Does Google Recognize the Name of Your Business?
People misspell their search engine queries all the time. That is why it can be incredibly helpful when Google steps and offers "did you mean suggestions." Google actually offers a few different spell-check features in its search results. These come with the internal codenames: "Did you mean," "Chameleon" (mid-page suggestions), and "Spellmeleon," where a couple results are shown for the corrected query. Chameleon: Spellmeleon: "Did you mean" comes up fairly often, and a problem that some businesses might face as a result of this is that Google doesn’t understand that their name is a valid query, and offers a "Did you mean?" alternative. In this Web 2.0 world, where seemingly every start-up is some weird non-existent word, it’s not hard to envision this happening fairly often. One business owner actually sent a question about this into Google’s Matt Cutts, who answered it in the following video uploaded to Google’s Webmaster Central YouTube channel . The question presented to Matt was: When I do a Google Search for my business name, Google suggests "Did you mean:" with some other company name. Is there anything we can do to keep that from happening? Cutts says that there’s nothing that he knows of that a business can do about this at this point. "The hope is that over time, we learn that sort of thing automatically," he says. "Anything you can do to build the reputation of your business, so it’s more well-known, so that you’ve got a lot of links pointing to you, and you’re more easily found on the web…" Cutts suggests as a possible solution. These are the kinds of things that signal Google to realize that it is a valid query, and that it’s not something that they need to show a spelling suggestion for. So in theory, if you promote your business well enough, the "did you mean?" will not be an issue. There aren’t any special forms or anything you can fill out to notify Google at this point. So if this is a problem for you, you have a little work to do.
Cutts Explains How Blogs Can Rank Higher In Google
If you want your blog to do better in Google’s search results, Matt Cutts recommends WordPress. According to a presentation Google’s Webspam captain gave at WordCamp San Francisco, Word Press takes care of about 80-90 percent of SEO mechanics. The presentation, which spans 50 pages, is available at Cutts’ blog in Google Docs or PowerPoint . Other than how WordPress helps automatically, Cutts gave tips about how to get a blog to rank better in Google. The two biggest ones are be relevant and be reputable. Being Relevant Some of this is voodoo and some of this technical, obviously. The big questions are necessary, equivalent to who am I? Why am I here? Cutts recommends asking yourself: “What do I love?” “What am I really good at doing?” What do I have to say?” Once you’ve answered those questions and commit to exploring them via bloggery, there are some technical things for gaining relevance, like keyword relevance. Choose words users are likely to type, and include them naturally in blog posts. For example, a blogger can use name variations referring to the same device: usb drive, thumb drive, flash drive, pen drive.” Cutts recommends ALT attributes. Also consider URL structure. WordPress default URL structure uses question marks and numbers, instead of day and name, month name, etc.. Cutts says these types of URLs improve aesthetics, usability, and forward-compatibility. For URL paths with keywords in them, Cutts says dashes (hyphens) are preferred over underscores to separate words, but no spaces between words is a bad idea (example.com/my-keywords). Don’t overdo keywords in the text. Make sure they flow naturally. Otherwise, Google could bust you for keyword stuffing. Being Reputable Cutts recommends the following to boost a blogger’s reputation: Be interesting Update often Find your niche Provide a useful service Do original research or reporting Give great information Live blog Make lists Create controversy Meet people on Twitter, Facebook, Friendfeed Other Useful Information Google crawls in decreasing order of PageRank, which means if a site has a low PageRank, it will be crawled last, behind sites with higher ranking. Cutts’ simplified definition of PageRank is “the number and importance of links pointing to a site.” Cutts also recommends plug-ins he uses for his blog, which include Akismet (a comment spam catcher), Cookies for Comments (another comment spam catcher), Enforce www. Preference (301 redirects to no-www or yes-www preference for link building), Feedburner Feedsmith (for tracking subscribers), and WP Super Cache (for fast caching).
Matt Cutts Opens Up About Google Penalties
Not long ago, another installment of the wacky car race known as the LeMons was held. Rule-breakers are penalized by being forced to do things like paint Bob Ross landscapes on their hoods and participate in conga lines. Google’s punishment system isn’t quite as obvious, though, so Matt Cutts discussed the matter at SMX Advanced. Coverage of SMX Advanced continues at WebProNews Videos . Stay with WebProNews for more updates and videos from the event this week. Cutts started by giving a rather witty answer to the question of “how can you tell if your site is in the penalty box?” He replied, “One really good way is if it disappears completely from Google. That’s what we call a leading indicator.” After some laughter subsided, Cutts then shared additional details. He said, “We make the penalties public where we think it can give the most help. So if you’re a small mom and pop, and you didn’t even realize (this happens a lot) – I hired a webmaster, and he put some hidden text on the page in 2003, and it was like 3 sentences, and they didn’t know – that’s the sort of thing where you want to tell them [through official channels]. “But if you see a sustained drop in ranks, or if it drops completely out, that’s the sort of thing where . . . there’s lots of forums on the web, including the Google Webmaster Forum, where you can go and ask for some help.” Cutts noted that Google’s employees will often respond with some “very, very blatant hints” about what’s gone wrong on such forums. And here’s one more important detail: unlike the LeMons judges, Google isn’t trying to toy with anyone. Cutts said that the only reason all of this isn’t conducted out in the open is because scammers and black hats would use the info to their advantage.