I have a web page that ranks well for the term “International SEO” in Google. This page was created and optimized back in 2006. I really haven’t promoted it across any social networks, I haven’t asked any industry heavy weights to link to it from their (much more popular) blogs, and I’ve only mentioned the page or linked back to it from my own site, once in a while.

When I speak to customers on the phone, describing the use of WebPosition, I point this ranking out as one example of why some keywords are easier to rank on than others. (Trying to rank on just “SEO” would be pretty daunting.) I suspect that many of these budding SEO/SEM shops have created their own pages on the topic, trying to see if they too could rank for the term. Depending on the day and mood of Google, I’ve seen that there are anywhere from 300,000 competitors for this term to 1.5 million.

When you look at some of the competitors for this phrase… wow. There are some heavy weight SEO players in this area. Why are they not ranking? Hats off to sites like: www.seochat.com, www.v7n.com, webmasterworld.com, www.zunch.com, www.johnon.com, among others…

If you look solely at links… there is no way that I should rank.

First, these other sites have more links back to their main URL. Thus, overall, more popular sites than MarketPosition.com. Second, the Johnon post seems to have many more links pointing back to it’s page (as evidenced by the seemingly more accurate Yahoo link check).

I’ve seen my page bounce around the first two pages of results over the past year. When I linked back to the 2006 post on International SEO in this February post, the ranking for my 2006 post shot to ranking 2 from hanging around rank 8-12 in December and January.

While this one example is not all conclusive, it may help to explain why rankings is about more than just “who has more links?”.

-> While all engines have access to virtually the same pool of back links that point to a site, they may not count all of them. At least not publicly, through their back link reporting tools. Privately, this may be a different matter. If they do have pretty similar lists of back links, wouldn’t SEOChat dominate many of these phrases with more than 553,185 back links in Yahoo? Or WebMasterWorld with 140,000 links in Google? By simply linking from their main page, they could pass a heavy load of popularity onto any page and have it rank fairly well.

-> Search engines have different tastes. This is one of the reasons why I do recommend that you create good, optimized, customer facing content pages for all engines.

->Not all links have equivalent weight. Looking at back links that point just to the pages that Google ranked for International SEO, Johnon’s page would rank higher than mine, across all 3 engines.

Being that I represent the WebPosition software, which has a link checking option, do not think that I’m saying that you shouldn’t check your links from time to time. It’s actually pretty important. If you are out there writing on a blog, posting videos on YouTube, if you are answering questions on Yahoo Answers, if you are marketing via FaceBook, if you are using twitter, or other services to promote your self or your site, it is one measurement of how people are talking about you, promoting your site, etc. In the real world, I would compare this to checking the newspaper to see if they wrote about you in the business section when you spoke or volunteered for organizations like the Kiwanis club, the scouts, etc. Are people talking about you, your business, your web site? If they are, you are doing something right. The more people talk , the better visibility you have, and the more likely you are to rank if you have other factors going in your favor as well (content and optimization for example). It is only one in a multitude of things that you can do to better understand the overall picture of how your activities are paying off.

Google says that they now, keep important emails in their WebMaster Tools area. It may seem like no big deal but if your site was hacked, then serving up a virus or other malware… and Googlebot caught on, you might find that your site now sported a Google malware warning once users clicked on your link in the Google search results.

While Google reps might have previously attempted to send an email to you, to warn you that they’ve detected malware on your site, or if there were other issues… Many web masters close the typical addresses that Google and others might try to use like abuse@, webmaster@, admin@, administrator@, etc. in order to avoid spam.

In some cases, people were even spoofing Google WebMaster emails in order to scare other web masters, gain logins, etc.

If you find that you are getting a Google malware warning or you have a notice about a penalty, while Google can warn you, they really don’t do much to clarify where or what malware that they found. And they may or may not tell you if your site was indeed penalized. (In some cases even Google may not know that they’re penalizing you.) At least not yet. But you might turn to Google groups, review your prior SEO activities, or look for a company that specializes in malware detection.

What is it?

Perform a search on a company name like Best Buy and you will get a result like this:

Add more to the extra search box, like mp3 player, and you will end up with a search like this: mp3 player site:bestbuy.com While you could perform this same search in Google’s advance search area, it was probably thought to be a little confusing and unfriendly to searchers as it took them out of the normal search process.

The good news.

If you run a large site, the new extra search box can help searchers who want info from your site, and your site only, to dig into your site’s content.

If you have a more vague/generalized domain or company name, that uses a common turn of a phrase like “best buy”, this may also help to a degree. Searchers often start with general searches and then work into more specialized searches, this is often associated with a process called the “long tail” of searching. But this new search box may prevent some long tail searches from occurring or benefiting competitors. This is because…

Searchers want to go to sites that appear to be authorities. Sites that rank well are often perceived as “official”, the “best”, etc. If you have additional bells and whistles in your search listing, some searchers may attribute your site to having more importance than competitors.

Below, no extra search box, but which listing would have more perceived value or authority? Which would cover more of the search results page above the “fold”? A simple listing or one that included extras?

To sites that end up with an extra search box, this may be quite a boon. Searches may end up spending more time digging through search results related to the first site rather than checking one page from the search result, clicking back, then checking result 2, 3, 4, etc. from other sites.

The not so great news.

-If you are a small site, for now at least, it doesn’t look like you will be included in this process. It seems like only large, authority sites are getting this extra search box.

-This doesn’t seem to be applied to sites based on a general algorithm. Not all large sites have this applied yet. For example, large, well known, e-commerce sites like Best Buy, Think Geek, Target and others get a search box, however sites such as Circuit City, Frys, Safeway, CostCo, Ikea, and others seem worthy of the extra search box but do not have them in today’s Google searches. Sites with lots of great, searchable content like Slashdot, Wired, CNN, BBC, Fox News, USA Today, and others don’t get one but there are a few sites like the NY Times, LA Times, and the Washington Post that do have these extra search boxes. It would make some sense for many of these passed over sites to end up with the extra search box feature in the future.

Not Likely For All Sites Will Get An Extra Search Box

I think that this feature has a lot of potential. There are many information sources like blogs and forums where it could be extremely handy to have this feature in the search result. While I shudder to think of seeing the extra search box below every search result, I know that just about every site would want this type of feature available for their own site regardless of where they appear ranking in a search result.

To a degree, Google already does offer something similar…
If I search on best buy MP3 player there is this link: “More results from www.bestbuy.com“. But this appears on the second Best Buy listing in the search results. And while other competitors on the page like CNET, Pocketdeal, and others may actually have some really good buys (best buys) for MP3 players, they are not blessed with either a “more results” link or an extra search box.

If your mental gears are spinning, search on Best Buy again, click on the +/- button near their stock quote:

Wow, that is a lot of info. But when folded up, this doesn’t look too bad. Could Google add the extra search box and other features to a process like the +/- drop down? Probably, but again, Google doesn’t provide this for every listing.

In the past, Googlers have stated that they often remove features from the search results page if they feel that it loads up too slow. Putting a +/- box next to each search result may not be practical if it bogs down the speed of search results. Then again, as they are starting to create blended or universal search results with lots of extra widgets and content, maybe they’re willing to allow for slightly larger page sizes?