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I adore Google. Period. I use it each time I need to search some stuff
on the Net and it turns up the most wondrous results so I was truly
happy to know that there is something better than Google ... Google
Guide! Yep, it teaches you all the tips and tricks ... so you'll be
able to search even better! Thank God for Google Guide!
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Great site! You've maintained the elegant simplicity of Google's own site, along with a thorough attention to detail and content.
--sublime1-ga, Google Answers Researcher
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Excellent tutorial for both new/experienced Google users.
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You can make your website (more) popular and generate (more) income.
Learn how in this presentation, which provides tips on:
I'm going to share with you my experience with Google Guide.
Google Guide is now the top result for queries including
Want more information on developing a website or to print this presentation?
Then check out the links below.
Following each tip is information about
how I developed Google Guide and improved its content.
Create useful high-quality material that is of interest to users.
Created
Google Guide in 2002
to get feedback a tutorial book I was writing.
Goal of Google Guide -- make searching even easier for novices
and experienced users
Design your website for the blind and deaf, not for spiders or
search bots.
Search bots can't see visuals or hear sound files.
Make your titles, anchor text, and ALT tags descriptive and relevant.
Nelson Blachman, my blind father -- a wonderful reviewer and beta tester for Google Guide.
Present information in more than one way.
People have different needs and preferences.
My site's web logs help me to figure out which formats are popular.
Design names of pages to reflect what's on the page.
Google considers the text in the URL when indexing the page.
Include words on your web pages that users are likely to specify in a
query when searching for your content.
I strive to convey information concisely and clearly, rather than
incorporating particular words on my pages.
Design your site logically.
Include site maps.
Link to each page that you
want accessible from a search engine.
Google Guide includes
Submit a sitemap so that
Google will know about the structure of your website.
Google Sitemaps
provides
- top search queries that most often return pages on each site
- pages that Googlebot had trouble crawling
- common words in each site
- common works in external links to each site
Strive to keep your pages short and about at most a
few topics.
A user is more likely to find what she seeks on a short page.
Sparingly use dynamic content, e.g., JavaScript, Flash, DHTML, etc.
Search engine spiders are able to index plain text and html more
easily than flashy pages.
Flashy pages are more likely to be left out of Google's index and search results.
Correct misspellings.
Users are more likely to search for the correct
spelling.
Seek feedback and use it to improve your site.
Users and web logs are great sources for feedback.
To encourage suggestions and corrections, I
- respond to email quickly
- acknowledge those who
contribute ideas that improve Google Guide
Learn from your logs.
Try to figure out how and why users are coming
to your site.
If you suspect that users may seek information that
isn't on your site, consider adding it.
I noticed the query [ Google
stock symbol ] led
lots of users to the Google Guide Stock Quotes page.
So I added, at the top of the page,
Looking for Google's stock symbol? It's GOOG on Nasdaq. Click
here for Google's stock price or search for it on Google.
Eliminate errors.
Check your web logs.
Run a website validators, e.g.,
W3C Validation Service.
Remove broken links and correct invalid html.
Check Google Sitemaps
to find out whether search bots are able to crawl your site.
For more suggestions on creating great websites, visit
If you know HTML, it's relatively easy to make links to Google's
search results.
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[ Google
tutorial create link ]
[ <a
href="http://www.google.com/search?q=Google+tutorial+create+link">Google
tutorial create link</a> ]
- Open a new window containing the search results for the query
[ Google
tutorial create link ]
[ <a
target="_blank"
href="http://www.google.com/search?q=Google+tutorial+create+link">Google
tutorial create link</a> ]
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The URL shouldn't contain any spaces.
Use a plus sign (+) in place of each space.
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Certain characters can't be used literally;
they must be encoded into a form like %nn.
[ "a song for you" ] would be encoded as
http://www.google.com/search?q=%22a+song+for+you%22,
where
each quote (") is replaced by %22.
An easy way to find the correct encoding is to
- Type your query
into a Google Search box.
- Run the search.
- Look at the resulting URL in your web browser's address box.
- copy and paste the parts you need from the URL into your HTML code.
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With AdSense for Search, you can
- easily create a revenue stream
- provide a Google search box like the following.
Fill the search box with a query by specifying a value the attribute
"value".
Note: If you fill the search box with a query, Google may not share revenue with you.
-
AdSense for WebSearch + SiteSearch
allows users to search the web or the specific site(s) of your choice.
As soon as your site is available on the Internet,
Alternatively, get other websites to link to yours.
After that, when Google's robots or
spiders, known as Googlebot,
-
crawl the web
- they should run across
your site
For more about how to get your site listed on Google, visit
www.google.com/webmasters/1.html.
Visit
www.google.com/webmasters/remove.html, to
- remove websites
- individual pages
- cached pages
- outdated or dead links from Google's index.
PageRank is Google's
system for ranking web pages.
A page with a higher PageRank is
- deemed
more important
- is more likely to be listed above a page with a
lower PageRank
Google describes PageRank:
PageRank relies on the uniquely democratic nature of the web
by using its vast link structure as an indicator of an individual
page's value. In essence, Google interprets a link from page A to page
B as a vote, by page A, for page B. But, Google looks at more than the
sheer volume of votes, or links a page receives; it also analyzes the
page that casts the vote. Votes cast by pages that are themselves
"important" weigh more heavily and help to make other pages
"important."
In other words, Google conducts "elections" in which
- each web page casts votes for web pages
- with hyperlinks to those pages
But unlike a democracy,
- a page can have more than one vote
- links from pages with high PageRank are given more weight
(according to their ranking) and thus help to improve the targets' PageRank.
If you don't want a link to be considered for the purposes of
PageRank,
- e.g., a spammer posts a link to a discount pharmacy site
- specify the hyperlink attribute rel="nofollow"
- which Google implemented in January 2005.
See the PageRank of a page with the PageRank
meter in the Google Toolbar (an advanced
feature).
Using the Google Directory, compare the relative PageRank of your site with those of related
sites.
In the next section, Improving Your PageRank, I offer suggestion for how to improve the PageRank of your
webpages.
Below are suggestions for publicizing your site based on our experience
getting the word out about Google Guide.
Include useful high-quality information on your site.
Create content that users want and will share with others.
Submit your site to various web directories and reference sites.
Post your site's URL (web address) to popular web directories, such as
- Open Directory Project (ODP)
- Yahoo!
- LookSmart
Post your site's URL to online reference, e.g.,
- Wikipedia
- industry-specific expert sites
- blogs
- etc.
Publicize your site to everyone with whom you communicate.
Add your site's URL, e.g., www.googleguide.com, to every
piece of communication you initiate, such as,
Business cards
Letterhead
Newsletters
Brochures
Press Releases
Fax cover sheets
Email signatures
Write a newsletter and send it out.
Inform people what's new or noteworthy on your site.
The newsletter will
-
remind people about your site
- encourage them to visit to find interesting content
Provide a Rich Site Summary (RSS).
RSS is also known as Really Simple Syndication
Make it easy for other sites to distribute your
headlines and content.
Your RSS feed will be indexed by popular Blog search engines, including
Ask other high quality websites to link to your website.
Getting other "good" websites to link to yours usually helps your website's PageRank and ranking on Google.
Provide motivation for highly ranked websites to link to yours.
Getting highly ranked sites to link to yours will improve your ranking more than getting many poorly ranked sites to link to yours.
Check out a site before you link back.
Is it a site worthy of your link, i.e., vote of confidence?
Tell the press about your site.
Telling the press may not get your website publicity.
-
Contacted national, and
international press and
got a poor response to our publicity.
-
Emailed journalists who specialize in search engines, but
again few wrote articles about Google Guide.
-
Wrote to reviewers of books on using Google.
A handful responded.
-
Response was mixed.
-
Some wrote that Google Guide was for novices
-
Others wrote that Google Guide was tailored for advanced users
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Wanting to make Google Guide appeal to novices and experts alike,
I indicated sections that would appeal to particular users, e.g.,
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If you have little or no experience with Google, read on. Otherwise, skip to the next section, titled "Go to the First Result."
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We recommend that you skip ahead to Part II: Understanding Search Results unless you're an experienced Google user or you want to know how to use Google's advanced operators.
After several months, found links to Google Guide on
-
library sites
- class sites
- blogs
Got mentioned in a New York Times article.
History of the Google Guide Cheat Sheet
- Idea suggested by Matt Vance
- Created Google Guide using material from Google Guide's
Using Search Operators
- Announced Cheat Sheet on Slashdot
- Within 24 hours, my Cheat Sheet rose to #2 (after Google's cheat sheet)
Keep your website up.
If your website
- is not accessible for an extended period of time
- Google may reduce the ranking of your site
Give away content.
I publish Google Guide under a
Creative Commons License to enable others
to
- copy
- distribute
- make derivative works
as
long as they give Nancy Blachman credit and link to Google Guide.
Translate your website into foreign languages.
If you don't know a foreign language, find others that do.
Search Google for your website.
Search Google for your site.
Google Guide is highly ranked,
thanks to
- the sites that linked to Google Guide
- users who clicked on Google Guide in their search results
Being listed so highly on Google has improved the
traffic flow to Google Guide.
For the top ranked site, Google sometimes includes
useful links from within that site.
Google Guide
Avoid devious tactics to improve your ranking.
Google
may delist your site from its index,
if it suspects that you are trying to deceive it web crawler and
thus its users by
- including hidden text
- misleading or repeated words
- pages that don't match your sites description
- deceptive redirects
- duplicate site or pages
- other disingenuous tactics
To compute a page's PageRank, Google considers hundreds of factors including
- how fast a site is gaining links
- how long the links persist
- when your site acquired the links
- the click through rate
(CTR) of Google's search results, cached pages, favorites on the
Google Toolbar
- the stickiness of your site (i.e., the effectiveness
of your site in retaining individual users)
For more factors see
"Great Site Ranking in Google The Secret's Out" on Buzzle.com.
Google periodically changes how it calculates a page's importance,
thereby resulting in shifts in rankings, known as a Google Dance.
I don't try to keep up with the latest search engine optimization
tricks.
I strive to make searching Google easier by educating users about
Google services, capabilities, and features.
When I'm successful,
sites link to Google Guide pages and increase their ranks and
importance to Google.
Here are links to a few pages that discuss how to publicize your
website and improve the ranking of your web pages.
In the next section, Advertising Your
Website, I'll tell you how I increase traffic through running
inexpensive ads.
To increase traffic and to learn about Google's advertising services,
I became an AdWords
advertiser and
- designed simple text ads
- chose queries and keywords the ads should match
- specified the maximum we were willing to spend on an advertising
campaign
Google charges us only when someone clicks on one of our
ads.
AdWords contributes greatly to Google's bottom line, i.e., it's profits.
Google offers many resources to educate website owners about AdWords.
I encourage you to learn from Google's material and those of third parties.
You can make money from Google AdSense by hosting
Ads
Display ads that it deems relevant to the content of the page.
Link Units
Display a list of topics that Google deems relevant to the content of
the page.
A page of related ads is displayed when a user clicks on
a topic.
WebSearch
Provide web search and earn revenue from Google.
WebSearch + SiteSearch
Generate revenue by providing a query box for searching the web and
the specific site(s) of your choice.
Referrals
Generate income by referring your users to Google products and search
services.
At first I was reluctant to run ads on Google Guide.
I didn't want to
create any distractions that would lure visitors away from my site.
But visitors leave even if I don't run ads. So I ran ads at
the bottom of a page because I thought they would distract only
viewers who weren't interested in my site.
Few users clicked on the
ads.
Later I moved the ads to the top of a page.
The response rate
more than doubled and so did revenue.
Google provides a wealth of resources on AdSense, just
a few of which I've listed below.
This page was last modified on
Sunday November 26, 2006.
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For Google tips, tricks, & how Google works, visit
Google Guide at www.GoogleGuide.com.
By Nancy Blachman and Jerry Peek who aren't Google employees. For
permission to copy
& create derivative works, visit
Google Guide's Creative Commons License webpage.
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