610 16th Street Suite 207
Oakland CA 94612
(510) 200-TANK - (510) 200-8265
info@athinktank.com
http://www.athinktank.com
Saturday, November 13, 2010
Old Broad Match is back!
In case you missed the memo, the old broad match can be accessed via the plus operator.
+book will allow searches for book and books and misspellings like boocs or maybe boooks. What it will not allow is the more general substitutions that Google likes to make with regular broad match where your book might turn into a novel or airline ticked booking.
Still use broad batch for keyword discovery or if you like blowing funds. +harry +potter +books vs harry potter +books vs "harry potter books." Basically this is great news since we now have a controlled yet flexible way to work with more keywords. I have converted most all of my broad match terms to this now refined broad match.
+book will allow searches for book and books and misspellings like boocs or maybe boooks. What it will not allow is the more general substitutions that Google likes to make with regular broad match where your book might turn into a novel or airline ticked booking.
Still use broad batch for keyword discovery or if you like blowing funds. +harry +potter +books vs harry potter +books vs "harry potter books." Basically this is great news since we now have a controlled yet flexible way to work with more keywords. I have converted most all of my broad match terms to this now refined broad match.
AdWords Editor Update
AdWords Editor rolled an update the other day, and if you run huge accounts, you may run into a stalled editor download. In this case, create a shortcut to the app, then edit the launch to add this param, -dlbatchsize 500 or -dlbatchsize 2000 to batch up commands.
Monday, March 1, 2010
New in Google Search: Geographic Refinements
In the first 2 months of 2010, Google has rolled out impressive developments for search. New options to quickly customize search parameters are helping users receive the most relevant information in the shortest amount of time. I find myself clicking that "More Options" button in Google more than I ever have before, especially with the recent of addition of "Nearby Search". This great new option allows us to filter our Google search results according to our current geographic location. Refinement options include the ability to search by city, region/state, or simply a custom location that you enter manually.
Google says, "Location can tremendously aid the way you search, so we were pleased to add the ability to refine your searches by location to the Search Options panel. Say you're big on the outdoors and want to find bike rental information, bicycling blogs or the closest sporting goods store. There's a good chance you're looking for information that's relevant to your region, city or even a city you're visiting on vacation. That's where this tool can help. One of the really useful things about this tool is that it works geographically — not just with keywords — so you don't have to worry about adding a city name (e.g., "Berkeley") to your query and missing webpages that are in a similar region (e.g., "East Bay", "Oakland") but might not specifically mention the city in your search. "
With the prevalence of social media in today's world, it's becoming more and more clear that we want our web experience to be personal and reflect us as individuals. New search options allow me to actively engage in my search results, often reading the reviews and blogs of other locals that turn up in my search results. In fact, this is how I found my favorite new salad bar right down the street from my office! Next time you do a search, click that important "Show Options" tab and give it a try.
Google says, "Location can tremendously aid the way you search, so we were pleased to add the ability to refine your searches by location to the Search Options panel. Say you're big on the outdoors and want to find bike rental information, bicycling blogs or the closest sporting goods store. There's a good chance you're looking for information that's relevant to your region, city or even a city you're visiting on vacation. That's where this tool can help. One of the really useful things about this tool is that it works geographically — not just with keywords — so you don't have to worry about adding a city name (e.g., "Berkeley") to your query and missing webpages that are in a similar region (e.g., "East Bay", "Oakland") but might not specifically mention the city in your search. "
With the prevalence of social media in today's world, it's becoming more and more clear that we want our web experience to be personal and reflect us as individuals. New search options allow me to actively engage in my search results, often reading the reviews and blogs of other locals that turn up in my search results. In fact, this is how I found my favorite new salad bar right down the street from my office! Next time you do a search, click that important "Show Options" tab and give it a try.
Friday, February 6, 2009
Simple SEO Search for Beginners
Let's go over a couple of quick exercises you can run to examine your site's visibility within a search engine.
If you are new to Search Engine Optimization (SEO), you will need to learn a few basic things to get going. After you learn how to do this yourself, there are tools that can help you do this in the future.
Start with some basic tests that will show you how you are currently performing with search engine optimization. These are not concrete answers, but should give you a fair idea of what's going on.
Search Google for "site:YOURSITE.COM" . What you will see in the search results is a listing of all of the pages that Google wishes to show you, so review these results carefully. You should have a good mix of titles and descriptions, with everything unique and to your liking. These are not necessarily what all users will see when searching Google, but most will. Make sure these pages are telling your customers what you want them to know about you.
The next thing to do is check if your site is showing results for your search phrase(s). This is not a check of your page rank or site rank within the search engine, but simply how well your site is appearing for your desired search phrases. Let's check the A Think Tank site for its use of the phrase "search engine optimization". You will see that the construct is very similar to what we just used above.
(site:athinktank.com "search engine optimization") http://www.google.com/search?q=site:athinktank.com+"search+engine+optimization" .
When checking your own site, make sure you are getting the right kind of page results. Are those pages what you hoped to see? What pages are missing? In looking at Yahoo! within Google, site:www.yahoo.com, you will get some results that are not appealing and point to an issue of unique pages and duplicate listings. This issue will be addressed in future blog posts. For a smaller site, you definitely don't want to have most of your titles or meta descriptions that are the same. Variety and originality are the best path to successful SEO!
The tool we use to complete these tasks on a daily basis is called Search Status, http://www.quirk.biz/searchstatus/. Search Status comes as a FireFox plugin and is very easy to use.
If you are new to Search Engine Optimization (SEO), you will need to learn a few basic things to get going. After you learn how to do this yourself, there are tools that can help you do this in the future.
Start with some basic tests that will show you how you are currently performing with search engine optimization. These are not concrete answers, but should give you a fair idea of what's going on.
Search Google for "site:YOURSITE.COM" . What you will see in the search results is a listing of all of the pages that Google wishes to show you, so review these results carefully. You should have a good mix of titles and descriptions, with everything unique and to your liking. These are not necessarily what all users will see when searching Google, but most will. Make sure these pages are telling your customers what you want them to know about you.
The next thing to do is check if your site is showing results for your search phrase(s). This is not a check of your page rank or site rank within the search engine, but simply how well your site is appearing for your desired search phrases. Let's check the A Think Tank site for its use of the phrase "search engine optimization". You will see that the construct is very similar to what we just used above.
(site:athinktank.com "search engine optimization") http://www.google.com/search?q=site:athinktank.com+"search+engine+optimization" .
When checking your own site, make sure you are getting the right kind of page results. Are those pages what you hoped to see? What pages are missing? In looking at Yahoo! within Google, site:www.yahoo.com, you will get some results that are not appealing and point to an issue of unique pages and duplicate listings. This issue will be addressed in future blog posts. For a smaller site, you definitely don't want to have most of your titles or meta descriptions that are the same. Variety and originality are the best path to successful SEO!
The tool we use to complete these tasks on a daily basis is called Search Status, http://www.quirk.biz/searchstatus/. Search Status comes as a FireFox plugin and is very easy to use.
Friday, December 19, 2008
AdWords Editor Update
Yesterday the Google AdWords Editor team rolled out a new version of AdWords Editor that includes Quality Score (release notes). We love this because they have taken another step toward making Editor a tool that we can actually use! I say this tongue-in-cheek, of course, because right now working alone in Editor alone is just plain silly. You need to constantly go back and forth between Editor and the web version of AdWords to gather all of the needed metrics. With the latest version of Editor including Quality Score, you can at least identify the Ad Groups that need work based on that magic QS number. All we need now for Editor are clicks, impressions, CTR, conversions, etc... heck, why not clean it up with Ajax ?
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