Do you check your referrers? I do. I even try to learn things about search from my referrers. Today, I learned two thing when I investigated why I had a high rank for the Google search PageRank Zero October 2007.
What did I learn? First, no matter what else happened during the PageRank dust up, Google still likes older pages. Second, we should all give some attention to our archives.
Now, a bit of background. When I was my highrank for PageRank Zero October 2007 I thought three things:
- Google relevancy on this search term is not so hot.
- Who ranks #1 for “PageRank Zero”? and most importantly.
- Archives matter.
These thought led to a bit of investigation, from which I “learned” a thing or two. Below, I’ll expand on these thoughts, and provide the lessons they taught me about Google search.
Why do I think Google’s relevancy for this search is not so hot?
Two reasons.
- The #2 result was the top page of my monthly archive. The top page of my October archives were relevant for this search several days ago when they matched the current Google cache. That shows text from Ten Google Page Rank Haikus. which matches the topic of that search rather well.
Today? There is no mention of “PageRank Zero” on that url.
- The #1 result for that particular long tailed search is Courtney Tuttle’s Going From PageRank Zero To PageRank Hero. (I’m condomizing the link in my never ending effort to seize the #1 position for totally useless search terms!)
Sound relevant, right? The problem? Whoever was searching for “PageRank Zero October 2007″ likely wished to read articles about the “Google Page Rank Debacle of October ’07″. Courtney’s post was published in April; his October article would have been relevant.
Lesson:
Before proceeding, it’s worth noticing something: My October Archives page is older than my haiku page. It also has a direct link from my main blog page. Court’s April 2007 article is older still and it’s older than his October article.
Google still seems to like older pages.
Guess what ranks ranks #1 for “PageRank Zero”?
A forum post! Specifically, this entry at Webmaster world with an entry dated 6:52 am on Oct. 16, 2005 that reads:
My website, or rather a page or two which I occassionally check (as a general rule, I don’t enable the Page Rank feature of my Google toolbar), usually carries a page rank of about 4-6. On October 15th, my traffic dropped to less than 10% of normal, so I checked its page rank. zero. Zip. Zilch. Bizarre.
Below that, we find links to a variety of blogs. As far as I can tell, all but the forum entry were written well before October 2007. So, once again, for this search Google relevancy isn’t exceptional. (It is a toughie though. The person searching should have tried the blog search tool!)
Lesson:Google still likes older posts.
We all know there are many relevant posts about the October 2007 events posted on blogs. They didn’t show up. Why? Age often matters more than relevance.
Why do archives matter?
Google still likes older posts. It also likes pages linked from the top page of the blog. At month’s end, my archives may often be my oldest “relevant” entries; they are always linked from my top page. Google is likely to send people to my archives rather than my individual posts.
It would have been useful if the person searching had been able to find my Google Page Rank Haikus by way of my monthly archives. The haiku’s themselves do link a fair number of articles discussing the “PageRank Incident”. The person searching may well have been a blogger who was writing their own post. They didn’t find the relevant article at my site: they will surely never link it.
Lesson: I need a better format for archives
If my archives displayed at least 10 articles, most of the content would match Google’s cache. Currently they display three, which means that quite often, Google will send people to an irrelevant page. This is my fault more than Google’s.
There are other problems with my archives. Clearly, I need to put “improve archives” on my “to do” list.
Here’s another to do.
Ask readers their thoughts on archives.
Do you know of any useful plugins, features or ways of organizing my monthly (or topical) archives to ensure Google search results send visitors to the correct page? Are there other features I should consider? If you have good ideas, I’d love to read them.
What made you decide to pursue useless se terms?? That’s hilarious and will probably get you a link or two. Google does like older pages, plus older pages are bound to have more links than newer ones (they’ve been around the linky block). PR will also be effected by the number of results for that topic. The less results, the higher chance that you’re page will have a higher PR.