I haven't heard from any of them, except Google News, which rejected my URL in a computer-generated email on the basis that we don't produce news, even though new stories and features go up daily. Oh well.......
So what has happened since my last post a week ago now that we've been live for ten full days? Type in "PoetsandQuants" in Google's search box and what do you get now? Not a single direct link to the site (see below), at least through the first ten pages of results (I just couldn't put myself through the trouble of digging deeper). You can find PoetsandQuants on the first page of results but only because of our Twitter feed, Facebook page, YouTube channel or coverage of our launch (we were written about by BusinessWeek, The Wall Street Journal, MediaBistro, MINonline, among many others. Strangely, a blogger from Pune, India, who wrote a post on how we published something from him, appears as the fifth item on page one--well ahead the stories by The Wall Street Journal and BusinessWeek. One improvement from the last time we did this a week ago: the weblog link for Viagra fell to page nine from page five and now resides with all kinds of other irrelevant results, including links from livingwithyourdog.com.
Google the headline of the most-read story on the site to date: "Our New MBA Ranking of the Top 50 U.S. Schools." What comes up? No direct links from Google. The page one results do include a link to Tweetmeme, which obviously swept up Tweets on the story, and there's a section Google now calls "Results from People in Your Social Circle," that grabs posts from Facebook and Twitter.
So let's try Googling the latest article published on PoetsandQuants just this afternoon: "My Story: From an Army Ranger in Iraq to Harvard Business School." You already know the answer. Google has no direct links to the story or the site. Yes, the search engine did pick up our Facebook post along with a tweet that is, respectively, the number one and two results on the first page. So at least you can find it, even if it's not a direct hit.
What about Bing? We tried PoetsandQuants and a direct link immediately pops up as the number one result on page one (see below). We tried "Our New MBA Ranking of the Top 50 Schools" and Bing serves a direct link to the story as its first result on page one, even ahead of the BusinessWeek rankings which have been around since 1988. How about the latest story about the Harvard MBA who was an Army Ranger in Iraq? You guessed it. Bing provides a direct link to the piece, again the number one result on the page. Obviously, Yahoo Search delivers the same results because it's now powered by Bing.
Colleagues have told me that it could easily take Google 45 days to find our site. So perhaps I have at least another 35 days to wait. But somehow Bing already has found the needle in the Internet haystack. I'm surprised by the speed and the quality of their search results as much as I am mystified by Google's inability to deliver on the expectation that it is the world's leading search engine.
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Interesting. Reminds me of the maxim: 'Never pick a fight with someone who buys ink by the barrel.' In the digital age, I guess this advice should be modified: don't irritate someone who has generous bandwidth and an army of followers.
ReplyDeleteHonestly, I'm more amused than irritated. Over the course of a long career covering highly successful companies, I've seen one organization after another blow its dominant marketshare and lead over competitors. Now we're watching as Google's primary product--its search engine--is dramtically losing it's edge in the marketplace. It's unlikely that Bing will beat. There is a David waiting to slay the Goliath out there, you can be sure of that.
ReplyDeleteMaybe somebody at Microsoft heard about your complaints and put you at the top of the list...
ReplyDeleteHi John, I've found the opposite to be true so I think it might just take a little more time for Google to pick it up. But once it does, you shouldn't have any issues. Within a few minutes of uploading new posts, they're already searchable through Google. (It takes days for them to show up in Bing.) It's interesting that we're having opposite issues. Some mysterious algorithm!
ReplyDeleteLooking forward to the future of C-Change Media. I've always admired your work at BusinessWeek and how you've championed true engagement. I'm sure you'll continue to inspire!
Michele,
ReplyDeleteThanks for your kind comments. My gut tells me you're right. It takes time for a new site to get on Google's radar screen. I'm just surprised that Bing found it so quickly (and Richard could very well be right). As I said in the post, I'm told it often takes about 45 days for Google to discover a new site. Some say it can take even longer--as far out as three months. I'm patient but probably not that patient.
Best,
John
Bing is much better than Google people are using google only because of habit I bet if anyone uses Bing for a week they will never ever use Google again.
ReplyDeleteHi John, I'm an engineer at Google. I dug into this and can provide you with more information. As of yesterday, when you type [poetsandquants] as a search, we return your website right after your Twitter url, and searching for [poetsandquants.com] returns you at #1.
ReplyDeleteThe issue is that from May until late July, your website had very little visible text on it (basically just the text "www.poetsandquants.com"). The text on the page was so sparse that we thought that Poets and Quants was a parked domain--which in essence it was, for those months.
We later detected that the page had changed away from being a parked domain, but it took a few days for that new information to spread through our index.
I think you're in fine shape now, but if you launch a domain in the future, I would recommend not showing an empty page (except for the name of the domain) for months. If you intend to launch a domain, I'd recommend instead writing a couple paragraphs--although even a few sentences are better than nothing--about what the domain will eventually be. That helps search engines realize that a domain is not just a parked or empty domain.
Hi Matt
ReplyDeleteI have landed here from your tweet. After reading your comment I am more impressed about the capability of Google to find the real status of sites. Thanks for mentioning some real useful points out there.
Hi John
Usually Google index a new content site within 2-3 days for me. My advice is that don't rely on Google's addurl link but submit your site to some of the leading bookmarking sites. Google will pick your site from there pretty fast.
John you must have been very lucky with Bing I remember relatively recently launching a business website for the biggest Audi dealers in the UK and for months Bing would have nothing to do with the site even though in yahoo and Google it was ranking top 3 for its desired money terms
ReplyDeleteI use Bing because of the Rewards Program. Wihtout it, my browser homepage would be set back to Google.com. Haha.
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