SEO 2011

The Changing Face of Search Engine Results in 2011

Getting your own web pages to the ‘top of the search engines’ is the online promotional dream of most businesses and webmasters, particularly those which are purely online businesses i.e. there are no physical outlets and pretty much all communication, promotion, and taking of orders is handled online. A ‘virtual’ business however is not just subject to the changing ‘real’ business environment, but also to important changes by other businesses i.e. the search engines, which currently have huge influence and control over the online business environment.

Recent U.S. figures show Google as having in excess of 65% of the search engine market, and when most businesses check their own website statistics, if the website is reasonably well established, this kind of percentage and above of referrers to the website as a percentage of all search engine referrals is still likely to come form Google. In fact Google is likely to be the single largest supplier of visitors your web pages.

This well established position in the search engine market has been built up over time and to large extent actually owes a lot to Google’s search engine technology and how it is used to try and protect and maintain the quality and integrity of its search engine results for its customers i.e. you, and your customers, and your potential customers. It has to be said however that part of this protective activity by the search engines has been fuelled by the constant attempts of many webmasters to reach the top of the search engines by whatever means possible.

Getting to ‘the Top’

The goal of ‘getting to the top of the search engines’ initially referred to reaching the top of the natural listings / organic listings i.e. those on the left hand side of the search engine results page (SERPS). Although ‘getting to the top’ is often the main stated goal of many webmasters and website owners, within this statement is the challenge of which and how many key phrases and web pages / web content could achieve this for you. Also the sheer public visibility of much of your SEO work and Internet marketing can only help your competitors who are also constantly trying to get to the ‘top’.

The introduction of Pay Per Click Advertising e.g. The beginnings of Google AdWords in 2005 was the start of making it much more unlikely that the same pages would appear technically ‘at the top’ of the SERPS. This is because some of the adverts are now shown technically at the very top of the SERPS. This does however mean that for a price, and with the right PPC skills you can now technically be ‘at the top’.

2005 in the UK saw the beginnings of a feature called Google Maps which has over time developed and become part of Google Places, a feature which allows business entries to be found in local search results and on the current day Google Maps. This has also made the coveted ‘top of the search engines’ position potentially more elusive depending on the nature of the enquiry. In fact this feature and the current emphasis behind it is bringing about a quiet but major change in the search engine results in Google in 20011. It’s not only Google – Bing has publicly mentioned its vision for a greater local focus and the potential for ‘personalisation’ of search engine results.

2010 to 2011

The last half of 2010 really saw the noticeable acceleration of successive and relatively major changes in how Google and the speed of how collected and compiled data and information about web content e.g. Google Caffeine (June 2010), Google Instant. The likely drivers for the introduction of these changes were essentially the forces of ‘push’ and ‘pull’. Google has long been ‘pulled’ by its vision of being ‘real time’ provider of highly relevant and important information. The ‘push’ aspect is likely to have come from the manifestation of some real threats in the market. These threats are very likely to include large numbers of people spending large amounts of their time on popular social network platforms such as Facebook (and therefore not spending that time on Google), and using social network platforms instead of Google (or any other search engine) for much of their online information needs. Also, Microsoft and Yahoo’s ‘Bing’ has been making some real progress, most noticeably in the U.S. and as such has the makings of a competitor, albeit on a relatively small (but growing) scale at the moment.

Local Focus

Google and other search engines know and probably want to know more about at the very least where we are searching from. Typing generic keywords and key phrases into Google are most likely to produce a page of search engine results with the least ‘local’ focus. However, even some generic terms entered now without an accompanying regional reference can produce prominent ‘local’ listings at the top of the page of search engine results, and other natural listings related to where we physically are when we are using Google. If a key phrase associated with a business / profession which typically has a geographically specific area is entered with a town/city/area name, Google’s current search engine listing are likely to produce a large number of Google Places listings at the top of the page of search engine results, often to the point that they appear to take up all of the ‘above the fold’ area. Conversion theory in websites tells us that scrolling is something that Web users like to avoid, and therefore this could put pressure on the expected visitor numbers that some of the top ‘natural listings’ web pages could expect to receive.

Another potential casualty of local listings appearing to take up much more of the traditional ‘top of the search engines’ position are the many local business directories, some of which may exist / have existed offline too. The service they essentially offer is to provide details and information about businesses in a local area specified by the searcher. Unfortunately this is the same service that search engines such as Google now routinely provides with a normal search. This means that not only do the search engines appear to be more directly in competition with directories of this kind than ever, but the (natural) listings of the online directory pages themselves are now buried below the search engines’ own local results, AND whatever natural listings for other pages appear above tem in the search engine results.

A further potential hurdle to most webmasters is the introduction by Google to the search engine results (on November 2010) of ‘petit fours’. This means that up to 4 separate listings from 1 single domain can now been shown on a single page of search engine results provided the pages are relevant enough. For example, by typing “moma” into Google (Museum of Modern Art) you will be able to see how the whole ‘above the fold’ are of the search engine results can potentially be taken up by listings from one single website – good news if it’s your website, but the chances are it’s not.

The goal of ‘top of the search’ engines is therefore becoming a much less predictable situation, and a much more challenging one than ever before for many webmasters. 2011 has been characterised so far by more change and a strong and visible focus on ‘local’ search engine results.