Now, let’s consider another post that covers Rich Snippets as well as something called “Answer Highlighting” which looks like this:

“Consider the example, [empire state height]. The first search result used to look like this:”

“With today’s improvements, the answer —1250 ft, or 381 m — is highlighted right in the search result:”

Let me start off by saying I’m not making a judgement here… I just want us to take a moment to consider what’s going on here. These improvements for the user can have a detrimental impact on your traffic numbers.

By offering more information to the searcher on the SERP itself, the developer is removing the need for the searcher to actually visit the website. In the above example, I no longer need to visit Wikipedia to see the height of the Empire State Building. As Google adopts more and more Microformat protocols, it seems logical that the number of visits siphoned off should increase.

What’s the motivation for developers to encourage proliferation of the protocols if your goal is to drive traffic to your website? Couldn’t this change your goals?

Let’s say you have a restaurant website with your phone number and address tagged with Microformats. Someone looking for your restaurant or a similar one, might find your Rich Snippet in the SERP and call your restaurant. Success right? Sounds like it. Now imagine how that looks to an Analyst when multiplied by 1000 times.  I’d see a steady decline in visits to the site from Google and need for a way to account for that.  The apparent success of the site would appear to be waning but the restaurant’s phone would still be ringing off the hook.

What’s next?

It’s not hard to imagine what else could be served up in a Rich Snippet. Why not figure out a way to display your actual lead or contact form right there? Imagine the havoc that would cause for conversion rates. If you think about it, it wouldn’t be beyond the realm of possibility, right?

I think there’s opportunity for further discussion on the impact of Rich Snippets and Answer Highlighting on our analytics in the future. I’d love to hear your thoughts.

January 20th
One Giant Leap for Link Data: Announcing Open Site Explorer + Page/Domain Authority Metrics – Awesome tool. Making me consider becoming a Pro Member, honestly.

January 19th
Keyword Targeting: How to Employ Multiple Keywords for SEO & Conversions – SEOMoz breaks down keyword research

January 18th
Browse American Eagle, Aerie Merchandise Directly From Your News Feed With New Widget – Finally an effective use of a Facebook widget

10 Professional Development Tips to Boost Your SEO Career – This sounded important so I starred it. I haven’t read it tho. Let me know how it is.

Link Building With Interviews: How Thought Leadership Builds Links & Leads – I really thought this was a neat idea and a good example of thinking out of the box. I’m definitely going to try to implement this with some of my projects.

That’s it for this week folks! If you’ve got something you think I should read, just lemme know.

Thanks!

I just saw another article this morning on Aaron Wall’s SEObook.com site.

Here’s the quote from Jonathan Mendez, a speaker at SES New York:

“…This is clear as YouTube is now the #2 search engine, Facebook, eBay & Craigslist are in the top 10 search engines and Twitter is trying to position itself as a real-time search. Search is integral to the web experience.”

While statistically true, is this really a relevant statistic? I think not.

Are you going to tell someone selling tractors or cement mix that they NEED to be on YouTube because that’s where people are searching? Has anyone ever searched for a birthday present on YouTube? My guess is not a one.

Here’s the bottom line. YouTube’s #2 Search Engine status says nothing about the CONTENT of those searches. I asked a panelist about this at SES Chicago. Another panelist agreed with me and the other guy just got sore. Don’t let the experts make you think you HAVE to have some kind of YouTube presence just because THEY say it’s the #2 search engine. There are quite often other, more practical, efforts you can prioritize.

Basically, all the search engines will let you suggest the preferred URL you’d like them to focus all the SEO juice on:

To use Google’s example, all you put in the head tag is something like this:

link rel=”canonical” href=”http://www.example.com/product.php?item=swedish-fish”

That’s all there is to it, folks.

Here are the links to the new canonical goodness!

Google Webmaster Blog posting

Search Engine Land posting

For once, the search engines unite to make and SEO’s life a little easier.

WOO HOO!!!

Check it out!

“The Google PageRank Algorithm”

It pretty interesting since he also includes a PageRank Calculator.

Check it out folks!

When I was logged in to my Google account in Chrome, my article was #1. When I was not logged in and using Firefox, I was #8.

Just another example of how using SERP ranking as a success metric is becoming more and more wishy-washy.