Search Trends in the Recession: Porn Wins Big!

'porn' wins as Americans get lazy and horny during the recession

Wow. I guess I shouldn’t be shocked. Times are tough. We are in the midst of a recession. And it looks like when times are tough, people get lazier and hornier. The Google Trends graph above is filtered for search volume in the United States from 2004-2009, so don’t tell me that some other countries are skewing the data. Again, I guess I shouldn’t be shocked, but seriously? Really? I know, I know. Unemployment is way up, so a lot more people are sitting at home being lazy and bored. Hence, the porn searches. Gosh. Are humans that predictable?

I was also surprised to see a decreasing trend in ’sports’ searches. I find myself watching more sporting events than ever this year. I guess I’m unique. Yeah right. ‘God’ searches are nice and steady. I’m glad to see people are still into God. ‘Politics’ is also kind of static.  I guess that’s no shocker. Finally, it should be no surprise that ‘coupons’ searches are way up (beginning in late-2008). I like coupons. You should like coupons, too.

Oh well, that is all. This filler post has been brought to you by the hectic holiday season.

Matt Cutts: Google Using DMOZ Info to Create ‘Better’ Title Tags in SERPs

Wow. Around 2:14 of this video, Matt Cutts says Google “can sometimes use the Open Directory Project snippets” when populating snippets for URLs displayed in the SERPs. He then goes on to talk about how Google can also use that information to create a “better” title for URLs in the SERPs:

…Webmasters are probably not as used to the idea that we’re willing to find a better title as well. So if you have a bad title or a title that we don’t think helps users as much, we can try to find a better title – and one that we think will be an informative result, so that users will know whether that’s a good result for them to click on.

So I just wanted to give people a heads-up about that because they’re used to the things below the title changing, but they’re maybe not as used to the idea that the title itself can change in our search results as well.

Thanks for this video, Matt. The last part is fascinating. We saw that Bing was doing something like this back in early June.

One question: Is Google going to do my title tag SEO for me now? That would sure save me some time. ;) I’m sure if I was Boser or Graywolf, I would have a big problem with this. I kinda do, but I’m too busy to write much more. I guess I’d really care if a page with no title tag could outrank my page after Google created a “better” title tag for that page. That would be upsetting. But I am confident in my SEO abilities. Now where was I?

BTW, Yahoo is doing the same thing.

Zombie URLs? 7 Geocities Pages That Are Still Alive!

I don’t know what’s going on here, but these 7 URLs from www.geocities.com are still alive. Zombie URLs!!! I feel like I’m in I Am Legend or 28 Weeks Later, and I just found the other survivors. At any rate, these zombie URLs are probably hungry for brains. Maybe it was a glitch that was just in time for Halloween. I dunno. But I’ve gotta give it up to these URLs for surviving Yahoo’s mass extinction event last Monday. It’s evolution in action – on the interwebs!

• http://www.geocities.com/bradreviews/
• http://www.geocities.com/heartland/bluffs/8481/
• http://www.geocities.com/johnniemccoy/
• http://www.geocities.com/kintoraaikido/
• http://www.geocities.com/markohlson2002/
• http://www.geocities.com/SunsetStrip/Backstage/2220/
• http://www.geocities.com/yosemite/5860/

I know that Yahoo was giving Geocities users the opportunity to get their Geocities URLs redirected to a custom domain (btw, a domain that you could purchase from Yahoo and then host with a Yahoo webhosting account). Those 7 URLs are not being redirected. They actually return 200 OK in the header response.

Just so we have something to compare those zombie Geocities URLs to, here are a few Geocities URLs that have been redirected via 301 redirects. Could it be that Yahoo is learning some SEO? Welcome to the new millennium.

• http://www.geocities.com/amitasirohi/
• http://www.geocities.com/Heartland/3575/
• http://www.geocities.com/peakesi/

So there you go? Can anyone explain why these URLs are still alive? Could they belong to Yahoo employees? Hmmm…

Is Recent PageRank Update a PR Boost for All Twitter URLs?

Hey! I am sure you are all aware of last week’s PageRank update. Yeah, it happened. And even though Google recently told us to stop concerning ourselves with PR so much, I’m still going to check out how my sites are doing. I dunno. I know Toolbar PR is way old and outdated and such, but I don’t care. Old habits die hard, right?

Is anyone else out there seeing massive increases in the PageRank for their Twitter account(s). I have about 100 accounts, and I’m noticing all sorts of good stuff. Primarily, I am not the owner of several PR5 Twitter accounts. Many of these have only a few status updates, and they are all less than a year old.  I mean seriously. I have several PR4 Twitter accounts that only have ~200 followers. That is wild. I’ve done some checks on other domains, but the recent PR update didn’t seem to have any major effects on PR for typical sites. I could be speaking too soon on that one. I guess we’ll hear more about the effects of this PR update in the next few weeks. But really, why am I seeing massive PR increases for  Twitter? Does Google really like real-time status updates that much? Anyone need any links from Twitter? ;)