Search results can vary considerably from town to town, often dominated by local businesses and interests. Searching for a business type or professional will most often give rise to different search results, in some cases there is not a single URL on the first page of the SERPs that is shared between locations.
For example, the search term: dog walking
Results for that query will produce local independent dog walking businesses for each search location.
The Chrome Extension below, allows multiple location search and displays the rank positions for each location.
4. The status should read: “Step 1: Please change location in browser”
Screenshot showing Extension at startup
5. Follow the instructions by returning to Google.co.uk and using the ‘Search Tools’ menu, enter any location that is different from the current location shown. Changing the location in Google will initialise the extension and change the status shown to read ‘Ready to Search’.
Screenshot showing location change
6. The Chrome Extension should have updated automatically to reflect the current search term too:
Screenshot showing search term currently used
7. At this stage, you can change the default search locations to places you wish to search. When edited, press the button beneath and results will be displayed beneath as they are gathered.
Screenshot showing interface as results come in for each location
8. Once all the results are loaded, the URLs are shown alongside their position in the SERPs for each location. Depending upon the search term, the results can vary dramatically, the following screenshot shows major differences in SERPs for the term ‘dog walking’. Not all positions are visible in the image below.
Screenshot showing SERPs for dog walking in six locations
Download the extension and give it a try for your preferred locations.
You can keep changing the locations to search again, adding to the results shown each time.
Strange green jelly-like substances have been appearing near waterways in the RSPB nature reserve at Ham Wall. Scientists are somewhat baffled by the origins, however historical documents reference a slime that can be seen following a meteor strike.
The strange grey-ish white substance tends to evaporate quite quickly.
Some believe that the meteor that struck Russia last week could be responsible for this outbreak of astral jelly.
An intriguing possibility is that these jellies are a form of slime mould – a life-form that we are only just beginning to realise doesn’t fit well with current definitions of life on Earth. These moulds spread as a dust, until they combine with water to form jelly-like blobs. In fact, slime molds are believed to have inspired the 1950s B-movie called the Blob.
One theory is that these moulds could have been carried on the meteor and dispersed through the atmosphere on arrival – alien life forms which then settle on Earth and communicate with each other to re-group.
Through the ages, across all areas on the planet, folklore makes frequent reference to space:
E. lycoperdon (the fake puff-ball) is named “caca de luna” or “Moon’s excrement” by the locals in the state of Veracruz in Mexico.
Studies into slime moulds reveal they have complex organisational characteristics and appear to exhibit communication and hunting ability.
John Bonner has been investigating and filming slime mould behaviour for 70years:
Look how the mould ‘appears’ to solve the problem of finding the food by the shortest possible path.
This epiphenomena could have been used to help design the Tokyo city rail network.
By placing food at the spots of major cities in a petri-dish the mould will grow to create the perfect transport network:
We are being invaded by slime, lets hope they are friendly as well as brainless.
Despite mounting evidence, businesses of all sizes cling to an outdated understanding of search engines, in particular there is a strongly held belief about how Google decides which sites to present in search results.
Over the past few years, Google has been placing more weight (!) on machine learning than on simpler measures such as Page rank, yet a fuller appreciation of how this affects positions in search results and subsequent traffic flows is not being explained by the industry. Even when we know what we are doing has dubious benefit at best. Our industry continues to mislead business by promising to ‘build links’, seek out ‘high authorty domains’ and generally waste clients budget by engaging in out-dated practices that are highly unlikely to benefit the client in the long term. I am not referring to spammy automation, we have all moved on from those days, I am referring to continuing to ‘build’ links at all.
Are links really that important in 2013?
The most prevalent belief is that sites are ‘rewarded’ for simply having more links from high authority sites than their competitors. This belief is based in turn on a belief that links correlate to rank, and that rank can be somehow ‘cemented’ by building links. Consequently, agencies respond to competitive RFPs by agreeing to build links rather than challenging the clients firmly held beliefs.
This post will examine one page of results for a query, and I’ll attempt to show how far Google has come from simply matching keywords within the query to on-page content, then using links as a measure of trust to determine rank…
For this discussion, I will use the 3 term search ‘list pax man’ using Google.co.uk
SERPs ordering for ‘list pax man’ query
Notice that Google suggests ‘pax man’ may be a mistake, I am presented ‘paxman’ as a single keyword suggestion.
Notice also that Google includes a link to Wikipedia, for a list of ‘Pac-Man’ video games – even though I did not type Pac-Man.
The first result is the most relevant to my query:
pax is a unix command, man refers to the manual and list is a common option
Both second and third results relate to Jeremy Paxman.
The second result contains the word ‘list’ once on the page (Amazon wish list).
The third result does not contain the word ‘list’ at all.
The fourth result shows how hard Google is working to provide all the possible options for my initial query.
Now let’s look at the number of inbound links for each result… if links were an important factor in the results set, then it would follow that the result suggested in #1 would have a handsome quantity of inbound links.
The stats (from MajesticSEO) for each URL in the SERPs are:
#1: 21 referring domains, 36 backlinks
#2: 1 referring domain, 4 backlinks
#3: 723 referring domains, 5,789 backlinks
#4: 25 referring domains, 156 backlinks
OK, so what ? Perhaps the ordering of the SERPs still has only something to do with links, but the quantity and volume are less important than the relevance of the page content…
Let’s make it more obvious what we are searching for, by repeating the ‘pax’ keyword in our query:
SERPs for the query ‘list pax pax man’
Now Google understands. We have achieved ‘entity disambiguation’ – a search engine nirvana.
We don’t mean ‘Pac-Man’ and we don’t mean ‘Paxman’. The repetition of the keyword ‘pax’ has ensured a full page of results about the Unix command ‘pax’.
Notice that the previous ‘best result’ for the Unix command has gone from #1
A URL from the apple development site takes its place.
In fact, the top results are now dominated by well frequented sites such as Apple, sourceforge, IBM and Wikipedia. The domain ‘manpagez.com’ is not a competitor in this new well-defined search space – which is odd, as it used to be the best possible match, just one query ago!
Looking at links to pages:
#1: 6,994 referring domains, 91,196 backlinks
#2: 64 referring domain, 156 backlinks
#3: no links reported
#4: 28 referring domains, 154 backlinks
If Google had a more ‘authoritiative’ match for the original query – if we assume links convey power and authority, then why wasn’t the result from Apple presented in that first search test ?
Look again at result #3 above from IBM. There are NO back links reported to this page by MajesticSEOs historic index.
The results above reflect the ‘importance’ of the results in relation to the query based on machine learning – not simply accumulations of links.
In order to be presented in SERPs, considerable effort must be made in ensuring that the clients site serves the need of the audience.
People looking for man pages on the pax command are the sort of people that visit developer.apple.com. Once Google has clear signals that the query is for the Unix command and not ‘Pac-Man’ or ‘Paxman’, then the SERPs are populated with the domains that serve this audience best. Unfortunately for manpagez.com, they do not attract and retain attention sufficiently to be returned for the second search.
I encourage you to try this for yourself and further to demonstrate to clients the dissociation of links with position in SERPs for queries. There is simply little to be gained by adding links to a site – the most important challenge is to give visitors what they want on the site and be clear about the content offered.
Growing an audience that uses the site regularly is more important than just adding links. Work on building advocates and the links will follow to support that effort. If you work on building links, then you are only increasing risk for the future.
Let me know what you think matters most by commenting below 😉
