This post over on Scottish Sceptic’s website (below) points to a problem that WUWT has with search engines. One big issue he raises is that I can’t edit meta tags in the website header, but then again, I’ve had a clue that hasn’t mattered for a couple of years now, from the WordPress forum:
It’s not possible to edit meta tags on WordPress.com blogs.
…
Moreover Google does not use the keywords meta tag in web ranking – Monday, September 21, 2009
http://googlewebmastercentral.blogspot.com/2009/09/google-does-not-use-keywords-meta-tag.html
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WUWT – page 35 when searching for “global warming”
Following some comments on WUWT about the “+1″ scheme to boost ratings, I first joined the scheme, then decided to do it the old fashioned way and click on the WUWT link when searching for “global warming”.
So, imagine my surprise when I found WUWT on …
PAGE 35
Yes, that is right! WUWT was on page 35 … I had to double check to make sure it was right because it was behind the GWPF, behind climate audit, behind unrealclimate, behind the IPCC behind sites that none of us have ever heard of.
- So, why was it on page 35 of the google results?
- Why having clicked on it just once, did it move (via another PC on another URL) to page 34?
- And, why when I checked the page, was there not a single meta-tag telling the google search engine this site had anything or wanted anything to do with global warming?
The simple answer given the ease by which I escalated the ranking by a single click is that no one ever clicks on a WUWT page when they search for global warming. And before everyone starts point to google bias, obviously, no one trusts the top ranking sites (they are mostly paid for … or promoted due to google’s own politics) but whilst it is quite possible WUWT has a lower ranking than it should, I think there is much more to this and quite a lot has nothing to do with Google and so I have a few suggestions:
- I have to be honest, and say that I don’t think Anthony Watts has a clue about publicising his site particularly for search engines. E.g. he doesn’t even mention global warming as a search term in the meta tabs telling search engines which words and phrases characterise the site. That just screams out that he doesn’t exactly make his site google friendly and it’s not surprising that it is so lowly rated.
- Sceptics most probably do not use Google to find the site. If we don’t search on google, how is google supposed to know that people want to find that site when they search?
- And yes, Google hates WUWT … and more than likely is actively trying to repress the site. OK, we have to accept that, so we have to work together to try to reverse this.
What can be done
1. Search for global warming and click on the WUWT site.
Go to google and enter “global warming”. Then click the last number at the bottom to go to pages 10, then 19, etc. until you reach page 35 3435.
(Addendum: the next WUWT page is around page 70 of google results!!)
Then start going backwards until you find an entry for any page linked to wattsupwiththat.com and then click it.
Repeat prescription every day!
2. Add a link to wattsupwiththat.com
Where ever and when ever add a link.
3. Join the “+1 scheme“
Join the scheme and then find the WUWT pages and press the +1 button
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He makes some good points that would make a good new year’s resolution – help spread the word. There is one thing I can do, and that is make a change to the header image to remove the masthead statement and place it into the first lines of text. I’ve made that change today to see if it helps.
As always, my sincerest thanks in advance to everyone who helps support this website in words and deeds.
Walnut article was page 27 when I searched. That article did have global warming in the title though. Why not add a reference page called “a primer on global warming issues” or something.
James
You fare better in Bing, where a WUWT article showed up on page 11.
Went backwards from page 35, found you on page 28 🙂 I was happy to click back through those pages to get you. Hopefully many more clicks will get you onto the top ten….
I tried using Google as mentioned above, the first mention of WUWT that I found was on page 39. 🙁
I find google to be almost as bad as the UN.
http://www.dogpile.com
It searches google also but, seems to me to work much better.
I can see where an “Occupy Google” would be fun though. Hehehehehehe
I tped in Global warming is crap and this was on page 1:
Whale poop fights global warming | Watts Up With That?
wattsupwiththat.com/2010/06/16/whale-poop-fights-global-warming/
Whale poop fights global warming. Posted on June 16, 2010 by Steven Mosher. Image From Popular Science Worst Jobs Article. Click here to watch the video.
Had a look and it is described as “The worlds most viewed site on global” and runs out of space but a very good hook to get people to take a look even if it is down the rankings. I sometimes skip the first pages of a search to see what comes later in a result.
Hopefully you will move up the list.
God bless you in the new year.
James Bull
Switched from Google to Bing (I know…peas in a pod). Searched “Gobal Warming” for a WUWT and gave up scrolling when I got to 80. I try to do my part by giving the heads up to friends and co-workers.
Well, actually WUWT does pretty well on Google Search. Try entering any post title as a search phrase in Google and you will find WUWT on the first page – if not on the top spot – nearly every time.
You see, WordPress uses the post title as the page name and Google gives great importance to those words. So if WUWT wants to be top for such terms as “Climate Change” or “Global Warming” it just need to post a few articles with those and similar key words as the post title plus sprinkle the article text with the same or similar words.
Done and done! By the way, Anthony, I give people direct link to individual posts on your blog, that way they can’t whine and cry about not being able to find you through google. Or as we like to loving call it, “that crap bucket with the leftist political agenda”. Kinda catchy, don’t ya think!?!?!
Just followed the instructions above … found WUWT at the top of page #32 … perhaps its already on the move upwards?
You can get more than 10 entries per page on Google if you go to something like
http://www.google.co.uk/webhp?complete=0&num=50
This will force it to return 50 entries per page.
For Firefox there is an add-in FastestFox that, inter alia, has an option called Endless Pages. If this is on then when you scroll down to near the bottom of the page it starts loading the next page as an addendum to the current page.
So with ‘num=50′ specified, if you go down to the bottom of the page 10 times then you will have the first 500 entries in one big web page.
Being in one web page you can then easily search for any string that you like (e.g. “watts”) in loads of results in one go.
Jim
I don’t do giggle … I use Bing.
Also, I don’t use the default settings … I’ve made my settings 50 items per page vice the default 10. I just did “climate change” and got WUWT as the 14th item (1st page). Didn’t see anything for “global warming” on the first page.
For what it’s worth, typing “global warming” into a Google search today finds RealClimate is on page 32 of the results, and WattsUpWithThat on page 38. 350.org is on page 24, and a satirical article on TheOnion is on page 28. The top three entries on page 1 are: 1) the Wikipedia entry for “Global warming”, 2) a NYT science section article on Global Warming, and 3) the EPA.gov subsection on “Climate Change”.
The highest ranked skepticism-driven result is http://www.globalwarming.org, sponsored by the Competitive Enterprise Institute, which is the 7th result on the first page, just above the NRDC.org, and NCDC.noaa.gov sites.
My guess is that Google ranking has something to do with clicks, keywords, and links, but may also be penalizing sites that contain or link to content that is not extremely temperate and polished in its use of language, and with heavily moderated comments, if it has comments at all.
Love the new Logo / Caption
Will now Google every day, as well as +1 all articles
Andy
Interesting.
I found WUWT also on page 33. Here is what Google says about my visits
You’ve visited this page 24 times. Last visit: 2/2/09
I can state with great confidence that I have visited WUWT more times than that, just in the last month.
“Climate Change” on Bing gave a hit on page 25.
It gets far worse
As I searched under “climate change”, as things progressed, I was offered fewer and fewer results per page, until about page 45 there were 2 results per page, and by page 57 I was offered only one result per page – and no mention of WUWT anywhere along the way
http://andic.co.nz/google.jpg
Lots of pages still to go – but I ain’t found WUWT as yet
Andy
Look at the plugin “WordPress SEO”. It’s by the same author as another very popular plugin. On each page, when you’re on the edit screen you’ll have a form where you can enter the meta description and meta keywords for the page. There are other tools which the plugin provides as well.
It was my understanding that the page title has the major impact on searches. The WUWT title “Watts Up With That? | The world’s most viewed site on global warming and climate change” is diluted with too many worthless words. It might be worth changing it to : “Global warming and climate change” and put “Watts Up With That?” in the description tag.
Page 2 if you type in:
global warming not
Anthony,
Placing expressions to be indexed for search-engine optimization in the first lines of text is a good start but not all that must be done. The meta tags in the page code come into the picture as well.
If you examine your page code, you will find the meta tags between the and tags.
The expressions that you want to have emphasized (identified in the following by the example, global warming, shown in brackets (exclude the brackets, the parentheses and the text between the parentheses)) for search-engine ranking should be contained in the following tags:
and
your page title [(should include the string) global warming ]
That is not entirely or complete true anymore, but not all that long ago that repetition of expressions of interest was of great and even primary importance for search-engine optimization. It is not merely important to make use of the advantage in ranking that provides, but some search engines may even include parameters in their ranking algorithms that penalize the ranking of a web page if it does not follow those and other considerations.
There is much more to it than just that. The best thing you can do is to read a few articles on search-engine optimization.
REPLY: You’ve missed the point spectacularly, wordpress.com hosted blogs (of which WUWT is one) don’t have the ability to edit meta tags and page code – Anthony
FireFox – Page 38
Clicked on page 38, now working my way backwards.
From “global warming” search on Google.
Also consider that many of the high ranking sites which promote AGW probably use the nofollow HTML tag when linking to sceptical sites, preventing the sceptical sites from increasing their ranking from the linking.