Duplicate Content? Tell Google which URL Parameters to Ignore
Google has recently added a new feature to Google Webmaster Tools (GWT) called “Parameter Handling”. This feature allows site owners, web development and search agencies to add up to 15 URL parameters that you don’t want Google to crawl and index.
The new Parameter Handling feature works in two ways:
1. When Google crawls your website and finds duplicate content from parameter driven URLs, it will list suggested parameters that you could tell Google to ignore in the future – thus eliminating any duplicate content produced from these parameter driven URLs
2. Google allows you to get in there and specify parameters yourself. So if you’re launching a new site and know that there are a number of parameter driven URLs that could give you a duplicate content headache you can simply go to the GWT console and manually tell Google to ignore the parameters
Why did Google launch parameter handling?
Well that’s an interesting question, this new feature, whilst helpful with its additional insights into how Google sees you website, certainly doesn’t provide the best method of reducing or even completely eliminating duplicate content issues, unless perhaps you’re an SME. Also from Google’s perspective, by getting sites with duplicate content issues to at least reduce the amount of it, it will instantly free up their computing and crawler resource.
Why’s this useful for my site?
Well in short it’s not, unless perhaps you’re an SME. Yes it gives you some additional insights into how Google view your website but for companies with an in-house team, web development and/or SEO agency working alongside them you really shouldn’t be worrying about this new feature.
Why not?
Firstly it only applies to Google so this won’t solve any issues in Bing or Yahoo.
Secondly when developing a website it should be designed and structured in a way that minimises duplicate content, but let’s face it eliminating all duplicate content via the website structure isn’t always possible, but you can certainly minimise it.
Thirdly if your SEO agency or in-house team are worth the money you-re paying them then they should already be aware of any duplicate content issues and should have solved them or be on their way to fixing them via any of or a combination of the four methods below:
– 301 redirect
– Meta Canonical tags
– Meta Robots tags
– Robots.txt
Perfect for SME’s
Let’s face it in the UK and US, amongst other countries, Google dominates the search landscape, so for SME’s and companies that don’t have any on-going web development or SEO support they may not be able to implement 301 redirects or any of the other methods to eliminate duplicate content. However, the Parameter Handling function in GWT provides a free and easy method of reducing duplicate content within Google – and currently in most instances Google is the only search engine that SME’s need to worry about.
Got duplication of content? What’s the solution?
As much as I’d like to say there’s a perfect solution there isn’t – it really depends on the structure of your site and URLs. There are advantages and disadvantages to all four methods that were listed earlier but ultimately your web developer or SEO agency will advise you as to which is the best method to eliminate any duplicate content on your site. Personally I’m not a fan of the Canonical tags and I only use it as a last resort, purely as I think other options are better, but that’s just my opinion – I’m not saying its right or wrong.
In an ideal world the 301 redirect would be used to eliminate all duplicate content, but sometimes it’s just not the right solution. But where possible the 301 redirect is the preferred method to reduce duplicate content issues. This is seen as the best option because it redirects users, search engines and a portion of any link juice to the primary page, thus leaving only one version of the page, which is ideal.
Latitude is one of the largest and longest-established digital marketing agencies in the UK, with expertise in SEO, PPC, display advertising, social media, conversion analytics and affiliate marketing. Original here.
Derren Brown: How To Control The Nation (And Your Brand?)
Last Friday Derren Brown has once again entered our minds and attempted his most hypnotic effect yet. The UK’s most talented psychological illusionist claims that he literally ‘glued viewers to their seats’ in his show “How To Control The Nation”.
Mr. Brown might have managed to predict the lottery two weeks ago, but his most impressive trick in my mind is the adoption of the latest social media trends to engage with his audience.
Having a keen interest in Magic, suggestion, NLP and hypnosis myself (along with SEO), immediately after the first “How To Win The Lottery” my curiosity sent me online to gauge the reaction of viewers. Hundreds had beaten me too it and were already engaging in 140 character rants, arguments, praises and condemnations of the show on Twitter, where Derren’s number of followers had surged to well over 40,000 followers.
Within minutes of the Lottery Prediction show ending, the social networking site was awash with Lottery related tweets and Derren was trending for two related keywords (an impressive feat considering the show was only shown in the UK).
The Influence of Television And Social Media On Search Trends
Google Insights show there is a perfect match between the rise in search volumes and TV broadcast dates, the result of an increase in viewer interest having watched the show and wanting to find out more.
What’s interesting is the 5 fold increase in search volume traffic after “How To Win The Lottery” compared to each of the previous specials. The average volume of searches for each of the specials has remained relatively constant between 2004 and the middle of 2009, but the latest show is a big exception.
Explaining The Sharp Rise In Brand Searches
Why is the volume of searches for “Derren Brown” five times greater than after previous shows? Here are some possible explanations.
– Derren Brown’s reputation has grown (not likely): He has become more famous with every show he has done, and more people are aware of his existence. However, search volumes after each special up until mid 2009 have remained similar. Therefore, his popularity is not likely to have contributed much to the recent surge.
– The Enticing Show Title (possible): Any show called “How To Win The Lottery” is going to create a great deal of buzz, both online and offline. Far more seductive than any of the previous titles, and naturally appealing to people’s greed, this one is going to hook people in.
– Derren Brown’s Social Media Campaign using Twitter and a Blog (highly likely): Derren Brown set up a Twitter account on 20th March 2009 and has a blog dedicated to “The Events”. These have been regularly updated and added to, keeping followers in the loop continuously.
– An Increase In TV Publicity (possible) – More advertising by Channel 4? The sharp rise in searches directly after the show indicates that people were not searching after seeing adverts, but after seeing the main show. And there hasn’t been much more advertising than previous shows.
The current mix of TV and online marketing make dissecting what contributed to the search volume increase and by how much difficult. No doubt everything helped. However, I would argue that the existence of the blog and Twitter accounts is a MASSIVE contributing factor, and clearly shows the power of social media in action, when used correctly.
As the tweets continued to flow into the early hours of the morning after the show, news of Derren’s accomplishments had already reached a worldwide audience. Many non-UK Twitter users were left bemused wondering who this mystery man was. No doubt they searched to find out!
Did Derren Really Hit The Jackpot?
Judging by the volume of searches for Derren Brown tickets after the show, yes. He has also been steadily releasing tickets for his Enigma show every few days via Facebook and Twitter links. A fantastic strategy to ensure a sell out tour, now that he has 40,000 Twitter followers and 69,000 Facebook friends.
The Danger Of The Instant Feedback Loop
If you are going to promote yourself through mediums that are constantly being monitored by thousands of people every second then chances are any chinks in your armour will be blown wide open – fast. As a magician, that makes Derren’s job much tougher.
The day after the prediction show a YouTube video by mutatedmonty explaining one possible explanation of the Lottery trick went viral. As of today, the video has been seen by over half a million visitors, a figure sure to increase as the rest of “The Events” series continues.
The story was also picked up major UK newspapers such as The Guardian, The Telegraph who aggregated the buzz and sculpted summaries of events, including links to the explanation video.
With social media your brand can be damaged just as quickly as it is built. Any negative brand buzz, no matter if it is true or merely rumours is going to permeate the web just as fast, if not faster than positive news. And there’s little you can do to prevent it.
Summary and Takeaways
Social media has becoming a highly effective method of getting building your brand. You can reach audiences globally by generating local buzz, which then gets investigated by others. It is fast, can be done on a shoe-string budget, and can produce fantastic results when you know what you are doing.
Latitude is one of the largest and longest-established digital marketing agencies in the UK, with expertise in SEO, PPC, display advertising, social media, conversion analytics and affiliate marketing. Original article is here.
What To Expect From The Google Ad Exchange
Following the launch of the Google DoubleClick Ad Exchange on Friday, who better to seek an opinion on this new development than Satish Jayakumar, COO and CoFounder of European Ad Exchange AdJug.
This article looks at the benefits of online ad exchanges and the likely impact of Google’s entry in the market.
Google is all things to all people, isn’t it? From mapping to telephony and email to radio and TV – I can’t remember being able to live without it.
Over the last few years, Google seem to have become intricately involved in every single market & sector, but it’s starting to become obvious that while a lot of what they do is very nice, there’s quite a lot that just doesn’t make any money. One could argue that they have been flirting with several different products in all sorts of sectors, but nothing seems to stick.
Im not suggesting that Google is just a one trick pony. But I do think they’ve made a few pretty unfocused decisions since their IPO paying $1.65 billion for YouTube, for example.
All that said, I think have got it together again & things are about to get a lot more exciting. Why? Some time in 2007, Google rather unceremoniously went about making their biggest acquisition yet. They coughed up 3 billion to acquire DoubleClick – the world’s largest display ad serving solution. For a while afterward there was a mad feeding frenzy wherein Microsoft bought aQuantive and WPP snapped up 247 Realmedia. I’d confidently speculate that the latter two transactions were entirely meaningless & were borne purely out of fear. For Google however, the acquisition was strategic for in DoubleClick they had plans that would hurtle them to twice the size of business they are today. If you haven’t felt the tremor yet, then hold on because DoubleClick’s Ad Exchange (codename: ADX) has hit the stalls and yes, it’s going to be big.
So, as the COO of one of the major exchange platforms in the market today, I thought I’d write here to give some insight on what to expect.
What the heck is an ad exchange?
The closest likeness in the real world is a stock exchange. It’s a place where buyers and sellers of ad inventory can congregate in one place and under the right conditions facilitate trading. It will initially deal predominantly with display advertising, but in few years you can expect it to blend into the search product.
What are the advantages of an ad exchange?
Exchanges create pretty ground-breaking advantages:
- They are open markets where skill & know-how create efficiency as opposed to sheer buying power.
- They offer total equality and openness to both parties engaged in the transaction. Supply & demand determine price.
- It is the dawn of a new era where data can truly be leveraged by advertisers to engage directly with consumers. You need not serve ads or banners blindly without knowing if the consumer has any interest in your product/service.
On a stock exchange, the best traders deliver the best returns. They do this with data, bespoke technology, intrinsic know-how and expertise. Similarly the agencies/advertisers who recognize the power of data & can leverage the strength of technology and know-how are best placed to leverage ad exchanges.
What should we be worried about?
Well, that’s a hard one to pin down.
1. Google has a habit of luring us into their using their products by extending discounts and offering great returns – this is true to advertisers as well as publishers. Then when they have sufficiently weakened the competition and achieved a majority share in the market, they set about recouping their losses. We’ve all seen this happen and in search and unfortunately, we will see it happen in display as well & the final blended search/display product that will come about.
2. Doubleclick has and is the preferred ad server for most advertisers. This puts Google in a position where they totally understand the sites, times of day, type of pages, etc that are most likely to deliver conversions. Of course they will strongly deny using any of this data, they have to. But I put this to you – if it were your company, would you?
What features are going to have me excited?
For starters there’s search remarketing. For instance, a user searching for “used cars” will be targeted on other sites with ads for used cars. You will be able to buy user segments or users who have expressed an interest in a particular product. Google calls this “interest-based” targeting, the rest of us call it search remarketing.
Then there’s real-time bidding. Advertisers who have data on users who have performed actions on their site i.e. a user who left at the shopping basket stage of a e-commerce site can be specifically targeted with a specific “come back” creative whenever he/she appears on a site within the Google ad exchange. In short, display will start to make up what search loses.
Will this be the end for agencies?
Hardly. People have been predicting the death of the agency model for years and it’s just not going to happen. They may come under a bit of margin pressure, but that’s about it. The other important thing to note is that search is very different to display. In search, the demand for a keyword exceeds the available clicks for the keyword, which makes it easy to increase price. In display, there is no shortage of impressions available to advertisers. Those that are able use relevant technology to sift through those billions of impressions to target users more effectively will be winners in this process.
Display is tough game with some seriously big companies entrenched in the sector. It will be interesting to see how Google copes with the challenge of entering an industry as the underdog.
Latitude is one of the largest and longest-established digital marketing agencies in the UK, with expertise in SEO, PPC, display advertising, social media, conversion analytics and affiliate marketing. Original article is here.
Behavioral ads: Google Is Watching You
Love it or loath it Google is an increasingly dominant force, in the same way Microsoft was in the 90′s and IBM in the 80′s.
As soon as Google offer more sophisticated targeting to advertisers there are user groups wanting to dispel their approach, and place restrictions (via congress) through “opt in” measures.
I jump to the defence of Google, not due to me having an affinity with them but, because this has been happening for years now. As and when Google try to offer better targeting the case is brought into the wider public domain for review and discussion about its intrusive nature, mostly just because it is the big G.
Amazon is a great example of an early adopter using behavioural targeting to improve user experience. Amazon, one of the longest serving and well respected ecommerce sites, has been offering targeted services to its users for many years. I appreciate this about Amazon as its sophisticated monitoring suggests additional products based on your previous purchasing behaviour when you return to the site. Furthermore, they retarget you through email and other channels to retain you as a customer based on consumer behaviour (even at specific times of the year).
Google is a search engine that you (the user) choose to use, and should you (the user) wish for this not to happen you (the user) have the choice not to use its free services to find what you are looking for. Some would say this is a harsh portrayal of the article and the approach of consumer groups, however, I find this method of targeting adverts (if targeted well) as a major USP of Google’s advertising platform.
Ask the question – Would you prefer to see a group of search results and adverts that offer brands and services that bear no relevance to what you are looking for or like? Or would related and behavioural based adverts better suit your needs?
In summary, it is still not possible for Google to tell you (as a user} where you should go and what you should do but the aim is to provide the user with a smooth journey along the way, so that people continue to use the service, particularly with the increasing threat of Bing and Yahoo!. How much does this differ to your local bank or insurance company bringing you on board with one product and then trying to sell you related services or products along the way, based on your needs?
Let us remove ourselves from Googles back on this one as it is merely a late adopter to what has been happening for years with more popular brands.
Latitude is one of the largest and longest-established digital marketing agencies in the UK, with expertise in SEO, PPC, display advertising, social media, conversion analytics and affiliate marketing. Original article is here.
The Future of Real Time Search – Twoogle?
So far my musings have centred on Twitter purely because it is the most utilised example of the real-time search concept in action. There are plenty of other people at the party but they draw heavily on Twitter’s functionality.
Google’s own Eric Schmidt has enthusiastically discussed partnering with Twitter by integrating Twitter feeds into the Google SERPs. However, Schmidt was keen to play down talk of a full-on acquisition.
Other participants in the real-time phenomena such as Scoopler also draw heavily on Twitter data.
The additional space for “popular content” is a great idea, however, in my example above it is not yet 100% functional. Looking for David Cameron, who has recently indulged in some casual swearing on Absolute Radio, we see the expected tweet stream awash with posts including a video. However, when selecting the videos link from the popular content panel we are told there are no videos yet!
OneRiot also makes use of Twitter posts as well as online content that is being shared by the masses.
The good news here is that the video filter is working. However, I would expect the most shared content to be tailored to target the user query in order to make the experience more relevant. Overall OneRiot feels a little clunky and does little to enhance user experience.
For me Twitter is the catalyst to something much larger and more significant for search and the web as a whole.
Companies such as Collecta, Relegence and OneRiot are busy putting flesh on the bones of this debate, however, there are considerable problems with putting a true real-time solution in place.
The Future: Definition and Evolution
If the question a search platform needs to ask itself in the context of the traditional model is,
“What is relevant?”
Then the question a real time platform must ask is,
“What is relevant right now?”
To give context to this then consider the events surrounding Michael Jackson’s death.
In the traditional search environment the most relevant result for “Michael Jackson” would be the Michael Jackson website. However, in recent weeks this query would have been entered by people looking for information on the memorial event and the recent issues regarding his personal physician. Therefore it is important that search technology understands the intent behind each query.
Some may say that this is catered for to an extent in our current search solutions but for true real-time information as-it-happens we need to see big changes in technology.
At a recent search panel attended by Matt Cutts, Danny Sullivan et al there was talk of the sheer heavyweight computational requirements of such a task. Not only would engines need to see everything posted everywhere, they would then need to filter this data to determine:
– Uniqueness of information
o 5% of registered Tweeps generate the majority of content.
o Within this, think about the volume of re-tweets generated from a particular article of interest.
o The solution needs to account for the obvious relevance of a re-tweeted article but also discount the content as being duplicated.
– Relevance of content
o As with the example above regarding Michael Jackson’s passing and the evolving events surrounding it
– Intent of contributor
o Suppose 1000 people all post the same link on Twitter. Although the content and intent of the linked article are the same the intent of each user could be different. Think of Cristiano Ronaldo’s departure from Manchester United. There was a lot of opinion surrounding this and these differing opinions need to be considered.
o Some people here may prefer to make a distinction between real-time and social search (What is happening right now vs. what people think right now). I believe that the two go hand-in-hand for a truly relevant search platform. This links back to my opening on Twitter and brands connecting with users.
o What you say about an event should also be considered alongside the event itself.
One way of addressing this problem would be to apply a timescale to all data. Potentially, a real-time engine could examine all information gathered within a 5 minute timescale as relevant. Although this is still a mammoth undertaking from a technological standpoint we can immediately rule out masses of content which is not “of the now”.
Just how instant can we go?
Danny Sullivan labours the very valid point in his article What is Real Time Search? Definitions and Players that qualifying as real-time means as good as instantaneous availability on the web.
“For me, “real time search” means looking through material… where there’s practically no delay between composition and publishing. You take a picture and seconds later, it’s posted to the world to see. You think of something, immediately tap it out on Twitter, and your tweet is shared almost as soon as you thought of it.
What’s NOT real time publishing? Blogging, for the most part. A post has to be written, which typically will be at least a few paragraphs long. It may involve some research, taking more time. It may involve a ton of research, taking even more time. The mere act of creating and publishing the post will likely take more than a minute, if not several.
Publishing in minutes isn’t the same as publishing in real time? Nope. Not when the time to publish a tweet is seconds. You see something, hear something, want to say something, feel an earthquake happening – you bang it into a simple box and bam, you’ve microblogged.”
This represents a major challenge for real-time providers and the reason why Twitter has provided the backbone for many of the emerging platforms out there.
Wishlist: Commercial Application to PPC
When this hurdle has been navigated we are left with a very exciting evolution of search with massive potential as a business model.
In search we are all too aware of the link between TV spots and campaign volumes. A real-time model could allow businesses to leverage themselves at key conversion opportunities alongside their offline activity.
For instance, if I am running TV spots between the hours of 19:00 and 21:00 for car insurance a real-time model should be able to recognize the proportional uplift in searches for my brand in comparison to the norm and therefore place greater relevancy on my ads by discounting my CPC via it’s QS component.
This shift in functionality will surely excite those who often ask “So what?” when they are told about the link between offline and online. If Google and, indeed, search in general is all about relevancy then it is the next obvious step to start introducing this functionality into the paid search arena.
Latitude is one of the largest and longest-established digital marketing agencies in the UK, with expertise in SEO, PPC, display advertising, social media, conversion analytics and affiliate marketing. Original article is here.