Google have now included load-time in the ranking algorithm, and this has created a new focus on website performance and page load-times.

This new focus is quite ironic, as all websites should be optimized as a service to the customers and users – and not just to please Google and to improve rankings in Google.

State of the top Danish websites

How well are the websites performing in Denmark … are they optimized, are the load-times acceptable? To find out we have done a small test of 11 of the largest websites in Denmark. The websites are selected from FDIM’s (Association of Danish Internet Media) list over Danish Media Sites. See the list at www.fdim.dk.

The test using Yahoo YSlow and Google Page Speed

We have tried to make the test fair and square, and to eliminate bias due to browser cache and other factors that could influence the findings.

All 11 sites have been measured 5 times each with Yslow and Google Page Speed, and the first measurement is done after the site have been loaded twice in a clean Firefox browser.

We look at 3 parameters:

• YSlow – sec, load time in seconds
• YSlow score – overall performance score
• Page Speed Score

The YSlow – sec is the real deal i.e. how long time does the user have to wait, before the page is loaded. The YSlow score and the Page Speed Score is an evaluation of the page optimization. A score close to 100 indicates the page/site is highly optimized, and a score below 60 is equivalent to a quite a poor optimization of the Page.

Overall test-results

The test shows an average YSlow Score of 61.8, equivalent to a grade D. Five out of eleven sites had an YSlow Score below 60, indicating a very poor optimization. The average Page Speed Score is a little better at 74,49, thus indication a more acceptable performance, but still not very impressive.

Out of eleven sites three websites looks quite well optimized, another 3 sites are average, and then we have 5 sites that looks very poorly optimized – judged on YSlow Scores.

The average load-time was acceptable 3.62 sec, but the variation was quite big on some of the poor rating (YScore) and very heavy sites.

Optimization of Danish top sites is poor

The result of the test is very poor, as almost 50% of the sites fails the YSlow test and get a grade below D. The sites in the test are the leading Danish news sites, and some of the largest portals in Denmark, and the poor result thus call for some concern about the general state of the Danish websites.

To be continued!

Motor journalists normally like fast cars, and hard driving on track. This jounalist however is not quite up to the task of keeping his cool while Damon Hill put the hammer down on Nürburgring.

Nürburgring – Nordschleife is a scary place

The combination of the famours and scary Nordschleife on Nürburgring and the former F1 world champion Damon Hill is a dream for some, but becomes a nightmare for this journalist.

Take a look and see how the journalist get car sich … while Damon Hill is 100% relaxed at high speed.

Twitter can be a very busy place, if you follow a lot of people – but this also the case for many of your followers!.

If you want to keep your followers you really need to consider the tweets you are pushing out. Are they really relevant and necessary, or could they be considered as obsolete and irritating by some of your followers.

Polite or rude on Twitter?

Offline it is considered polite to thank people, if the recommend you or do you a favour. But how is it on Twitter – should you really thank people for a retweet or a #Followfriday?

Question 1:

Question 2:

Google has, as many know, introduced personalized search, where the search results are based on the individual user’s web-history with Google.

Personalized search can be switched off, but I think it’s fair to assume that a large proportion of the Google users will be using personalized search, thus not seeing the basic SERPs without personalization.

Implications for SEO

Google seems to maintain the basic ranking algorithm, and the personalization based on the web history, is used to correct the rankings when the user make the search.

We will therefore see more variation in the rankings accross the different users, thus making ranking checks more unreliable than before. This is however not a new problem, as rankings also are personalized for all the users who are logged in to Google, while they perform the search.

The interesting point is whether the average personalized results are biased compared to the non personalized result – i.e. does personalized search favour certain sites.

Ranking Bias

If the personalization is based on the non-personalized result and the web history, there would in my opinion be a bias in the average rankings, as the more popular sites will appear more often in the web history, thus improving rankings for these sites in the average personalized rankings.

This could lead to quite a large ranking bias, where the popular sites with a lot of traffic on average will move up in the rankings, and the small sites with limited traffic will lose ranking.

If this is correct then popular sites on average will rank better than the in non-personalized SERPs, and the small sites will on average rank lower.

Are this bias really important?

If the ranking bias is significant then Google will favour the large and popular sites with the introduction of personalized search, then it will be increasingly difficult for new and small sites to break trough.

These sites will struggle to get a top ranking in the personalized results, as the web history will create inertia in the rankings, that will work against changes in the rankings. The user will click on the usual sites thus improving or maintaining the rankings of these sites.

How big are the ranking bias

The experience with personalized search is so far limited, and the ranking effects of the personalization seem to be quite limited in most cases. But more tests and research are needed to make firm conclusions.

Google log-in personalization has been online much longer, and in my experience the personalization effect can be quite large with the Google log-in. I can’t really see why Google in the long run would like the put less weight on the web-history in the general personalization – and the personalization effects could therefore be quite big also without Google log-in.

Google are introducing a lot of new elements in the SERPS, and some of these include a lot of deep links to your site.

Sitelinks and breadcrumbs

The sitelinks are allocated to your site by Google, and you are only able to remove sitelinks, not add sitelinks that would benefit your business.

The breadcrumb navigation in the SERPS are still quite new, but it seems Google are using these without any possibility opt-out of breadcrumbs for individual URL’s or even for all the URL’s on a domain.

What is the problem with sitelinks and breadcrumbs?

With more deep links to your site, Google will be able to move some of the navigation from your site to a Google controlled area (adwords). This means you will loose the possibility to present other content or products to the user, as he will be surfing on Google.

Example

If you have a shop with two products, one main product with a lot of search traffic, and a secondary product with only a little search traffic.

In this example only the main product will be presented in the sitelinks, and quite a large share of the users will click on the sitelink and go directly to the main product page, without being exposed to your information about the secondary product.

What are the consequences?

In general more links to your site on Google should be a good thing, and sitelinks offer great visibility in the SERPS.

But if Google move some of the navigation from your site to Google, the entry pages on your site will change, and your sales funnels on the site will change, and most likely be shorter.

Google increased use of deep links in sitelinks and breadcrumbs then calls for a different site architecture, and revised sales funnels for the products. The main products will be exposed directly on Google while the secondary products should possibly have more attention on the site.

Sitelinks and breadcrumbs – good or bad?

In general sitelinks and breadcrumbs are a good thing, but the effects should be monitored carefully, as the navigation on the site can change dramatically over time, thus changing the optimal sales funnels.

Bur remember, if Google and Google alone controls the deep links, then your possibilities to change your product and market focus will be reduced, as a lot of the users will use the deep link navigation Google offers.

We have always wanted test the dynamics of link building, as the dynamic effects sometimes can be rather dramatic, and even get you penalized by the search engines.

So we decided to use a little time on a small scale live test of link building to a new site. The results were quite interesting, and somewhat surprising.

The Link Building test

We did a small scale test on link building to a new Danish domain (.dk).

The links were build organically by making comments on random blogs covering the same topic as the site. The comments we did were on topic, and made individually for each comment – so no blog-spamming. We made comments on both nofollow and dofollow blogs.

During 2 months in the spring of 2009 we build 257 links to the site. The maximum number of links build in one day was 17, but most day’s five to ten links were made, and some days we were really lazy and nothing was done.

Search Engine link reports

We monitored the link building process with Yahoo Site Explorer and Google Webmaster Tools.

The link reports from Google and Yahoo are as you all know not always very accurate or consistent for that matter. So we wanted to check how these tools performed in a relatively controlled test.

Link building test – Results

The graph below show the links reported by the two tools. The first observation is that the links to the site increases very quickly after one month.

Our research showed this increase was indirect effects of the link building, as most of these links were additional links from the sites were the link building was done. The main source was links from “recent comments” widgets on the blogs, where we almost got a link per indexed page of the blog.

Actually the number of backlinks topped at 3500 links, where only 257 links were build, and only a few other links to the site were found in the link reports.

The graph also shows that Yahoo reports the links quicker than Google, but this is mostly due to the fact that Google only made a weekly update of the report in Webmaster tools. It also seems like Yahoo keep the links longer in the index, after the links are removed from the sites linking to our site.

Take Away

The most important take away is the dynamic effects of the link building i.e. the extra links created on the blogs in the form of links from “recent comments widgets” and other site wide links.

These links can really create a balloon effect in your link building, where you create 200 or more links by making one comment on a blog. These links are not permanent and could create problems with the search engines. Getting 3500 links in only two month on a new domain can easily catch the search engines attention, and get you penalized.

It’s therefore important to check the blogs out before you make the comments. If they have links in a “recent comments” widget then be careful, as you might get a link from every indexed page on this site, just from making one comment. If your site has many links, and is established then there is no problem, but if your site is new, with very few links, then 300 links from one site could get you into trouble with the search engines.