Google can be more than annoying sometime – I mean, as Leo asks, what would you do if you woke up one day and all your rankings had disappeared?
But that’s not what happened to me today. Instead I was talking to Dave – who runs the awesome travel blog GoBackpacking which allows old backpackers to guest post about Google Alerts – and I noticed something had changed…
But first rewind: you do use Google alerts don’t you? Its the fastest way to keep an eye on what the great web is saying about you. I have alerts on my name e.g. “lis sowerbutts” my blog’s names e.g. lissowerbutts.com. But I also have some more subtle alerts:
- site:mydomain.com – tells me every time Google indexes a url on my site;
- link:mydomain.com – tells me every time Google counts a link to my site. NOT Yahoo – Google
Now most of you know probably all know that and have had the alerts for years. But today I noticed there is a new column in the Manage my Alerts screen. As well as “type” and “how often” there is a new column “Volume” – the default of which is “only the best results” – I turned it back to “all results” .
I thought about it and realised I hadn’t been seeing many alerts for the last few weeks – suddenly they are all back. So what does this new feature tell me about Google:
- there are sites and there are sites – Google trusts some more than others – and PR has very little to do with that.