92 replies to this topic

[kyrasdad]

A simple picture I now have of Google SERP's is the following:

Google has formally stated that the Search side is run independently of the Advertising side. So a SERP has similarities with a newspaper.

The body of the SERP, i.e. the search results, is like the editorial content of a newspaper. The top banner and the top right hand side vertical group of ads are just that. So if you want information look in the body of the SERP. If you like reading ads, look at the top right hand corner.

That's always been the case. However, when you turn to the sports page of a newspaper, you should expect to see relevant sports articles. The Florida update, in lots of cases, delivered non-sports articles. It failed to deliver relevant content, at least on the terms I track for our business.

By that I don't mean that it didn't deliver our pages. It hardly delivered any pages that were relevant to the search from almost any perspective. Glad to see they are sorting it out, though. Lots of women's fashion articles are still on their sports pages, though.

[OldWelshGuy]

Barry that is a great comparison, TY i will use that in the future.
Every day is a schoold day on the web

[BruceLamb]

Hi, all:

For what its worth, I've been of the opinion for over a year, now, that MSN and Teoma deliver much better results for commercial queries, while Google does an excellent job on non-commercial queries. The latest mod to Google's algorithm has, in my mind, made the difference even more stark.

That being said, until the rest of the world starts to see things my way , we're stuck with the desire to be found on Google.

Perhaps this latest algorithm change will force the issue. I know that when I search on Google and don't find what I'm looking for on the first query, I instantly paste the query string into the address bar and perform the same search on MSN. The problem, of course, is that I'm probably not a typical searcher, being immersed in the search industry.

Here's hoping for a change in peoples perception of what constitutes a relevant search result!

- Bruce