If you are not already using Google’s Webmaster Tools, I suggest that you get yourself setup ASAP.  Find out more about Google Webmaster Tools, or if you have any questions, concerns, or problems with setting it up, please feel free to contact us for web/internet advice and assistance

What are Parameters?

You have probably noticed URLs which contain a variety of  different characters – often including “?” and “&”.  Most often these URLs are used by dynamic sites that generate page content, and the parameters are used to determine what information is included on the page and how it is displayed.  Here are some examples :

www.example.com/product.php?category=coffee-maker
www.example.com/product.php?category=coffee-maker&cat-id=9999
www.example.com/product.php?caregory=coffee-maker&cat-id=9999&sid=3456
www.example.com/product.php?category=coffee-maker&cat-id=9999&sid=3456&sort=asc
www.example.com/product.php?category=coffee-maker&cat-id=9999&sid=3456&sort=desc

In the above examples the parameters are :

category – a text based title of the category (good for SEO)
cat-id – a numeric  code for the item category
sid- a numeric code representing a visitors session id
sort – a field indicating in what order items should be listed

Some parameters affect the content of the page, others can influence how the page is laid out.  Search Engines have long been able to recognise and crawl these types of dynamic URLs. However, one problem that can be introduced through the use of parameters is the issue of dynamic content.  Each of the example URLs provided above could conceivably reference exactly the same page content – presenting search engines with a dilemma to determine which is the most relevant URL, and which ones should be ignored.  Search Engines will try to make a guess at this – but will not always choose the one that you would.

Webmaster Tools Parameter Handling

Since September 2009 Webmaster Tools enabled site owners to specify up to 15 parameters that Google should ignore when crawling and indexing the site. The main benefit of the feature was to improve the canonicalization of a site in Google’s index due to duplicate content. Canonicalization issues occur when multiple URLs load the same content (as in the example URLs above).  However, this was a bit limiting – when you choose to ignore a parameter, you are telling Google that this parameter has NO impact on the displayed content. However, some parameters may not affect the content, but may affect how the content is represented.

Google has recently announced improvements in the way that parameters can be defined in webmaster tools.  The new functionality allows webmasters to specify “default values” to certain parameters which don’t necessarily affect the content.  This provides greater flexibility for webmasters and improved indexing for Google.

So, using the above example URLs, the webmaster could specify that cat-id and sid parameters should be ignored, and that the sort parameter should default to “asc”  (displaying results in ascending order).

Parameter Handling can be found in Webmaster Tools via Site Configuration >> Setting >>Parameter Handling (tab)

Google New aggregates many of their individual product blogs and shows the latest posts from them. It also provides a search box to search for Google products and highlights the latest news on some of their featured products.

Google claim that the purpose of Google Instant is to deliver users with faster, dynamic results and provide further predictive suggestion (similar to Google Suggest) to make it easier for users to find what they are looking for.

At time of posting it hasn’t yet made its way to www.google.com.au, but has been implemented on Google.com and Google.co.uk and is expected to arrive in Australia very soon.  At the moment Google Instant only works under a limited subset of browesr (mostly the latest versions), and will also not shpow up if you have a low bandwidth internet connection.

So far there does not appear to have been any change to actual rankings – the results from both natural and paid search do not appear to have changed, but it’s going to be interesting to see how Google Instant may impact Search Engine Optimisation and Paid Search strategies.

This release has generated the usual (and predictable) – “OMG – It’s the end of SEO” statements, but of course it isn’t.  As long as people rely on search for finding the information they need on the internet, there will always be a need for improving rankings and online visablilty.

In response to the question ““Will Google Instant change search engine optimization?” Matt Cutts has said :

“I think over time it might. The search results will remain the same for a query, but it’s possible that people will learn to search differently over time”

It appears likely that Google Instant will change users search behavior, and this may have an indirect impact on how a site should be optimised.  Whilst traditional SEO strategies are unlikley to change overnight, Google Instant may very well introduce other opportunities for website owners to have their site found – and is quite likely to result in new SEO strategies and techniques.

Search Engine Land have published a great article called Google Instant Search: The Complete User’s Guide, which talks about how Google Instant works and their view of how Google Instant may impact rankings.

Testing has been underway for a couple of months or so, with Yahoo already incorporating up to 25% of Bing’s search results, and in July, Yahoo announced that the organic search results on Yahoo will be powered by Bing 100% beginning in August/September.

Will the Yahoo-Bing change affect your website traffic?

In the USA, Yahoo and Microsoft sites currently have a combined search market share of approximately 30%. In Australia (where Google has a much bigger slice of the search pie) Yahoo/Bing combined searches still account for about 10% of total searches – which is still a pretty significant volume of searches.

If your site currently receives higher rankings (and traffic) from Yahoo than it does from Bing, it is very likely that your overall traffic will drop in August/September when the changes are applied. There are a number of ways you can check how much of an impact this may have on your site :

• Check your rankings for primary keywords under Yahoo and Bing. You can do this yourself by manually searching for your primary keywords in each search engine – or as us about our search ranking reports service.
• Check your user stats or analytics to compare the relative volumes of traffic being generated by Bing and Yahoo. Look at this over the last couple of months, because recent Yahoo testing may already be having an impact.

If you are not sure on how to access or interpret your usage stats, contact us and we should be able to assist. If you are currently getting higher rankings in Yahoo, or receiving significantly more traffic from Yahoo than Bing, there is a good chance that your search traffic will drop when the Bing search results are fully applied to Yahoo. Conversely, if your website is already listed for the right keywords in the Bing results, you will very likely get an increase in website visitors.

How to optimise your website for Bing

Fortunately, optimising your website for Bing is really not much different from optimising your site for Google. So if you already have an optimisation strategy in place, it will probably help your Bing rankings.

Like Google, improving your search rankings in Bing requires optimised web pages (with keyword rich content) and good incoming links. One difference is the priority that Bing puts on the various ranking factors. Optimisation strategies that work well with Google may not have the same effect on Bing and vice-versa. Here are a few suggestions that will help you to get the best ranking results for your website:

• Take a look at the pages that already get good rankings for your primary keyword phrases in Bing and compare them to the pages that get top results in Google. You may be able to determine differences in the types of pages that are ranking better in each search engine.
• Vary your optimisation strategies by Optimising some of your pages for Google and other pages for Bing. This can increase your chances of getting listed on the first result page.
• Focus on a single primary keyword phrase to optimise for each page. It is much better for a web page to be highly relevant for one key phrase than vaguely relevant for many key phrases.
• If possible, optimise each page of your site for a dedicated search engine/keyword combination. The more targeted the optimisation, the more likely it is that the web page will be listed in the top results.

You are likely to lose traffic if your web page currently has high rankings on Yahoo but not on Bing as Yahoo’s own results will be dropped after the transition to the new Bing results. Therefore, the sooner you start to optimise some of your web pages for Bing, the better.

Reasons why Google drops web sites from its index

The most common reason why web sites are removed from Google’s index is that these web sites use shady tricks to get higher search engine rankings.

If you use cloaking, hidden text, doorway pages or any other technique that’s put in place for the primary purpose of tricking search engines then you stand a very good chance of having your web site  banned as soon as Google finds out. Don’t try to cheat or trick Google, it will almost certainly backfire on you.

Even if you don’t use shady tricks to optimise your web site, your site might be removed from Google’s index if your web site was down, or pages were unavailabe when Google tried to index it.

If you have a new web site, or if you have made major changes on your site, your web site might be put into Google’s sandbox. You then just have to wait until it comes out of the sandbox.

How to get listed in Google

1. Optimise your web page content

Google can only rank your web site highly for your keyword if it can find out what your web site is all about. To tell Google what your web site is about, you have to optimise your web pages for Google.

2. Get good incoming links

Google heavily relies on links to determine the ranking of web pages. The more web sites link to your site, the better your rankings. Make sure that the web sites that link to your site are related to your web site and that the links to your web site contain text that is related to your site.

3. Avoid dirty tricks

Only use ethical search engine optimisation methods to optimise your web pages. Using shady tricks will get you banned sooner or later.

If you used cloaking, doorway pages or hidden text on your web pages before, rebuild your web pages with the ethical methods described above and send a re-inclusion request . Tell Google that you have cleaned up your page and that you don’t use these unethical tricks anymore.

Getting listed on Google is possible. Just play by the rules and make it easy for Google to index your site by optimizing your web page content and by getting good incoming links.

If you have inadvertently (or intentionally) used some “optimisation” techniques on your website that are outside the Search Engine Guidelines, there is a real chance that your site may be penalised – and this could result in significant drops in your rankings, or your pages may be dropped from search results completely.

If you carry out regular rank reporting on your site, this rankings drop should show up fairly quickly. But a significant drop in the number of visitors to your site – and ultimately, a drop in inquiries or sales – are all symptoms of search penalties being applied.

If you have your site listed with Google Webmaster Tools they may (but will not always) notify that there is an issue with your site. A Webmaster tools notification will also usually give yiou an indication on what the problem is.

It is very important that you do something about it as soon you become aware of an issue. The longer you delay – the more significant the impact is likely to be on your site and online business.

What Can I do?

The first step is to identify why your site was penalised in the first place, and this is not always easy. If Google has indicated an issue in Webmaster Tools – they are usually pretty good at explaining what the problem is. The issue may not necessarily be related to recent changes to your site, it could actually be caused as a result of changes applied quite some time ago, – and only just discovered by the search engines – or as a result of a recent change in the Search Engine Ranking algorithms.

If you are not sure what the problem is – consulting the relevant Search Engine Guidelines is a good place to start. Whilst these guidelines don’t necessarily list everything that could be penalised – they do cover many of the most common issues.

Once you’ve identified the problem – fix it, update your site – and submit a reinclusion request.

What is a Reinclusion request – and how do I submit one?

These days, (according to Matt Cutts) Google likes to refer to a reinclusion request, as a “reconsideration request”. A reinclusion request asks Google to review your site and consider removing any potential spam penalty.

The official Google documentation on how to file a reconsideration request is here: http://www.google.com/support/webmasters/bin/answer.py?answer=35843.

When submitting a request, Google wants to know two things:

1. that any spam on the site is gone or fixed, and
2. that it’s not going to happen again.

Matt Cutts suggests giving a short explanation of what you think happened: what actions may have led to any penalties and what corrective action that you’ve taken to prevent any spam in the future.  The video (below) created by the Google Search Quality team provides some good tips on requesting reconsideration.

How Long will it take ?

Once you have identified the problem, fixed it, and submitted your reinclusion request to Google, how will it take before your site starts to show up in the listings again, and will it achieve the same rankings as it did before?

That depends largely on when Google reviews the request, and on the type of spam penalty that has been applied. In our experience though Google is usually very responsive to reinclusion requests – and your site could start appearing again within days, although don’t’ be surprised if you do not see any changes for 2-3 weeks. If your site has not reappeared within 3-4 weeks, you should take a closer look at the webmaster guidelines, and seek advice from a reputable and professional SEO agency.