Yearly Archives: 2010

Google Adsense Split Post Shows Power Of LMNHP

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LMNHP Gives Higher Rankings


Frequent readers will know that LMNHP is an acronym for a new way of handling the front page of a WordPress blog.   It gives an immediate 301 redirect to the latest post displayed as a single blog post web page.  Such readers will also know that this method gives improved search engine rankings in keyword queries.

Four SMM blogs are being tested and the search engine ranking results for all posts are being measured.  Where possible, we are also writing in these blogs about topics that are involved in very competitive keyword searches to better illustrate the improved results.  In some cases the results are so dramatic that we are also showing them in a blog post, such as this.

Perhaps the most dramatic example to date involves a keyword search for Google Adsense Split, which was covered in a recent post on this blog.  Such a search has 304,000 results so it is a relatively competitive topic.  The following is what was obtained in a keyword search for Google AdSense Split done today, May 26.  This was tested using the Google Global extension in Firefox, which checks the query in a number of different Google databases using non-personalized search.

google adsense split

Ignoring the first result from News search, what is most surprising is that the search engine results page (SERP) has two apparently similar items from staygolinks.com with different URLs showing as #1 and #2.  The first shows the domain itself, www.staygolinks.com, and the second is the individual post about the Google Adsense Split.

What is particularly gratifying is that the post by Danny Sullivan on Search Engine Land on which the blog post was based comes in at the #4 position.  Out-ranking such a post is a significant indication of how well the LMNHP approach works.  The order in some of the national databases was different but in all cases the Staygolinks post outranked the Danny Sullivan post.

Insights On Google’s URL Indexing

Looking more intensively into the results portrayed in the image above, we see some most intriguing behavior.

The entry for the domain is shown with a cache date and time of  24 May 2010 23:58:41 GMT. As it happens that was very shortly before a new blog post was added, which bumped the post on the Google Adsense Split off the front page of the blog.  That new blog post was published at 24 May 2010 25:22 GMT.  If it had been published two hours earlier, then its Title and meta description would be what would appear against this domain item.  However from what is seen in other keyword searches, if that new post had been indexed, then the order in the SERP would likely have been reversed to show the single post first followed by the domain.

The second indented entry for the blog post itself shows a cache date and time of 18 May 2010 00:51:22 GMT.

The blog post that now appears if you go to the domain and are redirected (Professional Writers Blogs Are More Visible With LMNHP) has been indexed and does appear in relevant keyword searches.  However the URL for the individual post is attached to that listing in such  keyword searches, rather than the URL for the domain. 

How Google indexes URLs and the content to be found there may always change, but it would appear that the following happens based on the cache dates.  On a first pass, the spider indexes the URL to which it is redirected together with the content there.  On a second pass, the spider indexes the domain itself since there was no record on the previous pass and uses the redirected content for that URL.  This description must be taken as highly speculative, but is perhaps a most intriguing glimpse into what may be happening.

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Professional Writers Blogs Are More Visible With LMNHP

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For those who are following the ongoing SEO testing of the LMNHP approach to blogs, I continue to monitor SERP performances on the four SMM blogs where the LMNHP approach is being adopted. I am constantly amazed by the high rankings that are rapidly achieved by new posts. For critical tests I use Firefox using the Global Search Extension to avoid getting personalized search results. Today I saw a result that was really mind-blowing. Recency of post may play a part in this but it still is noteworthy.

I saw a guest post on the Problogger blog, which clearly has some authority. Its title was Why Professional Writers Need a Blog. Or Not. It suggested that professional writers on nonfiction topics would be well advised to have a blog whereas those writing fiction books would be better served by a static website. I have been looking for high profile blogs where I could see how well a post written using the LMNHP approach would rank against a high profile blog post.

This seemed an ideal subject and was also a topic I wished to discuss since I took issue with the opinions expressed by the author. I firmly believe that professional writers of all types are best served by a blog. As a result I wrote a post, Professional Writers Blog, that was uploaded just over 24 hours ago. The image below is the result when doing a relevant keyword search. This is a 9.0 million item search so there is high competition for this. The result is that shown by Google Australia (clearly far from Canada).

Google SERP result for Professional Writers Blog

As you will see the blog post I wrote is at #3 while the Problogger post I was commenting on is at #4. Searches on other Google centres using non-personalized search had the two close together, sometimes in this order and sometimes reversed. I still find this hard to believe. Your mileage may vary but if you do a search rapidly for Professional Writers Blog, you may see somewhat similar results.

The LMNHP approach here is behaving exactly as it should. The latest single blog post web page is given as the SERP result with its own Title and with its own meta description. This description was chosen carefully to appeal to potential searchers for these particular keywords. Since this blog post is being shown as the front page of the blog for the time being, this maximizes the number of of back linkis that are registered against this particular URL. Its high ranking in the search engine results is a confirmation of the power of this approach. It is also particularly gratifying that the post outranks the Problogger post, which it was discussing. Recency may play a significant factor in such early results but usually posts will come back to a similar position after taking a dip for a week or two after the initial days of high rankings.

If anyone needed a graphic illustration of the power of the LMNHP approach, this search for Professional Writers Blog provides an outstanding example.

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Google Adsense Split To Be Revealed

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Danny Sullivan tells us that Google May Finally Disclose AdSense Split. For the moment, that is true only if you’re an Italian newspaper. Thanks to an anti-trust investigation in Italy, Google may share how much it keeps. At least, that is, to Italian newspaper publishers.

Sullivan is rightly critical of Google’s stance on the Adsense split. That is the amount of money that Google keeps for itself from AdSense ads that publishers carry. As he points out:

Google’s incredibly hypocritical in its failure to disclose its AdShare split. For years, the company has run a campaign that the web should be more open with data, though it’s most vocal about being “open” in areas where it is behind competitively. Google’s the leader in contextual ads that AdSense provides. Apparently, it sees no need to be open there.

Google also has tried to fend off claims that it has a monopoly or should be subject to anti-trust action countering that people can take their data with them and leave Google. … Google’s lack of disclosure when it comes to AdSense payments has long seemed the chief area it might be vulnerable on anti-competition grounds.

This topic is of extreme interest to the host of people who are now using AdSense ads on their blogs. They all of course wish to maximize their revenues and indeed if they follow Patrick Sexton’s advice in his In Depth Guide to Improving your Adsense Revenue, they may do very well.

However the unknown in this scenario is the proportion of the revenues that Google receives on those advertisements which it will remit to its publishers. Perhaps the principal reason why Google does not wish to reveal that AdSense split, is because it wishes to retain the flexibility of adjusting the split up or down during hard times. That is fine for Google but leaves its publishers feeling they are at the mercy or whim of Google.

A stable AdSense split would avoid alienating their publishers. Losing the flexibility of adjusting the split up or down is only a small price for Google to pay for a better relationship with some important stakeholders in AdSense.

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Higher SEO Rankings With LMNHP

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The LMNHP approach is now being applied in all four SMM blogs and the keyword query SEO rankings are being monitored.  Higher rankings are being seen and are maintained even after individual posts are no longer on the blog ‘front page.

As an additional test, blog posts on somewhat competitive topics are being issued to see how well the posts can outshine their competition.  As an example, Google Maps is finally showing the Golden Ears Bridge in British Columbia, which is extremely tardy performance.  A post was written on The Other Bloke’s Blog entitled Golden Ears Bridge BC now on Google Maps.

At the time of the launch, a search for ‘Golden Ears Bridge BC’ showed the following results:

SERP for Golden Ears Bridge BC

This includes some real heavyweight opposition.  Wikipedia seems to have a special Google relationship, Translink the owner of the Golden Ears Bridge has a PR7 website and Google has a PR10 website.

Some 36 hours after the post had been launched, here is what was appearing in the SERPs.

SERP for Golden Ears Bridge BC 2

Thus we see that relatively quickly only the Wikipedia item is topping the new post item.  The blog has two entries with the first shown as the domain URL but with the Title and the snippet reflecting the new individual blog post.

Now a new post has been added to the blog and is now the new ‘front page’.  Again a relatively competitive topic is being covered: Online Business Coaches.  It will be interesting to see how this post does against its own competition.  At the same time we will observe how the post on the Golden Ears Bridge maintains its rankings in the SERPs once it is off the ‘front page’.

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Google Places Is Where It Is At

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The Comscore Search Market Rankings data for the US in March had few surprises:

Google Sites led the U.S. core search market in March with 65.1 percent of the searches conducted, followed by Yahoo! Sites (16.9 percent), and Microsoft Sites (11.7 percent). Ask Network captured 3.8 percent of the search market, followed by AOL LLC with 2.5 percent.

Perhaps the biggest surprise was something we rarely think about and that was the rate of growth  of searches as shown in the following table.

2010 march search share

Yes search is growing at seven percent between the two months.  Facebook has a remarkable growth but that is only part of the growth that all the search engines are seeing.

It may well be that a disproportionate part of this growth is coming from the mobile web.  After all Google has now adopted as a slogan, Mobile First.

That explains why Google is now putting much more emphasis on this sector.  As a signal of this, it is now renaming the Google Local Business Center and making it part of Google Places.

One out of five searches on Google are related to location, and we want to make sure that businesses are able to be found and put their best foot forward. We’re excited to announce Google Places today, as it’s just the beginning of what’s to come from our efforts to make Google more local.

qr code

Google is also offering customized QR codes that are unique to an individual business and can be placed on business cards or other marketing materials.  Customers can scan them with certain smart phones to be taken directly to the mobile version of the Place Page for that business.

As Greg Sterling comments, this should be seen as the opening of a new push by Google into the local market, bringing closer together its SMB promotional and consumer assets and cementing a local “brand” around “Places.”  The figures are certainly impressive:

  • More than 4 million business listings on Google claimed by business owners (using the Local Business Center, now Google Places)
  • Nearly 2 million listings have been claimed in the United States
  • There are 50 million Place Pages
  • Place Pages are viewed millions of times each day
  • Google has mailed out Favorite Places window decals to around 200,000 businesses around the United States

Expect to see more and more of this emphasis as time passes.  The mobile sector has much greater potential than the existing PC world and Google is determined to get the lion’s share.

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