Today I thought I’d do a really random search, so I searched for google on google.com. The question: Will Google rank Google.com #1 for a search for google? Or if they do rank themselves #1, why would they do that? If someone is already on google.com and they search for google, would they even click on the search result for google.com? It would make no sense. Confused yet? It only gets worse from here. And here are the results:
search results for google on google.com
Well, there you go. Wait a minute! Google.org?! WTF? What’s that? Oh, it’s the ‘philanthropic arm’ of Google. Why would they do that? According to a linkdomain: query on Yahoo.com, google.com has about a jillion links (actually ~1.19B links) and google.org only has about 270k links. From what I’ve heard about Google’s ranking algorithm, the key to ranking is the quantity and quality of backlinks and anchor text. However, google.org does have a lot more content. Maybe that is the key element driving the top ranking. But seriously, what’s going on here? How does google.org pull a #1 ranking? That’s like me showing up to SkyBar with Megan Fox (btw, she just separated from that dude from 90210). I mean, I’m a nice guy and all, and I’m kinda philanthropic. Plus I once rescued orphaned nuns from a burning cathedral, but that’s Megan Fox. She’s like the #1 ranking these days. [And what about the fact that Google.com is advertising Google.com as the only result in the paid search ads? Is that logical? I guess it's about as logical as searching for the term google on Google.com.]
Obviously, something is going on here. Most likely it has to do with the fact that if you’re on google.com and you’re searching for Google, you probably don’t want to see google.com as the #1 result. Google recognizes this. They know you’re probably looking for something else besides google.com. I think its for this reason that Google has purposefully placed google.org in the top spot. After all, according to Google’s Keyword Tool, google.org only got ~40,500 searches in January. Google.com got ~13.6M searches, and the term google got ~83.1M searches. It stands to reason that google.org needs some help with exposure, and Google probably wants to get more exposure for the philanthropic arm of their company. Aw shucks. How nice?
It appears Google likes to help out the tired, the hungry and the otherwise unable-to-rank-for-themselves type of sites. But is that philanthropy extended outside the family? Let’s find out. How about a search for the term search engine:
google search results for search engine
Okay. Now I’m going to throw up. Dogpile.com? Seriously? That’s a little too obvious because dogpile.com is a site that let’s you search for anything, and then it piles (get it?) all the results from G, Y, MSN/Live and Ask into one results page. [Once again, it's very odd to go to google.com and then search for the term search engine, but it doesn't change the fact that these results are not necessarily up to par with Google's reputation for providing the most relevant search results for a given query.] I guess Dogpile is a reasonable #1 result, but the strange thing is that this site is not the most well-known search engine. Google is. The word google is used as a verb in our vernacular these days for heaven’s sake! Furthermore, according to Alexa, google.com is the #1 trafficed site in the world. Dogpile is #1,825. Typically, Google gets this kind of stuff right.
According to the Google Keyword Tool, the term search engine actually gets some searches:
Google Keyword Tool: search engine
See that? Google reports that the term search engine had over 2.4 million searches in January 2009. If I had an awesome anchor text analyzer, I’d totally compare the anchor text in links to google.com vs. the anchor text in links to dogpile.com. I bet that 99% of links to google.com have Google as the anchor text. Dogpile.com, on the other hand, might actually have more links with the term search engine as the anchor text. I can’t imagine that would be the case, but it’s certainly a possibility. It also occurs to me that Google shouldn’t even rank itself for this search. Why would a user click on the google.com result when they are already on Google. It really doesn’t make any sense. Kind of like this post. It’s filler. And I’ve dragged it out as long as I possibly can. Now I’m kind of hoping no one even sees this one.
Update: I just did another search for google, and after refreshing the search a couple of times, I saw some shifting in the organic results. Google.org, google.com, Google Reader, etc… – they were all changing places. WTF? I’m still confused. It’s pretty clear that this search result does not play by the typical algorithm rules. Me thinks Google has its hands in the search for google.
The year was 1981. It was a good year. I was only 3-years-old, but there was a lot of stuff going on. Believe me. I checked. President Reagan gave his first inaugural address. The Iranian hostages were freed and brought home to the United States. John Hinckly, Jr. shot President Reagan. Columbia, the first space shuttle, had its first launch. Prince Charles and Diana got married. Bob Marley died at age 36. The boxer Joe Louis died at the age of 67. IBM produced the first in its long line of PCs. MTV launched and played its first music video. The FDA approved the use of Aspartame, aka Nutrasweet. Dynasty and Hill Street Blues premiered on TV. The first ever DeLorean sports car rolled off the assembly line. If you were listening to the radio, you were probably listening to Endless Love by Diana Ross and Lionel Richie. Or you were listening to Physical by Olivia Newton-John for the thousandth time. The Grammy winner for Best Country Song was 9 to 5 by Dolly Parton. The top grossing movie was Raiders of the Lost Ark. Also placing in the top 10 was The Cannonball Run (now those two movies are definitely two of my all-time favorites). However, Chariots of Fire won Best Picture at the Oscars. Partial credit, I’d say.
And probably the most important event of 1981: Atari released a home version of the video game Pac-Man. More than anything else, this moment would set my life on a path to becoming a video game professional in the 1980s. Well, I never became a video game professional, but I sure wanted to be one. I’m not really sure why I liked video games so much, but I remember going through a few machines. Though we never knew why 3 Ataris broke in my house in a span of 3 years, my stepdad always said that it was probably because I played them too much. My favorite games were Joust, Frogger and Dig Dug. And that brings me to the subject of this post: Frogger.
Frogger Arcade Game (1981)
Note: Frogger was developed by Konami in 1981, but it saw worldwide distribution through Sega. The 1982 Parker Bros version of Frogger looked really basic, but the game got a lift in graphics and sound with the Atari versions. Don’t believe me, jump the bottom of this post.
The arcade unit was superior in every possible way (like most arcade units are!), but the home versions of most arcade games were, in general, close enough to the original to satisfy a kid. Just ask any kid in the 1980s about going to Arcades. They were seedy places, but the Arcade was like the most amazing wonderland of technology, graphics and synthesized sound. When the home versions of popular video games came out, it started a craze in the US. Just look at the design of this Atari 2600 Frogger cartridge and instruction manual. Isn’t it glorious?!
Atari 2600: Frogger cartridge and instruction manual
Anyways, back to Frogger and how it taught me a bunch of life lessons and SEO lessons.
The goal of Frogger is to get across the stream or pond. You have to guide the frog through various forms of impending and instantaneous death. If that car even brushes up against the frog, he’s dead. So you better watch out. As the game goes on, the threats of death become more ominous and rapid. I was never really even that good at Frogger, but I enjoyed the challenge.
As I sit here at my work desk, surrounded by desktops and laptops, I can’t help but think of the parallels between Frogger and SEO. Here area few of the parallels that I observe on a daily basis as an SEO:
One hop forward, two hops back.
The goal of my day is to get from point A to point B. At the macro level, it’s me getting up in the morning only so I can return home in the evening. Sure, it’s a round trip from A to A, but there is a point B in the middle. It’s called work. If I look at a micro view, I notice that pretty much every single daily task is a trip from point A to point B. And in these tasks, we are faced with obstacles and challenges. While our respective obstacles may not represent impending death, we still have to navigate above, around, onto, below, beneath, beside, underneath and/or through them. (How about that for some prepositions, baby!)
Most SEO projects turn into long term projects because they require me to navigate a web of people, teams and email. There are times when I think the project will never get done, and then it miraculously gets completed 5 months later. Our goals for some projects become over-arching journeys that span days, weeks and years. Sometimes we have to take one hop forward and then two hops back and then a hop to the side before we can eventually get to point B, which is obviously to get H1 tags placed on the product name on product pages.
Watch out for all the traffic
If you have ever worked for an e-commerce/retail site, you know that massive surges of traffic are not always a good thing. Well, for you anyways. Maybe it was traffic that was driven by a bad press report. Here is a situation that I am familiar with: There you are just minding your own business and out of nowhere you see that your client’s website got an extra 10,000 visits yesterday. And it all came from a really popular blog that happened to link to one of your products. The blog praised your products, but the bounce rate from this traffic was 95% within 10 seconds. While this might be great news for your clients, pretty soon you’re going to be answering questions like this:
Hey, if you got 10,000 more visits last week because of that blog, why did sales not increase from that traffic?
Hey! Why was the bounce rate so high?
WTF. Did these people even order the product?
Friendo, do you even know anything at all about SEO?
Why do we even pay you?
The great news is that a lot more people found the site. Those people didn’t even know the site existed. They know your client’s brand, but these visitors had no idea that the brand had a website. But none of that matters because that extra traffic just caused you to have more work that day. I mean, I’m trying to get from point A to point B, and now you’re asking me a bunch of questions. And your tone clearly indicates that you are a little perturbed about this free traffic not doing anything to raise your weekly revenue. And also, I can clearly see that you have no appreciation for free traffic that gives your brand free exposure to 10,000 potential customers.
The point is: free traffic is good, but be careful what you wish for. If you are really good at SEO or if your client’s site just happens to get a giant helping of free praise and website visitors, you might have it coming to you. Either way, you will have to navigate the traffic, the questions, the anger, the answers, the revenue, the AOV. Ahhhhh!
Ironically, George Costanza learns his life lessons from the Frogger arcade
To really get stuff done, you’ll have to avoid a lot of stuff When I used to play Frogger, it always occurred to me that these people made a video game where you have one objective. Awesome, right? Not really. Because the same people then put in a bunch of coding that would introduce elements that would make it downright impossible for you to complete your objective. Thanks a lot. I’m trying to cross a street, so I can get my frog into his home. And there’s a friggin’ Mack truck heading right for me, about to turn me into a road kill. Or there I am, trying to cross a stream, but for some reason I can’t get in the water. I dunno. It’s illogical for a frog to die if it gets wet, but I have to play by the rules to get the mission accomplished. Probably the best example of video game imitating life is when a crocodile appears in the frog’s home. After all there you are, 99% done with the mission and a crocodile appears in your little cubbyhole. Yeah, you have to hop back and to the side and then wait for that crocodile to disappear before you finish the mission.
Life is most often like this. You think it’s just going to be a crocodile in your cubbyhole, but it’s really going to be so much more than that. Pretty soon, you’re hopping onto a log that you thought was a log, but it’s actually another crocodile, pretending to be a log. And also, watch out for the snakes. They are always running around, throwing hissy fits (get it?). Oh and as you get older and get further along in the game, there is more traffic on the road, and it’s moving faster and faster. Just ask George Costanza.
George Costanza learns that drivers are actually aiming for him and his Frogger high score.
Frogger is a lot like SEO. And life. I know what needs to be done. I know how to do it. I know who I need to talk to. I have a clear vision in my head. It’s a bunch of puzzle pieces being connected by me, so that I can finally get some awesome optimized title tags implemented site wide. But nope. It cannot be that easy. There are rules to follow. There is business protocol. I have to schedule meetings and calls. I have to convince VP and Directors that it would be super sweet if they could have a blog hosted in the UK, where their company is based. And guess what? I could take care of every little piece all by myself, but they still have to be sold on the idea. $20 per month sounds like a lot for hosting in the UK? Are you serious?
And so your life becomes a game of Frogger. Hop this way, then that way. Jump on that. Avoid that. Talk to that guy. Avoid that guy. Watch out for the crocodile. Beware the snake. Watch out for that tractor doing 100mph on the highway. He’s practically aiming for you! But you avoid it all, and you get stuff done. And there you are. You’re in your cubbyhole at home, having gone from point A to point B and back to point A. You got your title tags done, but you’ll have to repeat the whole process tomorrow if you want to see that blog idea come to fruition. Just be sure to watch out for the free traffic…
To further prove my point that Frogger has direct parallels to life and SEO, here is a quote from the following 1982 Frogger commercial:
It’s a challenge… ribbit … because the better you are … ribbit ribbit … the harder Frogger is to play!
I always hear about China driving the most search traffic in Asia. And I always hear about China being a very coveted market for internet advertising. Well, good for you, China. So glad you are kicking so much ass over there. I’m glad that you have 253 million web users. Does anyone even know which country comes in second place in internet usage in Asia? Well, if the title of this post gives away anything, it is the answer to that question. Japan! Yes, Japan has 94 million internet users. That data is from this site, so hopefully it’s accurate. At any rate, I have an empathetic gene that apparently makes me stick up for the guy finishing in second place. With this post, I just want to make sure more attention gets paid to internet usage in Japan. So here I go. Before I get started, let’s make sure you know that Yahoo! is not the same as Yahoo! Japan. Yahoo Japan is a separate company altogether, but it’s nearly worth as much as Yahoo. In fact, US-based Yahoo! owns 34% of Yahoo! Japan.
Uh. Where to start? How about we look at visitor data for Yahoo Japan and Google Japan. Together, these two engines drive 72 million unique japanese visitors per month (Yahoo Japan has 46 million, Google Japan has 26 million). In graph form, it looks like this:
Monthly Japanase Unique Visitors for Yahoo.co.jp and Google.co.jp
Holy crap! Do you see that? Who would have thought that Yahoo Japan destroys Google Japan for monthly unique Japanese visitors? Not me. If you happened to be debating this topic at your local pub the other night, I’m glad I can help settle the debate. Yahoo Japan clearly wins. And it doesn’t stop there. In terms of monthly pageviews, Yahoo Japan has 21.9 billion, while Google Japan only has 2.2 billion. Yahoo Japan wins again! (Yes, I admit that graph doesn’t make much sense because it’s talking about percentages. But I like graphs where one part looks like it’s eating the other part!)
Now let’s look at Alexa Japan’s rankings for the top 3 sites in Japan:
Alexa Japan: Top Sites in Japan (Feb. 2009)
Holy crap! It looks like Yahoo.co.jp is the #1 site Japan. How about that? Where you at Google Japan? While I did say that I like to stick up for #2, I would rather not stick up for Google in this post. Google rules everything, everywhere else around the world pretty much. I’m going to let Yahoo Japan enjoy this victory. They deserve it. Ah, but I am empathetic, so I should point out that Alexa Japan has YouTube.com at #4 and Google.com at #8. That’s right. Google has 3 sites in the Alexa Top 10 in Japan. They may not be #1 in the market, but they definitely have enough representation in the Top 10.
Well, that’s all I’ve got today. Just a cool look under the hood of the battle for internet exposure in Japan. But before I go, here are some stats I found for Yahoo! and Yahoo! Japan for 2007:
Yahoo Japan’s worth is about $22B in Tokyo Stock Exchange (Yahoo worth about $27B)
Yahoo Japan’s sales hit $2.4B (Yahoo’s sales hit about $7B in the US)
Yahoo Japan’s net income for 2007 was $570M (Yahoo was about $660M)
Yahoo US has about 138M monthly unique visitors (Google US has about 133M)
For those of you wondering where I got all this information…uh…I found it on the internet somewhere. From different places and stuff.
I’m a big fan of Walter Sobchak. I’ve watched The Big Lebowski about 100 times in the past year. There are just so many aspects of this movie that make me think and laugh. And then laugh again. And then think some more. In a movie with several well-developed characters, there are certain personality traits that direct more of my attention to Walter Sobchak. For example, I enjoy watching him play dumb when part of the fault is his. Like when they walk out of the bowling alley and the car has obviously been stolen, Walter issues this line: “It was parked in a handicapped zone, perhaps they towed it.” The way he says that line really makes me laugh out loud.
The trait I most envy is Walter’s ability to speak his mind. Let’s face it – we all have opinions, no matter how well-informed or uninformed they are. While most of us are eager to keep our opinions to ourselves, Walter has no problem letting his opinions out for the world to hear. And he often does it with a persistent tunnel vision, as he relates nearly everything to Vietnam. In fact, Walter Sobchak will reference Vietnam in an improvised eulogy, in an argument about a stolen rug, in an explanation of league bowling rules, etc… It’s a defining characteristic of Walter Sobchak, and I love it.
"Eight-year-olds, Dude." - Walter Sobchak
Why exactly is Walter appearing on an SEM/SEO blog? I dunno. He just is. So let’s just run with it. What if Walter Sobchak was an SEO for a massive retail brand? Maybe even a Fortune 500 company? Imagine if he ran the show. Do you think things would get done faster or more efficiently? Or would he be arrested and lose his job? I think Walter Sobchak would be a fantastic SEO. Let’s take a look at some of his well-known quotes, and I’ll explain why he’d be the perfect SEO for your website.
“This is what happens when you f— a stranger in the ass!” Remember the time when your IT guy launched a new home page on Friday night at 9:00pm? And no one was there to make sure it worked correctly? And no one was there to make sure the tracking code was added to the new page? And also, he really does not like you because the hot office girl is nice to you and mean to him. So he decided to take out that optimized text-based navigation and replace it with uncrawlable javascript navigation because he hates your guts. Yeah, I think Walter would put on a vintage suit, head over to that guy’s house, and bust that guy’s windshield with a crowbar. And that IT guy would totally deserve it because he just caused a lot of problems for a lot of people. He usually gets away with such passive aggressive behaviors, but not when Walter Sobchak is your SEO.
"New 'Vette? Hardly, Dude. I'd say he's still got about $960 - $970,000 left, depending on the options." - Walter Sobchak
“Life does not stop and start at your convenience, you miserable piece of s—.”
This line is issued when Donny decides to listen at his personal convenience. Walter does not like that. He wants people to adjust to life and use some friggin’ context clues. Knowing this, I think Walter Sobchak would really get tired of IT/Dev project lists and calendars. Not because they have not been listening to the conversation. Not because the Dev team fails at context clues. Rather, Walter knows they are only using that project calendar as a work shield. That stupid calendar shields them from having to do work. It’s a really convenient tool. Don’t wanna tell the boss you’re just not gonna do that proposed project? Don’t have the guts to actually say that a co-worker is being too demanding? Wanting to keep it politically safe? Well, you’re in luck because you can use the new-and-improved Project Calendar. But I warn you: Walter’s not going to take it any longer. When the Q2 project calendar is mentioned, Walter’s going to issue this line. He’ll most likely berate you until there are tears streaming down your face. And from that point on, he’s going to issue this line at every meeting because he knows you have a natural allergic reaction to working. Plus, he knows that you are being very passive aggressive. And even though Walter likes aggression, he considers pacifism an emotional problem.
“The beauty of this is its simplicity. If a plan gets too complex something always goes wrong.”
When Walter and the Dude are heading out to the drop-off point with the million bucks, Walter informs the Dude of his plan to keep the money. The plan is so simple, it’s practically a swiss f’ng watch. This quote gives us a real insight into Walter’s outlook on life, and there is no doubt that this ideal permeates Walter’s SEO approach. Keep it simple. A good SEO should always be able to keep things simple. After all, SEO is simple in theory. Develop good/compelling content. Get links. Open yourself up to the search engines. Those are pretty much the main tenets of SEO. Walter adheres to these SEO tenets. He explains things so easily that even the most senior-level executives can understand every last item on the SEO list, no matter how complicated. When a colleague offers up the idea to turn the website into a flash animation with all sorts of bells and whistles, you can be certain that Walter will have something to say about that.
“That’s right, Dude. 100% certain. ” Walter is good at solving mysteries. Just give him a few pieces of unrelated evidence, and he’ll determine a cynical prognosis for your website. Furthermore, Walter Sobchak is the most confident SEO you’ll ever meet, so you’ll believe every word he tells you. He’s the right guy for any SEO job. As an SEO, you can’t be meek about ideas and recommendations. You’ve got to kick down the door and let people know that you’ve got it all figured out. While you may not have anything really figured out, people will believe everything you say about SEO if you believe you have everything figured out. I’ve listened to really good SEO’s complain about SEO items not getting done, and I’ve seen really bad SEO’s get a lot of bad SEO done on a site. The difference really is confidence. And probably some other stuff, too, but let’s not worry about that. In conclusion, if you’re recommending a complete site makeover to correct for a low conversion rate, you’d better be sold on your own recommendations. That’s the only way it will get done. Walter Sobchak knows this. He didn’t have to learn it. It’s just always been part of his skill set.
"You think I'm f'ing around here? Mark it zero!" - Walter Sobchak
“Has the whole world gone crazy? Am I the only one around here who gives a s— about the rules?” Walter Sobchak likes rules. He enjoys structure. In fact, one time he was sitting in a planning meeting, and he had to listen to some marketing VP talk about synergizing department learnings and strategies. Walter, who gets easily pissed off when people simply create new words out of thin air and then use them in strange contexts, did not like where the meeting was going. The VP talked about diverting search marketing budgets to the Dev side of things, so they could build some useless and unneeded functionality into the website. Walter knows that the goal of every business is to make money. It’s very clear cut and simple. It’s the #1 rule of business, and here is some dude trying to use a decreasing ROI as leverage to build some video player into a retail website. Well, turns out that Walter re-inacted the scene where Smokey is over the line. Walter advised the VP about the detrimental effects of a smaller budget for paid search and SEO. When the VP talked back, Walter reinforced his position. A world of pain was about to be entered. Not wanting to enter a world of pain, the VP withdrew his suggestion. And everyone lived happily ever after.
“I’m perfectly calm, Dude. Calmer than you are.” Even though Walter might pull a gun on a fellow bowler, he relishes a calm lifestyle. He can yell and scream, but he’s going to finish his cup of coffee. Some people might think that Walter is high-strung like a walking time bomb. In reality, however, he is very laid back. The only time he gets amped up is when people try to take what is his or break the rules. “What’s mine is mine.” Walter is simple. What you see is what you get. He likes to bowl. He’ll watch his ex-wife’s dog while she is on vacation. He likes a good cup of coffee. He likes to stay home on Shabbos. His approach to SEO is just as calm. Walter likes to sit down and investigate websites. He will take the same calm approach with your site. It might surprise you because you have seen him pull a weapon in public place, bite a man’s ear off, and throw a paralyzed man onto the ground. But in the end Walter stands up for what he believes, even when he is wrong. That’s the kind of SEO you want for your job. If he’s going to fail at something or get something completely wrong, he’s going to do it going 100mph. I like that consistent attitude.
“So you have no frame of reference here, Donny. You’re like a child who wanders into the middle of a movie and wants to know…”
As mentioned earlier in this post, Walter Sobchak gets really pissed when people wander into a conversation at their convenience and subsequently forget how to use context clues. He holds a higher level of disdain for people who wander into a conversation and then start making final decisions about items being discussed. I’m sure you have been there when people do this in your Tuesday afternoon meetings. It’s especially aggravating when SEO idiots decide to pay attention to the 10-minute SEO part of the meeting and then speak up as if they’ve even been listening to anything you have been saying for the past 5 minutes. Then they start telling you how to do your job. Then they start telling you what SEO strategy makes the most sense. Fear no more because Walter Sobchak will not stand for any of that. He’ll remain calm, but he will make sure those SEO idiots know exactly where they overstepped their boundaries. Over the line!
I honestly hope you find an SEO like Walter Sobchak. And if you are currently an SEO, please don’t bounce from this post without taking some of his traits to heart. Keep it simple. Keep it calm. Follow the rules of business. Be confident. Let people know where the line is. Don’t be afraid to stand up for your beliefs. You’ll be a better SEO for it. And probably a better person, too.
