Comments on: High Search Engine Ranking – A Blessing and a Curse

By: blogging help by pro bloggers Arieanna and Ianiv » Blog Archive » Being ranked for terms you don’t intend

Fri, 22 Jul 2005 21:50:24 +0000

[...] ned in the previous post, has its benefits. But it also comes with somewhat of a curse. Darren Rowse gives a good example: You see wh [...]

By: Tom Hanna

Tom Hanna — Sat, 16 Jul 2005 07:33:52 +0000

One of the top search phrases on my political blog is “hot lebanese chicks” and various variations because of a post I did during the Cedar Revolution this spring. Since the post was very short and didn’t address any real issues, I don’t actually get much traffic on the substance of the revolution, just my passing mention that the girls in the news reports looked great. Followup commenters decided to educate me on the virtues of Egyptian and other Arab women, too, so now I get results for hot girls of all sorts of nationalities. Hopefully this comment shares the wealth with you a bit on those search phrases. :)

By: Terri

Terri — Sun, 10 Jul 2005 15:32:17 +0000

I hope that “a long story for another day” is soon. I’d be really interested in reading about it, and I’m sure many of your other regular readers would be too.

By: Andy Merrett

Andy Merrett — Sun, 10 Jul 2005 07:02:23 +0000

Yep you have, thanks guys :)

By: ~Dawn

~Dawn — Sun, 10 Jul 2005 02:15:13 +0000

I wish I had the “curse” also. But I try to stay on topic and therefore, I don’t get many odd ones.

By: Darren Rowse

Darren Rowse — Sun, 10 Jul 2005 01:52:26 +0000

hehe – i think we MAY have answered Andy’s question pretty comprehensively :-)

By: Darren Rowse

Darren Rowse — Sun, 10 Jul 2005 01:49:00 +0000

Google have just released a toolbar for firefox which does it Andy

By: Teli

Teli — Sat, 09 Jul 2005 21:23:11 +0000

Re: PR on Firefox
The recently released Googlebar for Mozilla displays the PR of a website as it would in IE (however, it does look a bit different).

On another note, I’ve been comparing the PR of some websites with the Google provided toolbar and the Firefox plugin and I’ve found some interesting discrepancies between the two on a few sites…hmmm…

By: actionBERG

actionBERG — Sat, 09 Jul 2005 18:20:47 +0000

There is also a Firefox extension that displays PR. Pretty nice.

https://addons.mozilla.org/extensions/moreinfo.php?id=262

By: Marc James

Marc James — Sat, 09 Jul 2005 16:56:12 +0000

I have a content site that seems to get indexed by Google and others sometimes seemingly more than hourly. For example, I’ve posted stories that were pertaining to popular, current events in sports and it is simply amazing to see it appear on Google News literally minutes after hitting post. I’d say the neatest part was appearing on Google News’ front page as a bolded top story under Sports. I’ve found it’s the title of the post that means everything, so I keep that in mind more than ever if I want Google News to pick it up. It is sure a powerful feeling, especially when I, just a guy in his apartment, can get linked next to or above CNN, ESPN, etc. But like Darren said, with it comes responsibility (and often more criticism of the opinions expressed in the content).

By: John (SYNTAGMA)

John (SYNTAGMA) — Sat, 09 Jul 2005 16:52:55 +0000

Andy, there’s now a Google toolbar for Firefox. Whether it’s the same as Cary’s extension, I’ve no idea.

By: David

David — Sat, 09 Jul 2005 16:29:12 +0000

I get some weird ones on my blog. A really odd thing happened when I put my “feedburner” page in. I started getting indexed by google more for having new/newsworthy content and since my feedburner page is just some rss feeds, I get hits due to the content on those feeds, and tracking those users around, some of them actually stay for a bit after finding me.

Now if only my adsense would increase…lol.

By: Cary

Cary — Sat, 09 Jul 2005 15:34:34 +0000

Andy, yep, just install the googlebar Mozilla extension from http://googlebar.mozdev.org/
and then install the PR indicator extension from http://toolbar.nickstallman.net/

It works like a dream : D

Funny, my wife Lori’s cancer blog, Too sexy for my hair, gets some hillarious hits as you can imagine…one of my favorites, and one that she gets every day, is for: Sexy Womans (yep Womans), who is searching for sexy womans? Too funny. There are others, but I can’t mention them here ; D

By: Andy Merrett

Andy Merrett — Sat, 09 Jul 2005 15:06:11 +0000

By the way, is it possible to see your pagerank without using IE on a PC with the Google toolbar? I primarily use a Mac, or Firefox when I use a PC, so I don’t often get to see what my PR is. Any ideas? I don’t fret about my PR, but it’s interesting to see.

By: Andy Merrett

Andy Merrett — Sat, 09 Jul 2005 15:04:08 +0000

I get a similar thing on my blog – again I blogged about the London situation because I live and work in London, I love London, and I felt part of a common cause by blogging, even though most of what I wrote was based on the mainstream.

It feels almost weird to get any kind of gain from this – another situation where blogging is worth a lot more than any financial gain, even when one does it professionally (or aspires to it, at least)

It’s also a good reason to watch closely what people are searching for, when things might be out of context, and even helping people along (if you have time), perhaps by adding new content or links to old posts when it’s right to do so.

I don’t do this as often as I’d like, but search engine traffic can be fairly important, perhaps even moreso for things like Adsense earnings, so it pays to make your destination pages as useful as possible.

By: Allen Heat

Allen Heat — Sat, 09 Jul 2005 14:01:55 +0000

Well, I’m currently dealing with some of those, but it doesn’t seem to be too much of a problem, i’m the first ranked when searching for “rockstar new game: bully”…i get alot of daily visitors from that search, eventhough i posted about it about a month ago and my blog is about graphics, one thing is sure in my current case: it can’t help too much, but it wouldn’t hurt abit! :D

Heat

By: IO ERROR

IO ERROR — Sat, 09 Jul 2005 11:17:37 +0000

I wish I had to deal with this “curse.” :)

By: John (SYNTAGMA)

John (SYNTAGMA) — Sat, 09 Jul 2005 09:33:03 +0000

Yes, Darren, since the London bombings my blog has also been sprayed with search clicks, some of them weird. Someone apparently searched Google for “inbox” and ended up at SYNTAGMA. Mysterious.