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Annoyed with Google Results Lately

Elliot Silver
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15

I am an avid Google-user. In fact, I use a ton of Google searches daily. I also can’t remember ever using another search engine for a search that wasn’t SEO related for my websites. I am hardly let down by Google.

I don’t know about you, but I have been getting annoyed with Google lately. Since they started permitting websites to have multiple results on search pages, it seems that searches get more frustrating.

Take a search from today for example. I am looking for a company that does fulfillment inserts, aka blow-ins. Basically I want to insert some of my DogWalker.com magnets into boxes shipped from pet companies to dog owners. When they open their box, voilla, a magnet is inside that they can add to their fridge You’ve probably seen similar things, like samples, coupons, and/or other inserts on your shipped purchases.

From the sponsored advertising links on my search, I know Google recognizes what I am looking for, but the top organic results are way off. Perhaps Amazon links would be appropriate if Google was directing me to Amazon’s fulfillment department, but they aren’t. I’ve seen results like this a number of times, and it’s frustrating when Google seems to understand my search but not produce the organic results that are even close to what I want.

I don’t know about you, but this type of thing is happening to me more and more. As a webmaster, I do like the fact that my website might have 3-4 links in Google for some searches. However, as a searcher, I am finding this to be annoying, especially when the results are way off.

I’ve turned of Google Instant already, and I hope Google is going through growing pains and it’s not a sign of things to come.

Sunday Afternoon Updates

Elliot Silver
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14

I’ve been out of town for a few days but just returned home to the city, where it’s time for beers, wings, and the Patriots game. As always, thanks for checking out my blog today.   Here are a few updates.

– It’s only been live for a few days, but I find Google Instant extremely annoying and distracting. The problem is that generally as I search, totally unrelated listings come up until I complete the first related word or phrase. It’s distracting to my eyes, and it seems to make Firefox run much slower for me. I really don’t like it and am only keeping it live for now to see if I can learn something from it. I will probably turn it off in Firefox but keep it on in Safari for the time being.

– The first acting coach signed up for a directory listing on ActingCoach.com. I know the $4 net revenue is only enough to buy me a couple cups of coffee every month, but the first paid sign up always feels good. It shows that there is at least some interest.

– One big test of ActingCoach.com is whether clients will stick and pay each month.   The annual cost is a bit more than on DogWalker.com ($60/yr vs. $49/year).   It’s a bit like comparing apples to oranges since the professions are paid much differently, but learning about sign up and cancellation habits will be important, and it will be interesting to see, especially when renewals come around on DogWalker.com in a few months.

– Congrats to my developer Mike McAlister (aka “Threat”) who was named a Featured Author on ThemeForest this week. Mike works as hard (or more) than I work to build his business. It’s great to see him recognized for his dedication to his clients and projects.

– I am going to be migrating my blog to a new hosting company some time this week. I don’t anticipate any down time at all and have a backup plan in the event something doesn’t go as planned, but I want to give a head’s up in case you see anything funky.

Why Google Instant Might be a Game Changer for Domain Investors

Elliot Silver
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56

Google is in the process of rolling out its real time search functionality, now known as Google Instant. While the company previously made search suggestions as you type, Google Instant goes a step further and begins showing actual results before you finish with your search.

I’ve been playing around with it, and my immediate thought is that this could impact domain investors, especially those who develop. If Google is predicting your search before you’re finished typing it, people will probably be less likely to finish longer tail searches, which helped produce traffic for developed, long tail keyword domain names. For instance, if yo are looking for “debt management tips,” you may stop typing at “debt management” after seeing some interesting results, and if my site ranks well for “debt management tips” but not the more general term, I will be pretty much SOL.

This does bode very well for short, exact match keyword domain names that rank well in Google for those keywords, but it can also be problematic for some. I know this is contradictory, but let’s use my example below.

DogWalker.com ranks #1 in Google for “dog walker,” #2 for “dog walkers,” and in the last week, dropped out of the top 10 for “dog walking.” If someone is searching for a dog walker, they may actually stop at “dog walk” when the results begin appearing. Despite great rankings for the exact match keyword domain names, DogWalker.com does not rank in the top 3 (see screenshot):

Google Instant Search

It’s way too early to predict how search habits will change, but if they do change, it could have a big impact on domain investors and the domain names they buy.

BP Cares About BPCares.com

Elliot Silver
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27

BP CaresThere was a lot of commentary on Rick’s Blog when he mentioned that he bought and was successfully monetizing many BP-related domain names. It seems that whenever Rick writes something controversial, there are dozens of opinions voiced in the comment section of his blog, and this post was no different.

I received a Google News Alert today about an article appearing on Charlotte, North Carolina’s Fox affiliate website about the owner of BPCares.com. Apparently BP wants to acquire BPCares.com from the registrant, and he isn’t interested in selling it to the company. According to the article, the domain registrant purchased this and other companyCares.com domain names apparently after seeing NBACares.com used in action by the National Basketball Association.

The article mentioned that BP has tried to buy this domain name more than once and that the company keeps calling him about the name, but it didn’t mention whether BP threatened a UDRP or any other legal action. In my opinion, it wouldn’t be outside of the realm of possibility if it did threaten legal action, especially since the owner apparently confirmed that he registered other names related to other companies.

Smartly, the domain owner does not appear to have BPCares.com monetized (or even resolving to another website), and he didn’t mention a sales price, so perhaps his aim wasn’t to profit from the BP brand. However, it does appear to be listed for sale on Sedo without an asking price.

I don’t understand the motive for having this article written, as it only serves to show that he did register the domain name along with other corporate domain names that are similar. A quick search shows the registrant also appears to own GoogleCares.com and DisneyCares.com. If the registrant or someone he knows hadn’t mentioned the situation to the news station, it likely would have remained below the radar.

Let’s hope for his sake that BP doesn’t care enough about BPCares.com to take legal action because that could get quite expensive.

Steps to Building Out Bahamas.co

Elliot Silver
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37

Just a quick   evening post to let you know where I am at with the development of Bahamas.co and the steps I’ve taken so far. I want to show you how development doesn’t have to be time consuming.

1) Posted a coming soon page on Bahamas.co and submitted it to Google Webmaster Tools. It’s nothing fancy, but I figured that I might as well put up a placeholder for now. As you can see, it’s already been indexed in Google.

2) Held a logo design contest on 99Designs.   I invited some designers I thought did quality work, and others participated as well. Hey – why don’t you take a minute and vote for your favorite logo?

3) Found a few templates I like on ThemeForest.net, which will be modified and customized to my liking. I don’t have much time to get the site live, so the custom option is going to have to wait. I plan to have a travel search function eventually, but for now a template is going to have to suffice.

4) Did some research to see what people are looking to find when looking for information about the Bahamas and wrote down a list of article topics. There are roughly 40 article topics in total.

5) I posted a job listing on eLance asking for writers to create a proposal for the aforementioned articles, which will need to be sent to me within 2 weeks. All articles need to be custom written and come from at least 2+ sources (with citations in the event there’s ever an issue). I then selected the most cost effective proposal.

One I have the articles written for me, the logo chosen, and the template modified, I will begin the time consuming process of loading the articles onto the site. I will then build a XML sitemap, submit it to Yahoo and Bing, and hopefully start gaining some traction.

At the beginning of 2010, I promised myself there wouldn’t be any additional development projects this year. Having the opportunity to build and own Bahamas.co was too good to pass up, and it is going to launch in a couple of weeks.

BlogSport.com: Is Yahoo Typosquatting Google’s Blogger Platform?

Elliot Silver
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1

Google BlogspotYou’ll Never Guess Whose Making Money on This Frequently Visited Typo URL

There are plenty of times when I “fat finger” a url and end up on a website I had no intention to visit. We all do it. Oftentimes, these typo domain names are owned by typosquatters who place pay per click links on the landing page, with the hopes of making money from this traffic.

This morning, I went to visit a popular blog hosted on Google’s Blogger platform. These websites generally are formatted with a url similar to this: blogname.BlogSpot.com. When I visited the blog this morning, the page didn’t load, so I double checked that I had the correct domain name. I didn’t. Instead I had blogname.BlogSport.com.

I did a quick Whois search to see who owns the domain name, and I was very surprised to see that Yahoo owns BlogSport.com while Google owns its flagship BlogSpot.com.

You might ask yourself how this happened. It’s somewhat interesting, so I will briefly explain. Sometime between September and October 2005, BlogSport.com was acquired by the owner of Rivals.com. In June of 2007, Rivals.com was acquired by Yahoo, and they presumably acquired all of the assets of Rivals.com, which included the BlogSport.com domain name.

Today, BlogSport.com sits idle, as Yahoo isn’t monetizing or forwarding the domain name, presumably because they know that Google might take action if they did.   According to Alexa, over 10 million people visit Google’s BlogSpot a month. There must be thousands of people who accidentally visit Blogsport.com a month, intending to visit a blog or website on the Blogger service.

So whose making money on this valuable typo domain name? Presumably the Internet service providers like Verizon and Comcast who monetize error landing pages “helping” web browsers who accidentally type-in an invalid domain name. It’s very kind of them to do this for us.

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