Internet usage in China

Reading a recent report by McKinsey on China’s Internet obsession, I was not surprised to read that people in the country’s sixty largest cities spend seventy percent of their leisure time online. In the smaller towns it is averaging fifty percent. In terms of actual users of the Internet China has a mind boggling 384 million people. That is greater than the entire population of the USA, which currently stands at 309 million. (see also Global Internet Usage)

The Dragon’s Inquisitiveness

This gigantic Internet usage echoes the Chinese people’s deep inquisitiveness. Since the move from a central, state run, economy towards a more liberal economic model, the dragon’s almost manic search for knowledge has dramatically accelerated. A desire to know more about the world outside of China is only part of the story.

Chinese Commercial exploration

The computer is replacing television as the main entertainment in Chinese households. They shop online and use the Web site Taobao to participate in online auctions. In 2009 the volume of e-commerce increased by over 100%. Online advertising is growing at 30% per annum with $3 billion expenditure. This makes Google’s decision to exit China as brave.

Chinese Search Engines

This departure will ensure that Chinese search engines will become more important. Baidu is the most significant with an index of over 740 million web pages, 80 million images, and 10 million multimedia files. It also is the first in China to offer WAP and PDA based mobile search.

The Dragon has many heads

Due to its ethnic diversity China is not like entering a single country. It has a complex and inconsistent rule of law, which differs within regions and because of its size; potential entrants would be advised to treat each region individually. A “one size fits all” strategy is not to be recommended. A careful exploration and understanding of the differing regional Chinese characteristics
can pay great dividends.

Opportunities and Threats

Unless you have lived in a bubble for the past few years you will be well aware of the size of the opportunity in China. Put in perspective, it is rather like considering entering the USA market in the early 1900s with its immense potential and challenges. Over the past ten years the growth in China has been considerably faster and greater. The challenges are perhaps more considerable, given the language differences: speech and writing in China span six language families. With the wrong tonality, a few words of praise can turn into an insult. That is why entrants need to proceed with caution.

How we can help with Chinese SEO

Intelligent Positioning is well placed to meet the needs of companies seeking a reliable and effective SEO/SMO service in China by searching in local language. This, coupled with the extensive experience of living and working on international and local brands in China and Asia of senior Intelligent Positioning executives, means that the complexities of entering into China doesn’t have to end in tears.

Breathtakingly, economic development and consumer power in China has only just begun. Entering China with a bite-size approach will ensure an indigestion-free feast full of surprise and delectable delights.

Garry Titterton
CEO
Intelligent Positioning

Here’s an example:

Breadcrumbs in SERPs

From a click-through perspective, getting site these hierarchy links could be quite useful as it gives your site three or four extra links on the results page. Clearly, it would be useful to know how Google decides whether to show breadcrumbs and what determines how they are displayed. From an initial look it seems they probably aren’t generated as a result of chomping back through the URL, since all the examples I’ve seen do not have neat hierarchical URL structures like ‘/products/dvds/bladerunner’. This makes it more likely that they are pulled from the page somehow – certainly the link text in the site hierarchy seems to match up with the link text within the site navigation. This raises the question of how Google pulls the breadcrumbs out of the HTML. In some of the examples I’ve seen the site navigation has been marked up on page with class=”breadcrumbs” or something but this certainly isn’t always the case. Maybe Google are looking for links next to typical separator characters like ‘>’ or the raquo.

Anyway, I can’t say I’ve actually clicked on any of these breadcrumb links yet, so for now, perhaps, I’ll reserve judgement on how useful they are from a user point of view!

Well apparently not, even if I am judging the results a mere four days after the official statement was released on their blog.  It turns out that the example they provided within the statement isn’t actually true at all!  If you search for the term ‘football’ within Bing UK you’d expect to get the BBC or SkySports – who will offer you in depth analysis, news and statistics on the beautiful game.  Bing also thinks you might be interested in the NFL website  – according to these results (something they said would not happen on their blog):

NFL website showing up in Bing SERPs

Brilliant stuff!  After putting up a blog clearly explaining the changes to the search engine and that now it is out of BETA testing they are free to serve up UK related results to a UK audience – you’d expect them to make sure the example they provided is actually true.  It gets worse if you take a look at the image and video results being returned at the bottom of the page:

American Football related results being returned in Bing

You’d probably expect a clip showing a superb goal in the World Cup from Brazil or a masterful pass from a Ballon D’or candidate not some clip art pictures that wouldn’t look out of place on a birthday card you received from your Grandad when you were seven – nor for that matter an American Football and a stack of American Football clips.  Am I the only one missing something here?  This reminds me of those inventors that go on Dragon’s Den and the prototype doesn’t work.  You can hear the cries from the Bing office ‘It worked earlier…honest!’.

Now would have been the best time for Bing to nail those results and get one up on Google (in light of the summer change).  Bing should be boasting about the relevancy and usefulness of their results – not stating they’ve fixed something when they quite clearly haven’t.  I regret to say that on that basis – i’m out!

When Google recently introduced the search options within their platform – many searchers were unaware that these options existed and allow you to limit your search. The impact of Twitter and real time search has made Google aware that they must introduce an accurate and competitive solution – to aid the ever growing search population.

It is possible to modify the querystring so that a searcher can specify fresh results within the past five seconds, one minute, sixty minutes – for example. This can be done by changing a parameter called QDR – Query Date Range – in the URL (its displayed as tbs=qdr:x) with the ‘x’ time frame. Time frame options currently only work on English versions of Google; so Google.com and Google.co.uk, but hopefully this option will be introduced within other version.

For example, to limit a search to the last ten minutes all you need to do is change the default value proposed for “The past 24 hours” – that appears as “d” – to an “n” and you’ll be limited to results from the last minute. Simply adding a numeric value behind that, you can increase the time frame. If you set it to “n5″, you’ll see results discovered in the last 5 minutes, or, if you are interested into seconds time frame simply use “s30″.

What makes real time search so special?

To be honest nothing! It mostly depends on you and your passion for a specific topic, or if you are particular interested in the last key fact that has happened (just because you are working on something particular) to this person or event. This is because – most probably – the search options are generally hidden away from the average user. The majority of web users don’t really care about what’s happened in a second or in minute, they just want to read something up to date.

Real Time search example

Suppose you are interested in the latest comical rant from US rapper Kanye West – the following search query will display search results for him in the last 30 minutes:

http://www.google.com/search?q=kanye%20west&output=search&tbs=qdr:n30&tbo=1

Once the query has been executed the following result is returned:

Google real time search 1

At first glance the Google news results look quite useful, however in order to obtain a direct comparison with Twitter – we must sort the result by date:

Google filter by date

Once this has been selected – the following results are returned:

Google SERPs ordered by date

On first glance – although the results do not have the same visual impact as a normal search (i.e. the search query isn’t included within a number of titles tags) – they are extremely relevant as each entry focuses on the rapper’s conduct on stage, his eventual apology and the general reaction to his behaviour. We can then compare this to Twitter search:

Kanye West Twitter

Since I started writing this post – Twitter has informed me that 905 more results relevant to this initial search query have been posted – something Google does not offer. The four results included within the screenshot show one spam result, one user comment on current events and two useful Tweats including links to an apology by Kanye West and an interview with Jay Leno.

If Google made their real time search more prominent within their search platform – users are more likely to use such a service to check for the latest chatter and opinions from around the web on a specific topic. Google could always introduce another search button – which would enforce real time search.

In short, Google now offers up a lot of foreign sites in UK relevant searches that have no right to be there. We are not by any means anti foreign sites, but if you are searching for a localised search in the UK, for example Flats to rent, you do not want results for California, Melbourne or Auckland. So let me get this straight:

1) No one has a problem with foreign web pages being offered in the SERPS if they are the most relevant result. For example if i searched for “Statue of Libery” – i would happily have American sites, infact i would be annoyed if i didn’t (try searching “Pentagon”). But if i search for “TV Guide” – why give me an American TV guide that doesn’t mention BBC, ITV or Channel 4? There are many examples of inappropriate results, here are a few:

* Southbank Restaurants - i wanted London’s Southbank, not a Melbourne map

* Motor Forum – I’m sure this is good but unfortunately i don’t speak dutch

* Pawn Diamonds – Why would we want to get our Diamonds in dollars?

2) UK sites are not just .co.uk TLDs. Many thousands of UK businesses have .com TLDs. This is not the issue. Furthermore, US company’s do not own the .com TLD. It simply means Company. So there is not an issue of just having .co.uk in UK SERPS, similarly Google should not penalise other foriegn TLDs in Google US SERPS.

Here is the very confused response from Matt Cutts when this issue was put to him. (look at the comments pages here too) UK SEO companies venting their spleen

Also he states that this question was “lobbied” by the UK SEO industry, that is untrue – and crass. This question is simply extremely important to search results for all of us in the UK and SEO companies and web users alike have independently wanted an honest, clear answer – it did not happen. Google needs to realise that we are important – the second biggest market, and this does matter to all of us.

Location Problems

So what now? Is the issue to do with how google determines our location i don’t know? This post states that Google is thinking that some Australian and American sites are based in the UK.

I personally can’t believe this is true. I mean look at this search for TV Guide which give Yahoo.com in the top 5 results, telling us what is on Fox and HBO tonight. Does Google really believe that Yahoo.com is an English site? I doubt it, unless everyone at Google is quietly laughing to themselves. Do Yahoo appear in the US results too, ofcourse they do?

Add “UK” to the Search!

Some people have suggested – “Just add ‘UK’ to the Search” or “click the UK only button”. This isn’t a solution. It’s like saying “my front door is broken, so i just use the window, i get in eventually”. We need Google to sort this problem out, not just make an extra step for us. Plus a lot of the time, the “UK Only” button doesn’t make a lot of difference, try that “Southbank restaurants” search again, this time with UK only.

People are already adding ‘UK’ to their Search! – But how long has the problem been with us. This data states it may have been longer than the mooted June update.

So did things change in March / April 2009? The results are even starker for “shopping” and “local” searches. So Google, your localised results are not good enough, like 5-6 years ago we are having to put “UK” in our searches.

Maybe i will give Bing another go – it doesn’t seem so bad in hindsight.

The two examples he used – Tesco & Churchill – are enormous brands in the UK associated with Car Insurance, which you would expect to feature in the top twenty for the search term ‘Car Insurance’. The chart below highlights the movement since March 1st 2009 up to August 18th 2009 for the keyword term in question against those URLs.

Car Insurance movement in Google from March 1st 2009 to August 18th 2009

Not really ground breaking changes if you ask me. The two URLs featured in the top twenty prior to the algorithm change on June 6th anyway – and ‘earlier June’ was referred to in the initial question by Guavarian. So what do we take from this? The referral to two URLs, which are both hosted in the UK and featured prior to the change, indicates that either the question wasn’t fully understood OR, more likely, Mr Cutts decided to take a politician’s attitude towards the question. The quote below highlights the fence sitting attitude i’m talking about:

As we get better we’re more willing to show .com’s if we think that they’re really relevant to a given country.

I totally agree! Why shouldn’t a UK searcher buy Car Insurance from a German company that do not operate in the UK – which in this instance isn’t happening here. However, say you want to go off on a nice camping site trip, you could type the term ‘campsites’ into Google.co.uk:

Google UK SERPs for the term Campsites on 19th August 2009

As much I love traveling to the US I don’t know if I fancy going to Texas on a camping trip! So http://www.tpwd.state.tx.us is hosted in the US, doesn’t include ‘UK’ in the title (using the example Matt Cutts provided in his video) and is completely non-UK focused BUT appears on page one in Google UK for the keyword search term ‘Campsites’. There are a vast amount of backlinks from US hosted websites pointing to the website – so i’m finding it hard to see how or why this website is relevant to a UK audience?

Another example i’ve come across is for ‘Daily News‘ and yet again searching in the UK brings up ‘Tanzania Daily News’, ‘New York Daily News’ and ‘Sri Lanka Daily News’. Yes you may argue that ‘Daily News’ isn’t such a widely used term in the UK – however – I was quite surprised by this Google insights chart demonstrating the volume between ‘Daily News’ and ‘Local News’. 40% of the SERPs pages are in fact non-UK focused, so why would you continue to use that search term?

What I would have liked to have seen was a good quality honest answer that spoke about why, in some sectors, there is an influx of non-UK specific websites that ‘relate’ to the search query at hand. I thought it was a good honest question from Guavarian, which should have been met with a clearer answer. I believe competition is good – very good – and I do generally think that Google do try as best as they possibly can to serve up the most accurate results for the search term at hand, sadly the latest algorithm update hasn’t achieved this in some sectors.

The algorithm change happened around the end of June. Some are calling this Vince, however it is unclear, as previously Vince was attributed to a Brand algorithmic change by Matt Cutts, not a locality or regional search one.

If you have ever wondered what the Google algorithm shuffle looks like check out the chart below. Here we see a consistent set of results for the search Travel Insurance, each site happily sitting in its same position. Then all of a sudden at the end of June Google has changed its Algorithm, and mayhem ensues. But its happy days for the Post Office on the term “travel insurance”.

google algorithm change

The answer is quite simple, it’s got to be millions of times a day. Hasn’t it?

There was a time when Google would visit even the biggest sites once a week, once a month or only 6 times a year. Now Google visits certain sites such as www.bbc.co.uk, www.sky.com and www.guardian.co.uk every 15 mins.

Test Google Crawl speed

Try it now. Take a very recent headline from the Guardian news page, then search for it. If it doesn’t appear, wait five minutes, then search again. Bingo – it’ll be in the top 5 searches (depending on how many words you used).

Now copy a handful of words from the article and paste them into google search. Again the result will be the new page.

Millions of Keywords and amendments

Think about how many keywords have therefore changed in the last five minutes and how this has therefore effected 1000s of SERPS results with ten of thousands of derivatives of keywords and permutations on the results. (Read the first blog post and I will be back to tell you how quickly the article was crawled.)

SERPS are therefore changing all the time. As one result goes to the top of the Google SERPS, others are slipping down. And as the new article gets less credit or another usurps it, then that too will slip down, thus changing the SERPS again.

This IP-SEO URL tracker tool shows just that.

Buy toys online

This is a chart for “Buy Toys Online” on google, over the Christmas period and beyond – a big search at a busy time. The SERPS are changing every day throughout the top 100 results.

This Chart (one of our SEO tools) also only takes a snap-shot of a daily search, not one done every 15 mins or half an hour.

To find out more give us a bell or drop a line below with your comments.

So why is Live search still returning an illegal movie website at the top of their rankings for a popular keyword term?

www.watch-movies.net was apparently closed down and reopened under another domain – which is a different argument altogether – and still returns on page one in Live.com for the search term ‘Download Movies Online‘, so why is this? Why does a search engine that wants to compete with Google still returns a broken link to an apparent illegal website within their SERP’s? There are many legitimate Movies available online – so why is a perfectly normal search query returning poor results?

Take a look at the screenshot below:

This is appearing in your search results today for a highly competitive keyword term. So why is it still there? Does Live continue to reward the huge volumes of backlinks pointing to the website? For some reason the webmaster didn’t place a 301 redirect on the website – which of course would have passed over page value and history to the new domain.

Take a look at the performance of the website within Google, Yahoo! and Live over the past five months:

So Yahoo! didn’t even rank the website highly in the first place, Google did but immediately the ranking dropped once the content was removed (even though there were a vast number of backlinks pointing to the website) and then there is Live, which continues to rank a website highly (amidst some fluctuations it has to be said) that hasn’t be live for over four months……and people wonder why Google has such a stronghold online.

The fact remains that a good multi-media experience on the web is quite often the integration of flash, video, javascript, html…the list grows.

Google’s inability to provide a solution for users wanting good results for flash and html integrated pages portrayed SEO practice as one that sacrificed the interactive experience that Action Script enables in favour of Googles preferrence for HTML.

Google will read Flash – we’re told

12 months ago it was all over the blogs that Google had built a new and dedicated robot that was going to search through flash content in the same way a user would, and then fairly integrate the pages into the SERPS mix. We waited and for a long while after we saw nothing in the results that Google threw up.

Proof that Google does Read Flash

6 months ago Google got into Flash. We noticed this with a client of ours, Voicenet Solutions, a Hosted IP Telephony provider. They deliver business phone services enabled by Cisco IP phones.

2 years ago a range of interactive user guides on various Cisco IP Phones were created in flash, these were designed to help users navigate the phones functionality through an online interface.

Up until 6 months ago these pages never appeared in the top 100 results for any of the related terms in the content. 6 months ago this changed.

Searchers looking for user guides for Cisco phones were finding themselves at Voicenet Solutions flash webpages. Google had demonstrated its ability to look through embedded flash text and reference the keyword text in the SERPs.

The Impact of Flash reading on Traffic

The impact of this change alone has seen Voicenet Solutions organic search traffic over the last 6 months increase by 300%. The result of this will also have had consequence for the category as the accessibility of this content makes the categories instantly more competitive.

From a design perspective there are still challenges. Google might server the correct flash file to search users in the correct html page but it will always load the file at the start leaving the user to navigate through the content to arrive at the relevant term.

One thing is certain, this example demonstrates Google’s desire to get better and better at indexing the web and deliver the most relevant user search experience as possible. On that thought, I can’t help but to think that Google’s competitors missed a trick on this one.

Top - Flash page is read by Google. Bottom left the results in the Serps. Right - the multiple search terms in analytics