Chapter 6. The Technical Side of Web Research
This last chapter is specifically for search engine optimization (SEO) practitioners and web developers who are looking for an edge when it comes to advanced Google skills. This sort of information changes rapidly due to the perpetual motion of search engine development and the desire for Google engineers to avoid being too helpful to black hat SEOs, so soak it all up and check the next edition of this book for updated tips and tricks.
SEO for Firefox
Before you do anything else, update your Firefox browser to the latest release, then download and install the SEO for Firefox plug-in:
| http://tools.seobook.com/firefox/seo-for-firefox.html |
This plug-in transforms your browser into an outstanding research tool that will help you determine how sites in Google SERPs rank in a variety of relevant search engines and social media sites.
Advanced Query String Parameters
Most of the operators listed above should suffice for most searches. However, if you really need to get extra specific, here’s the hidden stash. All parameters are set using the = operator and assume a base URL of:
| http://www.google.com/search? |
Separate multiple parameters with the ampersand (&) character.
|
Query parameter |
Description | |
|
q |
The search query; can also be typed out in long form as “query” | |
|
as_epq |
Matches an exact phrase, same effect as using quotes around words | |
|
as_oq |
Matches at least one term, same effect as the OR operator | |
|
as_eq |
Excludes this term, same effect as the - operator | |
|
as_occt |
Restrict results to those where the query occurs only in title, body, url, or links | |
|
as_filetype |
Returns results that match the specified three-letter filetype extension | |
|
as_ft |
Includes or excludes files with the filetype specified with as_filetype, options are i and e for include or exclude | |
|
sitesearch |
Has the same effect as the site: operator | |
|
as_sitesearch |
Like sitesearch, but shows site:URL in the search box, can be used together with as_dt | |
|
as_dt |
Use this with as_sitesearch to return results from a specific URL(the i switch), or from all except that URL (the e switch) | |
|
as_rq |
Returns sites related to the specified URL, same effect as the related: operator | |
|
as_lq |
Returns all sites linking to the specified URL, same effect as the link: operator | |
|
hl |
Specifies the language used in the Google interface | |
|
lr |
Language restrict. Uses standard two-letter language codes | |
|
ie |
Input encoding | |
|
oe |
Output encoding | |
|
safe |
Toggles Google’s safe search filtering. Values are active and off | |
|
tbs |
Restrict results to the given time interval, where the time is qdr:(range). For the range, use y for year, m for month, w for week, d for day, h for hour, n for minute, and s for second (without the parentheses). You can also follow each one with an optional number, e.g. npr=qdr:d4 to get results indexed in the last 4 days. |
Adding Omitted Results
Under most circumstances, you’re primarily concerned with the first SERP, and maybe the second page, but only if you’re on it. What if you want to see the end of the list, though? Seeing the bottom ten results is more difficult than it sounds at first. Fortunately, there are some query parameters you can use to go to the last page of results and add omitted results. This also gives a more accurate estimated count of total results than Google’s initial estimate:
| &filter=0&start=990 |
Just append that to your query string and press Enter (Google Instant must be disabled in order for this to work).
Finding People to Link to You
It can be very difficult to find people who are willing to link to your pages, especially if your primary method is cold-emailing. If you can narrow the list of targets to include only sites that are topic-appropriate, where a link to your page won’t seem out of place or unusual, you’ve got an edge. So how do you do that? With Google search operators, of course! By using the site: operator in Google, for instance:
| site:edu | site:gov [some industry] “website * by” | “email * by” |
In the above example, we’re limiting results to educational and government sites that have content related to a certain unspecified industry, and looking for contact information (government and academic top-level domains are trusted, authoritative and important in the eyes of Google, since .gov and .edu links tend to be in more pristine link neighborhoods). This will return a more focused result set that will result in high quality links.
Reducing the Result Set When Testing For Indexation
Google won’t let you go beyond the 1000th result, so if you are checking a site to see how well it is indexed (e.g. checking a competitor’s website), you’re going to run into that limit if the site has more than 1000 pages. In these situations, you can work around the limit by looking at just a subset of the site by using the site: and inurl: operators. For example, this will return only the results found in the articles directory of this site:
| site:www.example.com/articles/ |
But what if you have more than 1000 pages in that directory? You use the inurl: operator to return a more limited result set:
| site:www.example.com/articles/ inurl:january |
That should return all of the articles with “january” in the file name. Hopefully you’ve employed a naming convention that will allow you to follow this procedure. If not, you may have to get creative with some other operators, such as intext: and filetype:.
Monitoring Incoming Links and Measuring Anchor Text Strength
Incoming link text is extremely important for determining which search terms your pages end up being associated with. Google will tell you what pages it associates with any given link text when you use the allinanchor: and inanchor: operators. So if you want to see who is linking to a page that sells frozen vegetables, you might use this query:
| allinanchor: frozen vegetables |
That will probably return a lot of results. Some of them may be interesting, but perhaps you’re more interested in seeing how people really feel about your products:
| allinanchor: worst | rotten | gross | disgusting frozen vegetables |
Hopefully your page isn’t in that SERP! If it is, you might consider contacting the blogger or webmaster responsible for that page and asking him what you can do to solve the problem.
The allinanchor: operator, used in a similar fashion to the above examples, can also be good for checking the strength of anchor text. Your keywords may not match up to your anchor text; if this is the case, you may need to do some fine-tuning of various aspects of site design, ad campaigns, and overall marketing once your keyword and anchor text research are completed.
Checking Image Indexing
Depending on the kind of business you’re running, you may or may not want certain images from your site to be indexed. In most cases, product images that link back to your site are a good thing because people who search for those products in Google Images may click your photos and get to your pages. On the other hand, you may not want photos from the company holiday party to be the top result for brand and product searches, so you may want to remove them.
The way to check image indexing is by using the site: operator in Google Images:
| site:example.com |
This query, when modified for your domain name and executed from the search box on http://images.google.com, will show all of the images that Google has indexed from your site.