seo penguin

search results^3

Jan 28, 2008 seo

a few days ago i posted a question in the google section of cr8asite forums regarding a client and a key term.

this client has PPC and for a while had been asking why they’re not showing up in the yellow sponsored box. for a few months this was a complete mystery to me and have expressed that to this client on a few occasions. by all accounts they should have been able to see their ad. adwords said they were in a high position, their term was placing high, i could see it and i could not only see it on my machine placing high but on nearly all the machines in my office (i think i stopped at 4 machines that weren’t my own).

late last week i was reviewing this client who asked the same question again but provided an image which was something i had not thought of asking for before. much to my surprise i saw that they were using the google toolbar, something i nor my coworkers have running on their machines. i ran some tests…

• checked the term in integrated browser search
• checked the term in google web search
• downloaded google toolbar and checked it there
• i even checked logged into different google accounts and not logged at all
• i also had other people in my department run the same test

and i came to the conclusion that:

• google toolbar wasn’t giving the same results that integrated browser search or web search was giving

so, i posted my question and got some amazing answers back.

from what i’ve understood so far google toolbar is the most personalized search you can get, without being logged in. in browser search and web search followed closely after.
why then, if google toolbar is supposed to be the most personalized search you can get, would my clients’ listing not show up for him in his own personalized search? personalized search snags, basically, the demographic information of the person using the toolbar (age, area, what sites the user views, etc) and can magically spit out results that closely match.

it was suggested that google is testing the user interface treatments on how you arrived at the serps. that makes sense, i can see them doing that, it’d be a smart move. but the same person also feels that google isn’t keeping tabs on their testing. which, again, i can see that happening.

why?
because if they were watching the testing then why would my client using personalized results not see his own ad? unless because

• you’re the type of person who doesn’t click on PPC ads then they will probably show you fewer or no sponsored ads altogether.

or…

google won’t show you personalized PPC results to protect against click fraud.

in order to even get personalized results in the serps you’d have to click on a result so that the search engine algo would recognize that you are partial to that type of site. if you were to do that in PPC you would be charing your competition money and you’d probably also click on your self resulting in massive clicks and click fraud against yourself.

now, if you think about it and google is trying to get you to use the google toolbar doesn’t it feel like a new fangled alexa toolbar except you won’t hear people going, “oooh, did you see my alexa ranking? it’s awesome.”

no, you’ll get people like my client wondering where their ad is. maybe it’s different for natural optimization, maybe my clients’ ad is just some weird fluke. all i know is i had to tell my client not to use the google toolbar so he could see his ad.

i am planning on doing further testing with the google toolbar to see if this is a fluke with just my client, or if this is just a PPC situation. i haven’t tried yet with natural terms but look for another update at the same bat time, same bat channel.

much thanks to the cre8asite forums and this post.