Thursday, August 02, 2007 at 10:46 AM
Held on June 27th, Searchnomics 2007 gave us (Greg Grothaus and Shashi Thakur) a chance to meet webmasters and answer some of their questions. As we're both engineers focused on improving search quality, the feedback was extremely valuable. Here's our take on the conference and a recap of some of what we talked about there.
Shashi: While I've worked at Google for over a year, this was my first time speaking at a conference. I spoke on the "Search Engine Friendly Design" panel. The exchanges were hugely valuable, helping me grasp some of the concerns of webmasters. Greg and I thought it would be valuable to share our responses to a few questions:
Does location of server matter? I use a .com domain but my content is for customers in the UK.
In our understanding of web content, Google considers both the IP address and the top-level domain (e.g. .com, .co.uk). Because we attempt to serve geographically relevant content, we factor domains that have a regional significance. For example, ".co.uk " domains are likely very relevant for user queries originating from the UK. In the absence of a significant top-level domain, we often use the web server's IP address as an added hint in our understanding of content.
I have many different sites. Can I cross-link between them?Before you begin cross-linking sites, consider the user's perspective and whether the crosslinks provide value. If the sites are related in business -- e.g., an auto manual site linking to an auto parts retail site, then it could make sense -- the links are organic and useful. Cross-linking between dozens or hundreds of sites, however, probably doesn't provide value, and I would not recommend it.
Greg: Like Shashi, this was also my first opportunity to speak at a conference as a Googler. It was refreshing to hear feedback from the people who use the software we work every day to perfect. The session also underscored the argument that we're just at the beginning of search and have a long way to go. I spoke on the subject of Web 2.0 technologies. It was clear that many people are intimidated by the challenges of building a Web 2.0 site with respect to search engines. We understand these concerns. You should expect see more feedback from us on this subject, both at conferences and through our blog.
Any special guidance for DHTML/AJAX/Flash documents?
It's important to make sure that content and navigation can be rendered/negotiated using only HTML. So long as the content and navigation are the same for search crawlers and end users, you're more than welcome to use advanced technologies such as Flash and/or Javascript to improve the user experience using a richer presentation. In "Best uses of Flash," we wrote in more detail about this, and are working on a post about AJAX technology.
32 comments:
"Before you begin cross-linking sites, consider the user's perspective and whether the crosslinks provide value."
And let's hope that once we consider the user's perspective and realize that the link is completely relative that Google knows enough to judge the link the same way as well.
Can Google assume that they know better than me what my website's users will also be interested in?
> Can Google assume that they
> know better than me what my
> website's users will also be
> interested in?
I guess they can try... and I think this is meant to defend against spammers, not you (assuming you're not a spammer). If you only put up some relevant cross-links there should be no harm. Guess it's more about a threshold -- do you have 30 domains which are all linking to each other? Sounds like it's a link farm...
Shashi -
I have audience both in US and UK.
As of today i rank number 1 for a particular term in the UK, because my servers are located there.
Provided my site is well optimized for the keyword, what impact will it have on the SERP's if i set up a server in the US?
Assuming that the existing competitors are weak for the keyword.Would there be any other factor to be considered like the age of server and the like?
Cheers!
Mani
I have a site that contains mostly North American content, but also has significant content targeted at other locations (UK and Australia mostly).
The site is a .org. and is hosted in the US, so won't have any of the IP address or domain hints for geographic location. It's an established site, and I don't want to artificially slice it into multiple domains.
Instead, it would be great if I could supply some geographic hint in the form of a per page metatag. Allow me to specify locations, with a total weighting of 1.0 (so I have to prioritise). So UK:0.7,Ireland:0.15,Europe:0.1,World:0.05 as an example for UK targeted content.
> it would be great if I could supply
> some geographic hint
I like steven's suggestion: I also want to provide a service for US, UK and Australian customers, but my servers are located in Germany. Therefore it is very difficult (read: nearly impossible) for me to provide a localized service that has a fair ranking chance.
I hope that this isn't too presumptuous but may I have more clarity on cross-linking please.
Two years ago, we expanded our destination travel to Arizona, Mexico and Canada. Our Nevada based company has a very specific URL for Nevada - therefore, offering other destinations within our current URL was unrealistic. We then created each destination and each location specific to that destination within their own URL. No cross property duplications on any site. Mexico was Mexico, Canada is Canada etc...
We currently rank high on Google with all our destinations. No cross-links (read further)
We removed the cross-links due to Yahoo - who banned us specifically for it, in-fact. Yahoo stated that we should run URL's as follows:
Nevada-Properties/Mexico/
Brain Surgery Please? Anyway - It seems really odd that we should not utilize the cross-links since all of our customers utilize one or more of our destinations.
Now for the clarity that I need. Is it fair for me to assume that the Mexico Properties are of value to my Arizona URL and therefore cross -link the sites? Keep in mind, the Mexico properties are found no where in my Arizona site - Yet when the client calls us, we do offer these options for additional destinations - Could a simple "Mexico" link suffice, without fear of being banned from Google?
I'm sure this is quite confusing, can you imagine if we did what yahoo advised us to do? In fact I was told to shut down our highest yielding URL (original) and start a new one that encompassed all 4 destinations as well as losing all my Google Rankings. (Genius!)
I find the server location thing a little odd. Many non US sites are now hosted in the US due to the affordability of hosting there (and the performance) in comparison to local server options. Seems a pity that to take advantage of this we need to move onto more expensive and worse performing options.
Most of my sites are hosted in texas - although we are not located in texas. Its just where the web host is.
Several of our sites reside on a clustered host which actually only has 2 ip addresses for all of their clients to share amoung hundreds of sites. However the hosting system they have fly. So i hope that those ips can be flagged and ignored.
As for cross linking between sites - we always take a look at the content of our sites and see which ones go together and link together those that make sense.
I am building a website of about subdivisions and will also have websites for each of the subdivision that I will offer for free for those subdivision to use as their own website for those who don't currently have a website. I want to have my main site link to all the subdivision websites even though they will all be hosting on only a few servers. Will Google penalize me for that?!?
Is there is any possibility that sometimes in the future when Googlebot will be able to see high end graphics as it is seeing at the textual contents now..?
"In the absence of a significant top-level domain, we often use the web server's IP address as an added hint in our understanding of content."
Does that mean a website with a .com-Domain and an IP adress in Germany is considered more relevant for Germany than e.g. the US?
Myself I think every website is treated differently with special Google Hand Editing I guess we found what the 900 non google engineers do. Besides select nifty google videos in youtube and assign quality scores.
Truth? I think that is pretty much accurate otherwise we would see some employees over 25. If you paid them more maybe they wouldn't have to run imputantly controled google adsense ads. Whats good for them seems to be invalid for us.
Hi
I am trying to give my trading company a International trading feel with a .com, but with 80% of my trade in the UK do I need a .co.uk ? But then I have duplicate content. Mmmm more things to keep me awake
David
I have a question regarding the link exchange. Google guidelines states:
"Examples of link schemes can include:
* Links intended to manipulate PageRank
* Links to web spammers or bad neighborhoods on the web
* Link exchange and reciprocal links schemes ("Link to me and I'll link to you.")
* Buying or selling links
Could you please define Link exchange and reciprocal links schemes ("Link to me and I'll link to you.") a little bit better? A lot of people where i am from are worrying they will get banned because they have reciprocal links on their sites. If I make link exchanges with sites relevant to mine, will I get banned? Can we please have a clear Yes/No answer on this?
We server US market, our site is .com but we host our site in UK. We have lost our page ranking since March 2007 and have not been able to figure out why. Other things being same, would we achieve better rankings if we shift our hosting to US server?
Could this make a huge difference?
I also find the server location thing odd, I like to take advantage of the pricing and support hosting options in the US, but because of this my local organic search results are compromised in the UK.
It would be far better to be based on where your domain name is registered too? Surely this would make perfect sense rather than where your server is located!
I find the usage of 'server location' and/or .TLD odd. Granted I assume there's some valid points to that, such as 'easy to check', rather than doing whois queries to see which country the registered company/individual has been set up into.
This is rather alarming for me as my results have gotten quite a bit worse, I used to have results for a certain relevant keyword between positions #1 and #3 for years, and now my site cannot be found within 2 or 3 pages of the same keyword.
I, my company and whole business is based in finland (.tld .fi), however *I* use .net domain and my server(s) are in the United states. The language used on the site is finnish, but apparently that doesn't matter?
..also, interestingly my position on the google results started to deteriorate as soon as I started purchasing adword-traffic, for this certain keyword, and dozens of other relevant ones. Clever trick to make customers purchase more traffic, to make their "free" rankings lower? [/end conspiracy theory]
Delete my previous message , this a good translation.
We know that in order to position a domain in a local Google search engine (Google.es google.de google.it, etc) the domain extension and its Ip are important influential factors. This has just recently been revealed by Google even though it was already well known.
Do you think this is good?
In Spain for example, the hosting companies are not very good so that important webs that must be up and running all of the time, it is recommended to host them in the USA to provide stability and proper customer service. If you contract a hosting service in USA and on top of that you have a .com domain, it makes it much more difficult to position the page in a local version of Google. There are two ways to fix this problem:
-Change the domain .com to a local domain and redirect all of the content (not that this would be very advisable)
-Change the hosting to one in your country, but this would imply a slower web page, a decline in customer service , problems with servers going down....
It would be a step in the wrong direction for the services we provide the user.
Is Google really providing more relevant contant for the user by offering web pages with local domains and local Ip adresses?
Does this not go against the idea of a universal search?
Regarding server location, Google servers have taken to giving me UK servers, though I'm in California, and my IP address shows that clearly. Also, my language preferences are US English, not UK.
I'm baffled and want my US servers back. No offense to the UK intended, to be sure :)
No wonder most of my visitors come from the US.
Is it very bad to link from my site A to my site B, and from site B to site A? Both are related.
I have audience both in BR and PT in my personal website.
Have same keyword to set up a server in the BR?
I'm not sure if anyone has totally cleared this one up.
I have a .uk.com domain
(http://www.onlinegardencentre.uk.com), but we use a US webhost called Hostgator. Therefore both of Google's hints point it towards the fact it is a US site. However, it is actually based on the UK market and is entirely written in British-English.
Will Google only display this site efficiently on google.com or will it be shown as being a UK site on google.co.uk?
Thank you
I forgot to mention the onlinegardencentre.uk.com leads into our retail shop at http://www.cupargardencentre.co.uk. Would that be enough to indicate to Google that it is a UK site?
Cupar garden centre:
Check out the new geographic location tool that we recently released. It should help resolve your questions.
It would be far better to be based on where your domain name poker is registered too? Surely this would make perfect sense rather than where your server is located!
It would seem initially that the language options area a better bet than the geographic element. Many sites wish to attract the UK, USA or Australian markets as they are in the same language. Targeting multiple locations as you can in the adwords is the miost sensible option overall . I am in Spain yet I target English incoming clients. The site is hosted in USA with .com.. That must be a very typical scenario. Yes I want to appear in the Uk results, thay are 40% of my business but I cannot afford the risk of losing the other 60% can I ? I just hope all the time that the searchers do not utilise the uk results only option etc. Then I will hopefully still pick up half of the Uk clients anyway, giving me estimated 80% target potential as oppose to the 40% if I just make it Uk only. It is 2008 and majority of online businesses will definatly aim at multiple locations. This needs to allow this quite obviously dont you think?
Many good questions and comments but if Google never replies to any of these questions/comments what good are they?
Dont ever kid yourself that Google is interested in anybody that cannot make them lots of money.
Its a corporation now not a helpful community thing that it once was. 90% of people using it nowadays in many many guises are probably doing it out of neccessity as oppose to the love and respect lets face it.
That was never a good thing for the internet and never will be.
They remind me of the American government a little haha Lets see how much of the world we can own, how much money we can make and all the sheep will blindly follow
The geographical issue is really a controversial one.
I have been testing a way to avoiding the hosting ip, by placing language and country meta tags. I ignore if these meta tags are effectively crawled by google, but at least I will give it a try
Matt, I do feel that since the ZA Geo graphic enforcement and the problem of 27th December 2007 has really hurt our US & UK visitor base. We have seen a gradual but marked drop in vistors since August till now even thought we are indexed.
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