Google Algorithm Change - Hiccup?

I'm noticing that many (but not all) of the websites that I look at daily are placing at different positions in Google. You may want to check your placements. I think this current state of flux is only a hiccup.....a scary halloween prank of sorts by Google.

Teleflora.com #10 Thanksgiving Flowers

Coming in at #10 in Google for “Thanksgiving flowers” is Teleflora.com.

Thanksgiving Flowers | Order Thanksgiving Flowers Online ...

Send Thanksgiving flowers, and celebrate the start of a season filled with family and friends. With our extensive network of Teleflora florists,

www.teleflora.com/flowers/thanksgiving-flowers-and-centerpieces-108856_108857c.asp

Of interest to florists who are just getting involved in SEO, please note that the blue area above is what is called a “Title-Tag”; while the black area below the blue font is what is called the meta-description tag. I often use the analogy of likening this area of the website to the steering wheel of a car. What you put in there will determine the particular direction the page will drift in the search results.

Google also looks at the value of the page and in this case Teleflora’s Thanksgiving page is scored as having a PageRank value of “3.” This value is determined by what is not only on the page but how much trust Google has for the page. In that regard, Google can’t see or read all the beautiful floral pictures but instead is only interested in text. The trust that Google meters for the page is determine by who is linking to the page (meaning not just any website).

On that, there are currently 12 pages (of various values) that are linking to Teleflora’s Thanksgiving page. The column on the right (below) represents the type of link-vote that was cast toward the Thanksgiving page which Google then tallies for their PageRank meter.

In looking through the pages below, it appears that the link-votes cast from doityourself.com are artificial and I believe Google is no longer counting some of them which is hindering their ranking. My opinion here is that it wouldn't take much for another web-page to come into the picture and knock them onto the 2nd page. Stay tuned as that may happen.

1	http://www.telaflora.com/	Thanksgiving Flowers (11/27)
2	http://www.shelterrific.com/category/holiday-06/	Thanksgiving Flowers
3	http://www.doityourself.com/stry/tgtabledecor	Thanksgiving Flowers
4	http://www.doityourself.com/stry/tgtabledecor?starvote=.....	Thanksgiving Flowers
5	http://www.doityourself.com/stry/tgtabledecor?starvote=.....	Thanksgiving Flowers
6	http://www.outblush.com/women/life/holidays-events/	Thanksgiving Flowers
7	http://www.legacy.com/Script/CounterRedirect.asp?Name=G.....	Thanksgiving Flowers (11/27)
8	http://www.legacy.com/Script/CounterRedirect.asp?Name=G.....	Thanksgiving Flowers (11/27)
9	http://www.telefloravip.com/roses/rose-bouquets-98313_9.....	Thanksgiving (11/27)
10	http://www.telefloravip.com/flowers/centerpiece-table-7.....	Thanksgiving (11/27)
11	http://www.telefloravip.com/flower-arrangements-by-colo.....	Thanksgiving (11/27)
12	http://www.telefloravip.com/flower-arrangements/mixed-f.....	Thanksgiving (11/27)

Thanksgiving Flowers - Series Intro

As Thanksgiving draws closer interest in ranking for the search term “thanksgiving flowers” heightens. Over the next few days I plan to focus on the tactical SEO moves of most of the websites that rank in the TOP 10. Since one of the websites I do SEO work for currently ranks 1^st you can image that I probably have the most interest (and the most to lose) in what is happening on that page. So I thought I’d write about my findings in a type of series.

For those who may be interested in following me, I’m also toying with the idea of posting my Google Analytics stats on site hits here once we drop within a week of Thanksgiving. I can’t quite commit to doing that yet as I don’t want my direct competitors to gain too much information, but we’ll see.

In any case, it should be an interesting November.  

FlowerPetal.com - "Flower Delivery"

FlowerPetal.com continues to get hit hard by Google filters on particular key-phrases. Up until a few days ago they were enjoying a solid ranking of 8th for the phrase "flower delivery" but have since plummeted all the way back to the 5th page. 

It appears that ranking for that phrase is just about over like their now defunct ranking for "flowers." As of this writing, they still rank on the 1st page of Google for "send flowers" but I think their days there are also numbered.

If "send flowers" gets filtered, that leaves them with ranking for only occasions (i.e. "funeral flowers" etc) and geographical areas nationwide.

For those just joining in, you can follow the context of my reports here.

  

Teleflora.com In Search of SEO?

It is no secret that PepperJam, a nationally recognized search engine firm, has served as the SEO for Teleflora.com for quite some time now. But of interest is Teleflora's recent post on a Job Board for an in-house SEO. It is unclear of what PepperJam's role will be in future.

Teleflora.com is currently an authoritative domain as Google's PageRank meter scores the value of the site at a "6." This score puts the website in the same class as Proflowers.com, FTD.com, and 1800flowers.com and could easily rival those companies search presence with the right SEO person at the helm. There are only a handful of floral ecommerce sites that have a PageRank value of "6" or greater and Teleflora.com is one of them.

Any way, it may be that Teleflora has already filled the position as last week their title tag read:

Flower Delivery By Florists | Send Flowers, Plants, Baskets - Teleflora.com
With our extensive network of Teleflora florists, you can be confident your flowers ... online flowers , every Teleflora flower arrangement is designed ...
www.teleflora.com

And this week it reads:

Flowers, Flower Delivery – Teleflora.com

Flowers – Browse our extensive selection of flowers online and you will find a bouquet for any taste or occasion.
www.teleflora.com

The change in tag structure is more refined and targeted which suggests that there is a SEO marketing campaign in the making.

SameDayFlowersDelivery.net

New on the radar is www.samedayflowersdelivery.net which is an affiliate for JustFlowers.com. According to the whois data base, the registrant is:

Terence Wilson
4 Jersey Way
Barwell, Leicestershire LE9 8HR
GB

This massive website has pages that are optimized to rank for floral terms related to individual States (e.g. “flower delivery Alabama” etc…) and some of the most popular cities in the United States. While I doubt that it will reach the web-presence level of Wesley Berry Flowers, you can expect to see this site appear in popular search results in the coming months.

However, its success will likely be short lived. The website will probably drift off into Google’s oblivion within a year for reasons related to it being eventually identified as a type of “doorway” website. What is a “doorway” page/website? According to Google:

“Doorway pages are typically large sets of poor-quality pages where each page is optimized for a specific keyword or phrase. In many cases, doorway pages are written to rank for a particular phrase and then funnel users to a single destination.

Whether deployed across many domains or established within one domain, doorway pages tend to frustrate users, and are in violation of our webmaster guidelines.

Google's aim is to give our users the most valuable and relevant search results. Therefore, we frown on practices that are designed to manipulate search engines and deceive users by directing them to sites other than the ones they selected, and that provide content solely for the benefit of search engines. Google may take action on doorway sites and other sites making use of these deceptive practice, including removing these sites from the Google index.”

The site currently has multiple links going to JustFlowers.com on every single page. In fact, the website does not even have a shopping cart at all but rather “funnels” everything to Justflowers’ shopping cart. In short, SameDayFlowersDelivery.net is nothing but an empty shell and Google-bot has shown itself smart enough to catch that practice as time moves forward.

FlowerPetal.Com Pt3

Back on September 16^th, I reported that FlowerPetal.com had recently mounted a strong SEO campaign in an effort to rank for premium key-phrases; most notably: “flowers.” In that regard, I noted that FlowerPetal.com was bouncing between 4^th & 10^th on the first page, and I expressed the thought that Google was probably suspicious of their sudden presence for reasons laid out in my baloney detector article on artificial link-votes.

A few days later, on September 20^th, I followed up with a post that documented FlowerPetal.com edging out ftd.com for the 3^rd spot [see image to the right]

While the techies over at FlowerPetal.com headquarters where probably getting all excited about all the orders that were being printed in their printer, I again noted that their ranking was probably going to be only temporary.

Well, fast forward about 5 weeks, and FlowerPetal.com is nowhere to be found in Google for the keyword “flowers.” And when I mean nowhere to be found, I mean they do not rank for that term in Google’s first 1000 results. 

Just imagine for a moment, FlowerPetal.com went from ranking 3^rd for a phrase that is typed over 50,000 times a day, to oblivion. Ouch!!

In an effort to compensate for that loss, FlowerPetal.com has since focused on ranking for more low-key phrases like “funeral flowers” for which they currently bounce between 5th & 10th. 

In an effort to stay below Google's radar for that term, and not make the mistake of getting link-votes from non-relavent websites like before, they've taken their funeral oriented page and have cast link-votes from funeral related web-pages toward it as we see in an image to the right from a site that presents funeral songs.

While that method may prove itself as a strong tactal move for that particular key-phrase, FlowerPetal.com has taken too many risks on other key-phrases. It wouldn't suprise me if FlowerPetal.com incures a fatal Google penalty of the magnitude that rosesnationwide.com was hit with a couple of years back.  

Google Backlink Update for October

There is a Google backlink update underway today. Time to check your websites again (e.g. link:www.yourwebsite.com)

I'll post more here if more information develops.

FlowerPetal.Com in Residence at TechNexus

Of interest, I recently learned that FlowerPetal.Com operates it's floral business model from the 15th floor of the Technexus in Chicago Illinois. According to the Technexus website, the building is used as a multipurpose "clubhouse" for the Illinois technology community. 

Something tells me there's not walk-in fridge up there.

Updated: 03/01/09. The link above appears to be dead but I've retrieved an image from Archive.org of the dead webpage. The image is from what was on www.chicagotechnexus.com/CompaniesInResidence

The Flower Guy.Com

My interest in looking at theFlowerGuy.Com website was sparked by a discussion over at FlowerChat.com. In that regard, some florists have noticed that TheFlowerGuy is ranking in Google for their own shop names and even phone numbers. The questions being asked are: 

1. What are the motives behind the use of real-florist addresses & phone numbers on TheFlowerGuy.com? 
   
2. How are they ranking so well? 
   

Before we take a look at that however, here are some tech specs of the site:

Whois Record Registrant for TheFlowerGuy: 

Send Flowers Today

Jamie Doverspike

508 Suite D East Mountain Street

Kernersville, NC 27284

SEO Consultant for TheFlowerGuy.com:

Brad Henry of SEOSLAP.Com (as gleaned from here & here) 

Other current info: 

Google PageRank Value: 2

Current Backlink Count: Under 200

Age of website: March 2002

Current .EDU Backlink Count: N/A

Current .GOV Backlink Count: N/A

DMOZ: N/A

Yahoo! Directory: N/A

In reviewing the specs nothing unusual stands out as a website that might be involved in an aggressive offsite SEO campaign (e.g. paid link-votes). Instead, its strong web-presence in search engines seem to stem from good old fashion onsite optimization.

The current SEO for TheFlowerGuy.com, Brad Henry, apparently has had experience working with YellowPages.com. According to his SEO site:

“While doing online marketing sales with YellowPages.com, I was able to see the value of having a listing in a website that could potentially deliver qualified leads and wanted to take marketing a step further.”

Brad seems to be aware that the online florist world suffers from a lack of unique content. So in an effort to make TheFlowerGuy.Com a little different and pedal toward what Google and other search engines are looking for, the site plays into elements of both the Yellow Pages feel & florist online ordering. 

As is well known, Google favors websites that lean in the direction of "information," and TheFlowerGuy.Com website fits the mold. If you browse deep within their pages to a particular city, you will notice that the website not only lists real flower shop addresses and phone numbers, but it also lists the same information for Hospitals & Funeral Homes.

While Google may like the combo, as probably the Hospitals & Funeral Homes (who probably don't care), many florists arn't so keen to find their address and phone numbers on a competitors website. 

If I were one of those florists who had an issue with TheFlowerGuy's ranking in my area, I would see to it that my floral website out ranked TheFlowerGuy, and then I would create pages on different websites and/or blogs about my floral shop and rank those pages beneath my own in an effort to push TheFlowerGuy down in the search results. 

The best way to fight SEO is with SEO.

Yahoo Weather Report Issued for October 2008

Yahoo announced that a search update for October is currently in progress:

Weather Report: Yahoo! Search Index Update

We'll be rolling out some changes to our crawling, indexing and ranking algorithms over the next few days and expect the update will be completed soon. As you know, throughout this process you may see some ranking changes and page shuffling in the index. Also, we recently turned on our new Site Explorer experience as the default experience for all users on yahoo.com. Thanks for the impromptu feedback polls.To share your thoughts or check in with other Yahoo! Search users, please visit the Site Explorer Suggestion Board.

Robert S. Apatoff Named President of FTD

FTD named their new President today, Robert S. Apatoff. Here's an excerpt from Market Watch:

WOODLAND HILLS, Calif., Oct 14, 2008 (BUSINESS WIRE) -- United Online, Inc. (Nasdaq: UNTD), a leading provider of consumer products and services over the Internet, announced today that Robert S. Apatoff, 50, has been appointed President of the company's FTD Group, Inc. ("FTD") subsidiary, effective November 3, 2008. Apatoff, a highly-accomplished executive with extensive leadership experience at companies with well-known consumer brands, served as a director of FTD for four years until its recent acquisition by United Online on August 26, 2008. FTD is a leading international provider of floral related products and services under the FTD and Interflora brands.

The full news release can be read here at Market Watch.

Ex Day Bouquet at 1800flowers

Today, 1800flowers announced the birth of a new holiday (October 16th) and named it "Ex Day." According to various news agencies, "Ex Day" is a day where former lovers can attempt to rekindle extinguished flames. 1800flowers CEO, Jim McCann, reported that they've already sold "several hundred Ex-Day Bouquets" for this day and is optimistic that the company will sell many more. 

See here for the news piece.

And this is from 1800flowers:

Ex Day is October 16th!

Send our stunning fresh bouquet of gorgeous green and white blooms to reconnect with a long-lost "Ex"! Order one today and make their day as unforgettable as they are to you!

• The freshest carnations, Gerbera daisies, Asiatic lilies, daisy poms, button poms and more, all in gorgeous shades of green and white
• Arranged by our select florists in a clear glass gathering vase accented with raffia; measures 8"H
• Components may vary
• Arrangement measures approximately 18”H x 14”D

A terrific way to share a gift of stunning beauty with a past love and never let them forget you care!

What's The Story?
Inspired by CBS' new series, THE EX LIST, "Ex Day" on October 16th is the perfect day to reconnect with your "Ex" and who knows…sparks could fly again! And what better way to surprise them than with this fabulous bouquet of fresh green and white flowers!

From an SEO point of view, optimizing for the term "Ex Day bouquet" and "Ex Day flowers" is virgin territory.

New Top Level Domains Looming on the Horizon

According to the Wall Street Journal today:

"Next year, the organization that oversees the Internet will start selling rights to an unlimited number of new top-level domains -- the suffixes like .com that appear at the end of Web-site names. Domains likely to appear include those that take their names from popular subjects, types of businesses and geographic locations, such as .books, .flowers and .nyc."

Full story can be read here.

CanadaRoses.Com

Coming into my radar this week is the floral entity Canadaroses.com. While they already rank well for terms related to sending flowers to Canada, they’ve recently mounted a strong SEO campaign for more general terms like “flower delivery,” “send flowers,” & even “flowers” itself.

The website currently holds a PageRank value of 3 but will probably increase in value upon the next Google PR update due to a recent burst of link-votes (covered below). Also, the age of the URL gives it an advantage in ranking as it was first indexed in November of 2002 and listed in the Yahoo Directory which gives it credibility in the search world. Furthermore, their backlink structure exceeds that of 4,000 so things look rather promising for this website….right?

Well, at first sight everything looks good but it is when you dig a little do you sense that their ranking foundation is not built on organic soil, but rather on artificial sand. A general rule of thumb in SEO is that if a website is involved in an artificial link-vote campaign it is likely that a suspicious pattern will emerge in the first 40 backlinks that you review (via Yahoo).

In the chart below, I have posted what Yahoo believes to be the most current and important link-votes cast by other sites. To the left of your screen is the actual URL, and to the right is what that particular URL cast as a link-vote to help rank canadaroses.com.

[Pickup conversation below]

	Backlink URL	Link-vote Anchor Text
1	http://www.flowersonline.tv/	send flower delivery to canada
2	http://www.greatgreengoods.com/	flowers
3	http://www.neutralexistence.com/	send flowers
4	http://www.hosernews.ca/	florists in canada
5	http://www.global-warming-awareness2007.org/	flowers
6	http://www.blogcatalog.com/directory/environment	flowers
7	http://thegivinghands.org/	canada flowers
8	http://www.groovygreen.com/groove/	flowers
9	http://blissful-weddings.com/	flowers
10	http://ilonagarden.blogspot.com/	flowers
11		[Link-vote was recently removed]
12	http://www.perfect-anniversary-gifts.com/	send flowers canada
13	http://vegankid.solidaritydesign.net/	flowers toronto
14	http://vegankid.solidaritydesign.net/blog-against-sexism-day	flowers toronto
15	http://www.fridayhomeguide.com/	flowers delivery
16	http://www.flowerstomd.com/	flowers canada, Send Flowers, Order Roses Delivery, Toronto Canada Florist
17	http://www.pilecity.info/	send flowers
18	http://www.globalwarmingisreal.com/blog	flowers
19	http://www.usagardener.com/	flower delivery canada
20	http://www.ecotourismblog.com/	flowers
21	http://urbangardencasual.com/	flowers toronto
22	http://canada.bizfolders.com/	florists in canada
23	http://www.americanagiftshop.com/	Send Flowers, online florist, order roses delivery
24	http://www.paper-paper.com/links.html	Send Flowers, online florist, order roses delivery
25	http://emad.fano.us/blog/?p=510	?
26	http://www.weddingsvictoria.net/	flowers toronto
27	http://vegankid.solidaritydesign.net/2006/02/12/blog-ag.....	flowers toronto
28	http://www.horses-shiatsu.com/commercial_sales.shtml	http://www.canadaroses.com
29	http://thegivinghands.org/2007/10/10-ways-our-words-can.....	canada flowers
30	http://planet02138.com/	?
31	http://www.greatgreengoods.com/2008/04/07/recycled-tin-.....	flowers
32	http://www.hosernews.ca/tag/halifax/	florists in canada
33	http://www.greatgreengoods.com/2006/11/27/carnival-of-t.....	flowers
34	http://greatgreengoods.com/2005/11/28/carnival-of-the-g.....	flowers
35	http://www.greatgreengoods.com/2007/11/12/recycled-circ.....	flowers
36	http://vegankid.solidaritydesign.net/carnival-of-empty-cages	flowers toronto
37	http://www.hosernews.ca/tag/kiva/	florists in canada
38	http://www.greatgreengoods.com/2007/11/26/carnival-of-t.....	flowers
39	http://www.greatgreengoods.com/2008/04/06/recycled-silv.....	flowers
40	http://www.greatgreengoods.com/2008/03/23/eco-friendly-.....	Flowers

It is more likely that if a webmaster was going to cast a pure organic link-vote it would look more like this anchor-text: “Canada Roses” or “canadaroses.com” or something similar in tone, rather than what we see above, especially concerning the word “flowers.”

While such a link-vote structure may cause Google’s eye to rise, it is when the actual link-casting website is checked that concerns of an artificial link-vote campaign are really likely to heighten suspicion. On that, most of the link-votes that occur on the websites above are placed in the side bar area of the website often near similar links going to other floral entities using the same link-vote structure, or next to other link-votes that are completely unrelated. The more you become familiar with whose-who in artificial link-vote campaigns, it is often the same players that are involved, and you see them from site to site.

Google is very much into identifying the whose-who of artificial link-campaigns and seeing them always grouped together in the side bars of blogs and websites. In which case, Google devalues the strength of the website's casting ability of link-votes. As is well known in SEO circles, getting a link within the content of a site is key to ranking and staying below the radar.

Right now, CanadaRoses.com is clearly above the radar.