Just been having a quick look at my google webmaster tools account as its Monday and yet again google are not showing data for 6th of April across all sites..
This of course messes up all the % figures
Here is a screen shot :
As you can see some of the stats have be recorded but less than 10%
This is the same across all the sites I have webmaster tools account along with all my client sites too.
The question as always is will the data be returned, I hope so..
I’ve just been sent this email from bview (thanks)
I asked someone how they found out to contact me to sort this problem and they pointed me to your recent posts – hope you don’t mind me getting in touch, but thought this might be useful info for your readers.Firstly, we’ve spoken with Google and asked them to remove this Equifax data ASAP. They have agreed to do this, but we don’t know how long it will take.The Equifax data is out of date, and Google didn’t inform us that they were going to start displaying it. Had they contacted us prior to this information going live, we would not have approved of them using this data. The EFX score was included as part of a feed of data we gave Google a long time ago (2+ years maybe?), but they declined to use it at the time.To the best of my knowledge, we removed this Equifax info from our site (bview.co.uk) around 18 months to two years ago in response to feedback from businesses, and we’re as suprised as everyone else to see it suddenly appear on Google.We’re sorry for the hassle that this has caused, but about all we can do right now is wait for Google to fix the mistake.Feel free to drop me a mail, or tweet me if you’d like any updates or clarifications.SimonBView.co.uk
So great news you no longer need to contact Bview just wait for google to up the info.
First spotted this issue on Friday 1st April 2011 http://www.seohome.co.uk/2011/04/01/google-places-adds-equifax-scores-to-places-page/
If you missed it on Friday 1st April google added data from bview.co.uk to the google place business pages.
The problem was that clients of mine phoned asking “how do I get rid the a Equifax score on our google place page” at first I read about the data from bview which is a data dump from Equifax who are a credit scoring company here in the UK. As quote on the blog post from April the first here: Google places adds Equifax scores to places page you can not remove a company listing.
I’ve just found out from a client who phone bview that by emailing them on sales@bview.co.uk you can request the score to be remove from your listing on bview and in time google will up date the data (may take a few days or maybe weeks all down to google)
Check out the update here: http://www.seohome.co.uk/2011/04/07/update-on-equifax-google-places-issue/
So if you want it removed this is the way to go about it.
If you want to sort it out even faster its pretty simple to knock the score on to the more details link by adding enough data above it including the brands that you sell..
So what is Equifax?
One of the uk largest credit scoring bureaus..
So what’s the problem? Well today google starting pulling data from a site called bview. Bview is built on a database from Equifax.
So now google is showing the credit score output from Equifax, I’m unable to work out if the score comes from the credit score on the address or the company number. It’s an odd move from google in my opinion. This data normally costs money to get hold of a report.
Now the worst thing about this is that you can’t remove the data from the places page on google and you can’t remove your company off the bview site either…
http://www.bview.co.uk/static/frontend/content/faqs.html#2j
We endeavour to list every business in the UK. We now have 2.5 million and counting! We do not remove listings for businesses that are trading. If your business is no longer trading, register and click on the ‘update listing’ link. Then click on the ‘report this business as closed’ link. We will then investigate.
Here is a screen shot of a restaurant just up the road:
As soon as I find a way to remove this I’ll update this post!
Check out the update here: http://www.seohome.co.uk/2011/04/07/update-on-equifax-google-places-issue/
The timing of the post from friday couldn’t of been better, why ? google have just launched google instant for google places.
If you miss my crash course in local seo check it out!
On google blog here google have announced the launch of how place will now “spy” on what you type to help you search within places.
Instant yes is making ok suggestions but if you quote me on the local seo course post:
But… google suggest is great but it knows where I live, my IP and still give me blackpool, I’m sure google will update the ago for suggest very soon regarding local search and it will have a big impact on seo…
So yes google have launched this new feature but it still runs on data from the country and not location to my location.
See this screen shot for fishing shops:
As you can see from the screen shot the non locational search return local but instant/suggestions only show national data and not local or a mix of the two.
Sorry about the pun..
Anyway I was doing to catching up on the php template engine called Smarty just and clicked on the “crash course” link as it does what it say on the tin..
The thing is I’m so used to reading FAQ or guide and that’s why “crash course” caught me eye.. My first thought was do people search crash course and would anyone search for a crash course in driving? well no1 suggestion is of course a is ’crash course is driving’.
Now what’s this got to do with SEO and Local seo for that matter. Well Check out the screen shot below.
[ click to enlarge the local seo srceen example
It’s also worth noting that on the screen shot it would seem people from blackpool are in most need of a crash course. If you select “crash course blackpool” google first suggestion is driving crash course blackpool so is blackpool full of learner drivers ??? who know google seems to think so.
But… google suggest is great but it knows where I live, my IP and still give me blackpool, I’m sure google will update the ago for suggest very soon regarding local search and it will have a big impact on seo…
This is a simple reminder that if you run a site that has physical local e.g. a driving school don’t forget to add your places account to your adwords account.
As you can see from the screen shot C is the closest to me (st albans) then A(red) then C with the Blue A being very far away from me but winning due to is PPC being linked up.
Not only are other advertisers / site missing out but 2 A’s are on the map, A is always best isn’t it ? 
Some simple tips to get more local business from you campaign:
So your local and you sell online ?
OK.. google now link up google place (local search) with google shopping search (google merchant)
Here is an example
Here you can see a snowboarding shop near me (it isn’t really) but as the account has places, adwords and a number of review google well help it and add the “nearby store” link which really stands out.
So that’s my simple crash course in local seo. I live by the words “target your niche”
I thought this may interest any website owners and seo’s out and about..
I run a sort of social network of products of which members submit and vote, you know sort of like digg..
On this site you can’t submit anything without an image so the site is 100% image heavy.
The niche of the site isn’t important but it’s not adult type of images but products for sale.
Google doesn’t really rank the pages that well but ranks the images amazingly well. Many searches return images at the top of the google main web serps and this site is in many of those top3 or top5 images being pulled into the web search (universal search).
Anyway CTR (click through rate) is what I find interesting with search a heavy imaged site.
Info about the site: google crawl 7,000 pages per day on Avg, site has 100,000′s pages (site command = 108,000) with 29,136,640 backlinks.
Here is the screen shot from google webmaster tools for images searches over 1 month:
image-heavy-website-stats
Yes GWT isn’t perfect but I hope this will give you an idea. So looking at the last month’s worth of data 11,000,000 Impression vs only 50,000 clicks from images results. Now of course this does include direct image search and not just the universal image triggered in the main web serps.
A bit of maths then… The above shows a CTR of just 0.004545%
So what can you expect from a image heavy site and a google CTR, well half a % of people are likely to click so when doing your keyword research it’s worth keeping in mind.. Of course the niche of the site can effect things. In terms of this site it ranks for images searched in “general” terms with many images for the query with google returning a great selection of images of which my site suits but is no better or worse than what other sites offer.
The clicks come from a person liking the images more than the ones around it BUT it’s a personal choice 100% hence a interesting and ground case study in my opinion.
Hope it interest some
This time last year I posted uk December trends for 2009.. Well worth a read into trends of 3 sites traffic over December 2009 and the effect of Xmas and New Year on traffic http://www.seohome.co.uk/2010/01/05/uk-traffic-trends-for-december-2009/
Well some how another year has passed (don’t ask me how???) and I have some my data to share..
For the first time I’m seeing some interesting results for the 25th December… The news in the UK kept mentioning for the first time that this year people would be logging on and buy online on xmas day the 25th..
Well this is the first year I’ve seen it happen…
Fig1 below shows some interesting results for 1 site. You can see more traffic came hit this site on the 25th vs the 24th and yes this is the first year I’ve seen this.
Why is this new?
Well the stats below are not a xmas based site OR a site with a boxing day PROMO but the change in the general media (tv news) and mass advertising on TV.
The Week before xmas you couldn’t help but see ads for the likes of argos saying about the sales starting xmas day (mid-night xmas eve) …
fig1 shows overall traffic but the below graphic is only mobile visits.
You will see a massive increase on the 25th.
So did everyone get Ipads for xmas then?
When you drilldown into the mobile devices yes you see a surge in ipad after 25th but also in Iphone’s ipods and of course a drop in blackberry (not many working you see)
So what’s changed and what should you be planing on doing for winter 2011?
From the above stats we can see a growth in online surfing/buying over the festive period vs others years.
We can also see a massive increase in mobile usage over December.
Now may be the time to start planning boxing day sales and getting ranking as the web it taking many off the streets in the uk.
Time to look at what promo your competitors are running.
Plan plan and plan some more..
Ever seen “We currently do not support the location” Â ??
Well this was driving my round the bend…. Â google bugged out basically for no reason..
I’ve spent a good amount of time trying to find out why and look at the advice given in the forums and FAQ on google which was all a load of crap so I thought I’d blog it to help anyone else seeing the “We currently do not support the location”
Here is the advice that didn’t work for me:
From google
http://www.google.com/support/places/bin/answer.py?hl=en&answer=176521
Error Message: We currently do not support this location
The data on Google is always changing as we update and add more listings and details to Google. From time to time, we may need to take some information offline as we update our algorithm. Please try checking your listing periodically when you see this message. You will eventually be able to see your listing display on Google if it does not violate our Google Places quality guidelines.
So google say wait OR you are in violation of the quality guidelines which in turn = useless information (in my case)
OK…
So how did I fix it…
The fix was so simple and all the forums and google FAQ / HELP section don’t seems to off the simple next steps .
Login to your google account >> My account >> Google Places >> Edit (the not supported location listing) >> Â Fix incorrect marker location (its on the right hand side) >> Move the Marker (only a little) >> Save Changes
If this doesn’t work then yep it’s like you either have multi listings makes a mess OR your pushing google to hard and breaking it’s “quality guidelines”
I hope this will help someone as I wish I’d found this before
