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.
thanks STRICQ
How about some classic pages like?
global warming jesus caspar paper site:bishophill.squarespace.com
global warming Wegman and North Reports for Newbies site:climateaudit.org
No +1’s, but it can’t hurt to search these to boost the search ratings can it?
“wayne says:
December 31, 2011 at 4:06 pm
Why do I get “Block all wattsupwiththat.com results” link on Google entries”
Because Google allows you to block sites that you don’t want to see. There are many sites that use optimization to get a high ranking, and are basically spam. The about.com articles are basically useless, yet they show up whenever you search many topics. After you’ve been to the site and come back, Google lets you block them so that they don’t come up in searches any more. This is very useful, so put your paranoia away and enjoy it.
I don’t know why you’d expect to see this site at the top of searches for ‘global warming.’ Think of how many sites there are that discuss this topic, and how much traffic they get. Just because this site is important to you, that doesn’t mean it’s important to Google. More links from more sites with heavy traffic would bump up this site’s ratings. I just searched ‘global warming skeptic,’ and a WUWT page came up #40 on the first page. That’s nothing to complain about.
Walter H. Schneider said @ur momisugly January 1, 2012 at 11:51 am
thepompousgit says:
January 1, 2012 at 10:51 am
“Anthony, if you are desperate to become a significant global warming alarmist site, you need to do something. If you do decide to become a global warming alarmist site, I suspect you will lose your present audience.
That is also true, but only within reason, and I don’t think that the insinuation is warranted.”
It was sarcastic and if anyone took what I said as seriously intended, I apologise. Pompous Gits are not noted for their manners.
“All things are fair in love and war. Anthony has love for the truth and for truth against the propaganda war that employs and exploits unnecessary fear of man-made global warming.
To make a dent in the persistent propaganda campaign, it will help to increase the already considerable popularity and visibility of WUWT. It will help that along if searches for specific terms lead people who are not yet aware of WUWT to this blog. “Global Warming” is a very prominent key-term. I don’t think that making it easy to find discussions that mention “global warning” at WUWT will in any way impact the editorial policies applied by Anthony.”
There are two ways for Anthony to effectively increase Google traffic from the search term “global warming”. One is to be linked to from NASAA as (Un)RealClimate is. The likelihood of that is about the same as me receiving a Nobel Prize for my diligence in lawn mowing. The second is what you say isn’t going to happen: a drastic change in editorial policy to make this website attractive to people searching on the term “global warming”. I’m not saying the changes made will have no effect; just that they will have a negligible effect.
I will try again. Google evaluates what people want to view based on their search terms and web page content. It does this very well (albeit imperfectly). The suggestion being made here is that people who would prefer not to read the content on WUWT should be coerced into doing so, be it ever so gently. The people who do want to read the content at WUWT have no problem whatsoever finding WUWT based on the search terms they are most likely to use. If Google was attempting to suppress WUWT, this would not be the case.
“Anthony and all others involved in doing the required work, thank you for that and for making the effort.”
Heartily agree!
LazyTeenager says:
December 31, 2011 at 7:03 pm
If meta tags “has always been irrelevant to Google” how did “people use them to game the system”?
Update on 1/1/12 at 22:00Z WUWT is now third from the bottom on page 19 up from page 38, after adding my +1 and clicking on it a few times yesterday, along with many others here. I suppose that’s progress.
For those who might think The Git is a shill for Google, consider the following:
Jonathan Sturm, The Pompous Git’s evil alter-ego is, according to Google, the world’s most famousest Pompous Git. He was one of the very earliest of bloggers (though we didn’t call ourselves that: see http://www.daynotes.com/index20041001.html). There are several thousand pages on The Git’s website though it has been only sporadically updated over recent time (and it’s a bit of a mess after a restore borked the CSS on a bunch of pages). The Git is telling you these things not to skite, but to tell you he knows whereof he squeaks.
Many people believe Google maintains an index of every web page, or if not of every page, every page of websites with high Google Rank. The Git’s web has a Google Rank of 4, just behind WUWT’s 5. When searching for pages The Git knows exist in his web using Google, some are not found while other search engines do. Why?
Google evaluates on several criteria and one such is incoming links and what the Google Rank of those links are. Those pages so linked remain in Google’s index. Pages not so linked, are eventually erased from Google’s index. Other independent search engines can find such pages, though there is no guarantee any particular engine will. http://www.searchenginewatch.com/ is a great place for search engine news BTW.
Google also evaluates websites based on the percentage of relevant (from the Google POV) pages. Thus a blog such as WUWT gradually erodes its Google Rank as more and more irrelevant (that is unindexed) pages accumulate. This points to a way to reverse that trend: prune out the older, irrelevant material that is no longer indexed. Unfortunately, discovering which of those pages need to go can be a tedious exercise.
The Git’s solution was to divorce the blog from his main website. Over time, he then intends to eliminate irrelevant material from the old website while continuing to add new relevant (from the Google POV) material. In the meantime, writing his new book is paramount. And thinking: “What’s for dinner?”
Just some food for thought that might be more important than worrying about attracting more R Gates, Lazy Teenagers, A Physics and so on. I don’t object to their presence at all, they add spice, but an avalanche of them, even if it could be engineered, would not be desirable (IMHO)
Ric Werme said @ur momisugly January 1, 2012 at 1:53 pm
“LazyTeenager says:
December 31, 2011 at 7:03 pm
“The basis of Google’s original page ranking is published, but the current implementation details and algorithm are secret. That’s to prevent people gaming the system. The reason meta tags is now irrelevant and has always been irrelevant to Google is because people used them to game the system.”
If meta tags “has always been irrelevant to Google” how did “people use them to game the system”?”
LT is incorrect. Google has used a variety of techniques to evaluate pages over time and has continued to refine them. IIRC meta tags were dropped fairly early.
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YOU, THE READER, CAN HELP WITH PLACEMENT.
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Google assigns a huge amount of weight to incoming links. READERS can improve WUWT’s placement on the general term ‘global warming’ by using the term in links to the site. Link building gives readers a chance to help.
When posting a link to an article on WUWT use the term GLOBAL WARMING in front of the article name. For forums use the typical BBC tags [url=http://…actual link here…]Global Warming: …article name here…[/url] when composing a post’s link. Different forums and blog comment sections do links differently. But, get the words ‘global warming’ in every link you post to WUWT. Ideally place them first and only once. It takes time. But as those links build up WUWT will start to float to the top for that term.
Google assigns high weight to external links because the site owner and SEO guys cannot easily spam Google via incoming links.
Google is link farm proof and will penalize sites that use link farms. But, forums, blogs, and other discussion sites that allow links are considered a good source of ranking information because it is too labor intense for SEO peeps and owners to go around the net posting links. Plus site owners, forums and blogs, will filter out spammers’ links.
Plus this takes the effort off Anthony and spreads it across his many readers.
http://dolphinad.com/
UnfrozenCavemanMD said @ur momisugly January 1, 2012 at 2:11 pm
“Update on 1/1/12 at 22:00Z WUWT is now third from the bottom on page 19 up from page 38, after adding my +1 and clicking on it a few times yesterday, along with many others here. I suppose that’s progress.”
Google monitors what you as an individual find relevant and weights its search results accordingly. Your discovery is therefore of no great consequence.
BTW The Git’s published results were on a fresh (1 week old) install and therefore he assumes little affected by recent searches on the terms used.
Walter H. Schneider says:
“There is a simple reason why it is at the top of search return lists. Think about it: “Minnesotans For Global Warming” shows up in the URL for the website?
You missed my earlier post where I said my blog used to be on the first page of Google results but now I am on page 10. This happened after Google made 500 changes to the algorithm “to improve search quality”
Alan Cates said @ur momisugly January 1, 2012 at 2:57 pm
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YOU, THE READER, CAN HELP WITH PLACEMENT.
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Google assigns a huge amount of weight to incoming links. READERS can improve WUWT’s placement on the general term ‘global warming’ by using the term in links to the site. Link building gives readers a chance to help.”
True, but AFAICT the links carry a weight dependent on the Google Rank of the website linked from. If that website has a Google rank of 0, as most websites do, then there is nothing gained. OTOH a single link from a website of very high Google Rank is worth more than many thousands of links from low Google Rank websites. For example, NASA’s Google Rank is 9.
The Google Rank checker that The Git uses is working again. WUWT has gone up from 5 to 6! (It’s updated quarterly IIRC). And people are p!ssing and moaning about this. OMG the sky’s falling in. Put on your tin hats everybody!
Elmer said @ur momisugly January 1, 2012 at 3:14 pm
“Walter H. Schneider says:
“There is a simple reason why it is at the top of search return lists. Think about it: “Minnesotans For Global Warming” shows up in the URL for the website?
You missed my earlier post where I said my blog used to be on the first page of Google results but now I am on page 10. This happened after Google made 500 changes to the algorithm “to improve search quality””
You are assuming nothing else changed, like thousands more people blogging on the same topic, incoming links going stale etc. And never forget the algorithm sorts websites by relative popularity. Note that WUWT has increased its Google Rank over the last quarter, a rather strange result if the “faulty” algorithm discriminates against websites such as WUWT.
If you want to increase your Google Rank, currently a very respectable 4, you need to evaluate your posts in terms of what people actually use to find your website when using Google. Content is king as they say. Either you need to have permanently accessible content that people want to read, or you need to provide new, fresh material that attracts people to visit your website regularly. In this respect, Anthony is creating a problem for bloggers who blog on topics similar to his. There are several blogs I no longer have time to peruse, not because they are at fault, but because WUWT is streets ahead of what they are doing.
And Google’s “faulty” algorithm is tracking this. I’d say WUWT has a “problem” that many would give their left nut to have.
Egads : still a serious amount of misinformation and disinformation being posted here. No wonder the SEO field is ripe with fraudsters and hucksters with all the nonsense that passes for common knowledge.
“If meta tags “has always been irrelevant to Google” how did “people use them to game the system”?”
I don’t recall if Google ever read meta tags, but they haven’t done for a long time. Gaming the search engines with meta tag stuffing was done long before Google was around. The thing that set Google apart and made it race ahead of other search engines was the fact it stopped trying to rank sites based on on-page factors (the things people could manipulate) and started ranking sites based on off-page factors, as described in the original PageRank algorithm. It’s a lot more difficult to manipulate off-page factors like links to your site, especially with high-ranking domains like government websites, education facilities, newspapers, etc.
It might be suggested that there is no point in linking to this site with ‘global warming’ in the link text, but in fact that is not the case. 1 NASA link might be worth 1,000 climate blog links, but that doesn’t mean 1,000 climate blog links shouldn’t be done.
Additionally, there was some suggestion in these comments that the indexes only update infrequently. That is false- as someone already showed in this comment stream, this post alread ranks for several unique terms (was it thongs or something?) which shows that, for an active blog like this, Google will be updating probably several times daily.
Anthony/Mods- you should consider posting a retraction to most of the advice given in this post and seek professional (donated) help in putting up a new post outlining the SEO strategy and asking for help from readers in ways they CAN help – none of which includes +1 clicks or trying to sort through 30+ pages of search results in the hope that clicking the link will give much of a boost.
And people – seriously – when Google decides you’re not welcome on their site, you disappear. As in : can’t be found at all. As I and others have said, they’ve got money to make, they aren’t going to spend a lot of time stuffing about trying to suppress particular blogs that aren’t breaking their own rules.
The reason things like RealClimate etc are ranking better are because they all have Government/Media buy-in. Government and Media sites are well-trusted (for integrity, not necessarily truth) and as such links from them help rankings enormously. There is no conspiracy or active fiddling of the search rankings – it’s just another manifestation of the overwhelming amount of money behind the climate scare industry. Google is (and will continue to) tweak it’s algorithm to favour branded sites over unbranded (i.e., New York Times over Uncle Joes Climate Rant) because that’s what people like, and the big brands have the money to spend on ads.
If WUWT follows some advice and does a combination of on-page optimisation (removing unnecessary outgoing links), editorial awareness (better choices of title) and a linking strategy (getting others to link with relevant link text) then this blog would race up the rankings.
So can we please get back to the facts and spare the crazy theories. Some people do this stuff for a living and know what they are talking about.
And thinking even more deeply about Googlish things and Climate Realism…
The Git just searched on “willis eschenbach” in the WordPress search box at the top of the page. He notes that Willis’ posts are all Uncatgorised. From a distinctly Gittish POV, he would like to be able to search for substantive scientific articles and commentary on articles and search within those searches to efficiently find what he vaguely remembers reading here. IOW there’s a lot of material here of permanent interest among a boatload of ephemera. Haystacks and needles.
What would be nice (and The Git is far too busy to volunteer for this) is a separate website that carries only the substantive scientific content, sans comments, but with a link to the original post here for those willing to wade through the dross looking for further nuggets. A properly indexed archive with suggested reading lists for special interests: Beginner to Climate Realism, Oceanography, Paleoclimatology etc. It could, and probably should, include like material from CA, Bishop Hill and others.
Hey, if the tinfoil hat brigade can dream of gaming Google, Gits can have their dreams too 😉
brc said @ur momisugly January 1, 2012 at 4:18 pm several things, but only quoted Lazy Teenager. However, some of what he says appears to be directed at me, so:
“It might be suggested that there is no point in linking to this site with ‘global warming’ in the link text, but in fact that is not the case. 1 NASA link might be worth 1,000 climate blog links, but that doesn’t mean 1,000 climate blog links shouldn’t be done.”
I don’t think I said it shouldn’t be done. I did point out that linking from a website with a Google Rank of 0 will have zero effect. 1,000 * 0 = 0. The Google rank value is entirely dependent on the Google Rank value of the source. I used NASA as an example because it’s clearly why (Un)RealClimate appears ahead of WUWT in searches even though it has much less traffic.
“Additionally, there was some suggestion in these comments that the indexes only update infrequently. That is false- as someone already showed in this comment stream, this post alread ranks for several unique terms (was it thongs or something?) which shows that, for an active blog like this, Google will be updating probably several times daily.”
I couldn’t find any suggestion that the indexes update frequently, and certainly not by me. It might help if you quote when responding to comments. I did state that Google Rank is updated infrequently, at least the one published by Google. It is of course not necessarily the case that Google uses the published Google Rank internally. Wikipedia states that the last published update was 27 June 2011. This is obviously now out of date as I discovered an hour or so ago. WUWT’s published Google Rank has gone from 5 to 6 since September when I last checked it.
Much of what you say appears to be generally reasonable advice, but it’s worth pointing out as I have that WUWT is doing rather well. SEO might well lift WUWT higher up page 1 when searching on “watts”, or “science & climate”, or “climate & blog”, but apart from bragging rights, what will be achieved? A very great effort might get WUWT onto page 1 for a search on global warming, and staying there might require even greater effort. But why bother?
As I pointed out, WUWT does have a potential longer term problem shared with all blogs. I didn’t make that up; it’s a topic of conversation among several website owners I know who make a living from writing.
Forgot to close the tags on efficiently and published in the last two posts! Can you fix please, Mods? I think we finally have some global warming here in southern Tasmania. It’s 30.5C in my garden and the pumpkins must be loving it 🙂
[REPLY: Fixed. I think. -REP]
A problem blogs can have is so many of them are not the original source for what they publish. I don’t know what the ratio of original to replicated work is here, but it may be a factor. The signal to noise ration on blogs can be pretty bad, too.
I wonder too how much WordPress does to discourage burning up bandwidth on the search engines – there are a lot of them out there. On my servers I’ve blocked quite a few of them because they’re bandwidth pigs. And they’re not just crawling web servers – FTP servers that allow anonymous access are fair game, too.
Anyway – keep up the great work. We all know where to find you.
How about aquiring an additional custom domain to widen your net? http://www.wattsupwithglobalwarming.com and just have the DNS point to your home page.
You cold use a different host name like http://globalwarming.wattsupwiththat.com and have it point to a reference page or do a tag search of your posts.
Just thinking outside the box here.
MrC
Hi Anthony,
There is a lot of advice above, I have some experience in this area so I feel compelled to add my two cents.
1. Meta keywords are meaningless, google stopped using them years ago as they are too easy to manipulate, plus Google’s machine learning algorithms are more than capable enough to determine the meaning of the content on all of your pages.
2. Search result ranking for most sites is not dependent on people clicking on search results. This is because Google gets much better data from the Google Analytics and Google Adsense scripts that are embedded in most web pages these days. The scripts that run on all sites using these products gives Google real time trending data on the actual usage of the sites. This is a far better indicator of the popularity of a site than search result clicking. You can see why they give Google Analytics away for free.
3. After a quick examination it appears that you are not using Google Analytics or Adsense on your site. Didn’t you used to have Google Ads on your site? Without these products, Google receives a lot less data about the usage and popularity of your site. You probably have good reasons why you don’t use these products.
4. The fact that you are not using GA or Adsense is no excuse for you to be ranked so low. The google bots which scan your site can easily determine the topics contained in your content.
5. My opinion is that you are being purposely down ranked. Any half decent algorithm would rank you near the top, and google have excellent algorithms.
6. Not sure if you are using a WordPress sitemap plugin but it is probably worth it if you are not as this allows search engines to find new content faster.
Please excuse my terse writing style, I have been been a progammer most of my life and paragraphs don’t come easily.
Keep up the good work, you are killing it.
tD
Page 32 on google.co.uk. (I this the same rank as google.com or any other dot thing?)
Of course various posters / commentators have been telling us not to use Google so perhaps this low ranking is the result.
I like your experiment with the menus below the masthead. Try seaching on “Al Gore and Bill Nye” – WUWT comes up number one.
I just found it on page 28 on google.ca, and of course, clicked on it.
I am flabbergasted at the continual suggestion that Google is downgrading WUWT. I just checked Dick Smith Electronics, a major Australian electronics retailer, both online and through a multitude of stores, not just in the cities, but suburbs and towns. They have a Google Rank of 5, and I’m willing to bet they have employed highly paid SEO experts to get there (they are part of one of Australia’s two largest retailers).
And the obsession with WUWT ranking low on the search term “global warming” when most warmists, the people most likely to use that search term, would be least likely to find what they seek at WUWT, is crazy.
WUWT is a colossal success: look at the traffic. Focus on why WUWT’s a success: content. Content is King!
Please, please, please, please don’t do a “New WUWT”!
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/New_Coke
I despair…
ditto
Google most definitely does send undesirable ( in their opinion) sites to the back of the rankings. I have run a blog that deals with motorized recreation (snowmobiling) for many years. In ’99 and Y2K I came out with a series of editorial posts very critical of Clinton’s Roadless Initiative and other efforts to close down public access to public lands. Guess what happened? I went from never being under #8 for my specific topic to page 30+, and at times not being listed in the directory at all. Just this year, about 2 years after my last pro-access article, I have returned to a top ranking listing.
In that decade my site was SEO optimized, keyword optimized, keyword titled, resubmitted, and I have three relevant domain names that used the top search terms.com pointing at the site. None of that mattered because I offended their worldview. I had excellent rankings with non-G search engines, but was exiled on the Big G.
Thankfully word of mouth made me the second biggest site in the region without the help of the big evil one, and the decade long trip to search engine Siberia didn’t matter much.
Now in my opinion “Do no evil” ranks right up there with hope n change, the check is in the mail, and I promise not to…
Whoops, back to page 35 tonight.
RR