Google Really Is Watching You!
YES Google is Watching You!
Let us explain.
It’s Tim & Anthony.
There is a lot of speculation on the Internet about whether Google manually checks websites for quality.
We are not talking about sites using Google Adwords to drive traffic, since there is no doubt they are subject to a quality filter employed by Google as well as manual reviews of landing pages.
Instead, what we are talking about here is reviews of regular websites ranking organically in the search engines for given keyword phrases.
We’ve done some digging and found a firm that exists to improve the quality of internet search capacity (that alone peaked our interest).
What’s more it manages a global rating team of over 4,500 people. That is a lot of people rating search results!
The company is LionBridge – see http://en-us.lionbridge.com/
A simple Google search reveals that Google is one of Lionbridges largest clients so it’s not a stretch at all to take this to the next level and say that (at least) 4,500 people are “rating” websites right now for Google.
And if there is one company offering these services to Google then there is likely to be more (perhaps many more).
So that adds up to a heck of a lot of people looking at websites out there and rating them for quality every day.
If you think about it, this makes a lot of sense to do. Because as we have discussed in the past it’s not easy for a software script to really figure out the quality of a website.
What a human can see in 10 seconds and “just instinctively know” is very hard to replicate in software.
Manual reviews would also explain stories of websites that suddenly jump up (or down) dramatically in the search engine rankings after being stable for a period of time for seemingly no reason.
Maybe a human review was completed and the websites pages ranked based on that review.
Perhaps Google over-rides to a large extent its algorithmic determinations about a given website after a human review is done.
If Google are paying for thousands of people to assess the quality of websites we can feel fairly sure they would act on the results, what point would there be to spent money for no return?
Remember Google’s future is really in it’s search users hands. If they cannot provide the best search engine results people will move over to another search engine. Google know this and constantly striving to improve their results. To use it makes perfect sense to utilize humans to review websites.
This also makes it even more important to ensure you have great content on your site. In fact, this links in perfectly with our previous article about how content is becoming more important than backlinks.
See: http://www.takeoverpageone.com/blog/web-traffic/its-time-to-give-google-exactly-what-they-want
Of course there are a lot of unknowns.
How a website gets targeted for a human review (given the number of websites being created each day, there is no guarantee that all websites could be reviewed). And with millions of webpages coming along online, there is no guarantee a website will ever get reviewed. Maybe sites are only reviewed if they raise a red flag. For example if a site is seen as being two perfectly optimized, or something else along those lines.
What do we do to ensure we are “review” friendly when Google comes a knocking ?
It seems to us to ensure you “pass” any review by a Google reviewer you should ensure your site and pages are easy to read, and laid out nicely and that the content relate to the keyword phrases you are looking to rank for.
Spelling is also a (more minor) consideration.
Pretty basic stuff right?
In terms of how we see a review being conducted, most likely what is happening is that the reviewer is given a list of 10 or more sites and their job is to determine which ones are the most relevant and the most irrelevant for a particular keyword phrase.
So you want to ensure that your website is seen as relevant as possible. The great thing here is that this can be done by having the best content and layout.
One good way to see where you are right now is to look at the top ten sites ranking for your keyword phrase – Go in and actually have a look at the page on each website that is ranking for each keyword phrase.
Is there a dedicated page for that keyword phrase? Is the content “about” that keyword phrase? Is the keyword phrase mentioned?
Is there other related articles available on similar keyword phrases?
What about the quality of the content? Is it informative, does it read well? Picture yourself as a searcher for that keyword phrase.
Would you truly be happy to land on a this site? In many cases you will find the answer is NO.
What did you like about each result? What about the negatives? Write down the best parts and aim to implement that on your website.
Remember that web site layout is also important. I am sure you have visited websites and they just “look good” and are easy to navigate and the information is well presented.
This is something you should be striving to do on your website.
These are things most Internet Marketers leave to last, or never do. They put all their focus on the backlinks and not the user experience. And whilst this was a solid strategy in the past, we think it’s time to put the focus on the content and layout first and foremost.
Folks, let us tell you that the user experience is where you should focus a lot of your efforts.
By focusing on the visitors experience and ensuring your site has as good if not better layout and content that those sites ahead of you in the search engine rankings now, you are really giving yourself every opportunity to pass that review when/if it comes.
Not to mention that your visitors will love you for it right now.
Who doesn’t love a website with a pleasing layout and great content ? What’s not to love?
Please consider taking and applying this information to your existing and new sites. We believe it will help you a lot!
Cheers
Tim & Anthony
