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Category: Ranking and Display
October 15, 2007
I have been making some changes to my feeds, which I clearly should leave alone as now Feedburner is openly mocking my lack of feed skills and questioning my decision to be involved in technology or the web at all. In any case, I’m trying some new things and am thinking I need a new post to restart the whole feed process.
So, here’s something different. Has anyone else noticed changes in the Google SERPs? Particularly, I’m wondering if they’re now bringing in Blogsearch as either an addition to universal search or as a new signal in the web results. As you might recall universal search launched with five verticals: news, local, video, images, and books. Adding blogsearch would make sense, as it’s fresh, relevant content.
When you do a blogsearch, related blogs sometimes appear at the top of the results. For me, you’ll notice that the Google Webmaster Central blog appears. Blogsearch still associates it with me, even though I haven’t posted there since June.
I noticed an interesting thing yesterday when I searched for name using web search (er, yes I’m very vain). The Google Webmaster Central blog shows up as the second result, even though my name doesn’t appear anywhere on the page. Now, if I click the cached link, I’m told that my name appears only in links to the page, so possibly it’s solely the anchor text that’s propelling the result to #2. I don’t remember seeing it there before though, which is what got me wondering about it.
More likely is that I didn’t notice it was there before, or other random changes have reordered my results. But it’s fun to wonder.
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I find it just as interesting when doing a [vanessa fox] vanity search that you and the webmaster central blog outrank wiki. That is an accomplishment unto itself that should be heralded.
Yes. I noticed a change when I did a vanity search. One of my own blogs finally outranks .edu articles mentioning me; I commented at my blog.
But I don’t work in SEO so, when I noticed things, I couldn’t figure out any way to write a decent blog post says more than “Oh… and it’s not just that my blog now ranks #1 for “lucia liljegren”.
Things just kinda “look different”. (With regard to the vanity search on my name, I think relevancy has improved. )
I notice universal search and adwords pushing organic search results further down on the page in a greedy, Googly widget sorta way! ;-(
It reminds me of that old video when you guys at Google launched universal search. I consider myself an above average (sometimes even scary) reader of facial expressions and you all surely were not on the same page if you know what I mean?
What are your thoughts Venassa about too many Googly widgets (universal search) cluttering organic search? Those of us without HUGE budgets rely on organic search traffic.
Thanky!
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ah feedburner. another great acquisition by Google, although I’m not too thrilled about the “openly mocking” feature, kinda freaky.
whats up with the “Microsoft Launches Coolhotmail” result on your SERP? Totally unrelated, don’t you think? Unless you’ve been on a recent shopping spree at the Bombay Store in Bangalore. Or, more likely, Microsoft is sabotaging your results on G… it’s a conspiracy.
hope you get it all worked out.
Google loves historical results as they are often the most trustworthy. Since your name was on dozens of webmaster central posts, you may be forever linked to GWC!
So – the Google Webmaster Blog has finally come out of the sandbox for the keyword “Vanessa Fox”?
Not sure if they have upgraded the algorithm – but SERPs have definately changed significantly in the past week or so; could just be one of the large occasional datacentre updates though (or scaling the index – which could have similar effects).
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I have been reading about that now for a couple of weeks. Is it true that Google Almighty changed its sacred algorithms again?