{"id":19,"date":"2019-02-15T10:56:29","date_gmt":"2019-02-15T10:56:29","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/explicitly.me\/?p=19"},"modified":"2021-04-28T20:49:54","modified_gmt":"2021-04-28T20:49:54","slug":"manipulating-google-suggest-results-an-alternative-theory","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/explicitly.me\/manipulating-google-suggest-results-an-alternative-theory\/","title":{"rendered":"Manipulating Google Suggest Results – An Alternative Theory"},"content":{"rendered":"

Google Suggest is a Reputation Management Nightmare at times. A number of companies have been hit and hurt by results that show up with \u201cCompany Name + Scam\u201d<\/strong> for example. The problem with those results is that when users see the suggestion, they are immediately tempted to click on them, as opposed to their original query.<\/p>\n

<\/p>\n

In fact, google have been sued in France successfully and forced to remove some\u00a0negative suggest results\u00a0.<\/p>\n

Is It Costing Businesses Money?<\/h3>\n

The other effect is financial. Ever seen Google Suggest results for businesses that run Promotional or Voucher Codes?<\/p>\n

\n

\"Currys<\/p>\n

Currys Voucher and Discount<\/p>\n<\/div>\n

The obvious impact is that users are tempted to find a discount or voucher code , even though their original journey would have been to the brand. \u00a0This means that a number of Promo Code websites are profiting from Google Artificially showing those suggest phrases.<\/p>\n

So How Does Google Suggest WORK?<\/h3>\n

Andy Beal who runs the awesome\u00a0reputation management tool trackur, suggests (excuse the pun) that user behavior and\u00a0search volume impacts google suggest:<\/p>\n

In practice, it\u2019s not quite that simple. After some testing, it appears that Google Suggest takes into account the following:<\/p>\n

1. What was the first keyword search? For example, someone searches for my company, Trackur.<\/p>\n

2. They then decide to refine those results by changing their search to \u201cTrackur Free\u201d\u2013which was what they were looking for all along.<\/p>\n

3. If enough people make that refinement, compared to simply searching Trackur, then it starts showing up in Google Suggest.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

This is a theory adopted by a number of SEOs. In fact, a very good friend of mine, Brent Payne manipulated Google suggest just to show that\u00a0sheer volume CAN change<\/a>\u00a0those suggest results. The\u00a0first test worked and failed<\/a>, while the result of the second is still live:<\/p>\n

\n

\"\"<\/p>\n

Brent Payne Manipulated This<\/p>\n<\/div>\n

The Alternative Theory<\/h3>\n

The problem with the above method of manipulation is that it requires huge volume, and cost. It also sends some sort of manipulation signals, and can be caught. So how can you affect Google Suggest without the use of Mechanical Turk or other large scale manual manipulation techniques?<\/p>\n

Let me take you to a post from 2009 that gave me a \u201ctubelight\u201d moment (bolding mine):<\/p>\n

google suggest results are hurting my business. When typing in my domain (which people do for whatever reason in a search engine) it shows \u201cMyDomain.com\u201d as the 1st result but shows my domain with negative words about my domain as the\u00a02nd and final suggestion<\/strong>\u00a0\u201cMyDomain.com sucks<\/strong>\u201c. Im needing to alter the google suggestions.\u00a0I saw a competitor of mine had this \u201csucks\u201d term listed on their site at one point but am not sure if thats the reason<\/strong>\u00a0its now suggested and connected to my domain. I doubt many people would actually search for \u201cwww.mydomain.com_sucks\u201d. Its all a bit odd. (Webmaster World<\/a>)<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

The question is answered by\u00a0Robert Charlton<\/a>\u00a0\u2013 and kinda hits a decent sized nail in the head (see my bolded portion):<\/p>\n

suggest was a Labs project before it became a standard feature on the search box. In the Labs incarnation and in the early days of the search box implementation,\u00a0numbers were returned along with the phrases. The numbers then reflected the number of pages returned, not search popularity<\/strong>.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Ultimately, google dropped the numbers, and I think the official word (or popular supposition) was that they did so because they were distracting and people weren\u2019t really looking at them. But it\u2019s also likely that google dropped these because they had factored other considerations into the personalized (and perhaps other) configurations of the tool, that the numbers therefore weren\u2019t really correlating any more with what the tool was showing in the personalized setup, and it was too complicated to switch displays.<\/p>\n

So Can Sheer Volume Of Content Manipulate Google Suggest?<\/h3>\n

In fact a few weeks ago,\u00a0Malcolm Coles\u00a0and I were having a discussion on Twitter about this very phenomenon and he has put together a number of other people reporting exactly what I am \u2013 that\u00a0Google Suggest does NOT only rely on search volume<\/a>.<\/p>\n

I decided to run a few tests. (lazy ones to be honest). In the first instance, I decided to use the power of twitter and RTs to drive indexed content for my two chosen terms, \u201cha ha ha<\/strong>\u201d and \u201crofl<\/strong>\u201d to be appended to my name in suggest.<\/p>\n

The test with \u201cha ha ha\u201d had a strange result, instead of going on suggest, it went on to appear in related searches:<\/p>\n

\n

\"\"<\/p>\n

Rishi Lakhani ha ha ha<\/p>\n<\/div>\n

So I pushed ROFL. And as you can see, as of last week:<\/p>\n

\n

\"\"<\/p>\n

Rishi Lakhani ROFL<\/p>\n<\/div>\n

Is Manipulating Google Suggest Against Google’s Guidelines?<\/h3>\n

Simply put yes. Therefore I warn you, you can and probably be penalised for the two suggestions below. This puts Google Suggest (now google Autocomplete) into the\u00a0blackhat SEO\u00a0category. Let me pull out a tweet from\u00a0Danny Sullivan during SMX West<\/p>\n

Google views manipulating suggestions as \u201cabuse\u201d & will take \u201ccorrective\u201d action as needed #smx #1b2<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Using Google Suggest Manipulation for Good<\/h3>\n
\n

\"Source<\/p>\n

Source kandyjaxx on flickr<\/p>\n<\/div>\n

I ran a similar test for a brand, where they really wanted to push a product. The sheer volume of search on the brand was quite heavy, so we tried to get the product showing up for google suggest. (I can\u2019t show the result as I have an NDA unfortunately). \u00a0It worked for a very short time however, and I need to hone the test a bit more.<\/p>\n

But how does that help?<\/strong><\/p>\n

    \n
  • Allows you to force branded queries into common deep product searches (better conversion!)<\/li>\n
  • Allows you to remove discount queries so as to claim back brand search share and discourage discounting<\/li>\n
  • Allows you to reputation Manage more easily than using mechanical turk.<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n

    Using Google Suggest Manipulation for Profit<\/h3>\n
    \n

    \"\"<\/p>\n

    Source: http:\/\/www.flickr.com\/photos\/anilmohabir<\/p>\n<\/div>\n

    For lazy affiliates like me, (that\u2019s what the Thinkvisibility Expert Panel call me!), this is probably a decent way to gear up search volume around a brand.<\/p>\n

    How? Well consider setting up manipulation around a range of words that users may get tempted to click through from Google suggest \u2013\u00a0scam<\/strong>\u00a0is probably the best one. Craft a landing page optimized for the word, but pull a bait and switch in the copy.<\/p>\n

      \n
    • User sees Brand + Scam<\/li>\n
    • User Clicks Through<\/li>\n
    • Content on page says that no, it\u2019s not a scam!<\/li>\n
    • Provide link to continue to brand<\/li>\n
    • Profit!?<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n

      This can be geared in many, many other ways\u2026 I leave you to think about them independently.<\/p>\n

      Final Note<\/h3>\n

      I have been berated that my subscribe button isnt big enough. So here you go. Subscribe.<\/p>\n

      \n

      \"\"Subscribe to my feed<\/p>\n<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

      Google Suggest is a Reputation Management Nightmare at times. A number of companies have been hit and hurt by results that show up with \u201cCompany Name + Scam\u201d for example. The problem with those results is that when users see the suggestion, they are immediately tempted to click on them, as opposed to their original […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":20,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/explicitly.me\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/19"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/explicitly.me\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/explicitly.me\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/explicitly.me\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/explicitly.me\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=19"}],"version-history":[{"count":4,"href":"https:\/\/explicitly.me\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/19\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":72,"href":"https:\/\/explicitly.me\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/19\/revisions\/72"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/explicitly.me\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/20"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/explicitly.me\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=19"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/explicitly.me\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=19"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/explicitly.me\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=19"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}