Beanstalk's SEO News Blog

Alright, today is the first time I've seen this. Now we've all seen Twitter in the Google results. We've all seen articles in the Google results but never before have I seen a scroll box with a mix of articles and Twitter comments half way down the first page.

As quickly as it came it disappeared but fortunately I'd done a screen capture which you can view here:

As if things weren't complicated enough. :)

And for those of you thinking this is just for longtail - the search phrase was "car insurance". Obviously we're looking at a major phrase here.

Shortly thereafter it went back to News Results indicating this may be a Caffeine test reinforcing rumors that Twitter and other social media avenues will have a greater impact in a post-Caffeine world.

Labels: Caffeine, google, twitter

As of this morning we were starting to see Caffeine results off at least one Google Datacenter. Last week we reported that we'd let you know as soon as we started seeing Caffeine results and where that location is. Interestingly - it is out of a location that contains one of our servers - Seattle. The IP is 74.125.67.100.

Now the interesting thing is that on SE Roundtable they're reporting (and confirmed by users there) that the IP is 66.102.7.18.

The results appear in-and-out right now and to make things more confusing - they may be moving as a client of ours can confirm seeing different (Caffeine-like results) out of Florida (no confirmed IP though).

We'll be sure to keep you posted as we find out more.

Good luck and may the SERPs be with you.

And Google Breadcrumbs:

Another big story came out of Google yesterday (but just hit my radar earlier today) and that is the announcement by Google that they are testing showing site breadcrumbs in place of URLs below the description in the SERPs. They illustration they used was:

Their belief is that this provides more information to the searcher when compared with the traditional results:
These results aren't displaying in my location so I can't test them (this isn't worth quite the same effort as tracking down Caffeine servers) but on the surface - I like the breadcrumb results and I do think that once the average searcher figures out how to read them to determine the results that most closely match their search intent.

In short - it's not revolutionary but it is interesting and I hope it works out.

Update - I have since found a server where I can see the breadcrumbs. If you'd like to see them for yourself yo can visit http://74.125.67.100/search?hl=en&gl=us&q=spidersapien+reviews&btnG=Search&aq=f&oq=.

Labels: Caffeine, google update

For those of you not yet aware, Google has been testing a new algo/infrastructure nicknamed Caffeine. Until a few days ago the general public had a location to go to to watch and monitor how their sites would fare on the Caffeine system. That location has been pulled and it's been announced that the new system is tested, working, and will be rolled out - though not until after the holidays.

While the fine folks at Google have tested Caffeine, they obviously don't want to be subjected to the same kind of backlash they received in the Florida update of 2003 when sites and pages were dropped from the index and spam ruled the results right through the holiday season.

In a few days time they will roll out Caffeine on a single datacenter and pull data and stats from a small percentage of the general public. The full launch will occur sometime in early 2010. When we have the location of the datacenter we'll be sure to let you know. :)

Labels: Caffeine, google update

Some of you out there may have heard about Google's major algorithm update called Caffeine, which can currently be tested here (they have already revised it a few times, so don't be alarmed if it is down for a few hours at some point with a maintenance message). This algorithm update is mainly related to how Google indexes websites, but as we have seen here at Beanstalk it has given even better results to most of our clients. For instance we have a client on Page 3 for the phrase Shade Sails (still mid promotion), but on the sandbox he is in the top 10. Another client on the 7th page for California Health Insurance are on the 1st page on the Sandbox. And lastly one of the largest campaigns we are running for the phrase Web Hosting shows only a variance of 1 position (lower on Caffeine).

From what I can see not only has the indexing changed but so has the value of higher numbers of links. We are being out ranked by a company called Rankpay for the phrase SEO Service almost purely by paid links (Sample Paid Link), and links from their clients websites (Rankpay uses the anchor text SEO Service and SEO Services) whereas we rank #1 on the current Google search algorithm. Reviewing the major phrases we rank for (SEO Service, SEO Services, and SEO Consulting), there is no more than a one position difference in our rankings. Needless to say in the long run paid links will get you penalized from the rankings, so we aren't going to change our tactics.

Below is a video produced by Michael McDonald from WebProNews and Matt Cutts (one of the top Google engineers) discussing the Caffeine update and its affects on rankings.

Labels: Caffeine, google update, paid links, rankings, search algorithm