» IP Blog: SEO, SMO and Web Development news http://www.intelligentpositioning.com/blog SEO web development social media consulting Mon, 21 May 2012 16:43:05 +0000 en hourly 1 http://wordpress.org/?v=3.2.1 How often does Google change its SERPS – search results? http://www.intelligentpositioning.com/blog/2009/05/how-often-does-good-change-its-serps-search-results/ http://www.intelligentpositioning.com/blog/2009/05/how-often-does-good-change-its-serps-search-results/#comments Mon, 18 May 2009 19:32:37 +0000 Sam http://www.ip-seo.com/latest/?p=705 google-logoSomeone wrote in a business blog I read earlier “Has Google changed its SERP results, I’m no longer number one, has anyone else noticed a change?” Which made me laugh. Then it made me think, how often does Google change its SERPS?

The answer is quite simple, it’s got to be millions of times a day. Hasn’t it?

There was a time when Google would visit even the biggest sites once a week, once a month or only 6 times a year. Now Google visits certain sites such as www.bbc.co.uk, www.sky.com and www.guardian.co.uk every 15 mins.

Test Google Crawl speed

Try it now. Take a very recent headline from the Guardian news page, then search for it. If it doesn’t appear, wait five minutes, then search again. Bingo – it’ll be in the top 5 searches (depending on how many words you used).

Now copy a handful of words from the article and paste them into google search. Again the result will be the new page.

Millions of Keywords and amendments

Think about how many keywords have therefore changed in the last five minutes and how this has therefore effected 1000s of SERPS results with ten of thousands of derivatives of keywords and permutations on the results. (Read the first blog post and I will be back to tell you how quickly the article was crawled.)

SERPS are therefore changing all the time. As one result goes to the top of the Google SERPS, others are slipping down. And as the new article gets less credit or another usurps it, then that too will slip down, thus changing the SERPS again.

This IP-SEO URL tracker tool shows just that.

Buy toys online

Buy toys online

This is a chart for “Buy Toys Online” on google, over the Christmas period and beyond – a big search at a busy time. The SERPS are changing every day throughout the top 100 results.

This Chart (one of our SEO tools) also only takes a snap-shot of a daily search, not one done every 15 mins or half an hour.

To find out more give us a bell or drop a line below with your comments.

]]> http://www.intelligentpositioning.com/blog/2009/05/how-often-does-good-change-its-serps-search-results/feed/ 6 The Long Tail Search http://www.intelligentpositioning.com/blog/2009/02/the-long-tail-search/ http://www.intelligentpositioning.com/blog/2009/02/the-long-tail-search/#comments Tue, 17 Feb 2009 20:17:28 +0000 Chris http://www.ip-seo.com/latest/?p=366 People search for absolutely everything (take the fact that Britney Spears was the most searched keyword last year for example!). With 9.4 billion searches on Google US, the average Google search is just as likely to be three or four words long as it is the common one word search of old.

What is long-tail though? Long-tail search terms are the longer more specific keyword searches. For example; a long tail version of ‘camera’ could be ‘buy Sony DSC Digital Camera online’.

Avinash Kaushik from Google spoke publicly on long-tail trends for the first time this year. His main message was that average Google searches is now a lot more likely to be 3 to 4 words per query.
If you look at today’s Hot Trends on the Google Trends site, you can see that at least twenty of the keyword searches are more than two words long.

People will often do a little Google Insights data to discover their one word “trophy term” and pursue this with real zeal. In certain situations this can be particularly tough though. In many circumstances hunting the tail will provide more meat than catching part of the head.

Does the tail weigh more than the head?

Using our database at Intelligent Positioning we found that 4 word search queries were more popular than 1 word queries. This was especially true for really large sites.

One of our clients received 20,000 organic clicks for a ‘trophy term’ (position 4 in Google) in January 2008. They also received almost 50,000 organic clicks for sixteen 2, 3, and 4 word derivatives of this ‘trophy term’. ‘Stemming’ has a part to play here but the figures show just how many clicks you can gain from long tail searches.

The Advantages of Long Tail Search

So, what can the advantages of long-tail optimization include? Here are two:

1. Even if the searches for a particular term are quite low, the fact that it is a such a specific search term means you often get a high conversion rate

2. Getting a small amount of hits for many long tail searches all adds up

Knowing what tactic to pursue obviously takes expertise, research and the right data. Good SEO companies can do this for you.

Intelligent Positioning use an inside-out approach based on an advanced data system. This means we are able to make the correct decisions when it comes to keyword pursuit. You don’t have to flip a coin to choose heads or tails!

Author Chris L

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