Last week was a real game changer for anyone in the SEO business in my honest opinion. Panda 2.4 was just the start with an impact on Google Analytics along with a few languages like Korean, Chinese, and Japanese. There was a ton more to come…
So let’s go back to August 15th, I was doing a few manual checks of some highly competitive terms (targeting brands) when I found what looked like an organic sitelink. I saw it once, but then it disappeared on reload. A few more refreshes and a cachaca later, I was able to get back into the test.(Sidenote, I should have checked my cookies and used that to get back into the test, oh well). Now come Tuesday the 16th Google announced and update to sitelinks and boy what a change. Let’s dive into some brands.
Marriott
Nike – Can you click anything else than Nike?
Okay, now even my own uBlanket
These sitelinks are based on your navigation and suggest that you should have a LOT of top level navigation elements so you would have as many sitelinks as possible. My instant reaction would be to try and deep linking your top navigation pages, but still testing.
In addition, I am not sure if this was early or not, but I noticed Google is now using a few microformat data in their SERP. Let’s say your signing up for the SAT (like many high school students do this fall), Google “sat test dates” and you can see the dates clearly below the result
Sat, Oct 1 SAT Test Dates
Sat, Nov 5 SAT Test Dates
Sat, Dec 3 SAT Test Dates
In other news, I have been enjoying the Google Profiles (and Images) within the SERP. Thinking of some recent news posts (e.g. Skype + Groupme ) and a quick search later I see authors mugshots right there in the SERP. What stops you from changing your image to a big arrow that points to the right? Anyone?
It might not look great from a friends standpoint, but if it leads to a bump in traffic which gives you a bonus, do you think it’s worth it? Maybe its a bit … dare I say evil? With all these new changes I feel like Google is trying to incentive people to take advantage of theme, okay let’s not be evil and take a look as some other changes.
Last but not least, have you seen how Google has moved the Did you mean… ? and automatically substituted the correct spelling. I guess trying to do a bit blackhat and rank for misspellings is over, oh well.
I would love to get your thoughts on all these new changes. It feels like just last week Google Instant was forced on users and everyone was talking SEO.