7 replies to this topic

[DJJ]

I registered a new domain a few days ago (18 Nov 2009) and have been studying the G search engine results to see when it would appear.

The new domain is animatormag.com. I added a link to animatormag.com on a well established web site of mine called Stitching Cards.

I have been trying various searches each day to see when something appeared. So far the new web site has not appeared in the search results but the linking page on my Stitching Cards web site has appeared at position number 4 with the search term "animatormagazine uk". See the attached screen capture.


The interesting thing is that the word "animatormagazine" (all one word) does not appear on the link page as text nor as part of the URL. Nor does it appear on the new web site.

The words used in the link are "Animator magazine". The word "UK" appears elsewhere on the page.

However, a search for "animator magazine uk" or "animatormag.com uk" does not list the Stitching Cards web site at all. I have looked at up to page 50 of the results.

Would you like to speculate as to why this is?

I hope my explanation above is not too difficult to follow.

[DonnaFontenot]

Sure, I'll speculate. I'm going to assume that Google knows that "mag" is the same thing as "magazine" in many cases, and since the url contains animatormag, Google sees that as the same thing as animatormagazine, so there's the all-one-word connection. Combine that with the UK on the page, and Google made a guess. Since the all-one-word phrase would likely be a lot less competitive than the separated phrase, it managed to sneak into the SERPs (though it may not stay for long).

[DJJ]

If your assumption is right that could be useful a useful insight into how these things work.

It could be that G indexed "animatormag" as "animatormagazine" but I would have expected it to have indexed it as "animatormag" at the same time.

If I search for words that do actually appear on the page; "animatormag uk" (2 results) or "animatormag" (64 results) the Stitching Cards web site does not appear at all.

That is the bit that puzzles me.

[DonnaFontenot]

It's like trying to figure out the mind of a woman. Sometimes, it's just not logical from the outside looking in, but if only you could see the internal, twisted logic, it would all make sense.

[bwelford]

Great topic, DJJ. I think Donna has got some of the thinking that may be going on here.

I'm just using common sense here, so there may be zero useful content in what I'm about to say. As Donna said, it's like trying to figure out the mind of a woman.

What we're talking about here is the speed at which Google 'gets it right'. Eventually it will be but what do they do on the way is anyone's guess. If you want to create a new brand, say Xerox, then it will take a great deal of effort to spread the word around until people start to make the connection. However if you brand 'Langley BC Real Estate Office' then anyone will probably know what the website is likely to be about.

Google is trying to serve up 'relevant' results to keyword queries. If you suddenly come out of the woodwork with a new (nonsense) word, why should they give that any visibility straight away since you might guess noone will look for it. However the parsing software may guess that it relates to animator magazine so it records that association. It will be interesting to see day by day and week by week how things change.

I often do such time studies and it can be fascinating to see how things evolve. Of course sometimes the algorithm changes too while you're doing this so you cannot always be sure that you have really understood the logic. I'm sure eventually it will all settle out the way it should.

Edited by bwelford, 22 November 2009 - 10:17 AM.

[AbleReach]

site:http://animatormag.com

This search shows me that Google has indexed one page from http://animatormag.com

Doing the same search on Yahoo shows me that Yahoo thinks it has indexed all three pages. However, when I click through to the pages, all three result in "Error 404 - Page Not Found"

So, you see, you are in there. It's just that you're not showing up for the chosen terms.

A 404 can slow down indexing. You can speed things up by giving clues to the spiders. You could put a 301 on the links, or use link text that is NOT identical to the links that were 404's. A 301 will be the quickest, but as you don't have links to keep you could, instead, just beef up the home page, pop in another mention of this site on your other site, and wait.

I think that upping the descriptive nature of your linked language could be very helpful.

Think of concrete language that you could use, and pump up your content. For instance, in your sidebar you list this:

ContentsIssue 1
Issue 2
Which could be this:

Contents
About Animator Magazine
Hand Drawn Animation FAQ
About (the editor)
[/list]Animator Magazine Issue 1
Building a Rostrum
The Grasshopper Animators
Making of a Nightmare
How the Devil Went to Georgia
Sync Sound for Beginners
[/list]Animator Magazine Issue 2
Making the Legend of Bolster
Cutting the Cost of Cel Animation
Animation by a Young Film Maker
Entering Overseas Film Competitions
Animated Films in the IAC Library
[/list]As you see, I'd be tempted to give each issue of the magazine its own category, and treat each article within an issue as a subcategory of that issue. Breaking up magazine issues into a series of separate posts would get headings into title text, and give you a little fresh content boost for each post. You'd also give people who find you more individual things to link to. Post an article or two each day, with unique content and good, descriptive titles, link text and headers, and you'll have happy spiders.

--> Don't think like a print publication that is getting transcribed to fit onto a web site. You're posting these on a blog, so milk the blog format for all you can get out of it.

As a bonus for the print-like desires of some readers, you could consider making an entire issue available as a pdf "ebook," or maybe a year's worth could be a paid download.


As far as whatever search engines are going to do, I wouldn't worry overmuch while there is work to do. Sometimes the first 10-15 posts are all about feeling your way through keywords and user response.

Edited by AbleReach, 22 November 2009 - 01:20 PM.

[DJJ]

Thank you for taking the time to give such a thorough analysis AbleReach. You have given me lots of constructive ideas.

I particularly like the suggestion of a pdf "ebook". I have fond giveaways to be popular items on my other web sites.

I will also take a look at the navigation structure. The way you have laid it out certainly maximises the impact for new visitors.

[AbleReach]

I think that the biggest initial impact of breaking it up that way would be to automatically get a lot of terms into title tags (good for SEO) and headings. Some will be more competitive than others. Some will be the low hanging fruit sort of thing that you see when devotees of a field use qualifier words in their searches.

for instance -
Number of Results in Google
about 42,400,000 for animation
about 256,000 for cel animation
about 65,000 for cel animation history
about 37,400 for adding sound to cel animation
about 19,000 for cel animation demonstration
about 6,690 for cel animation primer

Edited by AbleReach, 23 November 2009 - 05:17 PM.