The build-up to Mini #SAScon has started with the event being held at The Hive on 7th December.

As many of you will know, Manual Link Building like to support as many industry events as possible and we have a busy few months coming up, along with the launch of our new website over at www.seooutsourcingcompany.co.uk

ThinkVis – 1^st September – Leeds

Next week, we will be at the awesome marketing conference that is ThinkVis over in Leeds.  This will  be the 3^rd ThinkVis we have been a sponsor for and if you haven’t been yet then it is well recommended – tickets still available here http://register.thinkvisibility.com/ (Dom loves people paying in the final week !!!)

So we will have all been looking into a SERP for competitor analysis or looking at opportunities for our clients and come across results that just make you think HOW or WHAT ???

Obviously we have seen updates such as Panda and Penguin go through with the aim of making the SERPs a better user experience and trying to ensure that sites ‘deserve’ to be there.

We want to see examples of SERPs that you have come across that really promote discussion – exact match domain dominated SERPs or irrelevant results appearing in competitive niches.

We have a number of tickets to give away for the awesome BrightonSEO and Manual Link Building even have a surprise for the attendees, as those of you who know us, we are not your average conference sponsor (we like to be that bit different !!)

So how to enter

Tweet the @manlinkbuilding account with an example of what you think is a SERP that really shouldn’t be like it and @search_magician will judge the best entries. A screenshot would be perfect and don’t forget to hashtag #worstSERP

Example

@manlinkbuilding here is my example of #worstSERP to win a #brightonSEO ticket yfrog.com/5gh819j

Terms and conditions

• Winner gets a ticket to BrightonSEO only
• Travel and accomodation not included
• one entry per person
• @search_magician’s decision is final.

Being an avid sports fan and having been glued to the television & other forms of media for the few days for the start of the Olympics I am interested to see how the different search engines have reacted to the start of The Games and the increased thirst for knowledge from people worldwide, maybe watching events that they know little to nothing about.

Obviously I have a busy job, but still want to be able to watch as many events as possible and more importantly not miss events such as 100m Final or Men’s 400m hurdles (my old event). So I took to searching Google for an athletics schedule – my search term “Olympic athletics schedule” and noticed the use nicely laid out search results, with embedded functionality on the 26th July, the night before the opening ceremony.

overly impressed with the layout of the SERPs for “Olympic athletics schedule” google.co.uk/#hl=en&gs_nf=1…

— Dan Bell (@danbellj) July 26, 2012

As much as this functionality in effect takes up nearly all of the screen ‘above the fold’, it definitely adds value from a user perspective, allowing for the ability to easily navigate through the different events. As you click through on each event, you are presented with a set of results that opens up to other websites and not just a Google dominated set of results, whilst still continuing to use the Knowledge Graph to present schedule, record and further useful information on the right handside from Google. (400m hurdles screenshot) In response to a tweet from Will Reynolds, who obviously noticed what I had seen, a conversation between myself, Dan Barker, Will & Gaz Copeland started regarding what the possibilities and implications of this functionality. Dan pointed out the lack of Paid adverts which from a Google perspective is huge for an event that is sure to be driving a significant amount of traffic through the search engines.

@wilreynolds & – of course – they’re foregoing paid ads on most of those terms. big, interesting experiment. @danbellj @StokedSEO — dan barker (@danbarker) July 29, 2012

He then went on to speculate as to what Google’s intentions could be related to with a bold statement referring to Google paid shopping, one that makes an awful lot of sense when you think about it.

@StokedSEO if enough sign up for paid inclusion shopping, they can use that & the content is the ads @wilreynolds @danbellj

— dan barker (@danbarker) July 29, 2012

@StokedSEO eg. swap ‘swimming’ for ‘digital slr’ & the medal table for ‘brands’… @wilreynolds @danbellj — dan barker (@danbarker) July 29, 2012

So, having had the conversation on Sunday evening, I woke up on Monday morning to read Danny Sullivan’s post comparing the way in which Google, Bing and Yahoo are all reacting to the Olympics and how it is beneficial to the user.
We have talked a lot about how Google is dominating their results with the embedded functionality, but what can we see from the other search engines. I thought with the athletics starting this week and even more importantly, the “blue ribbon” event of the Olympics being the 100m final, what better to be a good comparison than “100m final” and “when is the 100m final” as search terms.

So first up is Google, who we know have already nailed it with their embedded functionality. Clearly showing me for “100m final” the times of the events (including heats, semi finals) along with the additional information that we previously discussed such as world records etc on the right hand side, whilst also giving results for the official London2012 website and then News results related to the swimming.

Next up is Bing, who present me with News results related to the swimming finals from last night, so points scored for relevance, but then I get YouTube videos from 2006 and 2000 in my organic listings, with only the related searches providing me with the option to search for results based on “2012 100m final”.

Finally Yahoo, who again provide me with a YouTube video as the first result, followed by a DailyMail article related to the swimming last night.

So from a user perspective, we have seen that Google appear to be giving me the results that potentially I am looking for, whilst also giving me alternative swimming results in a prominent position. But what I wanted to see and maybe to give Bing and Yahoo the opportunity to present me with the results that I am looking for, I made the search term into a question and also a lot longer tail.

“When is the 100m final”

Starting with Bing, I am still getting the YouTube result at position 1, then the Daily Mail swimming article again, followed by a BBC article on Usain Bolt breaking the world record. For me, not really the results that I would be expecting for the search term that I have entered.


Over to Yahoo to do the same search and get the same 3 results as Bing, with no mention of a schedule or what I would deem as relevant results, this YouTube video is of the 100m final from Athens 2004, uploaded in 2006 – cant see the exact relevance to my search query.

To finish where we started, I use enter the same search term on Google and I am presented with the exact information that I am looking for in the right hand of the screen, clearly telling me the date and time of the event (granted that 2006 YouTube video is still there ☺).

What I also really like about this box is that they are presenting you with the option to visit the official website, but also by clicking “watch online”, you are presented with 3 options to watch the events online.

Whilst in Danny’s post he rates Yahoo ahead of Google, I believe there is only one clear winner here and that is Google. I am regularly trawling SERPs and see some examples of horrendous results pages, but really have to take my hat off to Google for what is a gold medal performance in terms of the results being provided.

Enjoy the rest of the Olympics and if you are feeling generous then feel free to donate to myself and Nichola’s fundraising efforts in the Great North Run in September.
http://www.mycharitypage.com/danbellj

Thank you to everyone who entered our competition to win tickets to ThinkVisibility and we were impressed by some of the guesses on both distance and time.
Unfortunately as with most competitions, there can only be one winner and that is ………..

The original questions along with the answers are:
a) How many miles is it from Rhys’ front door to the office in India?

The correct answer was 5330 miles

b) How long in minutes will his total journey take including stopovers and transfers?

Rhys’ total journey time was 1512 minutes

The winning guess was a combination of 6106 miles and 785 mins which made Ned the overall closest with a combined variance on the correct answer of +49.

Congratulations to Ned from Quirk, who has won a ticket to ThinkVisibility which is being held on the 3rd March and no doubt a few beverages courtesy of @search_magician – see you at the bar Ned !!!

Special mention to Emma from MEC who was only 69 miles out on the mileage to the office and by far the closest, we will be in contact with a runner’s up prize !!!