How to make your content findable, Part 2
Long-time readers may recall that back in September I set up a small experiment in search optimisation techniques, by simply creating a series of virtually identical pages with minor differences in content. At long last, let’s see how they got on in the search listings.
The nonsense word I chose was “Whippersnatcher”, and there were 10 different pages – here are the results:
- Google – 4 results, top was the page linked to with the search term, and featuring the word as the filename, the title tag and as a link in the content
- MSN – no results
- Yahoo – 1 result, top was the page also linked to with the search term, and featuring the word as the title tag and as both a link and an h1 in the content
- AltaVista – 1 result, the same as Yahoo
- AOL – 2 results, top was the same file as Google (not surprising, as a header informs me that AOLSearch is “Enhanced by Google”)
Analysis
So – what do these results tell us? Well to be honest, not a hell of a lot about how best to optimise pages for the search engines! Different pages placed highest in different engines, and none of them picked up all ten variations.
But perhaps that is of interest – maybe they interpreted my list of links as unlikely to be important, or a (rather inept) link-farm?
Anyway, it’s turned out to be an ultimately pointless and un-illuminating exercise, but the fact that I’d never posted the follow-up has been bugging me for months. Consider this the first item I cross off my New Year’s resolutions…
Filed under: Internet, Design.
Bookmark this article with del.icio.us
Previously: Merry Christmas
Next: Blogger sacked by "Evil Boss"