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How has Google Suggest affected search queries?

Posted by Ian Macfarlane July 22nd, 2009

Google Suggest and search refinements were introduced at the end of March this year. How have they impacted the shape of search?

Note: This article focuses on the UK search market.

The folks over at Latitude have written up an interesting piece looking at whether or not the introduction of Google Suggest in the UK has resulted in any changes to the volumes of searches for the search terms which are suggested.

The expected effect would be an increase in suggested search terms as they get more exposure, along with a corresponding decrease in more generic short tail searches and possibly a drop in the long tail as well. Additionally, this should also result in fewer searches for mis-spelled queries, as Google Suggest can correct spelling mistakes on the fly.

The changes expected from the introduction of Google Suggest are very much in line with the type of changes introduced by Google Search Refinements – in fact, Google launched these two new features only a week apart. Therefore, it is likely that the changes in overall search patterns reflect a combination of these two changes.

Let’s have a look at some of the findings. Some examples are really compelling, such as the huge increases in searches for [pet insurance comparison]:

[credit - image from referenced post]

Many queries recommended by Google Suggest have experienced a rise since April, although these growth rates have generally been much lower than the rate for the search term [pet insurance comparison] shown above.

However, the picture isn’t completely consistent across the board. The example of [car insurance compare] isn’t entirely accurate, given the way that Google Insights for Search matches queries. Most people are searching for variants in the phrased form “compare car insurance” (the queries for which correlate well to the set of searches containing any of these words. However, queries including the phrase “car insurance compare” are much lower than this, and volumes are relatively flat.

Note: A side effect of this quirk with Google Insights for Search is that it’s not really possible to determine accurate relative search volumes for more generic terms (which we would expect to have declined slightly) as any generic query entered will also match long-tail variants, including those provided by Google Suggest. You can get some mileage with negative keywords in some instances (here is an example, although this isn’t related to the introduction of Google Suggest) but in general this isn’t suitable.

One area in which the introduction of Google Suggest is expected to have an impact in reducing a particular type of query is with mis-spellings – unlike Google’s other technologies for providing search refinements and spelling corrections, where only after a mis-spelled query has been made is the opportunity is given to correct it (potentially resulting in a second, correctly-spelled query), Google Suggest can prevent mis-spellings from ever happening at all. Here’s an example of a common mis-spelling of the UK’s most popular search term in 2008:

It’s very difficult to pin down a particular trend to one specific change made by Google. There are constantly many changes being made to Google’s search results – 359 last year alone. Some of the experimental features which Google runs never see use beyond a small test group, whilst others are seen by so many people that they’re common knowledge in the SEO industry before they are officially announced. The dates that Google provides for product launches are only rough indications of the dates by which the majority of users will have had access to a feature.

It is also important to note that different features can have related effects – for example, Google’s search refinements launched just a week before Google Suggest came to the UK and both would be likely to have a very similar impact (although I would expect that Google Suggest has a greater impact here than search refinements, due to its relative prominence as a feature).

Side note: The spelling suggestions example above is another good example of need for care with attributing a particular impact on search results on a specific change by Google – around the same time that Google made the changes described above, they also made some changes to spelling correction.

Nevertheless, the data does seem to indicate that the introduction of Google Suggest and search refinements has had the expected effect on search patterns. To round up, I’ll quote the summary of my previous article on search refinements:

As with any change in Google there are winners and losers. Searchers will be more likely to use a wider variety of search queries, meaning that the number of potential visitors will be spread out more evenly across multiple queries. As different websites will rank for different terms, this may result in a “spreading out” of visitors across a greater number of different web sites.

Sites that ranked well for high traffic terms might potentially see a drop in traffic, but the increase in search precision from these more targeted phrases should hopefully mean that searchers are directed to the pages on your site that are most relevant to what they are looking for. That, I think we can all agree, is good for everyone.

Tags: Google, international, keywords, language, long tail

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Google’s new search refinements – how will it affect you?

Posted by Ian Macfarlane March 25th, 2009

Google has announced two changes to how it displays its search results pages. These changes have been rolled out across 37 languages worldwide. In this post, we explore what the changes to their “search refinements” means to webmasters.

Google has recently made changes to their “search refinements” feature. These are the links that Google includes at the bottom (and sometimes at the top) of their search results pages which provide a number of suggestions for a searcher to narrow their search down.

Google has introduced new technology that can “better understand associations and concepts related to your search”. Aside from leading to changes in the search refinements which they display, they have also increased the number of these that they may show.

For example, when searching for [

• The long tail – The true “long tail” of search queries is distinctly different in nature. Remember that Google has said that roughly 20-25% of search queries they have never seen before. The long tail will be affected to an extent, as people may find what they want via query refinements rather than resorting to long queries, but there will always be users who type unusual queries into the search engines.

As with any change in Google there are winners and losers. Searchers will be more likely to use a wider variety of search queries, meaning that the number of potential visitors will be spread out more evenly across multiple queries. As different websites will rank for different terms, this may result in a “spreading out” of visitors across a greater number of different web sites.

Sites that ranked well for high traffic terms might potentially see a drop in traffic, but the increase in search precision from these more targeted phrases should hopefully mean that searchers are directed to the pages on your site that are most relevant to what they are looking for. That, I think we can all agree, is good for everyone.

Tags: Google, international, keywords, language, long tail

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Thinking outside la boîte

Posted by Malcolm McLachlan March 20th, 2009

One of the most common misconceptions that I deal with is keywords, particularly where travel and related services are involved. If you seek international success it is absolutely vital to think outside the confines of this country.

You have probably done extensive research into the most important destinations relevant to your business and you may even have extended this research beyond the UK to your target countries. So all done, yes?

No! What you need to do now is think yourself into each of your target countries and find out what destinations are most popular there. I know that a sizeable proportion of UK travel related services involves business travellers moving around within this country. It is reasonable, therefore, to assume that in other countries the same applies. While your top destination on the UK site may be London it is surely not reasonable to assume that Monsieur le web searcher in Paris is going to London. He may well be a business traveller on a trip to Toulouse or somewhere else within France. Similarly one of your top French destinations from the UK may be Disneyland Paris, but will the same hold true for native French search?

If you really want international success then you need to think internationally. Part of this thinking is that every country has a unique domestic market as well as a unique way of searching. Acquiring this knowledge is painstaking and sometimes quite difficult but it really is worth the effort. That extra bit of understanding can be the edge that you need in getting your product or service that critical position in the search results. The benefits of good keyword research for PPC campaigns are, I trust, self explanatory.

Tags: international, language

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Don’t think "Foreign", think "International"

Posted by Malcolm McLachlan January 5th, 2009

Recently I was presented with a claim that 70% of web searches are not in English.

It would probably be more accurate to say that some 70% of web users worldwide do not speak English as their mother tongue but this is still a powerful argument for the benefits of International SEO.

What is International SEO?

Let’s start with what International SEO is not. It is not just grabbing your UK website, translating the whole thing into your target language or languages and then chucking the result onto a country-appropriate TLD. If all you’re trying to do is to address potential non-English speakers who may be interested in your UK site, this approach may have some merit and you don’t really need to bother about a country-appropriate domain registration. However, that is multi-lingual targeting, not International SEO.

Get a country appropriate domain – nothing says “Germany” to a search engine more authoritatively than domain.de. Currently, certain countries will only permit registration of local domains if the registrant has a physical presence within that country. This is not generally a problem for multi-national corporations but can present a challenge for smaller businesses. Recent statistics suggest that some 14% of non-English searchers outside of the UK & US use the “Pages From [country]” option provided by the major search engines.

Know the market place – Certain products and services are completely inappropriate in some countries for religious, social or indeed legal reasons. This can be quite a granular issue and may not affect your whole offering, which is just one reason why you should avoid any form of machine translation or delivery system that simply spits out a "translated" version of your website depending on which country the content is being served to. Make sure that you know what, if any, age restrictions may apply to any part of your offering. Don’t even consider a straight translation of any legal pages. There is a very good chance that an enforceable UK contract would be tossed out by an overseas court and the flip-side of that is that you may find conditions being imposed on you that you hadn’t bargained for.

Don’t translate, create – This is the big one. Translating your English copy, however well it’s done, confers a “little brother” status on your international venture. Whilst, in strictly accounting terms, your international offering may be less important than your “home-grown” pages, giving your international sites a reduced status will not help them to change the balance. Know the local market place and create copy that’s right for it and for the localised search space. Bear in mind that surfing and searching habits vary markedly between countries, and your copy and its presentation need to reflect this. Don’t forget to include your generic content in this process (About, Contact, Legals etc). Remember that your page titles and meta descriptions need to be part of this process, as these extremely important SEO factors are often overlooked.

English as well? – Quite possibly yes, and for a variety of reasons. Many people consider English to be the language of international business and would expect to be able to view an English language version of say, a share dealing site, although they may be much happier if they can conduct research in their native language prior to engaging with any transaction. Then there is the greatly increased mobility of workforce which means that you need to accommodate English speakers who may be living and working in your target country. Additionally, you should bear in mind that many countries, particularly in Western Europe, teach English as a compulsory subject in school and there is an increasing population of at least bilingual surfers out there. The English content is, self-evidently, something of a no-brainer (ensure that legal stuff is accurate for the target country) but make sure that you’re not missing any opportunities to maximise your audience by offering any alternative language versions of your pages that are appropriate.

Don’t just spell check, proof read - Spell checkers are great, aren’t they? Well, up to a point. Yes, they will help you to trap the more obvious and embarrassing errors but they don’t help much if a misspelling actually makes another valid word. How about a grammar/semantics checker then? Do not put your faith in these things. They are limited and often not very accurate. Remember that this is your brand that we’re talking about here, so give your online presence the same care and consideration that you’d give to hard copy brochures and other material. In other words, proof read everything. Spelling and grammatical errors not only create a negative brand message but can adversely affect search engine rankings and performance.

HTML Entities & you – If you’re not familiar with these things, find out about them. The purpose of HTML Entities is to ensure a fairly universal interpretation of the special characters used in many languages. For example, Ü should be correctly rendered by the majority of browsers as Ü. Random question marks or other characters printed because the browser doesn’t know what to render look awful and hardly present the image that you’re striving for. If you operate on a Content Management System (CMS), it’s worth seeing if this can be enforced at system level. By the same token, if the CMS says that it works in a certain language, make sure that it’s doing this properly.

And to prove they matter - Be certain that special characters are present when required. A long standing joke in the translation industry concerns a town in the USA that allegedly used the word ‘ano’ rather than ‘año’ in a Spanish translation for a millennial celebration. While this may not look too bad to a casual observer, ‘año’ means ‘year’ while unfortunately ‘ano’ means ‘anus’. “Fiesta del ano 2000” might have been seen as a little too specialised for many people!

Getting the money – If your site, or a part of it, is intended for eCommerce, bear in mind that not all countries have bought into the age of plastic as thoroughly as the UK & the US have. You may need to research alternative payment methods like PayPal, or possibly completely change your approach in the target country and investigate “Buy From” style links with bricks & mortar retail outlets. If this is an issue, it will obviously modify your ambitions for the site but it shouldn’t halt your push for local online brand recognition.

Directories still count – Many people dismiss web directories as irrelevant and there is a certain validity to this view: by and large, the Internet has moved on. However, all of the major search engines continue to crawl directories and if you have a good entry and link in one or more of them it can’t hurt you and could speed up the early recognition of your site. The real trick is to sort the wheat from the chaff and not to throw your site at any directory just because it’s there. Yahoo! & DMOZ are both multinational, so have a look in the appropriate country section to see if you can get your site in there. Even if your UK site is already in there, don’t worry – you’re not spamming the directory by adding your site. Assuming that you’ve checked at least most of the areas that I’ve covered, this is a unique site that you’re adding and it lives on a unique domain. Research local language directories, particularly niche directories that fit your product or service, and see if any of them are worth getting into. Local knowledge is a big plus here, so make use of any contacts that you may have on the ground in your target country.

Web 2.0 is important – Like it or not, this is
the age of social media and virtually everybody is able to voice their opinion, pleasure and displeasure online. The great thing is that you can tap into this market and let it help you. If, for instance, you want to set up a South Korean site, are you aware that not only is this the most connected country on the planet but that they also really like social media? Blogs, social media sites and social bookmarking can have a tremendous effect on your back linking and thus your rankings. If you have the personnel to operate it, consider setting up a company blog and make sure that it’s kept fresh & up to date with content that’s appropriate for your key demographic. Blogs are also a great way to get multimedia material that you may not want on your core site out to visitors. This can create a lot of positive noise around your brand and there is always the possibility that one of these items could go viral. Of course, people can also create negative noise, so monitor your social media presence and be carefully reactive if bad noise starts.

Tags: international, language

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