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.

The purpose of SEO is to get your site listed in the top ten search results without having to pay to be there and without it being a local listing (although this is important) for keywords that will get you targeted visitors who are likely to spend money at your store or sign up for your newsletter, whatever you want the goal of your website to be.

But, the average website owner usually doesn’t know the difference between all of these different listings.  So let’s talk about them so that YOU are an educated consumer.

First, the Paid Listings (PPC)

In case you’re not familiar, when you do a search at Google and get a page of results, oftentimes you’ll see listings at the very top of the page which are highlighted in yellow (at Google) and you’ll see listings down the right hand side of the page.

These listings (outlined in red above) while technically on the first page of Google, pay to be listed here.  Each time someone clicks on any one of these ads, the owner of the ad has to pay a certain amount of money.  The more competitive the term, the more money you’ll have to spend per click.  Now to be fair, there are lots of little nuances that go into a PPC listing such as (as previously mentioned) how competitive a term is but other factors are how much you’re willing to pay for each click as well as how much you’re willing to budget each month for those ads to run.  So while you could split hairs and say “Well, this is a top-ten listing.” you would be right.  But, in SEO it’s our goal to get you listed in top spots without having to pay to be listed there.

SEM which stands for “search engine marketing” is a way to not only get your site listed in the top ten results at Google but also helps you place ads in the Pay Per Click marketplace so that you can get traffic to your site while you wait for the search engines to pick up and start ranking your web pages.  Now I can’t speak for all SEMs but typically across the board you’ll find that no legitimate SEO company will count this as a “top ten listing” at Google; again, because you have to pay to be listed there.

Second, the Local Listings

I’ll be the first to admit that if you have a local business whether that be in your home or an actual walk-in brick-and-mortar business, a local listing is an absolute MUST.  Google has made quite a few updates to their local listings so that you now can show up for highly competitive terms whereas before you had to state a location in your search query.  These are what local listings look like in the search results:

However, again, when we talk about a top ten listing in a search results page, we’re talking about the listings that A) you don’t have to pay for and B) the listings that aren’t local.  One flaw to a local listing is that if you’re in an area that doesn’t have a lot of competing local businesses listed in the local business area, you’re listing will not show up as a local business.  Plus, a local business listing doesn’t take into account all of the different keywords you’d want to rank well for in a search results page.

Here’s a great example I did on a search for “bicycle tires”.  Now, in my local area there are tons of bicycle shops and most if not all of them sell bicycle tires.  However notice from the screenshot below that there are no local listings like the image above shown:

Now this means that even though you have a local business that does sell bicycle tires, the local business listing doesn’t show for that topic.  To be fair, this could be due to a variety of reasons; either local business shops in my area have not created a local business listing, or if they have they have not listed bicycle tires as one of their items, or, likely, there’s just not enough local businesses to warrant a Google local listing.

This is why actual top 10 natural listings are so important…

Third, Top Ten Natural or Organic Listings

This is the cream of the crop.  This is what SEO actually does for you is get you listed in the top ten positions of a SERP (search engine results page) without having to pay for it and without worrying whether or not your local listing is going to show up at all.  If you look at the image above, and you sold bicycle tires, it is the goal of SEO to get your site listed right there in the top positions where those other sites currently reside.

Can you guarantee those listings?  Absolutely not!  How come?  Because we, as SEOs don’t control the search engines.  We aren’t privvy to all of the factors that go into a top listing at Google or any other major search engine for that matter.  We do however, understand quite a few of the factors that can make that happen.

Things such as what keywords you’re using on the page, how your website is set up (is it easy for the search engines to move through or does it stop them in their tracks?), who is linking to you, how important those links are, and tons of other little details.

So the bottom line is, the next time someone promises you “Guaranteed Top Ten Listings at Google!” read carefully because you might be in for more than you bargained for.

After using it for a few minutes I immediately found quite a few things that I like over Google’s search results.

First, it’s a heck of a lot cleaner.  Google has slowly added in their Universal search results into the natural results so much so that it’s become messy.  You’ve got web pages, images, videos, news stories, blog posts, suggested searches, and ads at the top and side of nearly every search results page.  And while they’ve done their best to cater to the masses and still do provide the best relevant search results, I especially like a few things about Bing over Google.

1. It’s fast.  I was pleasantly surprised at how quickly search results were returned.  It was a lot faster than I had expected.
2. When you do a search in Bing and hover over any of the listings you’ll notice a bar with a small orange dot next to the listing.  When you hover over the listing itself, a quick preview of the web page will show up on the right.  Interesting note here.  In Chrome, it only works for the first listing, once.  At least this has been in my experience.  In Firefox, you have to hover over the orange dot but in IE each preview shows just by hovering over the listing itself.
3. Related searches are shown to the left of the search results instead of at the bottom of the page like Google.  I find this much easier to use.
4. Your recent search history is shown to the left of the listings as well.  With a click you can go back to a search you just did instead of having to search again or resorting to using your back button like you do with Google.  You can also clear your searches all together or even hide them if you want.
5. Like Google, you have a video link at the top of the page.  However, and this is one feature I really like with Bing, unlike Google where you’re shown a listing of various videos from various places, Bing let’s you organize the videos by length, screen size, resolution and source (YouTube, Hulu, Metacafe, etc.).  Whereas in Google’s video search results, you have to scroll through the listings to find out this information.  The downside is that of all of the video sources available, Bing only lists a handful.
6. The images link also allows you to sort by size, layout, color, & people.  Again, a nice feature that let’s you drill down to what it is you’re looking for instead of having to scroll through pages and pages of images.
7. The “related searches” in Bing are, at least in my opinion, more related to the search term that I entered than what Google believes would be related.  For example, in doing a search on “Spring Cleaning” Google suggests that I might be wanting a “spring cleaning poem” which couldn’t be further from what I was seeking.
8. The search results themselves.  Here we get to the heart of it all.  While Google has gained the reputation of having the most relevant search results, I did a quick comparison of what Bing believes to be the top search results and what Google believes to be most relevant. Click for image.  I still believe Google to return the most relevant search results.

All in all I think Bing has done a great job; I especially like how I can drill down into certain areas like videos and images.

This takes me back to the days when I used to work closely with engineers.  As a manager for a new web-based interface for a large telecommunications firm, there would often be some head-butting happening because the designers felt it was better for the end user to do it one way whereas the engineers logically would suggest another way because it was more efficient.

However, in all cases, the overall goal is to make the end user happy.  This end-user appreciates the interface of Bing, but also appreciates the search results at Google.  Maybe they should all just get together and then we, the end users would have the best of both worlds.