Designing for Search Engines MIS 314 MIS 314 Professor Sandvig Professor Sandvig

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Designing for Search Engines

MIS 314Professor Sandvig

Overview

Why Design for Search Engines What users want from a search engine Google

Market shareHow Google WorksPageRank

Search Engine spamming Design features to Avoid

Why Design for Search Engines

E-commerceTraffic = Sales = $$$Very effective marketing methodFree!!!

Effective DesignBest to be in top 10Few users look past first page of results

US Market Share

68%Google19%Bing10%Yahoo2% ASK1% AOL

2014SearchEngineWatch.com

What Users Want from a Search

1. Comprehensive index2. Relevant ranking of results

Millions of pages containing keywords Which get listed first?

How Google Works

1. Relevance Page contains some or all of keywords

Number of times keywords used More is better

Location of keywords in page Page title URL Headings Depth Font size etc.

Example: Bellingham Real Estate

How Google Works

How Google Works

2. Page Importance PageRank

Measure of a page’s “importance”Popularity index

Each incoming link adds PageRankAmount added:

PageRank of linking page divided byNumber of links on page

Page Rank

Chrome SEO Extension

Page Rank

How to Be Well Ranked

Keyword placement:Prominent locations

Page title – very important!HeadingsNear top

Use frequentlyKeywords in domain nameMeta tags?

How to Be Well Ranked

Selecting keywordsNeed to be relevant to siteTry to use specific and/or unusual

phrasesModel names, numbers, ISBN, etc.

Maximize PageRankDevelop incoming linksAvoid leaking PageRank to other sites

How to be well ranked

New – April 21, 2015

Mobile friendly siteHigher search ranking Searches from mobile devices

How to Be Well Ranked

Human sacrifice

Example

“Bellingham Real Estate” Keywords:

Page titleDomain nameHeadingsTextmetaTags

PageRankPR 3Links: links:windermerewhatcom.com

Search Engine Spamming Trying to “trick” search engine for higher page rank

Many techniques Repeat words many times Use popular but irrelevant words

sex, Brittany Spears, … Text same color as background Gateway pages Auto-redirects Hidden links

Risk Search engines will ban site from index Difficult to get back in Google Punishes JC Penny for Gaming Search

Google Bombing

Tricking Google’s indexExamples (Sept. 2006):

miserable failureWeapons of Mass Destruction

How: couple dozen peopleLinks on web page

Distinctive phrase: “miserable failure”SRC: official Bush bio.

Design features to Avoid

Can cause problems:Forms

Google’s spiders attempt to submit formsDon’t count on it

FramesFlashImages without alt tagsJavaScript redirectsNear identical pages

Additional Information

SearchEngineWatch.comSurveys, statistics, tips

WebmasterWorld.comGoogle World forum

ObservationDo some searchesLook at design features of top ranking

sites

Summary

Search engines want relevant contentGain customers

Effective designsUse key words effectivelyBuild PageRank

Avoidbeing banned for spammingFrames, Flash and other problem-prone

design features

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