So what do you find when you Google "poetsandquants?" Not a single mention of the actual website. On page one of Google's results, you'll find links to my Twitter feed, to this blog, to the blog of an MBA applicant who has been featured on the site, and finally in the top five, a link to my YouTube channel. In sixth place is a bogus operation called sitereporting.org that offers an entirely inaccurate report on the site generated by an algorithm. In the seventh and eight spots are links to a press release about the launch of PoetsandQuants. In the ninth and tenth places are links to topsy.com and ubervu.com, sites that track and aggregate tweets. Still not a single link to the actual site I've created.
It gets worse. As you go through the first five pages of Google results, there are all kinds of websites that have essentially highjacked Google, rendering its search product less useful and helpful to users. There's a so-called weblog that is little more than a place to advertise Viagra and Cialis. There's links to TweetMeme, Interceder, tweetcepts, twapperkeeper, rallyclips, and whotechpunditstweet, among many others. Most of them are search traps that have gamed Google. There's even a link to one fool who has no idea who I am yet calls me a "douchebag" on page three of Google's results for PoetsandQuants. (See the screenshot below to get a real glimpse of how bad Google's results are.) Get through the first ten pages of results and there is still not a direct link to the site.
I then Googled (don't you hate that it has become a verb?) the headline to the most popular story on the site for the past three days: "Our New MBA Ranking of the Top 50 Schools." There's TweetMeme again in the first two results, Friendfeed in the second, Twitter in the fourth and fifth spots, and finally Facebook in the sixth position. Not a single direct link to the site that reported, wrote, edited and published the story.
A lot of the coverage of PoetsandQuants is devoted to MBA rankings due to their popularity and controversy. For the launch, we not only published the new ranking referred to above. We also published a ranking of the top 30 schools outside the U.S., and even an analysis of the rankings cranked out by BusinessWeek, Forbes, U.S. News & World Report, The Financial Times, and The Economist, ranking the rankings. For the debut alone, there were a dozen different stories on MBA rankings. So naturally, I Googled "MBA rankings." Not surprisingly, there's not a single link to PoetsandQuants in the first ten pages of results. I didn't bother to look much after that, I confess.
Now, it's not that I'm unaware of the importance of search engine maximization (SEO). When I was editor-in-chief at BusinessWeek.com, we had a full-time SEO expert on staff. I worked closely with my web developer on SEO issues for the WordPress platform we're built on. As I created the content for the site, I was careful to write simple headlines and multiple tags to allow Google to find all the information on the site.
So where is Google? I don't have a clue. Luckily, our traffic has been impressive out of the gate, thanks to the BusinessWeek and Wall Street Journal mentions, and all the attention we've paid to social media. Twitter and Facebook, in particular, are delivering amazing numbers of people to PoetsandQuants. Every day, the traffic sets another new record. As for Google, nothing. This goes to the quality of Google's primary product: search. If Google can't find PoetsandQuants or any of the stories published on the site, I wonder how many other legitimate, substantive efforts are also going undiscovered because Google's algorithms have been so effectively gamed.
Or am I judging Google unfairly? Does the mother of all search engines take a lot longer to find that needle in the haystack that PoetsandQuants obviously is.
Posts
This comment has been removed by a blog administrator.
ReplyDeleteSo what happened when you used the other search engines? Were they any better?
ReplyDeleteI really like this blog, you are very good making them.
DeleteMust admit that you are human being of the best bloggers I ever saw.
DeleteGary, you have a point. Same issue. Nevertheless, shouldn't we expect more from Google?
ReplyDeleteDon't you think the onus is on Bing to catch up? The shortcoming you pointed out is indeed a very valid one, but I don't see why Google should risk compromising the quality of the rest of their search by improving this one aspect. If anything, it should be Bing who does the innovating to try to catch up with Google and if they manage to find a way to corner this, Google will be forced to work on it.
ReplyDeleteYou have 88 pages indexed so Google hasn't ignored you. You just haven't given them enough time and you maybe haven't given them enough REASON to rank the site yet. Is Google some kind of an entitlement for website owners? No.
ReplyDeleteYou need to be patient AND not use techniques like stuffing a keyword tag which is pretty much SEO from the year 2000. Also, go to your site map and see that there is nothing there in HTML. It's a blank page.
Without spending too much time it looks like there are elements of the site that are working against you like dead links etc
This has nothing to do with Google. It has everything to do with your expectation that because of "who you are" Google should jump. Sorry, thankfully it doesn't work that way.
From what I know, Google's search is based on their indexing of sites that is stored on their servers. Since the process of searching isn't really "live" it usually takes a while for newer websites to be indexed. On top of that, the way they used to index usually kept more recent updates of high traffic websites (or more well known sites), so it would also take a while to update for lesser known sites (even if they have been released a while). Notability of a site is based on things like webpage hits, keyword relation, and the notability of other sites that link to the site in question. Now, the question that occurs to me is that this method of index was supposedly replaced (you can google "Google Caffeine" to see), which is supposed to index the internet on the fly at a more rapid pace to make up for the previous flaw in indexing. It seems to me that this new feature is not working as well as they claim, at least not yet.
ReplyDeleteIf its any consolation, while poetsandquants doesn't bring up the correct results, the results for poetsandquants.com show your site as the first link. :-) I would check back in a week or so and if the results are still rubbish, it would probably be worth telling Google about, they like feedback and are willing to improve.
> shouldn't we expect more from Google?
ReplyDeleteYou are a new domain. Until you prove you are not a domain spammer, you are in the penalty box at Google. (google: seo google sand box)
You'll stay there for about 45 days. You can help get yourself out of the sandbox by getting lots of backlinks.
Until you reach an inbound link threshold, you will continue to be invisible.
Brett Tabke
Did you submit the site yet? http://www.google.com/addurl/?continue=/addurl
ReplyDeleteTakes a while for Google to find make a site relevant. Be patient and I am sure you'll be up in no time.
To the commenters before me.... a url should be prooven once it has been linked to from IBusinessWeek and The Wall Street Journal.
ReplyDeleteThis comment has been removed by the author.
ReplyDeleteWhen I search for poetsandquants on new search engine blekko.com your website is at position #1 ;-)
ReplyDeleteMarcus, Munich, Germany
Google Webmaster Tools:
ReplyDeletewww.google.com/webmasters/tools/
Have to agree with the previous commenters here. I would find a different Web developer if you are this concerned about SEO. Your HTML site map is totally empty. Your homepage meta keywords tag is crammed with phrases that refer to other publishers (businessweek, forbes, the economist, etc) and are not present in the actual text of the page. Google's algorithms detect this brand salting and text mismatches as an attempt to game the system.
ReplyDeleteIn addition your developer should have prepared you for the sandbox effect on new sites. How long has businessweek.com been up? Many many years, which actually counts a lot in Google's ranking. People who have worked on established Web presences are often surprised at how invisible a new site is to search engines.
John,
ReplyDeleteI ran into this exact same problem recently. I built my girlfriend's site Psychblog.com and then it took literally 2 and a half months before it showed up in Google results. All the SEO and web developers asked the exact same thing to me but I had already used Google webmaster tools and everything else. Crazily enough the site still doesn't show up in Google blogsearch. Anyways, it's just now being indexed but there are problems with it.
I've found this only happened when I've purchased other domains through domain brokers. Feel free to email me as I have someone at google that I spoke to. My email is nick [at] socialtimes [d0t] com.
Best,
Nick
Seriously, your site optimization could be better, although it isn't bad. It is new so while there are 300+ backlinks already it just takes a few days usually for google to begin ranking it. Patience and better optimization will help.
ReplyDeleteHello. I actually got on this page following one of @pkafka's tweets and http://mediamemo.allthingsd.com. Suggestions for your wordpress administrator:
ReplyDelete1. get rid of that <meta name="keywords"..... tag stuffed with 1560 chars content. it's useless for google. and it uses expressions that obsessively repeat keywords like "MBA rankings, business", etc.
don't get me wrong: all in one SEO pack is a good plugin, just don't abuse it.
2. doing a "site:PoetsandQuants.com" query on google, returns your homepage with no description snippet. it might be so because google considered it as spam due to the stuffed meta keywords tag on your homepage. remove it.
3.You should add a meta description to your homepage. it is used by facebook when sharing a link and by search engines as a snippet description. but it shouldn't be longer than 155-160 chars!
this can be done from the All in One SEO pack plugin management console within your wordpress dashboard.
4. be patient. as i understood, the site is new and has been launched this week. it takes some time to rank in google's results. but with links coming from trustworthy domains like the wsj or businessweek the whole process should accelerate.
but again, this MBA/business education is a topic with harsh competition. so you will be still seeing spammy links in search results.
through all the seo talk no one has mentioned the elephant in the room, google has changed their algorithms significantly this summer and placed a much larger importance on mashups, social and search intent ai. it's also made the search results terrible. it's no coincidence google's search share has declined in step with these changes. head over to the google forum on webmasterworld and you'll get an idea.
ReplyDeleteThey haven't mentioned the social and search element, because the indexing of a new domain, Google's sandbox, and basic natural search elements have all been around for years, and need to be covered before you worry about anything else.
ReplyDeleteGoogle's search share declined a tiny amount, but is still at what, 70% of all searches in the UK? And over 90% on mobile...
Either way, Google are at liberty to change their algorithm any time and way they like - it's down to us whether we think it matters, and if so, to learn how to use it effectively.
Not the least surprised. Corresponds to my own experiences. You must pay the Google tax (AdWords) to be listed in the search results. When I Google on the things i blog about, total garbage turns up. Search is messed up beyond recognition.
ReplyDeleteYou are clearly in the index: http://google.com/search?q=site:poetsandquants.com
ReplyDeleteIn addition to much of the above advice, it might help to be consistent in how you refer to the site. Is it Poets&Quants? Or Poets and Quants? Or Poetsandquants? I see all three on the homepage.
http://google.com/search?q=poetsandquants gives me a "did you mean" where I see many of the pages you wanted to see (the press, etc) but not yet the actual site (not sure why).
Your robots.txt file is incorrectly formatted. I'm not sure what a blank "disallow:" will do, but it could cause you some serious problems.
ReplyDeleteUltimately your problem is age and authority.
ReplyDeleteI glanced at one article and saw this bio
"Vivek Wadhwa is an entrepreneur turned academic who also serves on the advisory board of C-Change Media, owner of Poets&Quants.com. He is a Visiting Scholar at UC-Berkeley, Senior Research Associate at Harvard Law School and Director of Research at the Center for Entrepreneurship and Research Commercialization at Duke University. Follow him on Twitter at @vwadhwa"
That is potentially 3 solid university links you could get from someone on your advisory board, maybe on his university profile page which includes affiliations, and possibly on a news blog.
You should leverage that with all your authors and advisors, and encourage any University you write about to link to you as it also helps promote them.
Sign up with webmaster tools, fix those meta issues mentioned, make sure the first link to a page is using the keywords you target with the article.
Do Entrepreneurs Need MBA Degrees?
An entrepreneur wades into the controversy
The first line should have the link.
+1 What Frank Reed said above. Also, use Google Webmaster Tools effectively. If your content is worth anything, WMT will solve your problem.
ReplyDeleteA lot of the comments here are talking about how to help Google find poetsandquants - perhaps what John is referring to as "gaming Google's algorithms". Isn't the point that if someone is searching for "poetsandquants" it would make sense for "poetsandquants.com" to appear in the results, regardless of whether the site was optimized for search engines?
ReplyDeleteGoogle crawled and indexed the site most recently on August 10th. I can confirm that it *does* show up in the search results, just not for the query you provided.
ReplyDeletehave you submitted your blog for google ? http://www.google.com/addurl/?continue=/addurl
ReplyDeleteThe site shows up at #2 on Bing, for the query you provided...
ReplyDeleteFirst of all, congrats on your new initiative. About Google and search engines, there are no 2-3 elements that make a website or blog creep up to the first spots. Even if you do perform a search for you own company name have in mind that you have competition out there. I don't mean other websites that offer the same services and content as you but websites that talk about Poets and Quants that are more popular and have existed for some time (at least more than your website). If you perform the search now you will see links from Twitter, Facebook, WSJ Blogs, etc. which have a better reputation in the online world. Google and search engines need time to determine that a website is legit and valuable before they can put it above more popular sources. That's why Brand Reputation Management is key for websites so that even if you don't show up at the top, those that do, and are more likely to be clicked on, talk good about your site.
ReplyDeleteGive it some time, but also have in mind that you will have greater organic traffic with SEO strategies. For now, you have a good start with all the press you are getting and now have to use that as an SEO advantage. Also, recommendations above about Google Webmasters are very good and you should look into.
I just posted a comment on memeburn about this:
ReplyDeletehttp://memeburn.com/2010/08/declining-search-quality-is-google-losing-the-spam-battle/#comment-69355401
Hi, I'm an engineer at Google. I left a comment with more info on the follow-up post, but the short answer is that during May/June/July, the domain really only showed the text "www.poetsandquants.com" on it, so for a few days we believed that the domain was a parked domain, and it took a few days for that information to be updated once the site launched.
ReplyDeleteSearching for [poetsandquants] does return the domain name very highly now.
I own and created Tweetcepts. I didn't game Google at all, it's how Google works that you have a problem with.
ReplyDeleteI created a semantic engine that tracks trends moving across Twitter (people, places and things). I opened the door to the public and Google went crazy for the content instantly. It required zero effort in regards to Google. I track millions of topics, news stories, twitter users, videos, et al. When you carry that much content you're going to show up all over the place.
From my experience I know that until you place some adsense on your website it can be problematic to get proper google rankings, you can place in the footer, and it will help.
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