Forum Moderators: Robert Charlton & goodroi
With systems and methods described herein, mechanisms are provided to generate or simulate links with artificial named anchors and to allow the browser to recognize the artificial named anchor and navigate directly to the desired specific part of the target webpage even when the author of the webpage has not created a named anchor at the specific part of the webpage.US Patent Application [appft.uspto.gov]
My first thought was "there goes my carefully designed 'above the fold' part of the page. But I can see how this would be extremely useful for the end user sent to a long page, or especially one of those monster PDF files.
< Thanks to Bill Slawski at SEO by the Sea [seobythesea.com] >
Some questions:
Would it be possible for Google to append ad-delivery to the section targeting and do it in such a way that the "middleman", i.e., the publisher, is cut out of the equation?
Yes, such a delivery/discovery/targeting system would be at odds with G's own contextual ad delivery system but if it "cuts out the middleman" - say by an ancillary ad-delivery system - would it be more profitable for G? Especially if the (total) "system" is able to confirm "Yes, that's my search intent"?
IF G is going to implement such a system AND IF G will effectively impact/reduce a publisher's/G's Adsense revenue - by bypassing the Adsense hotspots - wouldn't G be designing a system that reduces its income . . IF G doesn't make up for that loss elsewhere?
Would you expect G - or any other ad-revenue-driven company - to do that? "Make up" for a loss of revenue "here" by recapturing the ~lost revenue "there"?
OTOH, might the new system play nicely with Adsense's "section targeting" or might this type of information/confirmation be made available to publishers - to possibly help them more effectively target/satisfy a searchers information-search/find-intent?
It will be interesting to see which way this goes. ;-/
Every technology move needs to be analyzed for how the move will impact G's bottom line. To ignore the bottom line would be at odds with G's obligation to its shareholders.
Agreed.
But, and to ignore the bottom line of those who optimize sites for their search engine (us) would be at odds with the interest of their search engine and shareholders needs to be added...
As long as they maintain the status quo and ranking in Google and making money don't become mutually exclusive, then Google can continue to dictate, suggest, 'improve', play around, lead the market in search, or whatever phrase you would like to use.
Conversely, if (when) the time comes that ranking in and receiving traffic from Google is no longer a financial benefit to those who run websites as a business or source of income, the results in Bing and Yahoo will undoubtedly improve, because those are the engines we'll optimize for while giving Google the proverbial finger...
I think one thing not too many people think about WRT result quality is: Google is the main engine we all optimize for because it's currently where there's the most money to be made... If that changes, so will Google's quality, because we'll make whatever changes we feel are necessary to rank in other engines, which will make it much easier for Yahoo and Bing to produce quality results.
Really, if Google goes too far with things and cuts too much into the profits of the site owners they will IMO significantly cut their own market share, because if ranking in Google is no longer a financial benefit we'll probably start looking to optimize sites for other engines, which will significantly help the other engines improve their quality and ultimately increase their traffic, which has to come from somewhere.
Part of the reason Google is where they are is because of us...
Not necessarily because of the content we allow them to serve snipits of, but because we (generally) optimize for Google first and other engines as an after thought, whether we like to admit it or not. Really, if you have to choose between a shorter page title for Bing and a longer page title for Google, which do you choose? (I'll bet you choose Google.)
If that changes Google's result quality will most likely decline, because when people who optimize for a living have to start making a living off another engine, or change careers, listening to what Google suggests or does or cares about WRT rankings becomes much less important.
IF G is going to implement such a system AND IF G will effectively impact/reduce a publisher's/G's Adsense revenue - by bypassing the Adsense hotspots - wouldn't G be designing a system that reduces its income . . IF G doesn't make up for that loss elsewhere?
I would think they could make up for any potential loss by showing the exact same ads they deliver to the top of the page where the person lands, couldn't they? (They might even be able to increase click-throughs / revenue by showing ads more relevant to the exact phrase someone was searching for (and viewing) because the ads could be more specific for a given search phrase than they can when delivering ads delivered to a volume of people based on the general text of the page.)
They'd in control of all 3...
The ads they deliver to the content.
The place the visitor lands on the page.
The ads they conveniently insert right above the 'super relevant text' they drop the person off at because the result they showed the visitor was such a high quality web page the visitor couldn't find what they were looking for themselves.
Would you expect G - or any other ad-revenue-driven company - to do that?
Yes, I think this is a very slippery slope.
IMO: The shift in SE dominance won't come until Google oversteps too much and starts breaking too many webmaster. Part of it will be marketing and algorithms, but another portion (I think larger) will be us, the webmasters. As long as Google doesn't go too far they can enjoy their dominance, but if (when) they do, they will be ushering in the competition...
NOTE: WebWork, I was posting while you were editing, but I didn't feel like snipping, so I just left my thoughts even though you edited your post to a very close version of my second point down there at the bottom.
Also, there's nothing saying that the artificial anchors would need to be served up if the landing page has Adsense units up top.
I think we'll just have to wait and see how this one plays out. I'm guessing we have a year or so before we'll start to see anything develop on this front.
they should also be able to auto-insert a floating ad banner for us where ever they end up on our page
So, previously the webmaster has put the AdSense code at the top, but the answer to the query is at the bottom, so the visitor is taken to the bottom via the artificial anchor and now, lo & behold, there's AdSense in perfect position, thanks to the "floating ad banner". I can see a ton of siteowners gladly signing up for this special feature, if it potentially means more income.
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Every technology move needs to be analyzed for how the move will impact G's bottom line.
I agree and would add that the analysis at Google likely extends to the long term. Google has a history of changing things that benefit the user experience at the expense of short term benefits to their bottom line. I'm not a fanboy of Google or any other product or company but I believe that Google has a focus on what is good for their user, a philosophy that many webmasters who are promoting sites for the long term, including myself, share. This focus is sometimes at the expense of earnings in the short term.
I feel that Google's intention for search is to provide the best user experience because this serves their long term goal of remaining useful to their site visitors and capitalizing on that.
I'm on the fence about whether this feature would be good for me or not. It would be good IF it made site visitors into fans. Taking visitors straight to the content could possibly aid that effort. But I'm on the fence. Everything is speculation until/if it rolls out and we can measure it.
google's algo makes it relatively easy for a page to rank on a phrase without even mentioning it. all you need are some backlinks with the text in.
and even if the phrase is in the source code, i might be hidden behind a tab upon page load. what are they going to do then?
or maybe the phrase is contained in the ALT text, page title, or meta description. they can't highlight those.
you've also got pages that change from day-to-day, like a news page. the phrase might be gone by the time they arrive.
and then you'll have times when the phrase is spread over the whole page. if you look at a cached page, where the search terms are often highlighted by google, you'll often see one word in one place, and another somewhere else. where are they going to scroll the page to then?
this new aid might work most of the time, perhaps, but it will pretty confusing to users if 33% of the time it fails.
So in other words, instead of taking the user directly to that part of my page (and skipping over content which I feel is relevant!), they would visually indicate where they thought the query was satisfied. The users can then decide for themselves if that's all they want. I can more easily live with that sort of page manipulation, as an "imposed-upon-me" search feature.
...................
I wonder how they will get over the legal notices on some sites to the general intent: "You may not intercept nor alter in any way the contents of this web site".
The way the rest of us do - by doing what we want anyway. One click, no Flash. Another click, no AdSense. And so forth. People can design how they like and put up whatever notices they like, but users are going to do what they want wit a page or website. Fighting it is a good way to lose users, or challenge them to escalate the battle (and sophistication level) over who controls what.
As far as Google's pinpoint targeting on a page. It's happening already with sites that have lots of good content and make good use of fragment identifiers. I've already got the 'jump to' link option in the results on a couple of my little sites. If they don't automatically move the ads down the page, we will optimize ourselves to take advantage of the results.
However it happens, its not stoppable, it's just a logical progression. Nothing new in the bit picture. We'll adapt to whatever happens and all the adjustments that will follow.
I remember well whiny site owners that tried to ban 'deep linking' to specific pages, and seemed to gladly prefer no link at all. LOL Similar situation here. I would love to link to specific locations on specific pages when making recommendations.
One of my big knocks on W3C is that though they use fragment identifiers extensively, they do not identify them in the on-page text, which makes providing the exact link extra hassle. I don't want to jump to the top of the page to find the link jump back to the text I just left and want to link to. It's a %!#$ reference site. Make it easier to reference.
We like to write web sites for users, either to make money, to impart knowledge or for personal gratification.
We are forced to use search engines as a way of advertising those sites. There is no longer a viable alternative beyond local ads on vehicles and hoardings (which Google seems to block out of their photos).
Using SEs is fine as long as they play fair but if they go beyond what is "fair use" without EXPLICIT permission then they should be reined in.
There is already censure within Europe concerning Google's privacy policies. If they flout web owners' AUPs there are likely to be other issues.
Phorm in the UK cited google as an excuse for their own privacy violation - and they had reason, up to a rather fine point beyond which they went insane. Nebuad has already been killed off in the US and effectively stifled at birth within the UK. Google are pushing the limits already and are under notice in some quarters.
I'm not much interested in AUPs beyond the steering clear of serious legal issues that affect me personally. To publish webpages and then attach an AUP may be reasonable, but not especially practical. No stopping 'progress'. Google is lot less of a threat to me than other scrapers and content infringers that get away with lot worse and cause a lot more trouble; for me anyway.
That said, I'm not too worried about this Google patent. I think odds are it'll never see implementation. But I could be wrong.
something that P1R brought up some time ago, I would have thought thats how its gonna go.
via the adicional meta data that we can add to a page, via micro formats, rdf ...
just my 2 cents
Web Content Accessibility Guidelines (WCAG) 2.0 when this document talks about user agents its not just talking about your browser. Its talking spiders as well.
Still waiting on P1R to come in and post here ....
but I reckon he spotted/posted at this first...
Still waiting on P1R to come in and post here.
I've been following the topic since it started. I've been looking at this from the perspective of how to prevent Google from guessing. This type of stuff convinces me even more that Google does and have been using semantic markup as a means for determining document architecture.
If I can wrap my content in the correct semantic containers and ID them with proper naming conventions, I do believe I can avoid any guessing on Google's part. Headings and Fragment Identifiers with semantically marked up HTML has always been a solid foundation for me and it's been quite some time now since I latched on to the W3 and the concepts of using proper markup.
Machine Readable Grammar
^ That's what it is all about. And, it doesn't affect the user experience at all. In many instances, the user experience is improved, especially for those using assistive technologies. Let's not forget that the UAs are Blind and Deaf. :)
How would you feel about Google adding an artificial page fragment anchor, so that they could send users to the specific part of a page that was chosen in the snippet, for instance?
I think it is an excellent feature. It puts the user literally 1 click away. Before, it was 1 click and some scrolling and/or finding. Now it is truly 1 click. I'm a firm believer in segmenting content at this level. I see no problem with Google taking a user to a specific block of content in the document if it is relevant to the query.
I think it is an excellent feature. It puts the user literally 1 click away. Before, it was 1 click and some scrolling and/or finding. Now it is truly 1 click. I'm a firm believer in segmenting content at this level. I see no problem with Google taking a user to a specific block of content in the document if it is relevant to the query.
Which is great for Google and the visitor for a period of time, but what it really does is makes it so monetized sites will have to find a way to show visitors their ads no matter where they land and that means we'll all have to deal with more variations of pop-ups and floating ads that follow us down the page, and personally, I'd like to be the first to say 'Thanks!' to the people at Google for being the cause of this and making the Internet a better place. Really, you guys have out done yourselves with this one...
Seriously, how many floating ads and pop-ups do you think this 'great idea' will be responsible for adding to the Internet? Click and scroll sounds good to me. I don't mind a bit!
BTW: I didn't think it was possible at first, but you can keep visitors landing at the top of the page with the use of server-side scripting, which could keep webmasters from switching to the more annoying options of floating ads or some pop-up variant.
There are some ways I really like the idea. I know what people mean when they say it would be easier to just find what they are looking for rather than having to scroll the page or search on the page and until I really started to think it through it sounded cool...
I don't even mind the idea of the terms being highlighted in bold or with a colored background so a visitor can scroll to them easily as long as it can turned off, but when I ask myself, 'What are the long-term ramifications of landing a bulk of visitors at a named anchor that bypasses all advertising and branding?', I think wow, 'That could hurt the webmaster.', and then I think, 'What would I do about it, change professions?', and the answer I come up with is, 'No, I would find a way to show the ads or logo I need to show.', the same as most...
The means most webmasters have to do this is either by:
1.) Inserting a pop-up of some sort.
2.) Using a floating advertisement.
Both of which make the Internet a very annoying place.
The only other option I can think of is to keep visitors landing at the top of the page even when they click a named anchor link.
[edited by: tedster at 5:42 pm (utc) on Nov. 28, 2009]
Wouldn't this be really easy to do on a cached copy of the page. Also if they did it on the cached copy then it wouldn't matter how the page was created as long as it was in the cache. If they did this then the server load on our own servers would be much reduced, users would only hit your server if they don't bounce from the cache page.
Perhaps this is linked to the speed thing. Faster smaller pages == smaller cache size.
Cheers
Sid
Really, IMO on the surface this sounds and seems like a fantastic idea. It's the end-result when you draw the whole process to it's logical conclusion where it starts sounding much less attractive for visitors. It really sounds cool at first, but what I see coming out of it definitely trumps any benefit of landing at the right place on the page. I personally wouldn't even switch to one of the annoying possibilities, but webmasters usually opt for the 'known' and 'easy way' that's mass published and there's excess script for laying around, which means the solutions they would most likely consider are floating ads and some sort of pop-up, and it just plain sucks, because what could be really cool could (and probably will) be completely ruined.
Yeah, the end result is still the loss in the branding, advertising, etc.
Think of your document in sections (it's mandatory with today's loaded websites). Each section can have its own targeted advertising and/or branding. I see a lot of potential for highly targeted inline advertising, and branding for that matter. I can create favicons, floating logos, etc. And, if I use Fragment IDs properly, I believe I can control what Google use as Anchor Text for this so called Artificial Anchor. What exactly is artificial about it? Google is extracting that relevant text from your content, right? The user is searching for that relevant text, right? That sounds like the ultimate scenario from my perspective.
If you nail the semantics of it all, I believe that would be SERPs Nirvana. :)
Even though 'opting out' shouldn't be too difficult by forcing the user to the top of the page, I would expect consequences for doing so.
It's easy to be a fan of progress until we are comfortable with where we are at and set in our ways; then less of a fan anything that requires keeping up.
You might nail it, but what about those who run websites and cannot? They can either show ads everywhere, float the ads, or pop them up. It seems you're looking at things from the perspective of what you or someone with your skill level and expertise can possibly do, which is cool, but definitely not the 'norm' or 'average situation'. My argument against this system is based on what the average webmaster is capable of and I believe they will most likely do in response. Not what the small minority of highly skilled site operators such as yourself could possibly accomplish by taking advantage of it.
Personally, I'm only directly involved in a limited number of websites (purposely, because they take more time to develop than most), two of which happen to be directories.
Both directories display advertising and are well trafficked and switching to what you are suggesting is out of the question as they are currently structured and with the advertising they use, because: 1.) They will look like s*** for lack of a better word to people who want to view more than one listing, which is currently most visitors because they view an average of 2+ pages per visit. 2.) I also must keep showing certain advertising and cannot just repeat it down the page because of the agreements in place.
I have actually tested the software generating the directory with the other advertising repeated more often on a page and with different styles of ads, and it does not work, so as it stands to even think about making a change to accommodate Google's desire to land people where ever they feel like one advertising agreement (with a fairly major corporation) would have to be changed, the other advertisers would have to agree to a change in structure which currently excludes certain things from being done, and they would all have to have their ads redesigned to accommodate a different display which would have to be a specific design for the sites in question, all of which is a definite cost and inconvenience, if possible, especially when they can currently use stock-standard advertising and are very happy with the agreements in place.
Displaying ads with every listing just does not work with the design and layout of the sites, whether I can determine where visitors will land or not, so it's not at all as easy as you make it sound, because I either have to get all advertisers to 'buy-in' to the idea and completely redevelop the display to show the advertising which is currently at the top and in the middle of the pages to keep from 'cluttering' or 'over doing' the advertising so each site is still useful and not just an advertising page that drives traffic away or I have to keep visitors landing at the top of the page.
Those are my two options.
They're very limiting.
In sitting here thinking about it I actually don't know how I would redesign the page to repeat the advertising, so while your thoughts sound idealistic for the site owner, Google and the visitor, the reality of the practical application and what most people will opt for or be able to do whether out of necessity, lack of caring, lack of knowledge, lack of skill, lack of time, or some other factor is much different than you and those who like this system would probably like to admit, because your skill level, knowledge, and most likely, time spent developing your sites is not the norm, and you also seem to have more flexibility in what you do with and how you display your advertising than some (myself included) do.
Like I said, seems nice and sounds cool, but the reality is the actual response of most to this system will most likely be much different than yours. I know mine most likely will be for the reasons I've mentioned in this post.
BTW All: I typed rel='noarchive' in a previous post and that's not exactly what I intended, but you can noarchive a page, so go with what I meant.
HTML5 Elements and Attributes
[Simon.HTML5.org...]
^ Have you seen the new elements in HTML5? Did you notice that Google utilizes an HTML5 DOCTYPE? Did you also notice that Google is a strong proponent of HTML5? ;)
Now that we will be working with <section>s, many will need to shift their thinking a little bit and look at their documents as a container for multiple <section>s, each one being highly targeted to a specific sub-topic of the main topic. Proper use of semantics, naming conventions, common class names, etc. will all be of benefit to the tech savvy publisher.
You mention Advertising. I see this being an Advertiser's dream come true. Why couldn't you dynamically serve your advertising for each targeted <section> of the page? And, you don't have to use HTML5 to make this happen. HTML/XHTML will be with us for quite some time. If you use the elements and attributes available to you per protocol, you'll reap the benefits of all this stuff the Search Engines are now doing and will be doing much more of into 2010 and beyond.
All of this can also be enforced through the use of RDFa and other Metadata technologies that are being used by the Search Engines. There are plenty of discussions about concerning Microformats and RDFa. I see a few of my knowledgeable peers have already implemented their RDFa stuff. They'll be that much further ahead and will be able to mentor the rest of us. ;)
Even though 'opting out' shouldn't be too difficult by forcing the user to the top of the page, I would expect consequences for doing so.
Then I guess I'll have to just pop them up or follow people down the page so it's undetectable if and when the day Google makes it so they have to be in control of where a visitor lands on my web page comes. Really, if they start penalizing sites for landing visitors at the top of the page (which is nearly undetectable) and forcing more annoying methods of keeping ads in front of people then that's a huge loss to the web and an unfortunate situation for the visitors.
You mention Advertising. I see this being an Advertiser's dream come true. Why couldn't you dynamically serve your advertising for each targeted <section> of the page?
It completely depends on the agreements you have in place and why those agreements are in place. I could do what you suggest now with PHP and HTML 4 easily and I would love to be able to, but the advertising agreements do not allow for it, and without going into detail, I can say it's for good reason and happens to the benefit of the advertisers and visitors, with one of the advertiser benefits including not overwhelming the advertisers with responses, which happened when they first began advertising on a specific site I'm referring to. (I honestly could and would overload them if I displayed the ads too much. I know because it's already happened.)
* The two of you seem to be looking at this from an 'I can do it, so everyone should (must) be able to' perspective and that's just not the case.
Have you seen the new elements in HTML5?
Yep, sure have and even though it's not recommended as a doc type yet a site I started writing in HTML 4 will be changed to HTML 5 shortly, but unfortunately, no matter what you know, or how far ahead of the game some of your knowledgeable partners are, IMO you are not looking at or thinking about the response of the average webmaster to the situation which IMO will be much different than the elite few you are referencing and will most likely have a negative impact on visitors, whether those in favor of the idea like to admit it or not.
You're talking about and referencing the elite, not the average masses of people who own and operate websites. (You know the ones who need help with a simple robots.txt if they know what it is or have to be directed to G's WMT or don't understand the difference between site: mysite.com and site:mysite.com. The masses of people who can barely install pre-coded js and need help making a change to it... I'm talking about the average, everyday webmaster and their most likely response to the situation when they have ads and need to show them to visitors so they go looking for a pre-made solution to accomplish the goal.)
I'll make adjustments for this somehow, which will most likely be undetectable by a bot, because I happen to be technically proficient and have the ability to do things most webmasters cannot, so my personal response may be totally different than theirs, but most webmasters do not fall into this category, which means doing this (landing visitors where ever Google feels like) is really not a benefit to the visitors and IMO the average webmaster response is going to be to the detriment of visitors to a large number of websites from all search engines, because once webmasters start doing something to keep ads in front of visitors they are not going to limit it to visitors from Google, much as I wish they would...
Edited: Clarifications.
