Query deserves freshness.Fact or Fiction?
Tom from Seattle asks, “”Query deserves freshness.” Fact or fiction?”
It’s a fact! They have talked it in the New York Times that we believe that there are some queries that deserve freshness. So QDF was that he talked about it in the New York Times and that is fact not fiction.
Is Google doing away with use of the meta description?
Quentin from Vancouver asks, “In the search results, Google will often display a snippet appropriate to the specific search query – often disregarding the meta description. Is Google doing away with meta description use like they did with meta keywords?”
Alright Quentin let me lay a little bit of schooling on you. It actually turns out that we used to not use that meta description at all. We would only use the snippet appropriate to the specific search query. And only in recent years have we added it where if you have a meta description we would sometimes chose that meta description over the snippet within some page. So in fact it’s moving the other direction, we started out as only having stuff from within the page and now we are little more likely to sometimes use the meta description. But we don’t use it all the time. If you think it’s useful for the query, don’t make the same meta description on every single page just as a cookie cutter because we sort of think that’s not a very useful meta description. So it’s not that we are getting away with the meta description we use it more now than we did say 7 or 8 years ago. But at the same time we think it has to be useful before we use the meta description the best thing to do is make a really useful meta description and then you are more likely to see that instead the snippet from the page. Now if you don’t want to bother that’s completely fine too. We’ll just try to do whatever we think is the smartest and the best for the users and hopefully users will click through and find your content.
Will Google find text in images someday?
Pigatto from Erechim, Brazil asks, “Will Google find text in images someday?”
Well that would be a really big undertaking. I think it would be fun, we’ve joked around the pool table about wouldn’t it be great if we crawl the web and found out all the images and ran OCR on all the images on the web, that really would be a lot of work. I think it would be a fun idea but I don’t think you should count on that for the short term from Google
How do meta geo tags influence the search results?
Jochen from Stuttgart, Germany asks, “How do meta geo tags influence the search results?”
And the answer is that it is not something that we look at very closely at all, not meta geo tags, we tend to look at the IP address, we tend to look at the GTLD or the CCTLD that’s the country code TLD, Top Level Domain so .fr, .de. There is also something in Google’s webmaster tools, where you can say my site is not just the .com that’s about the entire world it’s a British .com or it’s a .com that really pertains to New Zealand or Australia. You can highlight and say this .com is really about Germany or Canada or whatever your country is. But typically the geo tags that are in Meta tags are not as usual and we don’t give such way if at all. So I would spend your time trying to make sure you have the right domain name, trying to make sure you have the right IP address if you can and definitely if you have content that is geo located, even if it’s a sub-domain or sub-directory you can specify that within Google’s webmaster tools and say yes this is relevant for this particular country
Will a link to a disallowed page transfer PageRank?
Steen in Copenhagen asks, “If a page is disallowed in the robots.txt, will a link to this page transfer/leak link juice?”
So essentially suppose ebay.com is allowed in robots.txt will a link to ebay.com even though it’s roboted-out will it still collect link juice? And the answer is yes. So in the old days New York Times, eBay, the California DMV, all of them blocked us with robots.txt. And yet if someone comes to Google and types in California DMV you want to return the DMV’s home page. So we solve that by not crawling the page but we can still return the reference and so if you see enough people link to a page even though its roboted-out we can still return that in our search results
Can my blogroll affect my blog’s reputation in Google?
Remiz Rahnas from Kerala, India asks,”I keep a blogroll page with link to all my friends’ blogs on my blog. Will that affect my blogs reputation in Google? Recently my friend lost PR5 to 0 for such a page.”
Certainly, who you link to, can affect the reputation. So if you are linking to spammy sites, sites that we consider junky, skuzzy, spammy whatever that can affect your sites reputation. Certainly, if you are selling links within your blogroll, that can be a very high risk. But just because your friend lost PR5 to PR0 that doesn’t necessarily mean it was because of the blogroll, it doesn’t necessarily mean that we thought that he was selling links, it could be a temporary thing with canonicalization. So I wouldn’t automatically assume that it was the blogroll that did it. That said if you do have a blogroll its better that it be editorial real links and not link that you are secretly selling but you are calling it a blogroll or something like that. In general blogrolls are great things to have. I have one of my blogs so don’t be scared to have one. But if you are linking to a spammy stuff or things that you think are kind of low quality be aware that, that can affect how we think of the quality of your website.
How can I optimize my site on a small budget?
Keen Agents from Glendale, CA asks, “How does someone begin to SEO their site on a small budget in an overwhelmed industry such as real estate?”
I’ll give you the same answer regardless whether its real estate or any other industry. I think there are a couple of things to bear in mind. No. 1 start with a small niche, don’t say I’m going to rank 1 for real estate or whatever your trophy phrase is. Its probable better to concentrate on individual neighborhoods or individual markets or may be going to a consumer market is a little bit of a big thing to grasp at once. So maybe you want to go for a small sliver of the market, the niche that you can be well known for and then build your way outward. Build your reputation up; build your rankings up as you get to be more well known. The other factor is to be creative. If you have the same brochure way of site as everyone else in the industry, there is no reason for someone to link to you or even remember you. But if you have some sort of compelling thing about your website then, it could be a blog with a distinct voice; it could be you can really make amusing videos; it could be that you come up with fantastic advice, look for some unique angle. So start with a unique niche and try to be creative and how you tackle it and that can probably help you out quite a bit compared to a bunch of different competitors in your industry.
When will the Data in Webmaster Tools be improved?
Grahame Davies from London asks, “When will you commence work on improving the information provided in Google (Webmaster Tools) as per the suggestion you would at the start of the year?”
The answer is the webmaster team up in Curtlin has been working very hard to try to make sure that the information is both reliable and updated more often. You don’t always see that because it’s under the hood but they have made a number of significant improvements to make it so that the information continues to work well and be reliable. So the fact is they have been working on that the whole time and you are already benefitting from that and you will continue to benefit from that, and the infrastructure underneath the Google Webmaster Council is much more stable and much more reliable now if it’s as even a few months ago because of the good work that they have been doing
Can the geographic location of a web server affect SEO?
Lee from the UK asks, “Hi Matt, could you confirm whether the geographic location of the web host has any significant ranking factors for organic SEO?”
Yes it does. Because, we look at the IP address of your web server. So if your web server is based in Germany we are more likely to think that it is useful for German users. That’s not the only country we are going to return you for and we also look at the tld’s, we also look at the .te .fr all those sorts of things. You can also specify in Google’s webmaster’s console and say yes my site my .com or .whatever is about this specific country. You can even do that for specific parts of your site like de.something.com or fr.example.com. So I would absolutely recommend that you use those tools. If you find a great deal in a particular country and if you really want to stay in that country with your web server, I think that’s fine. But if you are worried about it or you want to experiment you can certainly try switching the geographical location of your web server which is essentially changing your IP address and that might end up helping for various countries. So it’s the sort of thing that I would encourage you to experiment.
Will having my software in low quality directories hurt my ranking?
Richard M from Australia asks, “We sell a software product and there are 100s of software download directories on the web of varying quality. Could submitting our product to all of them hurt our rankings or domain trust/authority?”
Ok, so we are talking only about a software product not about a website. If it’s only a software product then I wouldn’t really worry about it some of those directories are not high quality and we might end up taking out or scoring differently those directories but it won’t hurt your website to link from those software directories. Now website wise I would definitely recommend not submitting your site to 100s of directories but you are talking about a software product. So that’s what you are confining yourself to then I think it doesn’t hurt to go ahead and have your product listed in all those software directories. If any of them are low quality we try not to score them highly, we try not to keep them that high in our ranking or how we crawl the web but it doesn’t hurt your software listed in that directory.
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