Dear Google,

I really hate that you use reviews as a signal for ranking websites and Google Places pages. I just got another email from a vendor who was trying to sell me review postings for $3 per review. Don’t get me wrong Google, I REALLY do like reviews but the more they hold weight in search engine placement, the more companies will game the system and the entire review system will be worthless to the end user.

I really like reviews. In fact I almost always look for reviews and ratings when deciding to make a new purchase with a company. I go to Google and type “company name reviews” and read what others have written about a company. I read these reviews on multiple websites so I can get an overall picture. But what happens to the quality of the review data when it becomes known that review data plays a role in getting your Google Places page, and even your website, pushed to the top? Businesses and SEOs will game the system and you will quickly start seeing an increase in fake reviews being spread all over the web. Sure, this has always been a problem with reviews, and I know you can’t completely get away from it. But it will only get worse very quickly now that Google is using reviews as a signal to rank their Places pages and local websites.  Do a local business search and look at the websites positioned at the top in the Places pages section. Do you notice they all have reviews and a Places page? Look at the screen shot below as an example. I removed the top paid ads section to save space but you will see the first 7 slots consist of businesses that have a Google Places page and reviews.

Google Places Pages and Reviews

Businesses will quickly realize they need reviews and a Places page in order to compete. Some will get reviews honestly but many will get them dishonestly because they will need to in order to compete.

It has also recently been announced that both Google and Bing are now using social network links as a factor. For example re-tweets, likes, mentions, etc. about your brand and to your pages will play a role in your quality score. This I don’t mind as long as Google and Bing can determine that these likes and re-tweets are valid and not just a bunch of spam accounts that have been setup for this purpose. It is the reviews playing a role that I have an issue with.

Remember when Forums were the rage? I personally think one of the main things that ruined forums was that they became overthrown with spam because it became common knowledge that links in forums hold weight. While those types of links don’t hold as much weight anymore, forums are still flooded with spam and are not used or trusted like they once were. So did Google ruin forums? I fear the same thing will happen with reviews.

I understand that Google and other search engines need to look at different factors to determine a website’s value and popularity. I guess I would like to see content place the largest role but I also understand that when you have thousands of sites competing for that same content, other things need to come into play. I personally think quality, relevant, in-content links from other trusted sites are a better signal than reviews. I know, I know, those are easy to game too, but at least gamed links are not going to ruin reviews that users have become reliant on to help determine a company’s value.

Please Google don’t ruin reviews!!!

As promised in our Pubcon Overview post, here is a real world example of what we did to improve the website load time for one of our sites. These are rough notes on what was performed on a real website,  how the implementation of each task was done and how it improved the website load time.

The first thing we did was run the website through http://www.webpagetest.org. This is a free tool that will break down your website performance and give each area a score. After we ran the site through this tool, we were presented with a lot of suggestions on how to optimize the site. Following is a break down of each.

Initial page load results

First Phase [Optimize images for faster page load time]:

From the test we saw many images that needed to be reduced (optimized). We went through these images and reduced the file size and from just that we were able to notice a relatively significant decrease from the load time. As you can see from the before and after screen shots below, we were able to cut back almost 200 KB from our images without resorting to a reduction in quality.

Before and after results from compressing image sizes – note the dramatic increase in score after the changes were put in place

Second Phase [Combine JS/CSS Files faster page load]:

We initially had three separate CSS files that were being used for different aspects of the same overall style, which was causing the server to have to unnecessarily download three different files. We combined the three CSS files into one, which saved about one second from the load time.

If you are using WordPress, the WP-Minify app makes this very simple. Merely install the plugin and it will combine Javascript, CSS, and HTML files automatically. We’ve found that this works best when using the Thesis theme, as there have been compatibility complications with other themes.

Before and after results from minifying Javascript and CSS files – note the increase in score after the changes were put in place

Third Phase [Enable GZIP Compression for faster website load time]:

This is more techie but it did improve load time. First make sure your host has compression turned on. Once that is confirmed you can control the GZIP compression through your .htaccess file. I won’t go into detail about what each setting means because there is already a ton of documentation about this on the web.

(A good resource is http://www.askapache.com/htaccess/apache-speed-compression.html)

Instead I will simply provide a screen shot with what we placed in our .htaccess file for the site we tested this on and leave it up to you to read more about what these settings mean.

htaccess GZIP Example

Forth Phase [Minimize serving images and other files from other sources ]:

One of the sections on this particular site was using an API to pull in data. This API passes image urls from another server so this section was having to download and serve the images from that server each time the pages were loaded. We made some modifications to this script so instead of serving the images from the other server, it saves a copy of the image on our server and loads that copy.  This cut off at least 2 seconds from our page loads. While it is not always possible to load everything from your own server (e.g. Google Analytics, Adsense code, etc.) you should minimize this as much as possible.

So that’s the low down of how we improved the load time on one of our websites. We may tweak these settings some more and will document it here if we do, but for now we are satisfied with the improvements. We would love to hear any other tips you may have.

Final page load results

We are back from PubCon and have lots to share. Each time we come back from a conference, we write up detailed documentation of what was learned and distribute to all of the employees. I decided we should do it a little differently this time around. Instead of distributing it in a Word doc to our staff, I am going to publish it on our blog. So this first post will be more of an overview and following posts throughout the next few weeks will be more detailed posts covering specific topics. So here it goes…

Local Search
There was a lot of discussion about local, Google Place Pages and how Google is now displaying Place Pages within the organic results. There are a lot of changes in this space, some of which will create opportunities for local businesses and some of which may create more challenges. This is worthy of its own blog post so keep your eyes open for one soon.

User Data Signals
It was speculated that Google now takes into account user data signals as one of the triggers to score a website’s worth.  User data signals can be things such as Facebook Likes, Tweets, forwarded emails from Gmail, reviews, etc.  We will also discuss this further in a future blog post.

SEO Tools
As is standard in search conferences, there is a lot of discussion revolving around tools and which of them are best to use. We will be trying out some of the recommended tools over the next couple of weeks and will report on our findings.

Page Speed
Lots of discussion here too. While it was said that Google is currently not using page speed as a very large factor in your rankings, it was the common agreement at PubCon that this factor will play a larger role over time. There was a lot of great advice on how to improve your website page speed.  Rather than regurgitating what was discussed, we  implemented some of these suggestions on a few of our sites and documented the process along with before and after page load results.

Google PPC
We sat in on a really good PPC session.  One of the main key points pushed was that search queries matter more than keywords.  There was a lot of discussion on how to improve your quality score and how a higher quality score will lower your CPC. Lots of good information about how to break out your ads into smaller ad groups and more accurately target your desired clicks and eliminate the non-converting or non-relevant traffic/clicks.  We will be writing a couple of different posts about this with screen-shots in the weeks to come as we ourselves implement some of the suggestions.

Mobile
It’s no longer sufficient to be “thinking” about getting your site mobile ready – it is now crucial. With stats such as “mobile search queries have grown 500% in that last 2 years,” it is evident that your site needs to be mobile friendly if you want to tap in this rapidly growing traffic. This increase is due largely to the Android – which Google is investing in heavily – so this upward trend isn’t going away any time soon. Future blog posts to come on this topic will cover different ways you can make your site mobile friendly and methods you can use to capture those mobile searches.

HTML 5 and Microformats
This is more techie but there was some very good information on how to use microformats within your website pages/content and how to structure it with HTML5. We will be writing more about this too as we implement some of the suggestions into a couple of our sites.

I have been playing around (okay maybe obsessing) over Google instant search over the past couple of days and just wanted to layout some of my thoughts.

First from a user standpoint

I am not completely sure I like it. The instant changing results and how the screen flashes as I search is a little distracting. Those who know me will tell you that is because I am too simple, which is probably true. Maybe the hyperactive type personality will love this much more than me? On more than one occasion, I also received a message “Google Instant is off due to connection speed..”. Note that I am on a high speed cable modem connection so I feel sorry for all those folks on slower but still decent connections. I am wondering how much confusion this will cause.

Google instant search is off due to connection speed. Press Enter to search

From a results standpoint
I tested this out on a lot of different types of searches in a wide variety of niches. I noticed for some of the more competitive niches, the instant search favors and displays the large brands as you are typing your keywords. This is probably because most of the large brands dominate for short tail searches, therefore display first as you are typing the search being that your first couple of words would fall in a short tail search. This could have an effect on sites that are optimizing for the long tail around these competitive niches because a user may be inclined to click on a result that displays before they finish their entire long-tail search. Or users may just ignore the flashing instant results and finish typing their entire search string before looking at the results. It will be interesting to see how user’s behavior will change with this feature and if there will be lost traffic in long tail queries. You can be sure we will be eyeing our log files for this.

I noticed the instant search doesn’t do well for localized type search, at least in my tests. For example when searching for “2 bedroom condos in Pismo Beach” the instant search tried giving me results in Myrtle Beach and Destin FL. I had to keep typing until I typed “2 bedroom condos in Pismo” in order for me to get the results I wanted. Until instant search can predict what location I am wanting, I think a lot of the Real Estate and localized long tail searches will still have an impact.

Another example “size 9 women’s black boots” didn’t come close to pulling up what I wanted as I was typing until I starting typing the word boots. Interesting enough though, the second and third time I performed the search, Google displayed more relevant results when typing just “size 9 womens” so it seems as though the instant search also takes into account previous searches (personalized search). That didn’t happen with the Pismo Beach condo search though. No matter how many times I type that search, I am still presented with Myrtle Beach and Destin FL. I guess Google really wants me to move to SC or FL . I am sure Google will improve this overtime though.

From an SEO standpoint

One of the things I like about instant search is all of the other possibilities it gives you around a search. I think paying attention to the other options it gives you in that dropdown and optimizing for those can have a positive impact on your SEO and traffic you can obtain from targeting those other options.  I think SEOs really need to pay attention to this because if it sticks, it will for sure be a game changer.  I am also very interested to see how it affects our PPC ads and clicks.  It is too soon for me to comment on that but after at least a few weeks of analyzing our PPC data, I am hoping to have a better idea.  We will be keeping a close eye on our organic keyword traffic and PPC traffic to see what kind of impact this has and will try to report back in 30 days.

Have you been paying attention to the changes in the search engine space? Are you ready for these changes? On Monday, Google unveiled its real-time search features. One of the features of this real-time search will be a dynamic scrolling view of updates from Twitter, Facebook, MySpace and other sources. Watch the Google video of how this works:

Google’s real-time results are also pulling in other data, which includes latest updates from blogs, videos, news sites, and even images. The screen shot below shows a search on “Tiger Woods” and how some of these sources are mixed directly in on the first page of Google’s search results.

If you are an internet marketer, you need to be aware of these changes and create videos, optimize images in your content, participate in blogging, and participate in real-time social networks if you want to stay on top.

See my other posts about similar topics

• Google Search Sidebar
• Twitter is Important For SEO
• This is for all of those long-tail SEO skeptics
• Have you seen Google’s new search options?

What’s better than free, targeted traffic to your website? If you’re a site or business owner, not much. While the sessions at PubCon offer up everything from general to painfully detailed advice on organic search, here are the “ABC’s” of search from presenter Carolyn Shelby:

1. Analytics
   - Don’t rely solely on keywords that are already driving traffic; seek out other possibilities for new insights.
   - Go through your 404′s (people that have incorrectly typed domains in a search bar) to see what people are looking for (but not finding) on your site. This will shed light on what the user expectation is when they visit your website.
2. Ask
   - Don’t assume that real people understand industry jargon and buzzwords. You understand it; they may not.
   - Ask non-industry people about your product or service. Take note of the terms and phrases they use to describe things and incorporate those into your keyword lists.
3. Brainstorm
   - Invite people from throughout your organization to brainstorm on how they would search on the internet for your product or service. Their fresh perspective may reveal valuable insights.
4. Crunch your numbers, Cull your lists, and Create your keyword lists.
   - Once your research has yielded workable lists, it is imperative to evaluate which keywords and phrases are yielding the desired conversions.
   - Pull keywords that are not productive and focus on ones that are.
   - After honing in on the keywords and phrases that work best for your site, you should be able to build and nurture very effective keyword lists.

By no means do these “ABC’s” cover all that is important with SEO. They do, however, bring to light methods that oftentimes don’t immediately come to mind.