The Google results page has changed… and you?

I probably won't tell you much by saying that Google's results page has been undergoing a metamorphosis for several months now. There are more and more videos, images, books and news that relegate your site lower in the results to your greatest dissatisfaction.

What do you want, in many cases, Google has every advantage in ensuring that your site is not the first for a request.

• He prefers that it be a site that is part of his properties (Youtube, Google Base, etc.) in order to generate traffic and consequently income on them

• He would like you to buy Adwords because that's what brings him more than 95% of his income.

On the other hand, this change in the Google results page is visible, which makes it a major opponent, but a noticeable opponent. The biggest changes Google is making right now are invisible…that's the challenge. They make the job of any SEO specialist much more difficult, as they distort indicators that were previously reliable. Thus, several firms continue to offer their clients a ranking report indicating the position they obtain in Google. What is problematic is that these results are becoming less and less reliable and could become completely useless in a few years mainly thanks to the fact that Google presents different results depending on:

WHERE YOU ARE LOCATED

Indeed, a search made in Canada in Google.com for the query “restaurant” gives me completely different results than the same query made in the United States. It is true that this difference is understandable, but what do you say of a difference between this research when carried out in Montreal Vs Toronto, on the Plateau Mont-Royal vs in Little Italy? We may not be exactly at that level yet, but it's a safe bet that we will be there soon.

CUSTOMIZATION TO YOUR PROFILE

More and more Internet users have a Google ID and get personalized results for their query. On this subject, Google even launched a few weeks ago "Google search wiki" which allows Internet users to modify the results they obtain themselves and which will probably soon make it possible to modify the results of other Internet users according to their vote. of confidence. Another proof that Google wants to offer greater personalization of its results.

Now that we know the challenge, how can we act on it? Here are some possible solutions:

Diversify your sources of information

Rather than relying on your Google ranking report, try to get results from countries and cities that represent your target audience well. Thus, we use positioning indicators from several sources in order to obtain a more realistic idea of ​​the positioning of its site.

Use advanced tools to build your action plan

We use a multitude of free and paid tools to better understand why a site is better positioned in one place than another and to find the changes to be made to improve their positioning. For example, the Linkscape tool dissected here not only allows you to better understand the links pointing to your site, but also to find the links of your competitors that probably allow them to position themselves better than you in a particular place.

Rely on your data rather than that of external tools

Positioning data will be less and less useful in the years to come, so focus your efforts on more reliable performance indicators coming directly from visits to your site, especially if you see a drastic change in visits from search engines. . For example, it is possible to configure Google Analytics or other tools in order to be informed if there are suspicious changes to your organic traffic.