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Comparing Yelp Visibility for Explicit vs Implicit Queries After the Recent Google Local Algo Update (aka Pigeon)

July 30, 2014 by veezy

The data, analysis and anecdotal evidence after the recent Google Local Algo update (aka Pigeon) is all over the map (no pun intended). It would appear that the results and changes will vary quite a bit by niche, but here’s a little more kindling to add to the fire…

In this limited set of data, Yelp saw a noticeable increase in visibility for implicitly local queries, and potentially a break-even or slight decline in visibility for explicitly local queries:

Implicit Queries

~30+ implicit queries, location set to Los Angeles, CA

implicit-local-yelp-LA_2014-07-30

~100 implicit queries, location set to Chicago, IL

implicit-local-yelp-Chicago_2014-07-30

Explicit Queries

~100+ explicit queries, location set to Los Angeles, CA

explicit-local-yelp-LA_2014-07-30

~100 explicit queries, location set to Chicago, IL

explicit-local-yelp-Chicago_2014-07-30

Expedia Penalized by Google Around January 14 or 15, 2014

January 20, 2014 by veezy

Looks like Expedia took a slight hit in their organic visibility around January 14/15, 2014 – likely after the recent outing (which I won’t link to).

Weekly organic visibility via SearchMetrics:
expedia organic visibility 2014-01-20

Last 30 days estimated organic traffic via SEMrush:
estimated organic traffic for expedia 2014-01-20

Pages that appear to be most penalized

Keywords that appear to be most penalized

As for specific keywords, it looks like they’ve dropped in rankings for a variety of keywords related to cheap, hotels, flights and cars. Here are some examples: cheap flights, airline tickets, hotels, rental cars, vacation. Here’s a quick look at the most recurring words from SearchMetrics’ top 100 losers last week:
expedia top 100 organic keyword losers

Expedia’s loss is competitors’ gain:

Now that Google is breeding a culture of outing others and opened the door to negative SEO wide open, where will it stop?

Kayak.com +7% visibility
Orbitz.com +6% visibility
Travelocity.com +4% visibility

comparison between expedia, kayak, orbitz, travelocity

Google Testing Branded Knowledge Graph Cards Next to URLs in SERPs

January 19, 2014 by veezy

1/22 Update #2

Google has announced it’s formal launch and provided a feedback form specifically for these knowledge graph cards. From Google software engineer, Bart Niechwiej:

“You’ll see this extra information when a site is widely recognized as notable online, when there is enough information to show or when the content may be handy for you.”

Images in Knowledge Graph aren’t always from Google+

As of now, the little image that appears in the top left of the branded KG card looks for an image from Google+ first. If that’s available, it’s pulling the image from the first image result for that brand or site.

Original article:
This is the first time I’ve seen this, but it looks like G is testing knowledge graph cards next to URLs in the SERPs. They’ve added the brand/site name to the right of the URL and if you click on this it brings up the following:

MTV’s Knowledge Graph SERP Card:

Vevo’s Knowledge Graph SERP Card:

1/22 Update #1

I’ve been seeing a lot more of this today…it looks like they may have expanded the test recently. It also appears that Google doesn’t always show the branded knowledge graph card and therefore may depend on the query and perceived relevance.

For example, a search for [nba] shows a variety of knowledge graph cards in the SERPs, but doesn’t show them for twitter and YouTube:
knowledge graph serp card doesn't show for all

But then a search for [twitter] does show it’s branded SERP card:

More examples

yahoo-knowledge-graph-serp-card

sew-knowledge-graph-serp-card

bankrate-knowledge-graph-serp-card

boa-knowledge-graph-serp-card

google-knowledge-graph-serp-card

Matt Cutts: What to Expect from Google in the Summer of 2013

May 15, 2013 by veezy

Here’s a rundown of the latest Matt Cutts video:

1. Penguin 2.0 is coming – Will be a significant change to previous Penguin updates. Someone called out a site recently to Matt Cutts and he said that it would be “hit hard” by the upcoming Penguin update. This led Alex Graves to believe Penguin 2.0 will go after SENuke style links.

2. Advertorials / Native Advertising – Ads should not have links that flow PageRank. Nothing new here. However, Google may start to punish the publisher and/or the advertiser as it sees fit. This strategy by Google seems like it continues to open the door to Negative SEO. Will be interesting to see what sort of effect this has.

3. There will likely be two upcoming changes geared towards tackling “traditionally more spammy” terms like [payday loans] or “pornographic queries.”

4. Minor comment (but potentially impactful) about “going upstream to deny the value to link spammers.” Will this be penalties? Will the link juice stop flowing? Something else? Expect this to roll out in the next few months.

5. Google is working on a more sophisticated link analysis system.

6. A more comprehensive hacked-site detection and communication.

7. Google is working on trying to rank niche authorities more highly.

8. Panda Refinement – They are looking for additional signals to help those that may have been caught in some gray areas. The language here is interesting as it implies they started at either end of the spectrum and are now working their way to the middle. It sounds like this will hopefully be a good thing as the algorithm may have been over-correcting in areas where it shouldn’t.

9. Host Clustering – Mentioned in another recent video, as you drill down through the SERPs, you will be less likely to see numerous results from the same domain. It will still happen, but for the very few that go past the first page of results, hopefully sites like Yelp won’t continue to crowd those results.

10. More information to help webmasters.

Google Chrome Switching to Secure Search (https) for All Users

December 18, 2012 by veezy

On December 10, 2012 Google updated their Chrome browser and also began sending toolbar/omnibox searches through their SSL/secure search at https://www.google.com. This appears to have been a slow roll out as some colleagues saw this happening first. And even though I was using the same version of Chrome as them, I wasn’t getting sent to secure search.

Well, I was finally able to confirm it today and I’d expect more people to start seeing this happen. Whether you’re logged in or not, if you do a search in the “omnibox” or URL bar, then Google will take you to https://www.google.com/ and perform your search there. This will happen in both the standard mode and incognito mode.

Keep in mind that Google was already doing this if you were logged in to a Google account (such as Gmail), but were not doing this for non logged-in users.

Prepare for even less keyword data to be passed as Chrome usage goes up. And for certain niches where Chrome usage is especially high, such as tech and SEO, this will likely be even higher. As of now I’m not seeing this happen for Chrome on iPad, but I’d expect Google to roll this out for mobile as well.

Update 12/18/2012 – It appears Google is testing this as my Chrome browser has reverted back to using the non-secure version when searching from the omnibox. They may also be testing sending people that type in google.com to the https version instead. I haven’t been able to confirm this happening on my computer, but others have told me this was happening for them.