One of my colleagues today looked up the word Search Engine in Google. The results were very surprising. Google ranks #6 in Google for the word search engine. Does that mean that they really consider themselves the #6 best site for users for that term? How is Altavista considered #1? When is the last time you used Altavista? LOL.
So if your listening Matt Cutts, I thought I would help you guys out with a couple SEO tips:
- That title you have on your homepage that says “Google” isn’t really that keyword focused. You might try changing it to:“Google Search Engine – Find Information on the Web including Images, Video and More”I admit I haven’t done any extensive keyword research for Google before making this tag so it might need to be slightly tweaked based on the best keywords. You guys being Google should know what your most important keywords are though. Of course you guys being Google should know better than to rank yourselves #6 for the phrase “search engine”
- Description tag. Um, here is what Google’s SERP description is:Shopping Groups Books Scholar Finance Blogs · YouTube Calendar Photos Documents Reader Sites · even more » · iGoogle | Sign in. Google. Advanced Search …That doesn’t exactly conform to your best practices for writing Meta descriptions. According to this link, Google itself has a poor Meta description tag (actually it has none). And even though that description tag won’t help Google rank any better in Google, it will help in MSN and Yahoo. You would think that Google would be leading by example with this kind of stuff.
- Change some internal links. Link that logo you have in the search box on the upper right hand side of the Webmaster Blog with an alt tag that says “Google Search Engine” or at least “Google Search”. I am sure you guys have enough internal link opportunities to figure it out…
So all sarcasm and poking fun at Google aside, this kind of result doesn’t exactly inspire confidence that Google’s algo is perfect (or even close). It also goes to show you that some of the biggest brands still need SEO
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Tags: Google
Perhaps this is there subtle way of shaking the "search engine" label in that the term search engine implies a very one-way type of system and Google is clearly migrating towards a community model aka "SearchWiki"
They have a long way to go then Rolo since most members of the Google community would agree that Google should be a top 3 search result for the term "search engine".
They have no META tags so the bots pick descriptions for google.com from the DMOZ directory.
yah! its means that they really had to consider themselves the best site for all the users for this term,you have a nice blog keep up the good work.
by: ricka
I think people searching for "search engine" is already on a search engine the fact that they are searching, (Reminds of Rene Descartes I think therefore I am *LOL*) so most probably they are looking for something that is more descriptive so IMHO, Wikipedia should be on top. People searching for Search Engine on a search engine is probably doing database information retrieval algorithm research.
But I found something else quite interesting… I search for other keywords:
Calendar
1. Google, 2. Wikipedia, 3. Yahoo
Email
1. Gmail, 2. Yahoo, 3. Hotmail
Documents
1. Google Docs, 2. Wikipedia, 3. W3CSchools
Spreadsheet
1. Wikepedia, 2. Google Docs, 3. Google Docs