Analyzing impact of Google’s SSL Search

It’s been a little over a month since Google announced that it will be providing SSL searches for it’s logged in users and as Result of that we will lose some of our Organic Search Data, we covered this in a bit more detail HERE

So now that the initial craze has settles we decided to look at some sample data and look at what’s actually going on and how it is really affecting us and our Brands.

We decided to use 6 Sits from different verticals as a sample; we decide don the following verticals:

• SEO Company (since Visitors are obviously engaged in Google, we assume that they logged in)
• Home Cleaning Products Manufacturer
• Financial Service Company
• Home Electronics
• Healthcare Services
• News & Gossip Site

This gives us a good look at a very wide spectrum of sites and users.

So what did we find?em>

The first thing just as we suspected is that SEO / Tech & Computers users are Google users, therefor logged in and will be using the SSL search. This was confirmed with 22% of searches being hidden.

Another interesting fact is that Google actually seems to be serving them smart. One of the sample sites is a healthcare site, and without giving away too much, it is not a modern medicine, it targets elderly people and we are fairly certain they do not have a Google account (80% of their members have ISP emails such as Comcast, Verizon, AOL etc). Based on the analytics sample data it seems that Google hid 13% of the keywords.

We need to keep one thing in mind, Google does this to protect users privacy and not to mess with us internet marketers ‘)

On the flip side it is fairly interesting that Google does not hide the info from a financial services site, but this might be due to the fact that most of their site is already served over https

Also we were expecting to have a higher amount of hidden KWs on the home electronics site. More hen 50% their member emails end in @gmail

Conclusions?

So without upsetting any hardcore Internet marketers, it does seem that there is more behind the decision process on Google’s side then just are you logged in or not.

After compiling this I looked at a few more healthcare and medical related sites, and it seems that across all of them there is a really high rate of hidden keywords as well, some even up to 50% and all of those sites are targeted towards elderly people, not your usual google crowd!

Another Interesting find is the high number of Chrome share among the hidden keywords, it seems that the browser is a deciding factor as well.

thoughts?

Google Hiding Keyword Data for Google Users

So on Thursday October 18th the Organic Search Community had a moment of silence and then complete Panic, google announced in a blog post ( http://vfx.la/xFDD0 )that it will stop showing the Search query from users logged into Google as well as all users using the secure search option ( https://encrypted.google.com/  )

We have been answering a few panic calls from clients, so I decided to write up this quick info sheet.

So to understand the impact a bit better, let’s look at the current flow of events.

1. Users a search Query using Google’s search page or toolbar
2. Google Displays the results page (at this point the search term position and following action are saved in the Google Webmaster Tools – and also inserted into Google Analytics)
3. Upon click google redirects the user to the final destination page

So what has changes?

On the frontend it all still looks the same, besides a cute ssl logo the average user will not notice a difference. ON a technical site the queries CTR rates and all related transactions are encrypted and more safe (not really sure why people care) but they seem to do.

So what does that mean for the organic community?

• You will no longer be able to see the SERP positions / CTR in Webmaster Tools
• In Analytics it will say (not provided) instead of the actual keyword
• You will no longer be able to track organic performance on a keyword level
• No more goal or e-commerce data on a keyword level

Who does this apply to?

• This only applies to Organic searches (paid is still getting that data)
• This for now only applies to users that are logged into their google account (so all Google+ / Gmail / Adsense / Adwords users)

Does this affect me?

• One of the hardest hits is against anybody provided services in the internet sector, such as web development agencies, SEO companies and any web service related companies. Why? It is because most of the internet development and marketing community is using one or another google tool.
• If you target for example Google+ and any other Google Product users, this applies even stronger to you

Why aren’t you worried?

• Based on our current numbers (we checked in Google Analytics) only 0.12% for the organic traffic was marked as (not provided)
• People who are logged into google, getting a custom search experience and SERPs anyway, and therefore not a good measurement of performance as it is.
• We have a strong believe in Whitehead tactics and think that google does these changes to improve quality for the SERPs and as long as we produce quality content and follow the clean guidelines

We will keep an eye on the Analytics for our web properties and keep you updated on any developments or changes.

UPDATE: After some technical feedbacks, we can confirm that when you leave a SSL site such as google Secure SERPs and go to a non SSL page, no referring data is transmitted which means its not just google being mean, it’s a technical challenge!

Update #2: Google just confirmed it in this Article ( http://googlewebmastercentral.blogspot.com/2011/10/accessing-search-query-data-for-your.html ): In Webmaster tools and Analytics you still can:

• View the top 1000 daily search queries and top 1000 daily landing pages for the past 30 days.
• View the impressions, clicks, clickthrough rate (CTR), and average position in search results for each query, and compare this to the previous 30 day period.
• Download this data in CSV format

Are you worried? Why not get a Free SEO Audit?

Mobile SEO Strategy Part 2 – The Tools

Mobile SEO Part 2 – The Tools & Research

Continuing on from Part 1 – What is mobile SEO we are looking today at the tools and ways to do your keyword insights and some initial ways to measure success and also establish a baseline / KPIs. If you have missed Part1 I would sugest you read this first, in case you decide not too, you should be aware that we are talking about smartphone SEO not mobile SEO, there is a dramatic difference as we will explain throughout this series .

1. Search Volume and keyword suggestions

The first step in any SEO campaign kickoff is the keyword research, thanks to google’s latest updates we have now a variety of ways to obtain the Smartphone (again smartphone != mobile) search volume. My favorite tool of choice is still the google adWords keyword research tool. Google recently added data for mobile volume / competition etc. They separate it into 4 separate groups:

1. Desktop and laptop Devices
2. All Mobile Devices
3. Mobile WAP Devices
4.  Mobile devices with Full Internet Browsers

This allows you and your team to evaluate the overall volume as well obtain suggestions for similar keywords / phrases. However I would still remain careful with the Total searches google estimates for some of their suggestions as they seem rather high

2. Keyword Suggestions and Trends

Unfortunately google trends has not yet updated its filtering functions to include mobile trends, I am sure they will add this functionality at some point, but again as of now, there is no option to filter for mobile trends yet! We will go further into strategy in a later chapter…
But for no a quick approach we follow is to get last years data from google trends, see what are the upcoming initiatives or seasonal items

We would then take these keywords and run them against the mobile search volume within google adowrds mobile and extract longtail keywords from that as well. For additional longtail optimization I would suggest then running those keywords trough autosuggest on google mobile and other mobile search engines and devices.

3. Establishing a baseline

So where do we start in terms of measurements?  We would suggest 2 base KPIs for any mobile SEO camp:

1. Measure user engagement for mobile Clients (Bounce, Time on site etc)
2. Search Engine Results page Clicktorugh rate

The first one is fairly easy since analytics comes by default with a mobile user segment which allows us to run some simple reports against all mobile users.

For the SERP CTR we are thankfull again to a recent update in Google’s webmaster tool that now allows us to display the CTR on the results pages for smartphone SERps. From there we can establish which results where displayed on mobile devices and what our Click Trough rate was, then we can modify Meta Descriptions and Title tags to fit better into the mobile shelf!

So what now?

As already promised in Part 1 of this mobile SEO Tutorial we will get into actionable items in a later chapter, but next on my list is one of the more existing parts of this: The future of Mobile SEO!
So for now go ahead, look at where you currently are in terms of metrics and goals, see if you keyword strategy aligns with your visitors and goals. And in the next Chapter we will start to actually get our hands dirty!

But if you are in a rush and need help getting your site ready, free to fill out our Free SEO Quote

Mobile SEO Strategy Part 1

During the past months the mobile search landscape has changed dramatically, google has retracted and clarified his own comments and statements on multiple occasions. During my daily business dealings with Agency’s and Brand’s I have noticed that even many of the top agency’s out there approaching mobile from the wrong perspective and basing their decisions on faulty facts.

During this 7 Part Series i will try to clarify the current state of things as well as the process and up to date guidelines on the mobile SEO process. These articles will be split into 7 Parts:

1. What is Mobile SEO
2. Tools & Research
3. The Future
4. Measurements
5. Actionable Items
6. Future Proofing
7. Ongoing Activates

1. What is mobile SEO?

Okay before we start diving into the tech stuff and tools, I think we need to clarify a few things.. Through this article we will make 2 assumptions:

1. Our goal search engine is Google (I will add Bing info in a later chapter)
2. We are planning on working with a Smartphone site (Not a WAP/WML etc site)

The first faulty assumption everybody is making is that when Google says mobile site they are talking about a smartphone site, THIS IS WRONG!

Google makes it VERY clear that a smartphone sites is not considered a mobile site and there will NEVER be displayed in the search engine results pages.

This is a very important factor when basing research or actionable items on Google’s statements or guidelines. Now that this is clear, let’s talk about KPIs. How do we measure success? It can surely not be measured like a regular site, there is no SERP, and there is no keyword based conversions. So wat actually happens, as of today Google seems to be delivering the same Search Engine Results page to Desktop users. Even the results URLs are not mobile URLs they are the Desktop URLS. What does that mean for the internet marketer? Basically those normal optimization techniques such as link building, Meta tag optimization and the usual “Tricks” do not really apply. So again how do we measure mobile SEO success? Due to changes and upgrades in Google’s toolkit we are now able to due specific filtering based on smartphone metrics and usage. In tomorrow’s part 2 we will highlight some of the techniques and a sample mobile SEO Cycle.

If you are interested in having your site optimized, please feel free to fill out our Free SEO Quote

The Difference between Rank 4 and 3

I have made an interesting discovery yesterday, we where ranked on the Keyword “Boston Web design” at position #4 in google for a really long time

On November 9th the Rank improved from #4 to #3, on average we get around 2-3 Leads per day resulting from Traffic to that specific keyword, on November 9th our lead number from that keyword improved from 2-3 to 9 leads, today we have received so far 12 Inquiries regarding boston web design.

This is a very strong indicator on the importance in even small rank changes, minimal position changes make a huge impact on the results and traffic you will receive.

These Results made me have a deeper look in conversion rates based on Keyword positioning; another strong keyword for us was “Boston seo”, we been fluctuating a lot in positions on this keyword positions, mostly between rank 8 to 16. Upon further Analysis using some of your custom developed in house tools, i discovered that we had the highest click rate when we where on position 10 rather then position 9, it seems that when users where vieweing the results, they are more likely to click on the result when it is #1 on the second page vs when it is the last result on the first page! So even here you can see that dropping a position can have a positive impact on your positioning.

AdLib, new iPad Javascript Framework for iPad web Development

Done21 reports on the curious discovery of a new Web-based framework used in the iPad that allows web pages to behave in ways much more akin to native applications than previously observed. The framework, dubbed ‘AdLib’ by the report’s author after the name of the file containing the code, was first noticed in action when navigating to Apple’s iPad User Guide using the iPad’s mobile version of Safari. It allows the user guide, which is simply a web page, to be offered in a split-pane view with scrollbars and with a native app-like feel.

What’s particularly interesting is that it does something that shouldn’t really be possible in Mobile Webkit: It includes scrolling panes that can be manipulated with a single finger, complete with the signature iPhone OS “scroll bars” and elastic transitions. If you have ever worked with Safari on the iPhone, you know that having scrolling boxes of content is sort of possible, but requires a special two-finger gesture to scroll.

Curiosity got the best of me, so I loaded the page in Safari on my laptop (and changed Safari’s user agent to mimic the iPad) and got to work with the developer tools. After extracting the JavaScript and de-minifying it, my suspicions were confirmed. Apple was manually reading the touch events, calculating the inertia of the scrolling, and manually drawing the scroll bars. It was incredible that it worked so smoothly in the browser.

The framework, which weighs in at about 4,300 lines of code, permits Mobile Safari to display the native-like user guide simply using HTML, CSS, JavaScript, the basic web technologies supported by the iPhone and iPad. It appears similar in some respects to the PastryKit framework described last December, although AdLib appears to be a more advanced version that incorporates iPad-specific references.

It remains to be seen whether Apple will release the custom API for use by third-developers, but despite an absence of documentation, the report notes that the framework is “extremely well thought out and complete” and could be of significant utility to developers.

What was more interesting is that there was an entire framework running this web application. The framework weighed in at 4,300 lines of code, and was unmistakably an Apple-born API. Every class and constant was prefixed with the letters “AD” and some of the classes include ADTabBarController, ADScrollPane, ADViewController, ADView, ADToolbar, and dozens more.

What does the AD prefix stand for? I don’t know. The framework itself was contained in a file called AdLib-ug-ipad.js, so for the time being let’s call it AdLib. I also appreciate the sense of humor the developers seem to have about the name. The accompanying application code that utilizes the framework is about 1,500 lines and offers a few clues as to how to use the AdLib framework. There is no documentation in the code or anywhere online, and the local variables are shortened to a, b, c, etc… If you want to know more about how it works, take a look at the code linked below.

Is AdLib a framework that Apple plans to release for the public? I sure hope so. The framework looks to be extremely well thought out and complete. Perhaps this will be a framework to support a future release of Dashcode, an application for writing dashboard widgets and Safari/iPhone web apps. Maybe we’ll hear something about it this Thursday at Apple’s event for iPhone OS 4.

Chrome Beta for OSX almost Ready

UPDATE Its available now DOWNLOAD GOOGLE CHROME
In Tech report posted on Nov 29th 2009, TechCrunch points to a Twitter entry from Mike Pinkerton (Chrome for Mac team) stating that there were only 8 bugs/errors remaining to be fixed before the Macintosh beta of Chrome is ready for its launch in the next month.

Speculation on the eight bugs noted by Pinkerton centers on this list, which is already down to four outstanding issues.

In a follow-up article, TechCrunch looks at the features for Chrome that will not be included in the initial beta release and have been pushed out to the next beta version in order to allow Google to meet its goal of releasing the initial beta before the end of the year.

- Bookmark Manager
- App Mode (allows Chrome to run Web apps in their own simplified windows)
- Task Manager
- Gears (offline support for Web apps; apparently being scrapped entirely in favor of HTML5)
- Bookmark syncing
- Multi-touch gestures
- 64-bit support
- Full support for extensions
- Full screen mode (possibly)

Developer builds of Chrome for Mac have been available for several months, but the move to a beta version suggests that users can expect to see a fairly stable browser with a number of significant features included. Work will continue on Chrome with additional Developer Preview releases occurring on a regular basis. Refined versions will then periodically be released as new additions to Chrome’s Beta channel. Releases will eventually make their way to Chrome’s “Stable” channel, which will offer “rock solid” performance without the inclusion of features still under development and testing.

Google Redesigned (Google 2.0)

So i have been browsing around, and all the sudden i came across a piece of code, using that cookie code, you are able to see a new version of google, its some kind of redesign or draft. Nothing fancy, nothing special, but check it out anyway, one feature defiantly like is the visible sidebar and options.

How to: When you paste the following into the address bar of your browser when on google.com and hit return, you should find yourself as new participant of Google’s latest and more all-encompassing prototype test – the one with a new logo, buttons, and always-visible left-hand pane in results. Please note I needed to sign out first for this to work.

javascript:void(document.cookie=”PREF=ID=20b6e4c2f44943bb:U=4bf292d46faad806:TM=1249677602:LM=1257919388:S=odm0Ys-53ZueXfZG;path=/; domain=.google.com”);

Read the rest of this entry »