About three hours ago, I posted my Case Study on RemodelingMySpace.com. Then, looking at my stats just now I noticed someone coming to my site from a Google India search on the phrase “case study”. And I figured it had to be a glitch in the matrix, because Google a) doesn’t index that fast, as a rule, and b) my site doesn’t have the kind of PageRank in Google to be on page one of search results for that kind of phrase, anyway.
So what gives? Well, I did a search on that phrase in Google and lookie here…
This is a section of the bottom of the page for a Google search on the phrase “case study”. That’s MY post from three hours ago, immediately under the section heading of “Blog posts about case study”!
Now I’m not breaking news here, I have discovered. It seems this idea that Google has about sticking the first three blog search results at the bottom of a “normal” search is something they’ve been experimenting with since at least November of last year.
But have a think about that for a moment. Sure, the link to your post is not at the top of the first page, but it’s on the first page!
Hey, I’m an SEO guy, among other things. I know how hard it can be to get onto the front page of Google for a given keyword or phrase. And now, Google have given bloggers a (albeit short) window of time to be on the front page!
Very cool. But a few “excitement dampeners” to bear in mind:
- Your post is only there until three more recent blog posts are indexed, which can happen quickly.
- The keywords have to be in the title of your post. That a little limiting.
- Google don’t always show these blog posts. Indeed, I repeated the same search just now and… no blog posts listed
So all in all, I’m not sure what to make of this. If it was a permanent feature, I’d say it could have some real value as a strategy to get some quick exposure and traffic for hard-to-SEO keywords, via blog posts. But the feature seems to come and go… at least for now.
Have you seen this before? What do you make of it?
18 Comments
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Just guessing that Google somehow indexes sites that it categorises as blogs more like news sites, i.e. very regularly. I haven’t seen the results on the front page before, but do notice that posts get picked up quickly by Google Alerts (within 24 hours), and other bloggers report the same if not faster: http://www.alexdesigns.com/blog/2006/11/wow-google-alerts-spiders-are-quick.cfm
Good fine, Alister!
And for your question “Have you seen this before? What do you make of it?”:
Since I just read your article, I’ll have to check when I post new posts on my blog. I’ll post a comment if I’m able to see my post on Page 1.
- Avi
Ooops! That should be “Good find”.
Sorry for the typo!
Interesting! I had no idea about this at all. However, I was getting the impression that Google were indexing somethings faster than I would have expected.
I’ve never noticed this when I am doing searches on google, but congrats on getting on the front page, if even for a short time!
Very cool! (Even if it is for a short period of time. It could still generate some great traffic.
I’m going to test this myself with a few keywords soon. It will be interesting to see the results.
Thanks!
That’s pretty cool. I never noticed it until now…doesn’t seem to come up every time (or even often in my case..)
Two words: zen digg
The difference, however, is that I can target the content whereas the effect seen here is title SEO stuffing (otherwise known as black hat link baiting) alone.
Hi,
I recently came across a similar phenomenon on one of the social bookmarking sites. Only the real cool thing here is that if someone votes for your bookmark or visits it, the Google position gets a boost. So I cycled between having about 10 first page results on Google, and a few first place results across different key phrases, and being completely invisible in Google. Nice thing about this is that you’re not just completely losing relevance over time.
This sort of thing is really open to abuse for anyone who needs to boost their traffic at a certain time in the day - so I’m not going to mention the bookmarking site, for the timebeing.
I do find though that you can get high first page results with onsite optimisation - you only really need a lot of backlinks when you are playing with the big boys. This said, without the backlinks its so easy to get knocked off top position by some one who knows what they are doing - so backlinks camaigns are still crucial for commercial purposes.
You’re a “SEO guy” and you don’t know that the keywords should be in the title of your post???
Malcolm, of course I do… but what has that got to do with this post?
You can’t balme me for trying to get a quick plug on your 15 minutes of fame… lol whether or not you keep it here is a different story. I just started creating a website focused on home improvements which is http://www.requestapro.com
Impressive stuff Alister.
Hi Alistair
Really impressed with you getting on so quickly. We managed to get a client setup with a new site and listed on Google (and on 1st page) within 24 hours - am convinced a great deal of this was down to the blog entry.
…and apologies for spelling Alister incorrectly!
Has anyone tried Clipmarks. It clocked up a Google ranking for me in just 47 minutes on one ocassion. I’m still not sure how a feel about it from a duplicate content point of view though, despite the fact it uses cite and blockquote.
Yes, I noticed the same thing on my blog at http://www.whoila.com/blog
I would post something and within an hour, it’s on Google Search results… don’t understand it myself. But sometimes results disappear after a few days though. So not sure what to make of it.
Hi, noticed this a while ago , though as you say dont always show . Will get you a few visitors I guess.
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