Google vs. Bing: Correlation Analysis of Ranking Elements

Posted by randfish

Earlier this year, Danny Sullivan of Third Door Media asked me if SEOmoz could put together some data comparing ranking elements of Google against those of Bing to help illustrate the potential biases SEOs might face when optimizing for the two engines. Today at SMX Advanced in Seattle, I presented the following data, compiled by our own Ben Hendrickson with help from the entire SEOmoz engineering team (particularly Phil & Chas on the Linkscape side). The results I'm sharing match those in the presentation, with a bit more detail added in for those interested.

Rather than include the entire slide deck, I've taken the charts, graphs and data directly from the presentation so those of you seeking to convince clients or motivate internal teams can use them in your own presentations. But, before we begin with the data, I'd like to share a few critical notes about this research that shouldn't be ignored.

Goals of the Correlation Data Research

With this research, we hope to accomplish three big things:

1. Add a new source of data to SEOs' understanding of how Google & Bing rank web pages
2. Bring more science to SEO through a repeatable, peer-reviewed dataset
3. Provide recommendations based on our own interpretations AND open the data for interpretation by others as well

Further research, including causation analysis through more sophisticated ranking models and possibly more correlation analysis on other factors are certainly part of our goals as well.

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How To Use Google Alerts For Quick and Easy Domain Alerts

Posted by atlasws

There's no shortage of posts and tutorials built around setting up a monitoring dashboard. Everyone has a favorite. Mine is from Marty Wientraub from Aim Clear (see How to Build a Reputation Monitoring Dashboard). There are new services that spring up every few months about monitoring like Scout Labs and Trackur, a lot of which are very good products. However in some cases those products are like driving a Ferrari to the supermarket to pick up a quart of milk: it's just overkill and too much power for the job. Sometimes you just need a quick, easy solution for the task at hand. Here's how I do it.

If you're an account manager for a large firm, or "the guy" in a one man operation, you should always be on the lookout for tools that you can use to automate the low level and receptive work. Google Alerts is one of those tools. There are some smart ways you can get Google Alerts to work for you.

When you set up Google Alerts, if you choose the "email" delivery option and choose "once a day," you should know that the first alert will come about 24 hours later. It will repeat every day at about the same time. So if you want your alerts to come at 9 am every morning, set them up just before 9 am and you're all set. The one problem with this is that, if you adjust an alert, the time resets to the last time you adjusted it. It would be nice if Google gave us the ability to specify a delivery time, but that's not the case. If you choose "as it happens," you'll get email alerts at random times during the day. There are some cases where you want this, and we'll get into that below, but in most cases I recommend once per day.

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