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Working at Home on the Internet

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How Google Treats Blogs

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I have been monitoring the term “working at home” on Google Alerts since forever, or at least as long as I have been Blogging.  For the First Time, I actually saw the Working at Home on the Internet Blog listed on October 26.  It even showed that day’s post… How to Build a Blogging Community.

My posts have showed up in the Google Alerts every day since then for that term.

 

What I did notice though, is that the Alerts had changed.  Instead of showing just the results from Google, they also showed the results for Google Blog Alerts (that’s where I showed up).  I never changed anything in my search request, but I think they expanded the search results they deemed relevant.  This is a good thing (I think).

First, the day they changed the alerts, my Blog started showing up in the results. (Good)

Second, Nothing showed up in the Google Alerts for the Standard Search. (Bad)

 

Does this mean that Blogs are Less Relevant to Google?  I don’t know, so I started to look around for answers in the Google Search.

I, of course, looked up “working at home” in the Standard Google Search.  I almost gave up after quite a few pages, finding nothing that wasn’t either corporate or an organization until page 14.  There I found my FeedBurner link on the top of that page and on page 16 the Blog Carnival Account link.  Neither showed my actual Blog or Address. (I just double checked, and Neither of them show 15 minutes later).

I did the same in Google Blog Search and it showed my Blog multiple times in the results.

 

That’s when I decided to check some of the Blogs I read that are better known.  Each one of them have www. in their URL or at the least are affiliated with a Blog Network.

I looked them each up by name, not the URL, and found most of them on the First page of the Standard Google Search.  Why this is, I don’t know.  The have, for the most part, been around for longer than my Blog.  But not all.

 

Is it the fact that they used the old standard www or that they are linked to hundreds of other Blogs through a network?  Does Google identify them as a Webpage (because of the www) and consider them more important?  Some of them post a few times a day, others only once or twice a week.

 

I guess the real questions are:

Am I doing something wrong?

Does the old www make a difference?

Does belonging to a network really make that much of a difference?

 

Help me out here guys, I want to be rich and famous too.  Or at least get into the Standard Google Search results.

Addendum:  I found that through Blogger Search (owned by Google) that my post on the (semi) Finished Basement was picked up.  Not sure what that means…


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    November 11th, 2006 at 07:30am | Posted by Joe | Basics, Blogging, Google | 5 reader remarks | Print This Post

    « Working at Home Blog Carnival-Sixth Edition | | Blogging Tip #1-Like What You Write »

    25 businesses you can start and run from your home

    5 Reader Remarks

    1. Hi Joe,

      I don’t know anything, but I can tell you my experience. Two thirds of my readers comes as a result of searches, half of my readers from Google searches. I never used Google alerts. I don’t even know how to search on blogs specifically. As best I’ve been able to tell my entire site, including all blog pages, has been indexed by Google and the index is updated regularly.

      My website has been up since around 2000. Until I started the blog the number of visitors was very low and I got very few search engine visitors. The number of readers still isn’t that high, but much better than it was without the blog.

      I don’t belong to a network. I do use the ‘www’. In fact, I have all results redirected to the ‘wwww’ version of my url using my htaccess file and a Wordpress plugin for the blog. Again, I just started doing this after I started the blog.

      I use a sitemap, and have submitted it to Google. It doesn’t include every page of my blog, just my main site pages and the blog index page.

      I also submitted my main site to dmoz years ago. It is listed under personal information managers (I’ve tried to get them to change it, but they won’t). I think Google has a tie-in with them somewhere.

      I use little SEO consciously, especially in terms of keywords. I just write.

      If any of these things mean anything I would attribute them to
      a)age of the site
      b)having a sitemap
      c)being in dmoz

      Input by Rick Cockrum | November 11, 2006 @ 9:07 am

    2. Hey Rick,

      I have submitted to Google Sitemaps using their auto verification and putting the code in the index of the Blog.

      In order to look up a Blog search, you have to go to the Third level (more)(more). If you don’t know where to look, you wouldn’t find it.

      I have been getting indexed by Google fairly regularly, so that isn’t a problem, it’s where they put Blogs in the search priority that I question.

      The Blog has only been around for a year, so I still have some time to catch up to your 6 years. :-)

      It just struck me as odd that they treat Blogs differently than other types of sites.

      Joe

      Input by Joe | November 11, 2006 @ 10:01 am

    3. I never knew about the blog search until a month or so ago. My blog began showing up while still with blogspot.com. When I bought my domain name, I put the following code into my header:

      " />

      I’m not sure if it is the bots/robots that is doing it, or what, but the domain started showing up within a week or two. I am also unsure if the massive amounts of clicks from my blogspot TO my domain name was affecting Google’s recognition of the site. I did submit the domain to the search engines using my host’s simple control panel ’site submission’ button and I went to Google and Yahoo! once to submit the domain name.

      I noticed that you are lacking the keyword “working at home” even though that is what you were looking for as a result from the alerts.

      Input by Jesse | November 13, 2006 @ 1:15 pm

    4. Hey Jesse,

      My old blogspot blog always showed up on their search, but this is the first I notice the new WP blog showing there.

      I like the way you can ping automatically with WP, that was I don’t have to remember to do it. ;-)

      Thanks, I never notice omitting “working at home” keyword, I’ll put it in right away.

      Thanks,

      Joe

      Input by Joe | November 13, 2006 @ 2:31 pm

    5. Also, there is a WordPress plugin that can automatically generate XML sitemap for you (and ping Google bots too:).

      O.K. now I really got to go.

      Best of luck…

      Input by SEO Tips, Techniques & Tutorials | May 6, 2007 @ 12:10 am

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