality Raters look for when they examine websites, details of the different evaluation tasks they do and much more.

Q&A With A Google Search Quality Rater

SEL: Tell me how, when and why you got started with the Quality Rater program.

Quality Rater: I first started with Lionbridge in May of 2011. I was looking for work because my then current employer had told me I was taking a pay cut, so I needed a way to add income. I began searching all the normal places for job listings and came across one on Craigslist for a Quality Rater. It sounded cool, so I sent them my resume and they got back to me the next day saying they were excited to have me and if I could just pass a few simple tests I would be hired. That was the easy part.

Did the job listing specifically mention Google?

The listing didn’t mention anything about Google but as soon as they contacted me, they said I would be doing work related to Google.

So, you knew it was Google-related. At what point did you know that you’d be rating Google’s search results?

I knew before I got hired.

One thing I think the SEO community is missing is that this program has nothing to do with SEO or rankings. What this program does is help Google refine their algorithm. For example, the Side-by-Side tasks show the results as they are next to the results with the new algorithm change in them. Google doesn’t hire these raters to rate the web; they hire them to rate how they are doing in matching users queries with the best source of information.

Let’s talk about the hiring process. There’s some kind of test. Was it difficult?

I had six days to complete both parts of the test, with the second part opening after I passed the first test.

The tests turned out to be a 24-question, essay-response theoretical test that asked questions based on a PDF they had sent me. The questions were designed to test my ability to take the rules and apply them to situations that weren’t covered in the PDF. One that I vaguely remember was about spam and what to do if the site didn’t show any signs of spam, but it gave off a spammy feeling. It was the hardest test I have ever taken (for a reference point, I’m a Literature major who has taken graduate-level courses).

Only after having passed that test did I get to take the practical exam, which had more than 140 questions. This test had actual results that I had to rate. In order to be hired, I needed to score a 90% or higher in each of the four categories (which were Vital, Useful, Relevant and Off-Topic or Useless). Ideally, these represented the actual tasks that I would receive as a rater.

What were the questions like?

To give you example of questions asked:

Query [crispy cream], English (US)
URL: http://www.treblebooster.com/

It would then be up to me to visit the page — something that I want to stress, because blogs out there have been saying that a rater can rate the page without visiting it — decide if it fits the query and then assign a rating. It really is up to the rater, but the correct answer here is Useful because of the spelling. If the user had typed “Krispy Kreme,” than this result would be off-topic, but because it is “crispy cream,” and the guitars on this page are called Crispy Cream, this could be the page the user is wanting.

There were 143 just like that. It was good times.

Do you have any direct contact with anyone at Google, or do you only communicate with Lionbridge?

I have no contact with Google; it’s only Lionbridge.

After you get hired, is there some kind of training?

After I got hired there was a weekly, two-hour webinar along with training modules to complete. It was very intense training. During the first four weeks, I was required to comment on every rating I gave. These comments were then reviewed and commented on, giving me feedback on my ratings.

At what point do you get the raters’ handbook?

I got this the moment I got hired.  It basically is just a list of tasks we perform along with examples of how to rate them.

How does Lionbridge (or Google) describe the handbook?

They refer to it as the guidelines, not a handbook.

While we are on the subject of guidelines, one thing that really impressed me was how they have more than one rater looking at a site. I believe (I’m not sure, I’m going off the comments left by other raters) that there are about six raters looking at each task. If I rate something as useful but another rater says it’s off-topic, we must come to an agreement (through comments and debate) before the rating is submitted.

How much do you make and how often do you get paid?

I get paid $14.50/hour and I am paid once a month. I’m only able to work a max of 20 hours a week and a total max of 80 hours a month.

In one of the recent articles about the Quality Raters, it says you can only work for a year and then you have to wait three months before you can re-apply. Is that true?

I know they say you can only be a rater for a year, but everyone I’ve talked to says that, as long as they get their hours in and keep up the quality they are allowed to rate.

Is the schedule completely up to you, or do they give you assigned hours?

I schedule my own hours; as long as I get at least 10 but no more than 20, I stay on pretty good terms with them. They are very strict, but allow you to make up hours that you missed. So, if I only did four hours the first week, I could make up the hours by doing 16 hours the next week. Still only allowed 20 hours a week max, so if I miss more hours than I can make up, I’m out of luck.

They also tend to be really strict about their productivity goals. There is a certain number of tasks that I must complete every minute, depending on the task type. If I fall short of those goals, I am put on probation, during which I can not work. If my quality isn’t up to par, they fire me. It’s a very controlled work environment.

You mentioned there about getting fired “if my quality isn’t up to par.” How do you know if you’re doing a good job? It seems to me that in a lot of cases, rating search results is pretty subjective.

Results are subjective, but they have a quality center that shows your progress over time. They track how many returned results you have, how long it takes you to take care of a troubled rating, etc. While the rating is up to me, it has to be similar to what other raters have said. So, they track quality based on staying within the time period for rating tasks and the number of tasks you have returned to you.

They return tasks to you — what does that mean?

It means that there has been a disagreement on the rating and you have to go back in and come to an agreement with the other raters.

So, the rating of search results is a group project. Is it difficult to come to agreement?

Sometimes it’s harder to agree with raters, especially if they haven’t read the guideline like they should or if they are just starting out. However, after enough exchanges, they have a moderator come in and choose which rating matches it best. This moderator looks at our comments and makes a decision off of that.

How often does that happen in your experience?

Not very often. Most of the time if you give your reasoning for why you rated something one way, the other raters will agree with you. Most of the time, these types of disagreements occur when something is either slightly relevant or off-topic. Once in a while, someone will think that a page is spam that isn’t, or the other way around. I’ve only had a moderator step in once.

What do you know about the moderators? Are they Lionbridge employees?

Yes, they work for Lionbridge. From what I know of them, they used to be raters and then got promoted.

Do you only look at organic results, or are you also grading ads/PPC landing pages?

We look at any type of page on the web. Most of them are organic results, but some of the tasks are geared towards more ad-related topics.

Do you remember an example of an ad-related task?

Not really. Most of what they were was placement on the page, order in which they are presented and which one would I click, etc.

Do you look at Google Places results and other Universal results, like News or Videos?

Yes, we do. I can think of many tasks where it shows the map of what a user was looking at before they typed in a query, and we are then to rate the results of that query based on the map they were looking at. We also rated news based on how current it was, how relevant it was to the query, and if it came from a trustworthy source. As for videos, we had to watch the video to determine if it was a match for the query and rate it Useful, Relevant, Slightly Relevant, or Off-topic.

That part about Maps is really interesting. So, in that task, they were putting you in the middle of some process — you’re not just doing tasks that involve standalone searches, but sometimes taking into account what has happened before? Does that also happen with other searches, too?

Almost all of the tasks given have to do with user experience. Even with just the basic searches, we are given the user’s language and location before we can rate a page. It’s not about if a page fits a query, it’s about if a user would find the page useful. The Maps queries (called local queries) are the only ones that give what the user was looking at before searching, but we are supposed to keep in mind what a user is expecting to see from that query with every task type. For example, if someone was in Seattle and typed in the query “weather,” they would find a page showing the weather in Florida slightly relevant; however, someone in Tampa would find it useful.

Aside from the collective rating that you described above, do you ever have other communication with other raters? Are there official or unofficial places where you can chat back and forth?

There are lots of places — forums and such on the Lionbridge site — where raters can talk to each other, but I never interact with them. I was always stressed getting my hours in for the week, so I didn’t have time to mingle.

Can you share a specific example of one of your recent tasks?

I can’t think of the exact URLs I rated, but the keyword was “Nike Women’s Running Shoes.” It gave me a list of 20 URLs to rate (10 on each side) [Ed. note: he's referring to the "Side-by-Side" tasks mentioned earlier.] and I visited each one in order to determine whether they were vital, useful, relevant, slightly relevant, or useless. With a recognized brand name like that, it wasn’t hard to determine quality. For example, I think the Nike site was one of the options, so that would get a “vital” rating. I remember a couple of sites sold the shoes, so I gave them a “useful” rating and the Wikipedia entry on Nike was giving a rating of “slightly relevant” because I believe not many people searching for Nike Women’s Running Shoes want a history of the company.

Do you click through and review all ten results that show up for a given task?

I always click all the links simply because I’m not good enough to tell what the site is about by just reading its description. No one is good enough, that’s why they give us the links.

When you click through from a Google search result page, what are you looking for on the web page that you visit?

When looking at a site, I always check for spam signals first — keyword stuffing, hidden text, sneaky redirects, and the like. Once I know it’s a good site, I start to look at the page as a person who would type the query in Google and whether or not the content on the page would help me fulfill my needs. There are some tasks that ask about design and layout and the like, but for the normal URL rating or Side-by-Side tasks, I really just look at content and figure out if it would be a worthwhile page for a user to see.

Do you ever look at the source code or anything like that? Are Raters asked or trained to look at source code of the web pages being rated?

There is a quick primer on looking at the source code in the guidelines, nothing in depth. Basically we look for hidden keywords and other spammy tactics discussed in the guidelines.

You mentioned URL rating tasks and Side-by-Side tasks, but also some that involve design and layout. What are those tasks like?

Design tasks ask if the page has a good ratio of main content, supplemental content, and ads. It also asks about the overall design, is it easy to read, clear communication of information, and the like. It’s not about whether the page is beautiful or amazing, but whether or not the normal user could find what they need on the page without getting lost.

Do they give you a single web page and ask you to rate its design, or are you still going through a page of search results and then rating design?

They are specific tasks, not part of rating a URL.

Are spelling and grammar part of the design-based tasks?

Spelling and grammar are something we look at in all tasks (at least I do) but there’s not a ding for it.

When looking at design and layout, do your criteria change based on the type of site you’re looking at? For example, a web page on a big brand site might be expected to have a more professional design than some small business sites.

Like I said before, it’s more about the layout than the actual design. A company with a simple design would be rated just as well as a big company with a professional design as long as the information is clear and presented in a way that is easy to understand. To give you an example, a page where you can tell what the main content is with ads taking second page in the design would get a high rating. A page where the ads are confused with the main content, where you can’t tell the difference between content and ads would get a low rating.

How many different kinds of tasks are there? The guidelines I’ve seen begin by saying “you will work on many different types of rating projects.”

There are a lot of different tasks but they are all grouped under four main groups: URL, Side-by-Side, Experimental, and Result Review.  The big one there is the Experimental tasks which have a ton of different types of tasks in them. I’ve included a picture that lists all the task types and how long they are supposed to take, as well.

What are “Display Block” and “TTR” tasks?

Display Block, if I remember right, is a block of images that we rate as a whole rather than one at a time. TTR stands for Time to Rate, which is the baseline task they use to determine how long it should take to get a task done. It has all the different tasks in it, but instead of looking for accuracy it just cares about time.

Do they try to give you tasks related to topics and things you know about, or do you review pages about things you’re not very familiar with?

If someone types in “Best Dog Food for Puppies,” it’s not very hard to know what they are wanting and most queries have a fairly obvious meaning. However, once in a while I’ll get one that I can’t figure out and that’s when I do research to figure out what they want. For example, if someone queried “Release Liner,” I would need to do some research to figure out that it’s something used in cutting vinyl for signs and the like. At that point, I could determine whether a site is worthwhile or not. Granted, it’s not a perfect system but it works most of the time.

Are there specific industries/niches that show up more than others in your rating tasks?

Not that I have noticed.

How does your work affect Google’s search results — do they tell you anything about that?

They don’t talk about that; however, I know that what it really does is perfect the algorithm instead of changing actual live search results. I gathered this from the way that Side-by-Side are the most important tasks because they show the old algorithm versus a change in the algorithm that they are testing.

Are you an active Rater these days? How long do you think you’ll keep doing it?

I still rate on the weekends. I like doing it, so I’ll keep doing as long as I can.

Does Lionbridge and/or Google know that you work in the search marketing industry?

No. I got this job after I got the Lionbridge job.

Do you know of any other search marketers who are also Quality Raters?

I don’t know any personally, but I bet there aren’t a lot of us.

What’s your opinion of Google’s search results, and has that opinion changed since you became a Quality Rater?

I’ve always used Google as my “go to” search engine; however, since I became a rater, I’ve started using it more because I can see the behind-the-scenes improvements they are trying to make.

I like the idea that they have an army of actual people working towards bettering their engine. I know some people might think this wrong or even that raters have a negative effect on their rankings. Well, I can honestly say that they don’t. The whole point behind quality raters is not to rate the actual web, but rather rate how well Google is doing at providing quality results.

Almost every company has some form of quality control. Do people get upset that McDonald’s has someone check the quality of their food? I don’t see what Google does as any different than wanting to present the best possible product they can to their users.

So, to answer your question, yes, my opinion has changed for the better.