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When Google Gets It Wrong By Changing The Titles Of Web Pages

Apr 30, 2013 at 5:55pm ET by Danny Sullivan

Google doesn't always use the HTML title tag of a web page, choosing instead to make its own title for a page, if it thinks it can do a better job. Here's an example of it getting this completely wrong. I was searching for Dana Point Jet Ski, which is a real business in Dana Point. Google instead listed the official page for Dana Point Harbor first: Listing the wrong site first is a relevancy problem. But changing the title of the page to "Dana Point Jet Ski & Kayak Center" is a double-fail. That's Google reinforcing its error, because it's so sure that it's right. See, Google [...]

The Power Of Headlines: The LA Times Gets It Right With Their Piece On The Inauguration

Jan 21, 2013 at 2:32pm ET by Vanessa Fox

Journalists call them headlines; SEOs call them titles and headings. Whatever you call them, they're the words that tell someone that your article is what they want to read. Look at Google News any day of the week for examples of headlines that give you absolutely no idea what the article might be about. Search engines don't know what to rank them for; users don't know whether to click. One trend I watch is that of searchers asking what time things start. For any event, you can be sure that searchers will take to Google to find out the start time. I chronicle this every year, for instance, [...]

11 Things To Ask Yourself When Optimizing Content

Sep 25, 2012 at 12:29pm ET by Jenny Halasz

A client asked me the other day why we were optimizing his software for Los Angeles, when he’s located in Raleigh, NC. In explaining the reason to him, I realized that a basic guideline for optimizing pages is long overdue. I’ve developed the following flow chart and explanation in response. Theming Content The first question you need to ask yourself when optimizing a page is, What is the Page About? If you can’t answer this or your answer is a keyword, then maybe you shouldn’t be building the page. Seriously. You need the page to be about something in order for it to have value [...]

Google’s May Updates: Inorganic Backlinks, Page Titles, Fresh Results & More

Jun 7, 2012 at 7:16pm ET by Matt McGee

Google's latest batch of search quality updates is online, and offers some insight into a variety of search- and SEO-related topics. Though some of Google's monthly updates have included more than 50 items, this one comes in at 39. But it looks like there's still plenty to digest. Here's a look at what stands out for me after a first read of Google's blog post. Inorganic Backlinks & Penguin There are two items that would appear to be closely related to one another: Better application of inorganic backlinks signals. [launch codename "improv-fix", project codename "Page Quality"] We [...]

The SEO Breakdown: Bank Information Center Site Audit

Apr 5, 2012 at 2:46pm ET by Chris Fernandez

As part of a site audit special series, we're going to review an interesting website, Bank Information Center (BIC). BIC is a non-profit organization that does some very cool things but, like most non-profits, hasn’t updated their website for many years. Needless to say, they have almost no Internet marketing or SEO strategy which led them to ask for help by submitting their site for this series. In this post, I’m going to break down: Who the business is and what they do First Impressions: Overall analysis of website look, feel, targeting and usability Second Impressions: [...]

Is Google Ignoring The HTML Title Tag More Often?

Feb 21, 2011 at 11:58am ET by Barry Schwartz

Google's long created title tags from means other than using the HTML title tag, however, there are reports that it might be increasing the times it does so. A WebmasterWorld thread has dozens of webmasters complaining that Google is not using their HTML title tags. The HTML title tag is often used by Google as the blue hyperlink in the Google search results. The words used in that hyperlink can often mean a click or skip when a searcher is scanning the available search results for a query. So when Google decided to not use your HTML title tag, you are hopeful that Google picks something mo [...]

Writing HTML Title Tags For Humans, Google & Bing

Dec 21, 2010 at 3:30pm ET by Danny Sullivan

I generally enjoy John Gruber's writings, but today he's dishing out SEO advice about HTML title tags. Some of it is bad advice. So with respect, here's how I'd suggest you write page titles in a way that can please search engines and humans alike. What Is An HTML Title Tag? Let me go back to the basics. The title tag is a section of HTML code that every page should have. It declares what the page's title is. For example, here's the title tag for the Search Engine Land article I wrote earlier this year, Some SEO Advice For Bill Gates: The <TITLE> tag appears within the &l [...]

Sorry, Yahoo, You DO Index The Meta Keywords Tag

Oct 14, 2009 at 2:31pm ET by Danny Sullivan

Oh, that this weren't true. Last week, Yahoo made news by disclosing that it had quietly dropped support for the meta keywords tag. As a long time hater of that tag and the insane questions it has produced, I was thrilled! But today, I see conclusively that Yahoo still supports the tag. The test was simple. I placed a unique word in the meta keywords tag on the home page of Search Engine Land. This word -- xcvteuflsowkldlslkslklsk -- generated no results on Yahoo when I looked earlier this week. Today, when I searched, it brought back the Search Engine Land home page. Thus, Yahoo indeed ind [...]

Yahoo Search No Longer Uses Meta Keywords Tag

Oct 6, 2009 at 2:15pm ET by Barry Schwartz

And then there were none. Yahoo has long been the only major search engine that supported the meta keywords tag. However, the search engine revealed today that like the other majors, it no longer supports it. The news came during the Ask The Search Engines session at SMX East in New York today. The search engines were all asked about their support of the tag. Moderator Danny Sullivan noted that only Yahoo provided support of the tag -- prompting Cris Pierry, senior director of search at Yahoo, to announce that support actually had been ended unannounced "several" months ago. Bing doesn't [...]

Google’s Advice On Using The New Canonical Tag

Mar 13, 2009 at 9:19am ET by Barry Schwartz

A month ago, Google, Yahoo and Microsoft announced they will be supporting a new canonical tag that allows you to tell search engines that page X is a duplicate page to page Z. In a way, it is a 301 redirect, without the physical redirect. The tag is incredibly powerful, as are 301 redirects and using this tag should be done with caution and slowly. Matt Cutts posted a new video explaining how one should go about using this tag, being that it is so new. Here is the video: [...]

Google’s Matt Cutts Talks About Redirected Links & Nofollowed Links

Mar 11, 2009 at 9:28am ET by Barry Schwartz

Matt Cutts of Google has posted two short videos on the topic of links. One video answers how Google handles links that are 301 redirected and the other video answers how Google handles nofollowed links from authority sources. Here is Matt's video on 301 redirects where the question asked is does anchor text carry through all 301 redirects: His answer, if you don't want to watch it is. Typically yes, but Google deserves the right to pick which they pass. If all your links are through 301 redirects, then that looks suspicious. Matt's second video on nofollowed links answers two [...]

Despite Inauguration, Google & Others Still Think It’s President Bush, Not President Obama

Jan 20, 2009 at 6:14pm ET by Danny Sullivan

President Barack Obama took office officially today plus launched a new White House web site as part of his transition. But the major search engines have yet to catch up with the power change. Google still lists President George W. Bush as being in power, sort of: The screenshot above shows what you get in a search for president of the united states at Google. A similar situation happens for a search on president: Ah, but it's only been a few hours -- surely Google will catch up with the changed page soon. Look closer. Google already knows the page has been updated. While [...]

Google Starts To Classify Content Types In Web Search

Oct 9, 2008 at 3:00pm ET by Matt McGee

Like other search engines, Google already distinguishes between various types of content. You can search specifically for images, videos, books, blog posts, and so forth. Google has separate search engines for each. But two recent changes suggest that Google is improving its ability to classify different types of content that's gathered from ordinary web pages. Search Engine Roundtable points to a discussion on WebmasterWorld about the addition of dates at the beginning of some search results -- something Michael Gray spotted in mid-September. From my personal experience, this seems to be [...]

Meta-Tag Optimization Tips: A Search Usability Perspective

May 29, 2008 at 7:55am ET by Shari Thurow

I know. I know. Seasoned search engine optimization (SEO) professionals might yawn and roll their eyes when the subject of meta-tag optimization comes up, as they might think, "Meta-tag optimization is SO 1990s." Personally, I think meta-tag content gets a bad rap because, in the past, many SEO professionals and website owners exploited meta-tags to achieve undeserved search engine visibility. As a result, the tags' content was devalued in favor of other criteria. Overall, though, if you look at the big picture, meta-tag abuse contributed to the evolution of better, more accurate [...]

Google’s Matt Cutts On Cloaking & Search Snippets

Nov 28, 2007 at 8:35am ET by Barry Schwartz

Matt Cutts of Google has written two posts on the topic of SEO: Detecting more "undetectable" webspam The anatomy of a search result The first, Detecting more "undetectable" webspam, should trigger some heated comments at his blog. It shows how he was able to find what was claimed to be "undetectable" cloaking and web spam. Matt then issues his warning to webmasters: More generally, if someone is trying to manipulate Google by deceptive cloaking, it means that a webserver is returning different content to Googlebot than to users. That’s a condition that can be checked for by algorithms [...]

Google’s Tips On How To Write A Good Meta Description

Oct 1, 2007 at 9:17am ET by Barry Schwartz

The Google Webmaster Central Blog described what makes for a good meta description versus what makes for a bad meta description. Meta descriptions are a special tag that you place within the source code of your html page. They can be used by search engines for ranking purposes as well as for being displayed within the search result pages. The tag looks like this when you view the source code: <META NAME="Description" CONTENT="informative description here"> The Google blog post describes key attributes of what Google considers making a good meta description, factors its says may inc [...]

Related Topics: Channel: SEO | Google: SEO | SEO: Titles & Descriptions

Google’s “Unavailable After” META Tag Now Live

Jul 27, 2007 at 2:52pm ET by Barry Schwartz

Google's Dan Crow announced today that the unavailable_after META tag is now live and operational. Google To Add "Unavailable After" META Tag from about two weeks ago, explains in detail more about this tag and how it can be used. [...]

Google To Add “Unavailable After” META Tag

Jul 12, 2007 at 9:30am ET by Barry Schwartz

Getting Into Google by Jill Whalen reports Dan Crow, director of crawl systems at Google, saying that Google is releasing a new META tag named "unavailable_after." The "unavailable_after" tag will allow you to tell Google when Googlebot should no longer crawl that page. Jill explains that this tag comes in handy when you have a limited time offer promotional page, and on this page, the promotion will expire on a specific date. By using the "unavailable_after" tag, you can tell Google that they should not crawl this page, after the promotion expires. There are several practical scenarios fo [...]

George Washington Did What According To Wikipedia???

May 16, 2007 at 4:41pm ET by Danny Sullivan

Many have joked about how Wikipedia seems to rank at the top of practically any Google search that you do. Often, that's a good thing, as Wikipedia has lots of great information. But a search on george washington today shows a downside. Someone edited the start of the Wikipedia entry about the first US president to be less than flattering. Google spidered the entry, and that material was used to form the description of Washington's Wikipedia page, as shown below. Look at the second listing: It's embarrassing for Google, but the fault really lies with Wikipedia, since this text stayed on W [...]

Newspapers Amok! New York Times Spamming Google? LA Times Hijacking Cars.com?

May 8, 2007 at 4:52pm ET by Danny Sullivan

Back in March, Google warned that allowing your internal search results to be listed in Google might be considered spamming. Today, there's some buzz that one of the top listings for a search for sex on Google turns out to be an internal search results page from the New York Times. In looking at that, I also came across an example of the LA Times "hijacking" the listing of Cars.com for a search on cars, thought the fault for that lies with Google. Let's start with the New York Times: John Andrews wrote yesterday that internal search pages from the query.nytimes.com domain were [...]

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