A Comprehensive Guide to the Vince Update
Call it what you will. The Vince Update? The Big Brand Update? Something big happened to Google’s algorithm this year. It hit the US in February and the UK in June, and it’s flummoxed the greatest minds in SEO ever since. Everyone’s tweeted about it, blogged about it, passed opinion on it at various conferences, but every week I see someone blog about Vince who seems to have got the wrong end of the stick. How exactly Google are giving preference to “brands”? In this post I’m going to give a potted history of the best commentary published post Vince, and how each bit of analysis fits together to produce a wider picture of what’s happening with the brand update.
More UK SERPs Craziness
This morning, Paul Carpenter pointed out some UK results still showing irrelevant US websites. Yesterday I noticed an example of my own. Check out the following SERP:
Why I Think the Google / Twitter Deal is a Bad Idea
Clutter
Don’t get me wrong – I’m a big advocate of both Google and Twitter, I just think that Google are going down a path that they shouldn’t be right now. In the old days, people preferred Google over other search engines because of its nice clean interface – the homepage looked pretty, with the search box and the two simple buttons. And the results were displayed in a nice clean way – just 10 results.
Brighton Zombie Walk Photos 2009
So this past weekend was Halloween, and in typical quirky Brighton style there was a parade of zombies through town. Officially called Beach of the Dead, the zombies started at Brighton train station at 3pm, and headed down to the seafront before lurching along the beach to the West Pier. It was kind of bizarre to witness a city grind to a halt because of a horde of marauding zombies, and some of the costumes were awesome – I especially liked the zombie Joker. Here are some photos from the day:
Zombie girl
Moving On To Pastures New
I wrote this post a couple of months ago, on August 21st, but didn’t get around to publishing it, so here it is now.
After 5 years of working at iCrossing (previously Spannerworks), I’ve finally decided to take the extremely difficult decision to move on. Today is my final day as Head of Natural Search and as an employee of iCrossing. The last 5 years have probably been some of the best of my life, and all I have are good things to say about iCrossing and Spannerworks. › Continue reading
Has Matt Cutts 302 Hijacked Himself?
Last week I pointed out what I thought was now a pretty irrelevant SERP. I mean sure, it was pretty big news within the SEO industry, but for normal folk looking for “caffeine” related information I’d say it was given too much real estate within the SERP what with the Sandbox, Google Webmaster Central Blog, and Matt Cutts’ blog ranking 2nd, 3rd and 4th respectively.
I’d say that the fact that these websites are ranking so well, so quickly, for such a competitive term, had to be QDF related, so I decided to keep an eye on this SERP to see what happened as the freshness lapsed. Today, the same SERP looks as follows:
Subdomains and the UK Vince Update
I’ve been pouring over lots of data for the last few weeks, analysing SERPs pre-Vince and post-Vince (Vince is Google’s brand update btw). Something I’ve noticed is subdomains starting to creep into SERPs. Here’s a few UK specific examples:
Furniture
Is Your GeoTargeting Screwed?
So I had suddenly had one of those rare moments that I thought was quite clever that I’d quite like to share with everyone. It’s amazing how many big companies really screw up their geotargeting by hosting all regional content on a .com, and then do absolutely nothing to ensure that their content ranks regionally. Imagine if you could find websites that do this, and then you let them know that they could increase their traffic by 10-20%. I’m sure there’s a decent packet to be made out of that.
Anyway, here’s how I’d do it. I’d do a search using Google for .com domains, that have UK specific sections on their websites. You can get to the query I’d use here, but the results should look something like this:
Weird Google UK Results
So Google UK’s results have been a bit screwy for the last week or so, with a supposed algorithm update taking place. I’ve been keeping an eye on some weirdness happening within the “car insurance” SERP since the update happened:
SEO Checkup @ SMX London 2009
So I’m talking (well, not so much talking, more ripping websites apart) at the forthcoming SMX London on 18/19 May at the Connaught Rooms in Covent Garden. I’m doing the SEO Checkup session on 19th May at 3pm. Also on the same panel are Dixon Jones and Jane Copeland.
SEO
Tweetings
- RT @mashable Take a Virtual Walk Through Hong Kong With Google Street View http://bit.ly/cJXvrf
- @jaamit cool tunes
- Banksy film: slow to start, but really funny by the end. Good introspective look at how ridiculous the street-art scene can be
- @markraymonduk I'll be out b4 u - I'll tweet u the ending
- Anyone else have a problem with #4sq crashing when trying to get ur location on iPhone?
- Off to see the Banksy film, Exit Through the Gift Shop. Will let you know what it's like
- @jamr0ck Cheers mate - I've left work now. May get in touch 2mrw tho
- I wish I'd paid more attention when I was being taught about regular expressions
- @davidcoats @dannyguk I've never been to Brazil