Not too long ago a document was making the rounds of the Internet that appeared to be the newest official Google Quality Guidelines document.  This document, most people hoped, would hold the secrets to ranking well within Google.

Now, you might wonder how this can happen.  After all, Google is especially secretive about what it takes to rank well within their site so how could it possibly be that the document used by Google Raters made it’s way online?  Was it a fake?  A distraction?  Something conjured up by a savvy online marketer to gain exposure?  Sounds very conspiracy-theorist doesn’t it?

Well, it’s actually not as exciting as one might think.  The fact is, Google hires folks from all around the world to do work for them and help them detect whether or not a particular web site should be ranked where it is based upon a variety of factors.  These people that Google hires, receive a document that tells them what specifically to look for and how to determine the merits of a site.  Due to the vast numbers of people who do this work, it’s not unheard of for one of these documents to make its way online.

The document (which has since been taken down online at the request of Google), contained an area that talked about spam; and how to determine what should be flagged as spam and what should not.

Whenever one of Quality Raters took a look at a website, it is their job to mark a site as:

• Spam
• Not Spam
• Maybe Spam

Pretty basic right?

The criteria for marking a web page as spam should not come as a surprise to anyone who has been in the industry for even as little as a few months.  It’s really very basic knowledge, but just to clear up any confusion, here are the definite “no-no’s” when it comes to your own site (and which you can also read here:  http://support.google.com/webmasters/bin/answer.py?hl=en&answer=35769#3).

• Don’t use cloaking;
• Don’t use hidden text;
• Don’t use framed pages;
• Don’t keyword-stuff your URL’s;
• Don’t use JavaScript Redirects
• Etc.

Again, pretty common sense stuff.

But, what you don’t see here is that according to this document, Google Raters are to mark pages without any useful content and designed only to make money, as spam.

There’s no doubt that you’ve come across these pages yourself.  These are the ones that have domains parked on them and where there is nothing more than a listing of ads; pages that are chock full of ads that have very little unique content on them, etc.

And yes, it should be noted that even if a site is attempting to generate income using AdSense ads (Google’s own product), that this will likely be marked as spam as well.

As a matter of fact, the blatant abuse of this has likely prompted Google to recently announce at PubCon that they (Google) will be taking a look at content that is immediately above the fold on a web page.  The assumptions are that Google will begin to penalize those sites that show ad-related content above the fold; above the fold meaning the content you can see on a web page without needing to scroll down.

Which brings me back to the whole point of the title of this post.  Does it make a difference in where you rank if you aren’t trying to sell anything?

Well, yes, and no.  We don’t know how sites are going to be affected by this new rule of having ads above the fold, but it is unlikely that major retailers who say, show products at the top of their pages in response to a specific product query, will not be penalized.

On the other hand, if a site is nothing more than a few bits and pieces of content yet chock-full of ads, especially ads above the fold, then it can be assumed that you would be penalized.   We’ll all just have to wait and see how it plays out but for now, if you’re one of the ones who has advertising listed above the useful content on your site, it would be advised to move those ads to a different location.

After all, if you’re linking to one of your own sites, you want any PageRank to pass along to your own site, you need to be especially careful when you’re choosing a URL shortener so that this does in fact occur.

This has been a question in many SEO’s minds for quite some time.  Before Google started indexing sites like Twitter, it really wasn’t all that big of a deal.  But now that Twitter, as well as many other sites like them are getting indexed more and more frequently, it’s important that if a page does follow a link that the shortener that was used passes along that PageRank.

That said, it should be noted that Twitter does not follow links – therefore the PageRank theory is null and void in this case but this does not mean that other services like Twitter don’t employ the same tactic.  I use them as an example only because it’s one of the more well-known micro-blogging platforms online.  As a matter of fact, there are many, many places where you would employ the use of a URL shortener and when you do, you want to make certain that you are getting any and all PageRank passed on to you.

Most URL shorteners are pretty good at this and do it the correct way by using a 301 redirect.  In case you’re still unsure which one to use, in the video below Matt Cutts, head of Google’s Web Spam team specifically says that shorteners such as bit.ly and goo.gl do in fact employ a 301 redirect.

Here’s the question that came into Matt and his answer on the topic:

First off, rich snippets are a way to showcase certain things about your business.  If you run a website that shows recipes you can use rich snippets to display that recipe.  Additionally, you can also use these snippets to show reviews of your business, products your business has, and even events that you may be holding.

Now sometimes this can be a little confusing because there are multiple ways to refer to this kind of content that you add to your site.  The actual content itself is called a “rich snippet” but the code that’s used to format this content is referred to as “microdata“, “microformats” or even “RDFa” (and if you have a recipe you want to showcase, then you would use the hRecipe microformat).

The best way to understand these snippets is to simply show you.  Here’s a screen shot of an organic search result after doing a search for restaurants in Chicago.  Note the reviews shown in the organic listings.

These rich snippets also include breadcrumbs, prices, and more.  And remember, these rich snippets are data that show up within the organic listings.  This is important because typical organic search results are often very similar.  There’s a blue link that will take you to the page of the site that’s listed, a brief description of the page, and the web page’s URL.  That’s about it.  But with rich snippets, you can take this so much further and make your listing stand out from the rest of the listings.

It’s important to note that just because you’re using these snippets on your web pages does not mean that you will rank higher in the search results nor does it mean that Google will automatically start showing these snippets but they do say that they’ll check your site for these snippets when they come to pay a visit.

Now although the name might sound a little intimidating, all it really takes is some basic knowledge of HTML in order to implement these snippets onto your own site.  And you can choose whichever format you prefer, the microdata, microformat or RDFa.

Once you’ve picked one of these for your own site, you can also use Google’s Rich Snippets testing tool to see how your site may appear in the search results with this data.  Google also offers a way to tell them that you have this data available on your site.

Although it might sound a little confusing right now, visiting any one of the above sites will show you examples of rich snippet data.  The bottom line is, if you have any of the following located on your site:

• Reviews
• People (Think LinkedIn)
• Products
• Recipes
• or Events

You’ll want to strongly consider adding rich snippets to your site if anything, to make certain that you stand out in those search results.

Similar to a sitemap that you’d use on your site to help your visitors navigate through your content or the search engines to discover all of the pages on your site, a video sitemap will help the search engines discover those videos that you’ve created which may be self-hosted; that is, not placed on sites like YouTube.

You see, sites like YouTube get indexed often and you don’t necessarily have to do anything in particular to your videos aside from some basic SEO when you add them. But, if you host videos on your own site or use Amazon’s S3 program then you’ll need a way for those videos to get discovered by the search engines and that way is by using a video sitemap.

Now, these video sitemaps require a bit of coding on your part since they’re written in XML format and Google has a very in-depth tutorial on how to do that.

But, what you may find more helpful is this nearly hour and a half long webinar that REEL SEO did with Google.  REEL SEO provides advice and services on video marketing specifically and in this webinar, they cover the aspects of Video Sitemaps which may help you out quite a bit more than just reading through the tutorial itself.

When you’re finished with the video, you can also read a very thorough Q&A session that occurred after the webinar.

So if you’ve got some time, self-host your own videos and want to know how to get those indexed then the following video is for you.

In a recent Google Webmaster Help video (see below), Matt Cutts, head of Google’s Webspam Team answers one of the most popular questions that many websites have and that is “Does Google use Twitter and Facebook Links as a ranking signal?”  The definitive answer, from Matt is “Yes”.

To be honest, this rather surprised me because rarely have I ever heard Matt answer a question with such forthright authority.  Usually the answer is more along the lines of “Yes, but…” with all kinds of subjective material added to the answer; making it virtually impossible to detect if what you’re doing yourself actually matters at all.

This question stemmed from a recent article written by Danny Sullivan Editor-in-Chief at Search Engine Land.

In this article (which is a great read by the way), Danny offers responses by both Bing and Google on specific questions such as:

1. If a link is retweeted or referenced a lot in Twitter, do you count this as a ranking signal?
2. Do you try to calculate the authority of someone who tweets?
3. Do you calculate whether a link should carry more weight depending upon who Tweeted it?
4. Do you try to calculate the authority of someone on Facebook?
5. Do you calculate whether a link should carry more weight on Facebook depending upon who posted the link?

It’s very interesting to read the answers and even more interesting to associate it with your own activity on both of these social networks.

Part of the curiosity with Twitter in particular, is because Twitter does not follow links.  They used to, but I believe it was back in 2009 some time, they added nofollow to all of their links.

What this means is that even though you’re tweeting a link and others may retweet it, the “nofollow” portion of that link is telling the search engines “Hey, if you see this link, don’t follow it to its destination and give that destination credit for it.”

But what’s so much more important here is what Danny has referred to as “SocialRank”.  And I am totally on board with him here…let me explain…

Years (and I mean years ago) when Google especially was gaining ground as the “go to” search engine, people realized that you could manipulate the rankings by:

1. Stuffing a bunch of keywords into your meta keywords tag (and if you don’t know what this is, don’t worry, it doesn’t matter any more anyway).
2. Stuffing your page full of keywords in order to rank well for the keyword you were after.
3. Hiding text on the page in the same color as the page background so that the search engines could read it but your site visitors couldn’t.

When this failed to work any longer, people realized that links were a major factor in where you ranked.  And so…reciprocal linking came along (that’s when you trade links with someone else in an effort to help increase the importance of your website.)

Again, Google soon realized that this wasn’t really a *true* indicator of authority and so it began discounting these kinds of links.

So it became important to try and get links to your website from other important websites (“important” as deemed by Google), in order to help your own website ranking.  This “importance” at least in reference to Google is referred to as PageRank which you can see by installing the Google Toolbar within your browser.

But…it’s also important to understand that the PageRank that you see in your browser for a web page is NOT the *true* PageRank of a web page or website.  As a matter of fact, it’s quite old information.  According to Google PageRank Data, the last time it was updated was April 2, 2010 (it’s now late December 2010).  So…over 8 months ago.

The fact is, Google updates this internally quite often but what you may be looking at today is in fact, 8 months old.

So, all this comes down to this:  Google has hundreds of ranking factors that determine where to place you within it’s search results and for what given terms.  People know a little about how Google determines importance of your web pages, but like all indicators that we at least know of, it can all be manipulated.  Whether or not you choose to manipulate it is up to your own moral standards, but the one thing that is extremely difficult to manipulate is your online reputation.

Who believes you?  Who trusts what you say?  Who retweets your links?  Et cetera, et cetera…

This is what Danny refers to within his article.  And I truly believe that this is the wave of the future for websites and their owners; simply because it is so difficult to fake.  If people trust you, they’ll read more of your stuff.  If you offer valuable information, you’ll be talked about more online, and so on.

Consider a great example of Mari Smith who is trusted by thousands of people online for her information and advice on how to use Facebook effectively.  She is a fantastic example of how SocialRank likely works.  I guarantee that if Mari posts a link, it’s retweeted and shared on Facebook a thousand times over.  She has “SocialRank”.

Take the time to read the article by Danny – I think you’ll find it very enlightening.

P.S.  The video by Matt is below…

Quick Update: It was noted in the comments (see below) that at least one person was not able to view the new Google layout.  The video below was shot using the Chrome browser but I also tested in Firefox and Safari – in both instances I WAS able to see the new layout.  However, I could NOT see it when testing it in Internet Explorer.  I’ll be interested to see if any of you notice the same thing.

Quick Update #2: Just after posting the update above I went back to Chrome, and searched yet again using the same topic of “coffee”.  And I was NOT able to see the navigation.  However, I CAN in Safari.  So I’m wondering if this is just a quick test or if they’re just rolling it out in some areas?  Curious indeed and just a little more than disappointed that I can’t *now* re-create it.  I’ll keep checking during the day to see if it shows up again.

This past Wednesday Google announced Product Listing Ads.  And rather tell you what they are, let me show you.

This first image is your typical search results page with the ads and organic listings highlighted.  This search was for “snow boots”.

Google Product Ads Example 1

This second image is another search results page but this time, this one has the Google Product Listing ads included within it.  This search was for “bed in a bag”.

Google Product Listing Ads Example 2

Notice the difference?

The new Google Product Listing ads now allow advertisers to show images next to their advertisements.

This new feature is open to those AdWords advertisers who have products in the Google Merchant Center (formerly Google Base) which was rolled out at the end of September 2009.

Unlike traditional AdWords advertisements where you pay every time someone clicks on one of your ads, you only pay whenever someone actually purchases a product from your site.

Additionally, again unlike AdWords, you don’t have to worry about keywords or any additional advertising text.  If a user searches on a keyword phrase that is relevant to a product that you offer and that product is listed in the Google Merchant Center, Google will show the most relevant products for that user along with the image, price and the product name.  As Google states:

“Product Listing Ads makes it easy for you to promote your entire product inventory on Google.com.”

It’s currently only available to certain advertisers and is still in beta.

What I find interesting is that not too long ago, some AdSense publishers realized that if you put images next to AdSense ads on your website those AdSense ads received more clicks.  This seemed to work very well for a lot of publishers until Google caught onto what was happening and made it “illegal”.

Ironically enough, they’re doing the same exact thing on their search results pages; one can only assume that it actually worked very well and so much so that Google has decided to incorporate the same strategy into their own websites.

All that said, what does this mean to you?

1. Once Google rolls this out to the public in general, it will be interesting to see if these images also show up in your AdSense ads on your website.  If they do and your website refers to say, “bed in a bag”, and Google shows ads in AdSense that also advertise “beds in a bag”, you’ll have to make some decisions as to whether or not you want competitors ads showing up on your site for the same or similar products.  I could see a lot of websites opting out of AdSense for this reason.
2. If you do have products in the Google Merchant Center, because Google will know what converts to a sale and what doesn’t, they’ll now have access to your sales data.
3. If these images begin to show at the top of the page where current AdWords text ads show, this will push down the organic search results; and in some cases “below the fold”.  Which means that web searchers will have to scroll down to view the organic search results.

The bottom line is, if you have a product and it’s listed in the Merchant Center, this could mean higher profits for you.

On the flip side, if you’re simply trying to get your website seen in the organic search results for a product search, you might have to rethink your optimization strategy.

1. First, visit http://www.Google.com/local/add and sign in with your Google account. If you don’t already have one, you can get one for free.
2. Click the button to add a new business listing.
3. Fill in the required information.
   Your business name. Your business name should be your legal business name for your company.
   Your telephone number. Your main telephone number should be your direct phone number. Not an 800 number. You can add additional phone numbers using this link (the add more phone numbers link).
   Your Address. Your address cannot be a PO Box. It must be your actual physical location. Additionally, all of these pieces of information should be the same as what’s listed on your website (if you have one).
4. If applicable, use an email address that is the same URL as your website. For example, if your website address is http://www.ABCCompany.com then your email address should be yourname@ABCCompany.com.
5. Enter in your website URL.
6. Give your business a description. Describe what your business does and how it can benefit someone reading your local listing. If possible, include a positive review that your company has received.
7. Enter a category for your business. Begin typing and Google will display a listing of categories. If one of the categories Google suggests to you fits well with your business select that one. If not, enter in what best fits your business. If your business fits into multiple categories, you can click the link to add another category. Google let’s you choose up to five of them. Click next.
8. Finally, you’ll be able to add details to your local listing such as your operating hours, what kinds and types of payments you take, any photos or videos of your business and any other additional details you’d like to add. Remember, the more you add, the more helpful it will be to web searchers.
9. When you’re finished, click submit and Google will ask you to verify your listing either by a telephone call or postcard. If you choose telephone call, remember to be near your business phone as they will call you at the telephone number you provided in your business listing and provide you a PIN number on the screen. If you’re not, simply request that they send you a postcard and they’ll send you your PIN number via postcard.

Once you’ve verified your local business, it should appear within Google’s search results within 12 hours.

Now, it’s my job to help you understand this patent so here I will do my absolute best to de-construct this new patent and help you understand it in plain English.

In a nutshell, this new patent allows Google to take multiple query paths and associate them so that one URL wins out above the others when it’s related to that same kind of query path.

Here’s what I mean.

And for the record, whenever Google refers to “content items” in their patent, or when I refer to them in this blog post, they (and I) are referring to URLs; whether that URL be a “video and/or audio files, web pages for particular subjects, news articles, etc.”

I’ll use an example that Google used in their patent.

When someone visits Google and does a search, during that search session they’ll revise their queries if they aren’t getting the kinds of results that they want, eventually clicking on a URL after they’re done revising their search.

If a “statistically significant number of users” submit that same set of queries and then end up clicking on the same URL this URL will be considered more relevant and that URL will then get a ranking increase.

In another example, if 55% of searchers using a query path such as apples/bananas/strawberries click on FruitURL1 and 35% of searchers using this same path click on FruitURL2, the search engine can rank FruitURL1 first and FruitURL2 second.  These can also be ranked as #1 and #2 whenever someone searches on apples/bananas or even apples, bananas, or strawberries as long as that path is identified as being related to the original query path that ranked FruitURL1 first and FruitURL2 second.

In other words, if more people click on FruitURL1 whenever they do a similar query that is identified as part of a query path apples -> bananas -> strawberries, then that URL will get a better ranking in the organic search results.

There’s many more examples provided in the patent itself but suffice it to say, that this is quite honestly, a popularity contest.  The more people click through to your website within the organic search results, the more likely you are to have a better ranking.

Think if it like a CTR (click-through-rate) of your website in the natural search results.  Much like your positioning in the Google AdWords program is determined by how well your ad performs, such is the case with this new patent.  If it’s determined that more people searching on apples/oranges/bananas tend to visit FruitURL1, then FruitURL1 will gain a better position in the organic search engine rankings.

What I found interesting however, is this little snippet of text taken from the patent which gives a little bit of insight into exactly how Google ranks pages.

The search results can, for example, be ranked by a quality measure and a relevance measure. For example, a particular web page can have a quality measure derived from the number of other web pages that are linked to the particular web page, and can have an information retrieval score related to the matching the query terms to words in the particular web page. The information retrieval score can be combined with the page rank to give a final rank to the particular web page.

From this little bit of information we can determine a few things that indicate how Google does in fact rank web pages:

• The “quality measure” of a web page is determined by the number of sites linking to that web page (no surprise there).
• The “information retrieval score” is determined by the number of matching query terms on the web page.  Note that this doesn’t mention where on the web page, only that it looks at the web page itself to see if there are matching query terms.
• The “information retrieval score” can be combined with the page rank to give the page a final rank.  Here again is the dreaded PageRank.  Now, to be fair, the term “page rank” is not capitalized nor does it have a trademark symbol associated with it, but one can only assume that PageRank is definitely playing a role in how web pages rank even though Google has recently removed PageRank from the Google Webmaster tools area (and updated PageRank across the board just recently).  Check out this post by Barry Schwartz where he states that “…according to Susan Moskwa from the Google Webmaster Central team “…it [PageRank] was removed [from Google's Webmaster tools] because Google keeps telling webmasters “that they shouldn’t focus on PageRank so much.” They felt it was “silly” to keep telling webmasters that, and at the same time show it in Webmaster Tools. So Google removed it from Webmaster Tools. I think this is a good thing, since I agree it is obsessed over too much, plus what Google showed in Webmaster Tools was not very useful to webmasters.”So, all this said, I wonder then why it’s referred to within the patent?  Since it’s not used in it’s proper form, spelled PageRank, do we then assume that they’re just using the phrase “page rank” as an overall encompassing term, not associated with the actual trademarked PageRank?

  Since they’ve removed it from Google Webmaster tools but then days later updated the PageRank on the Google toolbar across the board for websites, one can only assume that they are referring to actual PageRank.  Never let it be said that Google was transparent.

The bottom line is, this new patent appears as though it will begin ranking web content based upon the number of clicks that an individual URL gets by actual web searchers and the paths that they take to get there.  So my advice to you, as a website owner, is to be sure that people want to click over to your website.

Do you offer compelling reasons to do so?  Are these reasons contained within your web pages’ descriptions?

If not, now might be a good time to get to work on that.

Google has begun to roll out a new service where you can now pay to have a Google local listing. How soon it will come to your area is tough to say but right now it’s being tested in San Fransisco and San Diego and truth be told, it’s really too soon to see if it pays off or not.

Probably one of the most disturbing things that I’ve noticed thus far is that if you do a search in one of these markets, say “Salon San Diego” nearly everything above the fold is an advertisement leaving the organic search results pushed to the bottom of the pile.

(Note that in the image below, the local salon’s in San Diego that are using this service are highlighted at the top of the page with the blue balloons next to them.)

Google Local San Diego

Now this is not to say that every single time you do a search in Google will you see and entire half-page full of ads. It only (at this point in time) appears to be those more competitive local markets.

So how is this supposed to work?

1. You need a verified Google local listing within the Google Local Business Center.

   “…Local Listing Ads is available for business owners who have verified their free listings in Google Local Business Center in a limited set of categories based on advertising policy, and other considerations.”

2. When you purchase a local listing ad, your ad will show up whenever a local user searches for your kind of business.
   1. The ads will show up on Google.com and on Google Maps.
   2. You get your first 30 days free.
   3. You’ll get reports on how many people called you, how many people clicked, and how many people wanted directions to your business.
3. Unlike AdWords where you bid a price on specific keywords, the only thing that Google Local Listing Ads require is that you select a category (A category; meaning ONE) for your business and then pay a flat monthly fee for that ad.
   1. The flat fee is set by Google themselves and is based on how many people are looking for your kind of business in your area.  (So in other words, Google tells you how much you’ll have to pay based on their estimation and you either pay that or you don’t get a paid local listing).
   2. Second, Google is offering a “free call tracking” service.  How they’re doing this I don’t yet know (the local paid listing is not yet available in my area), but what Google will do is give you an announcement prior to that call that says “This caller brought to you by Google”.  As of today this is NOT optional.

Now, something that I want you to notice in the screenshot above, is that there is a 7-box (a map with 7 listings next to it) that are not listed in the Google Local Paid listings above.  That said, I can only surmise that the added benefit to having a Google local paid listing is to show up at the very top of the page where you might see typical AdWords ads like so:

My largest concern was that the typical search results we’re all used to seeing would be heading out and only the sponsored results would remain.  This however, does not seem to be the case (at least not yet).

In summary, it’s really too soon to say how this will affect local businesses (if at all), and how much Google is going to charge for these listings in your market because obviously it will differ greatly depending upon your location.

This will definitely make for an interesting test as soon as they bring it to all markets.