How to report rankings after the Google Venice update?
-
As a profesional agency we focus on traffic and conversions, but rankings are still a good KPI to please customers. Unfortunately rankings are not reliable anymore sinds the Google Venice update.
My question is;
"How can you still report about rankings, but without the risk that your customer sees total different results?"
Software we use
At the moment we use Rank Tracker from Link Assistant.
-
Hi David,
Thanks for your fast reply on my question!
We noticed that Venice is overruling depersonalisation search. Even if our customers use &pws=0 or incognito mode they sill get local results. This is not only annoying for our customers, but also for us as SEO professionals.
How can we tackle this problem?
-
Hi Van,
Unfortunately it's near on impossible to obtain a ranking position that will show universally for yourselves, your clients and their customers.
The best option you have is spending the time getting your customers to truly understand personalised and localised search, as well as the various methods of turning personalisation off. Once they understand this, they will be on board with the fact that the results they see will differ nationally/globally.
I work with a large number of clients on this basis, and they are happy with the logic. The know they can turn personalisation off (to an extent) using '&pws=0' or incognito mode, and to be honest these methods usually match pretty spot on with the rank tracking I'm providing them (probably because the rank checkers obtaining the results using these de-personalised methods)
Person A is always going to see different results than Person B, but if your clients can understand that the rankings reports are providing the positions the majority will see, then they should be happy.
As you mentioned, the main metrics should always be visitors and sales, but tying these to rankings is always a great way of showing the ROI of their natural search efforts.
Best of luck.
David
Browse Questions
Explore more categories
-
Moz Tools
Chat with the community about the Moz tools.
-
SEO Tactics
Discuss the SEO process with fellow marketers
-
Community
Discuss industry events, jobs, and news!
-
Digital Marketing
Chat about tactics outside of SEO
-
Research & Trends
Dive into research and trends in the search industry.
-
Support
Connect on product support and feature requests.
Related Questions
-
Google number one search result looks drastically different in firefox compared to chrome
I just noticed this today that some websites and brands look like this on firefox only, and others while still being number one result for their brand name, do not appear like this at all. also, this does not happen over chrome at all. both images provided for comparison are using the same google apps account logged in. It would be nice if someone could shed some light on as to why this happens sporadically and what does it take to be distinguished like this for your own brand if you own the identical domain.com or whatever. Zz7ZkX5.png lpuwheo.png
Industry News | | Raydon0 -
We noticed that goods offered in our email newsletters used to disappeared from first google search results page!?
We noticed that goods offered in our email newsletters used to disappeared from fisrt google search results page. Goods where in top 5 positions or even higher, but after email newsletters we didn't find them even in top 100. We suspect service provider of email sending is in blacklist? Could it be reason? If yes, how could we check that?
Industry News | | Patogupirkti0 -
If I have a Google+ Business page, do I need a Google Places page as well?
It seems like the two are redundant? Any official word on this? I'm fairly OCD about things being tidy and I dont want to split my reviews / shares / etc between two profiles. Are they not the same thing? I searched for my company, both my plus business page and my places page came up. I attached a SS of the situation. placesvplus.png
Industry News | | jonnyholt1 -
How can you change 'Google related searches'?
I am having problems for a few clients where google is suggesting negative related searches. I have had success getting Google suggestion (auto-complete) to suggest the keywords we want to be associated with the brand but the 'Searches Related to....' at the bottom of the search page is a big problem. Many of the terms are negative of sometimes defamatory and have absolutely not relevance to the brand. Even upon clicking on the related searches the pages Google displays are about other businesses. Can anyone suggest how to teach Google these term are irrelevant or any other suggestions as to how to remove them?
Industry News | | skehoe0 -
Google's Current Wave of Updates (4/24 edition)
Edit: Someone beat me to the punch, here is the thread: http://www.seomoz.org/q/google-webspam-algo-update-24-4-12 Let's just discuss it there. So Google has said they are doing another wave of algorithm updates that could impact anywhere from 3-5% of SERPs. I saw it here: http://searchengineland.com/google-launches-update-targeting-webspam-in-search-results-119295 http://googlewebmastercentral.blogspot.com/2012/04/another-step-to-reward-high-quality.html Has anyone seen any changes? I've heard from a few friends that their sites are bouncing all over the place, which seems to happy a lot during these updates. We might not actually know the fallout for a few days/weeks/months. I saw a few of my smaller sites take a hit, but most of mine have stayed the same. Anyway what do you guys think? Sometimes an update like this can be a wake-up call to people who think they are doing white hat stuff but may be pushing the envelope a bit too much. Thoughts?
Industry News | | vforvinnie0 -
Google to Target Overly SEOd Sites
I just watched the video from Barry Schwartz talking about the new Update to come with the Google Algo. Video of his Friday Post: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fJqSPT2NXdA I have also started reading on Webmasterworld on this topic: http://www.webmasterworld.com/google/4429947.htm What do you think Google has in the list of changes?
Industry News | | Ben-HPB0 -
What is the best method for getting pure Javascript/Ajax pages Indeded by Google for SEO?
I am in the process of researching this further, and wanted to share some of what I have found below. Anyone who can confirm or deny these assumptions or add some insight would be appreciated. Option: 1 If you're starting from scratch, a good approach is to build your site's structure and navigation using only HTML. Then, once you have the site's pages, links, and content in place, you can spice up the appearance and interface with AJAX. Googlebot will be happy looking at the HTML, while users with modern browsers can enjoy your AJAX bonuses. You can use Hijax to help ajax and html links coexist. You can use Meta NoFollow tags etc to prevent the crawlers from accessing the javascript versions of the page. Currently, webmasters create a "parallel universe" of content. Users of JavaScript-enabled browsers will see content that is created dynamically, whereas users of non-JavaScript-enabled browsers as well as crawlers will see content that is static and created offline. In current practice, "progressive enhancement" in the form of Hijax-links are often used. Option: 2
Industry News | | webbroi
In order to make your AJAX application crawlable, your site needs to abide by a new agreement. This agreement rests on the following: The site adopts the AJAX crawling scheme. For each URL that has dynamically produced content, your server provides an HTML snapshot, which is the content a user (with a browser) sees. Often, such URLs will be AJAX URLs, that is, URLs containing a hash fragment, for example www.example.com/index.html#key=value, where #key=value is the hash fragment. An HTML snapshot is all the content that appears on the page after the JavaScript has been executed. The search engine indexes the HTML snapshot and serves your original AJAX URLs in search results. In order to make this work, the application must use a specific syntax in the AJAX URLs (let's call them "pretty URLs;" you'll see why in the following sections). The search engine crawler will temporarily modify these "pretty URLs" into "ugly URLs" and request those from your server. This request of an "ugly URL" indicates to the server that it should not return the regular web page it would give to a browser, but instead an HTML snapshot. When the crawler has obtained the content for the modified ugly URL, it indexes its content, then displays the original pretty URL in the search results. In other words, end users will always see the pretty URL containing a hash fragment. The following diagram summarizes the agreement:
See more in the....... Getting Started Guide. Make sure you avoid this:
http://www.google.com/support/webmasters/bin/answer.py?answer=66355
Here is a few example Pages that have mostly Javascrip/AJAX : http://catchfree.com/listen-to-music#&tab=top-free-apps-tab https://www.pivotaltracker.com/public_projects This is what the spiders see: view-source:http://catchfree.com/listen-to-music#&tab=top-free-apps-tab This is the best resources I have found regarding Google and Javascript http://code.google.com/web/ajaxcrawling/ - This is step by step instructions.
http://www.google.com/support/webmasters/bin/answer.py?answer=81766
http://www.seomoz.org/blog/how-to-allow-google-to-crawl-ajax-content
Some additional Resources: http://googlewebmastercentral.blogspot.com/2009/10/proposal-for-making-ajax-crawlable.html
http://www.seomoz.org/blog/how-to-allow-google-to-crawl-ajax-content
http://www.google.com/support/webmasters/bin/answer.py?answer=357690 -
Google API's
As you may know Google has API’s http://code.google.com/more/ I can see ones for Blogs, News etc. but not for general search am I being dense? If someone can point me in the right direction that would be great. Justin
Industry News | | GrouchyKids0