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President Obama: "It Is Love, Tested by Tragedy, That Brings Us Together Again."

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President Obama: "It Is Love, Tested by Tragedy, That Brings Us Together Again."

Yesterday, the President and First Lady attended a memorial ceremony at the Fort Hood Military Base, remembering those who lost their lives in last week's tragic shooting at the base. As the President said:

It was love for country that inspired these three Americans to put on the uniform and join the greatest Army that the world has ever known ... They lived those shining values -- loyalty, duty, honor -- that keep us strong and free.

House of Cuts:

Thursday, April 10, 2014

House of Cuts

The House Republicans voted on their 2015 budget today, and it's bad news for the middle class.

How bad? Frankly, it makes Congress look like something out of a TV show.

See what the House Republican budget could mean for your family -- then pass it on.

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Content-Gap SEO: A Potentially Untapped Opportunity

Posted: 09 Apr 2014 04:17 PM PDT

Posted by randfish

NOTE: This post is mostly theoretical, but I hope potentially helpful and worthy of discussion.

Over the last few years, and particularly since the advent of Hummingbird, I've noticed Google becoming more nuanced about the content it ranks, even for queries where they don't have lots of data on what users click, what they engage with, what they ignore, and their behavioral habits around a search (related searches, usage patterns before/after the query, etc.).

My theory is that this new intelligence presents a dramatic opportunity for marketers and content creators who can identify the patterns and spot queries where critical questions may lie unanswered.

Historically, much of what we'd see from Google's rankings could be explained through a few big factors:

Links
Domain Authority
Keyword Matching
Relevance
Freshness (and, certainly during Google's partnership with Twitter, social signals)

We know Google's become more complex, but even from 2010-2012, I'd say the vast majority of searches' rank ordering could be explained with elements contained in these broad categories.

Today, I'm observing a lot of rankings that seem to connect with brand signals, user/usage data, and a far more nuanced consideration of links, authority, and relevance, but perhaps most uniquely, and especially in queries that have information-gathering intent, there seems to be a set of ranking signals related to what I'll call "relevance to alternative searcher intents."

I'll try to illustrate this with an example. Here's a query for " space pen" in Google US (non-personalized with geo-biasing removed):

There's three potential popular "intents" that searchers have around this query.

Those seeking Fisher's branded Space Pen
Those seeking to learn about the oft-repeated myth around the supposedly costly development of the Space Pen by NASA when Russian cosmonauts used pencils
Those seeking the Spacepen framework for Coffeescript

And Google's done a nice job recognizing those unique intents and populating the SERPs appropriately with results to answer all three. Historically I'd have called this "QDD" or "Query Deserves Diversity" (something I first wrote about way back in 2008).

But actually, I think we've seen an evolution from the raw "diversity" inputs (which, in my opinion, mostly revolved around combinations of click behavior in the SERPs and search modification behavior, i.e. people searching for "space pen" then refining to search for "space pen coffeescript") to a model that has more sophistication.

That more sophisticated model might be better illustrated with this query for " most flavorful steak" (also Google US, non-personalized, non-geo-biased):

There are multiple intents around this query, but they're far more subtle than those for "Space Pen." Searchers are likely seeking things like a description of the various types of cuts, information about what makes a steak taste better, perhaps some interesting types of steaks they haven't heard of previously or why certain cuts are more expensive than others.

What's remarkable is how Google has made shifts in queries like this in the last couple years. If I performed this query in 2012 (which I'm fairly sure I did, but sadly didn't screenshot), I would have seen a lot more keyword-matching and a much more singular focus on articles that specifically mentioned "flavorful" (or fairly direct synonyms thereof) in the title and headline. Actually, it would look a lot more like Bing's results (no offense to them; these results are actually quite good, too, just far more keyword match-focused):

Today, from Google, I'm getting a broader interpretation of the true intent(s) behind the use of the adjective, "flavorful."

There's results that touch on expensive cuts of steak, of types of beef itself (like Wagyu & Kobe), on what makes a steak more flavorful, and there's a site showing up (Niman Ranch) that seems totally out of place when you look at the link numbers, but makes a lot of sense as a highly co-cited brand name. For reference, here's a basic keyword difficulty report for the phrase:

My opinion (and this is pure, unvarnished, speculation) is that Google's using inputs like:

Relationships between words, phrases, concepts, and entities to get closer to an understanding of language and an evaluation of the content quality itself
Patterns detected in how authoritative pieces write about/mention the keywords
User and usage data signals that look at multiple sessions, multiple queries, and identify patterns of searcher satisfaction (possibly using machine learning)
Topic modeling that tries to identify terms and phrases that are associated with diversity of opinion and topical focus so there's an element of finding not just useful information, but potentially new and interesting information, too

I don't believe these are overwhelming signals today. Links are still very powerful. Domain authority is still clearly influential. But for a lot of what I'm seeing in the end of the chunky middle and into the long tail of the keyword demand curve, I think there's an opportunity for marketers to perform some content gap analysis and win rankings without needing the quantities of links & authority otherwise required.

Here's my strawman concept for starting out with some Content-Gap SEO (and hopefully y'all can rip into and improve upon it in the comments):

Step One: Identify the keywords you're targeting that fit in the backside of the chunky middle and long tail.

Step Two: Prioritize your list based on the terms/phrases you believe will be most valuable (and remember that doesn't always mean highest search volume).

Step Three: Starting from the top, write down 4-6 types of intent and/or pieces of unique information that you believe searchers might have/want when performing each query.

Step Four: Perform the query in Google, and look through the top 10. Do you see results that answer all of the intent/info types you wrote down? Write down how many are missing (including 0 if everything's already fulfilled).

Step Five: Use your number as a potential prioritizer for the creation of new content or the modification/addition of content to existing pages. Then watch and see if Google feels the same way and begins rewarding you for this.

While this process is speculative and my theories are, too, I will say that I have talked to and emailed with a lot of folks in the SEO field of late who've talked over and over about the surprise they've had from purely content-based rankings and rankings improvements. I might be wrong about a lot of the details, but I'd be willing to bet that there's something new going on in how Google analyzes and rewards pages that provide the right kind of content.

For marketers who can identify the patterns, find the content gaps, and fulfill them, I believe there's opportunity to rank without having to pound nearly the same levels of external links at your pages.

Looking forward to the discussion!

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Google Expand “(not provided)” Offering Into Paid Clicks

Posted: 10 Apr 2014 02:32 AM PDT

So, Google has gone and done it…

We heard on the grapevine a couple of weeks back that there were some ‘goings-on’ within Google around the ever-so helpful (not provided) data, or lack thereof.

In October 2011, Google provided SSL encryption for signed-in searches on Google, meaning that a user’s search term was tracked as (not provided). It was confirmed yesterday by Paul Feng that Google is now extending its efforts to keep search secure by removing the query on ad clicks originating from SSL searches on Google.com.

Since October 2011, publishers began losing keyword data that was invaluable in seeing how users reached their sites. Google was criticised for this move, as advertisers were still able to receive the keyword data in Search Query Reports. With Google now extending its efforts to keep search data secure, does this level the playing field between publishers and advertisers?

What Google say:

“We've long worked to keep your searches on Google secure. We provided SSL encryption for signed-in searches in 2011 and have rolled that out to searches from the omnibox in the Chrome browser. Today, we are extending our efforts to keep search secure by removing the query from the referer on ad clicks originating from SSL searches on Google.com.

Advertisers will continue to have access to useful data to optimise and improve their campaigns and landing pages. For example, you can access detailed information in the AdWords search terms report and the Google Webmaster Tools Search Queries report.”

My initial thoughts

There seems to be a lot of chatter around this at the moment. How will it affect advertisers and individuals who rely on this data to enhance their campaigns? Will the increase in (not provided) negate the benefit of AdWords? Will advertisers see a drop in quality traffic?

We have seen Google make bold moves before; in 2013 Google switched Google Shopping to a paid platform; Product Listing Ads. Although not affecting the user, advertisers overnight saw their free product feeds turn into a paid-for platform.

This ‘expansion’ could be seen in many lights. Yes it levels the playing field between publisher and advertiser, but I feel this will do more harm than good to the digital industry. At present, we can clearly report back to clients on keyword performance etc. but going forward it will leave us with some rather, shall we say, interesting conversations with clients when asked the question ‘So what keywords are working for us?’. Will we struggle now to fully optimise campaigns with an even greater lack of data from Google? I believe this lack of data will leave advertisers throwing keywords at the wall and sitting back waiting to see which ones stick….. and more importantly, at what cost? Is this another money making exercise by Google, perhaps? Restricting the data available to advertisers leaves them with no option but to open the floodgates and introduce some guess-work. which will surely mean an increase in ad spend.

I’d love to hear your thoughts. How will this affect you? Is this the right move by Google?

As more information becomes available I will be updating this post.

Image credit.

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