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Google’s Above-the-Fold Algorithm Change Will Penalize Many Sites

Rene LeMerle — Fri, 03 Feb 2012 12:51:04 +0000

Continuing its efforts to keep its search results more quality-oriented, Google recently announced a significant algorithmic change.

The change looks at the layout and amount of content on a webpage, if the ads above the fold are excessive, your site can be penalized and downgraded in the search results.

As Matt Cutts wrote on the Google Webmaster Central Blog post.

We’ve heard complaints from users that if they click on a result and it’s difficult to find the actual content, they aren’t happy with the experience. Rather than scrolling down the page past a slew of ads, users want to see content right away. So sites that don’t have much content “above-the-fold” can be affected by this change. If you click on a website and the part of the website you see first either doesn’t have a lot of visible content above-the-fold or dedicates a large fraction of the site’s initial screen real estate to ads, that’s not a very good user experience. Such sites may not rank as highly going forward.

This new algorithmic update will penalize sites with little or no visible content above-the-fold or sites that have deliberately pushed relevant content underneath large blocks of ads.

While placing ads above-the-fold is quite a common practice for many websites; these ads are a good source of money for many online publishers as long as they do it within acceptable limits.

Users will not see much of a change on the front end as Google estimates that less than 1% of the searches globally will be affected by this algorithmic update. Actually, the chances of typical users noticing a reordering of results on the search page will be only 1 in 100.

For webmasters who have recently updated their page layout, the page layout algorithm will automatically reflect the changes as Google re-crawls and processes a sufficient number pages from your site to assess the changes made.

The length of time it will take for Google to reassess your pages will depend on several factors, including the number of pages on your site and how efficiently Googlebot can crawl the content. On a typical website, it can take several weeks for Googlebot to crawl and process enough pages to reflect layout changes on the site.

Put simply, if you have stuffed too many ads into the area above the fold on your webpages , you are going to feel the wrath of Google’s algorithm penalty.

If you believe that your website has been a victim of the page layout algorithm change, its time you review how your web pages use the area above-the-fold and whether the content on the page is obscured or perhaps difficult to be reached by users.

Comments

How can you hack the LocalDictionary on a Mac system?

Dave Taylor — Thu, 02 Feb 2012 16:48:36 +0000

Another question about the built-in Mac spell dictionary. (I did read the previous question How can I forget or edit a learned word in the Mac spelling dictionary?)

Under User>Library>Spelling> I have both LocalDictionary and en.

What is the relationship between these two? Adding a great number of specialized, technical words one at a time as they appear in my writing is taking a lot of time. Is there a way to add a great number of (specialized) words to one of these?

Dave’s Answer:

Great question and an interesting one both, because it turns out that the Mac OS X spelling subsystem that underlies its common spelling capability is eminently hackable. How can you tell? Simply open up the LocalDictionary file that you reference.

Before I do, however, I will say that it’s important to use the right editor: if you use an editor that adds the wrong line-end sequences, you can presumably mess up the dictionary. My suggestion, since I’m comfortable with the command line, is to open up Terminal.app and use either “emacs” or “vi” to add content to the file. Save the original file before you start, though, and presumably you could also just try something else like BBEdit, TextEdit or even Microsoft Word. It messes up? Just copy back the original!

Even if you don’t want to hack the file, you can still open it up and have a look by using TextEdit. Launch the program, then navigate to Library > Spelling and open “LocalDictionary”.

Here’s what mine contains:

Does it work? To test it while in TextEdit, I added the nonsense word “ptoi” and saved the file, then opened a new TextEdit window and typed that word in to the window. The result was that it was still marked as a spelling error. Hmm…

To test further, I logged out and logged in again. The result:

No red squiggly line means that “ptoi” is now a valid word with an understood spelling.

Sweet! So there ya go. You don’t need to use Terminal.app or the command line, you simply need to open up the file with TextEdit and add the words you need, save it, and you’re good to go. Nice job making this easy to work with, Apple!

Comments

Optimizing MySQL: The Slow Query Log

Michael Marr — Tue, 31 Jan 2012 20:02:23 +0000

I prescribe to the slow and steady approach in life. It’s a proven methodology in becoming succesful (just ask the Tortoise and/or the Hare). However, slow and steady is typically not acceptable in data computation, and SQL is no different. Thus, MySQL provides a Slow Query Log.

Do you use the slow query log? Let us know your tips/stories in the comments section.

The long_query_time parameter in your MySQL configuration becomes the baseline for which queries will end up in your slow query log. If no value is specified, the default value of 10 is used. Changing the default to any number (minimum of one) will log any query taking longer than that number of seconds to execute. So, by default, any queries taking longer than 10 seconds will be logged. The execution time does not include time the query waits to receive a table lock. If your performance issues are related to an overload of requests, slow query logs will not be very beneficial.

I recommend enabling this feature on your development servers, as it will potentially shed light on problems before your application reaches production. MySQL also provides an excellent tool, mysqldumpslow, to extract the logged queries.

Some other caveats to the slow query log:

By default, administrative queries like OPTIMIZE TABLE, ALTER TABLE, and others are not included in the slow query log. To include these type of statements, use the --log-slow-admin-statements flag.
Keep the log file in a secure location, as some queries logged may include passwords or other sensitive data.
The slow query log will not tell you have to optimize slow queries, only that a slow query exists.
Slow queries are written to the log after the query has been executed and related locks released. Thus, order of queries in the slow query log may not correspond with actual execution time.

Using Free Transforming To Show Perspective in Flash

Chad Sweely — Fri, 27 Jan 2012 20:54:06 +0000

In this tutorial, I will show you how to display perspective (near to far) using objects in Flash with help of the Free Transform Tool. For a simple example of this, I will be showing you how to make a car from the distance become near.

Step 1: Creating The Flash Document:

After you have opened Flash, create a new document and resize your new Flash document in the Properties Inspector. To do this, click on the Size button with the default dimensions on the Properties Inspector

Within the Document Properties window, make the dimensions of your Flash document 500 x 383. This will be the size of the background that we will be using. After the width has been set to 500 and height to 383, press the “OK” button, and your Flash document will automatically resize for you.

Step 2: Importing The Images:

We are now ready to import the images (the car and the background) that we will be using into the Library in Flash. The images that I will be using in this tutorial can be downloaded here (background image and car). (Courtesy of Clipart.com)

To import the images into the Library, from the File menu, choose Import to Library, and an “Open” window will appear. From the “Import to Library” window, select the files that we will use in this tutorial and then press “OK”.

To open the Library (if it is not already open yet), press the F11 key, and the Library will automatically open for you. You will also see the files that you imported, and your Library should look similar to the image below.

After the files have been imported into the Library, we are now ready to place them on the Stage; however, we will do this sequentially and not both objects at the same time. First, drag the file that we will use for the background (with the trees and the road) onto the Stage by dragging the filename.

When the background has been dragged onto the Stage, use your mouse and keyboard to nudge the image into the center of the stage so that all corners are flush.

Step 3: Layering:

Before we place the car on the Stage, we will need to divide the Timeline into different layers. To do this, click the “Insert Layer” button on the bottom left-hand side of the Timeline, and a new layer (defaulting to the name of “Layer 2″) will automatically be created on top of Layer 1.

With the second layer (Layer 2) selected in the Timeline, drag the car image from the Library and place it at the top / far end of the road on the background image. The stage should look like the image below:

Step 4: Free Transforming:

As you can probably tell, the car is out of proportion with the rest of the image. To resize the car so that it is proportional, we will be using a tool from the Toolbox called Free Transform. With the Free Transform Tool selected from the Toolbox, click once on the car, and then use the crosshairs around the car to resize it to a normal proportion so that it looks far away.

Step 5: Getting The Car in Motion:

Now that we have both images set on the Stage, we are ready for the car to be set in motion. To allow the image to have the properties that we want attached to it, we will need to convert it to a graphic. To do this, select the car on the stage and press the F8 key. This will make the “Convert to Symbol” window appear.

Within the “Convert to Symbol” window, please enter the following parameters and then press “OK”:

Name: Green Car
Behavior: Graphic

Now that the car has been converted a graphic object, we are almost ready to set it in motion. To give the car time to move, we will need to extend the time in the Timeline. To do this, with Layer 2 selected, click on the 30th keyframe in the Timeline and then press F6. This will copy all of the frames between 1 and 6 for Layer 2. After this has been performed, do the same for Layer 1. The Timeline should look like what I have provided below.

Select keyframe 30 of Layer 2 in the Timeline. With this keyframe selected, click the car once with the Free Transform Tool selected from the Toolbox, and then resize the car to a large scale using the crosshairs. After the car is to a larger scale, move the location of the car to the bottom of the road / nearer to you.

Step 6: Tweening

To give the car motion from point A to point B, we will need to add an element to the Timeline called Tweening. To do this, select any of the keyframes between 1 and 30 for Layer 2 in the Timeline. With one of these keyframes selected, from the “Tween” options in the Properties Inspector, select the “Motion” option. This will shade Layer 2 a bluish color with a straight line through it and animate the car to travel down the road.

To test the Flash animation that you have just created, from the Control menu, select the Test Movie option. Your Flash animation should look like the example that I have provided below.

Average Search Rankings Redefined By Google

Navneet Kaushal — Fri, 27 Jan 2012 15:27:20 +0000

The definitions of average position in the search query report in Google Webmaster Tools and search optimization report in Google Analytics is being changed by Google. The change was revealed in the Google Webmaster Blog and Google Analytics Blog.

What’s the new definition?

As per the new definition, your search ranking will be determined by the average of the top ranking of the site for all searches, as opposed to all URLs listed and average that. Please note that only the top rankings will be taken. Earlier, the average search ranking was gathered by taking all the positions of your rankings and averaging them together.

This 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.”

The impact of this on your Top Search Queries and Google Analytics Data

As per Google the historical data will not change, only the Top Search Queries Data going forward will be affected. Google said, “Note that the change in calculation means that the Average Position metric will usually stay the same or decrease, as we will no longer be averaging in lower-ranking URLs.”

Google is of the view that webmasters anticipations of how a link’s position in Google Search results should be reported will be matched better with this new method of calculation.

Comments

Basics of Debugging Google Analytics Code

Lukas Oldenburg — Fri, 20 Jan 2012 15:46:00 +0000

Is that Virtual Pageview really being sent to Google Analytics when someone submits my registration form? Does the Event Tracking Call for outbound links get to GA in time before the visitor has left my website? Why do I not get any data for clicks on my teaser links? Questions that can drive a Web Analyst mad. Not if you know how to debug.

When I started using Web Analytics tools, there always was this huge black box: I’d put the tracking code on each and every page, and from then on, I usually waited and hoped the code would work as intended. Often, it didn’t, but I wasn’t able to see that until hours or sometimes a day later when the reports poured in to Google Analytics. Sometimes, it seemed to work, but only in some browsers. And so on. The more complex the code got (like when using Event Tracking for Flash applications), the harder it was to find out whether the code actually did what I was hoping it did. Luckily, that time is over.

Why is tracking code debugging so tedious?

Time lag: It usually takes several minutes to hours for the data to pour into the reports (even real-time analytics is never really real-time)
It was me, wasn’t it? You sometimes wonder whether the data in that report was caused by you or someone else that accidentally did the same thing on your website
No access to IT resources: Web Analysts may know some JavaScript, but we mostly are not IT people, so if you are testing web analytics code you sometimes have to wait for your IT guy to upload every little code change. An absolute killer for continuous improvement!
Testing on a test system isn’t the same as on a live system: There might be other scripts that are being loaded on the live system, the test system might be on another subdomain etc… Things that can be crucial for your code to function.

You can certainly name several more reasons why debugging the old-fashioned way is a very frustrating and time-consuming exercise.

Common Debugging Tools

There are some good tools out there to switch on the light in the tracking code’s black box:

Fiddler2
My absolute favorite (see next post on how to use this HTTP traffic monitoring tool). Fiddler2 makes it easy to view every request to Google Analytics (and any other javascript-based Web Analytics tool). You can even try out changes to your tracking code on your live system before releasing them to everyone, the tool is independent from browsers – and it is free!

Web Analytics Solution Profiler (WASP)
A well-known Firefox add-on by Stéphane Hamel that now belongs to iPerceptions. It recognizes a wide array of Web Analytics Tools’ tracking codes and shows you if your tracking code is successfully being executed (or not), crawls your site to find untagged pages, and so on.

A drawback is that it only works in Firefox, although it allows you to fake another user agent (like “iPad” or “Internet Explorer” which can be cool.

The basic version is free, but to be honest, it doesn’t help me that much for my use cases. Maybe I am too stupid to use it the right way, my use cases aren’t the ones the tool is made for (like using several web analytics solutions on one website), or I should try the paid versions.
So feel free to share your experience with WASP here in the comments.

Charles Debugger
A tool similar to Fiddler2, see this blog post on how to use it for Web Analytics Code Debugging.

Firebug/Chrome Developer Console:
A tool that makes any JavaScript Debugging so much easier, so it is a must-have for Web Analysts, too. And if you use Chrome, you don’t even have to install anything, not even a browser add-on (see this video by a Google Chrome Developer with 12 tricks to get the most out of the Developer Tools). That helps when you have to debug on someone else’s computer for example.

The function I use most of the time apart from the Console (where errors are being logged) is the Network Tab. It can tell us if the tracking beacon has been sent to Google Analytics successfully. To find out, look for the __utm.gif request. If it displays a “200 OK” status code (see the green light in the screen shot), you know that Google Analytics has received the current Pageview or Event. You can take a look what is inside that request in the “Headers” tab (Cardinal Path’s Kent Clark’s marvelous “Cheat Sheet” helps interpreting the values).

Chrome GA Debugger / ga_debug.js
Google’s recommended debugging tool for Google Analytics is Chrome’s Add-On “GA Debugger”. It is basically a form of using the “ga_debug.js” script without having to alter your page’s code at all (if you use ga_debug.js, you will have to change ga.js into /u/ga_debug.js on every page you want to debug). Chrome GA Debugger is a nice and easy-to-use tool that logs every Pageview and Event that you send to Google Analytics in your Chrome Developer Console (right-click on any part of the page => “Inspect Element” → go to tab “Console”):

Chrome GA Debugger shows you in an easy-to-read format what is being sent to Google Analytics without having to understand or inspect cookie variables or the Network Tab of your Console. It gives you hints like:

Does my visit have the correct source/medium/campaign?
Are there pages that accidentally override those sources?
Are there pages where conflicting JavaScript or other reasons hinder the Tracking Code from being executed?

I am not using Chrome GA Debugger much anymore though because:

It does not help with most cases of Event or Virtual Pageview Debugging. Events or Virtual Pageviews are most often tied to a click on a link (if you want to track the clicks on outbound links for example). If you click on a link though, you usually get to a new page, in which case Chrome’s Console is being cleared – and the Event Tracking call with it. So before you can take a look at what is being logged, it is gone.
It is Chrome-only. What works on Chrome doesn’t necessarily work on Firefox or Internet Explorer.
It breaks down sometimes, especially if you click quickly from page to page. And once it has broken down, nothing is being logged anymore even if you click slowly again to ensuing pages. That freaked me out because it always made me wonder whether my code wasn’t working well. You can easily restart the tool though by reloading the current page, but, even so, that is one factor that caused me to rarely use Chrome GA Debugger.

So much for a brief overview on the matter and a deeper look into Chrome GA Debugger. In my next article, I am going to show you how to effectively use Fiddler2 on some real-life examples.

Originally published on Web Analytics World

How do I create a new Aperture library on my Mac?

Dave Taylor — Thu, 19 Jan 2012 14:25:55 +0000

I take a lot of photos. So many that Aperture is starting to bog down. I was talking with a fellow photographer and he said that he splits his Aperture library every six months. Sounds like a good idea. How do I create a new Aperture library or, better, move a project into a new library?

Dave’s Answer:

I’m a big fan of Aperture, but I have definitely found that it works a lot better with a few thousand photos than it does with ten thousand or more. Yes, I also take a lot of pictures! I don’t split things every six months, however, but I do create a new Aperture library every year, typically after I’ve imported a project or two in early January and realized that I haven’t split it off yet.

If you’re relatively new to Aperture, a “library” is a collection of “projects”, each of which can be comprised of one or more “events” which themselves are collections of photographs. So when I went to the 2012 Consumer Electronics Show, for example, I kept all the photos from the show in the same project, even though they were taken over the course of four days.

That being explained, there are two ways you can create a new library in the program. The first is to simply create a new library…

Creating a New Aperture Library

There are three steps to creating a new library, starting with choosing “Other/New” from the “Switch to Library” option on the “File” menu:

Aperture asks what library you want to use:

You need to click on the “Create New” button on the bottom, at which point the program asks you to name your new Aperture Library:

You’ll notice that I’ve stayed consistent with my naming scheme of “Aperture YEAR” by naming the new one “Aperture 2012″. I recommend keeping these libraries in the “Pictures” directory, but you can put it wherever you want, of course.

Exporting Projects as a New Aperture Library

If you’ve already imported one or more collections of photos into Aperture, however, creating a new library isn’t helpful because it’s tedious and a hassle to export projects and then import them into the new library.

Instead, select all the project or projectss you want to move, then Cmd-Click on any one of them:

As you can see, “Export as New Project” is the option to select. Pick it, then name your new Aperture library, perhaps “Aperture 2012″ as I did. It’ll export the projects and create the new library which you can then easily switch to and proceed.

Hope that helps you get the most out of Aperture!

Comments

Twisted Swirly Thingy

Soud Al-Abbasi — Wed, 18 Jan 2012 18:17:35 +0000

This tutorial will teach you how to create an abstract background of twisted swirly lines using Adobe PhotoShop, something that looks like this:

Let us start with a new file of your preferred aspect ratio (try to have a square, but a rectangle is fine just do not make it stretch too much because that won’t give the intended results.) I used the preset web with 1600X1200 for this one.

Set the foreground and background colors of your choice (I used black and white for additional effects.)Then, Filter > Render > Clouds.

Then, Filter > Pixelate > Mezzotint.
Choose Medium Strokes for best results, press OK, and this is what you get.

Now choose Filter > Blur > Radial Blur.
Choose the following settings:
Amount: 100, Blur method: Zoom, Quality: Best

Press OK, then click Command (or Ctrl) + F to apply the filter again. This is how the image should look like:

Command (or Ctrl) + J twice to copy the layer twice.
Choose the third layer and apply this filter:
Filter > Distort > Twirl
Set the Angle to a positive angle, somewhere between the range of 80 to 360. I chose 360 but it is up to your artistic rendition, then press OK. This is what you have for the third layer:

Click the eye on the third layer to hide it, choose the second layer and apply the same filter, this time with a negative number, preferably the same number as the third layer, then press OK.Now show the third layer and select it. Change the blending mode to Lighten, and do the same thing for the second layer, this is what you should end up with:

Since you chose the colors of your liking in the beginning, you are almost done, all you have to do is to right click on one of the layers and choose Flatten Image then save the file and you are done.However, I chose black and white colors for a small addition to the process. If you did so, do NOT flatten the image, we are not done yet. This is just an extra.

Select the third layer, then go to Image > Adjustments > Selective Color.
The Method I chose is Relative, and personally I prefer that.
We are going to change the following Colors: Whites, Neutrals, and Blacks.
Choose each one of the colors and adjust to your taste and liking, and you can always keep the colors as they are. This section is all up to you, boss, so be creative. Click OK after you have adjusted the colors to your liking.

This is what I have so far by changing only the Whites and the Neutrals of the third layer:

Apply the same to the second and first layer and adjust each of the colors to your preference. When you have the results you like, right click on any of the layer and Flatten Image. You can now save the image. This my final result:

(Optional addition) After you have flattened the image, Command (or Ctrl) + J to create a new layer, and change that layer’s blending option to, again, your preference, to create the effect you seek, flatten the image and save the final progress. I chose the blending option Color Burn to end up with this:

Hope you enjoyed this tutorial. Don’t forget to leave your comments.

5 Ways Google Search Plus Your World Impacts SEO

Jacob Stoops — Fri, 13 Jan 2012 20:11:21 +0000

As you probably well know by now, Google struck another blow the other day in the social wars with the launch of Search Plus Your World, their enhanced algorithm for personalization in your SERPs.

This change will have far reaching impacts on a variety of things, including SEO. That being said, I’ll discuss the SEO impact of Search Plus Your World as I see it at this point.

#1. Increased Attention on Google+

One of the most notable things that came out of this release in my opinion was the lack of integration with Facebook and Twitter (for now) – which aren’t promoted in this update.

This is not to say that results from Twitter and Facebook won’t be appearing in Google’s search results, they just won’t be as heavily integrated into this new personalization display.

Amit Singhal, who oversees Google’s ranking algorithms, had this to say about the omission of Facebook and Twitter:

“Facebook and Twitter and other services, basically, their terms of service don’t allow us to crawl them deeply and store things. Google+ is the only [network] that provides such a persistent service. Of course, going forward, if others were willing to change, we’d look at designing things to see how it would work.”

SEO and Social Media have been right on the cusp of really being joined at the hip – meaning we’re getting very close to the point (we may already be there) where you can’t run an SEO campaign without integrating it heavily with social media.

Up until a few days ago, most of the focus of SEO-Social efforts had been on primarily on Facebook and Twitter as the primary outlets to focus on with Google+ in the background but pulling closer – and rightly so.

That model has been effectively flipped on its head much to the chagrin of the folks at Twitter.

Since Google is the most influential search engine and they are clearly integrating and favoring results coming from people’s Google+ circles, this becomes the most important social outlet to focus on from a SEO-Social perspective. No more ignoring it.

#2. Relevancy Will Change

In the past, Google and most other search engines put a high priority on relevancy as the most important factor in search – and still claim to. That is, they are committed to providing the user with the most relevant search results to their query.

So, in an effort to increase a website’s relevancy, most SEOs typically focus on writing great content, working on things like page titles, and building quality backlinks.

In the last couple days, I’ve noticed more and more Google+ content being featured – even if it wasn’t the most relevant result for what I was looking for. Danny Sullivan echoed my statements in an article two days ago:

“Being Relevant Means Going Beyond Google+

Why does that matter? It’s Google’s search engine, after all! Two reasons.

The first is legal. By having a dominant position in search, Google might ultimately be responsible for going above-and-beyond to include competitors. That’s part of what the current anti-trust investigations into Google are all about. One complaint over today’s move — though likely mostly about privacy — is already being readied.

The second is about relevancy. Google’s job as a search engine is to direct searchers to the most relevant information on the web, not just to information that Google may have an interest in.

These suggestions would be better if they included other services, and that’s the standard Google’s search results should aim for, returning the best.

What Google+ Might Not Have

Would listing Britney’s Facebook page be better? Maybe. After all, if you want to follow Britney socially, you won’t find a picture she shared of her and Snoop Dogg on Google+ (where she has 1.4 million followers). She only shared that on her Facebook page, with her 16 million followers there…”

I agree all the way on this one…

#3. Multiple SEO Strategies

Practitioners of SEO may now be forced to have two SEO strategies running concurrently with each other: a “personalized” strategy, and their “normal” strategy.

It is highly likely that many high-level initiatives from what would be deemed your “normal” SEO strategy will not change. Things like page titles, writing effective copy, solid site architecture, and link building will likely remain as core foundational strategies.

What will change will be the need for developing a strategy for building your client’s Google+ networks while gaining their social approval and trust in order to create an organic environment of sharing – which will have an impact on how that network’s personalized results will be display (and then shared forward).

#4. Link Building Will Change

The fact that link building as a practice will continue to be one of the cornerstones of good SEO is likely to remain unchanged.

Links are like “votes” for a website, and the more votes you have the more trust and better rankings your website is likely to garner. Furthermore, links/votes from high-quality sources are more valuable and influential than those from lower-quality sources.

This part won’t change.

What will change is the focus on Google+ as a source of links and way to get your content shared. The most important factor here will be getting shares of your links from Google+ users who themselves have wide networks (sometimes called “Power-Users”).

Companies and SEOs alike will need to develop strategies to gain the approval of these influencers in the respective niches. A +1 from their niche’s big shot will be the social equivalent of the .org/.edu/.gov backlink.

Whereas 1-2 links from high-quality websites can do as much or even more good than 100 links from lower-quality sites, 1 or 2 shares from “Power-Users” will ensure that your links/URLs get distributed across wide networks of users – and is likely to impact how those stories are then displayed in the personalized results.

In this way, links from high quality sites = shares from G+ users with large networks.

#5. Continued Loss of Keyword Referral Data

Since October, Google has been providing users who are signed in with Encrypted search results. From an SEO perspective, when a user is signed in and performs a search, we lose the ability to track which organic keywords they are searching through our analytics platforms. Instead, the Keyword Referrals show up as the infamous (not provided).

Originally, Google stated that it would impact single-digit percentages (so less than 10%) of organic searches. However, I’ve been experiencing between a 20-30% ratio here on the Agent SEO blog and have seen a similar impact on other sites.

With the implementation of Search Plus Your Word along with the increased emphasis on having Google+ and GMail accounts, I do not see this ratio going down – and it is likely to continue to grow.

Google provides us with some insight into some of their security initiatives, including the full-scale implentation of SSL search for signed-in users:

“When it comes to security and privacy, we set a high bar for Search plus Your World. Since some of the information you’ll now find in search results, including Google+ posts and private photos, is already secured by SSL encryption on Google+, we have decided that the results page should also have the same level of security and privacy protection. That’s part of why we were the first major search engine to turn on search via SSL by default for signed-in users last year. This means when you’re signed in to Google, your search results—including your private content—are protected by the same high standards of encryption as your messages in Gmail.

So what does this mean from an SEO perspective? We will continue to lose more and more of our Keyword Referral data and will likely have to come up with alternate means of reporting organic traffic and business impacts on the keyword-level.

Basically, it sucks for us SEOs – although I do find it quite suspicious that Google provides this type of data for people who are running Adwords. So basically, if you pay them you get data, if the searches come in for free you don’t.

So tell me, how has this change impacted you? Do you like it or not, and why?

Comments

Google’s Advice for Testing Your Website

Rene LeMerle — Fri, 06 Jan 2012 08:44:25 +0000

Ever wondered whether your targeted audience is really finding your website useful? Is the high bounce rates from any of your pages a matter of concern for you? Well, you’re in luck… Google is giving out some simple and handy tips on its latest Webmaster Central Blog that will help you understand and analyze the usage of your website from a visitor’s perspective.

For example, did you know that on average users scroll down 5.9 times as often as they scroll up, meaning that often once a page content is scrolled past, it is “lost” .

If you have never though of these things before or did not succeed in finding an answer to these questions before, this is a good opportunity to find an answer to these questions.

I have outlined Google’s advice for you below:

First, think about your user

Whether you are launching a new web project or completely revamping your existing site some important questions need to be asked answers to which will add value to your website.

How might users access your site—home, office, on-the-go?
How tech-savvy are your visitors?
How familiar are users with the subject matter of your website?

Simple Testing

Even before you get started a brief profile of your user’s behavioral patterns will give you enough information to help you plan the website content and design as per the user’s liking. So basically you should be looking for information that helps you score your site for its functionality, ease of finding information and common site interactions.

Sample size: You can start with your family and friends and even a group of five people can provide substantial information on the common problems in your layouts and navigation.
Choosing your testers: While every tester will give a different feedback, concentrate on the feedbacks that only focus on a particular pattern rather than on every individual issue encountered by the testers. For example, if more than 50% of your testers have the same usability issue; it’s likely to be a genuine problem on site.
Testing location: Getting the users to navigate your site in your presence will give you an opportunity to observe how every individual navigates the web in their personal natural surroundings. For those who cannot do this remote testing is also a possibility and Google+ hangouts is a handy tool for this purpose.
How to test: Ask your testers to complete 4-5 tasks, which summarize your website’s goal, and observe them. If they are around you ask them to speak out their experiences and opinions rather then giving it to you in writing.
What to test: You can use a basic test model in HTML to test the basic interactions, in case you do not have a fully functional site for testing. This way, you can test different navigation and layouts alternatives and check their performance before actually implementing them.
What not to test: Your focus should be on the usability of your site rather than appearance, because only quantitative tests conducted over large groups (200+) will get you a real feedback about the appearance of your site. To test the effectiveness of your design you can offer a few descriptive keywords and ask your users to rate them as per their liking.

Apart from these, keep a check on things like:

Highlighting hidden text/content appropriately so that it is easily accessible by the user.
Use proper and effective language that is eye catching as well as easy to understand. Avoid using “Learn more…” in link text—as users seem to avoid clicking on a link which implies they will need to spend time learning about something.
Check your page load speed on various network connections like public places with WiFi, secured office connections etc. Google’s Page Speed tool comes in handy over here.

All in all Google has come up with solutions to your long pending designing/redesigning woes and investing some time here will surely help you reap good returns in the future.

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