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Yup, deleted.

I've never come across any stats, but logic (well, my logic at least) and from everything I hear from anyone is that if anything, it's increasing.

People are getting better and better at searching for specific things online.

But... it's ultimately up to Google. Google may decide that your search query, "where to get a hawaiin pizza 24 hours a day in New York" is very specific but it's going to focus on shorter phrases like "24 hour pizza" in the search results.

In Webmaster Tools, you can "fetch as google bot" meaning you can enter one of those 77 URLs, and see what the Google "bot" sees when going to that URL.

You can also use:

http://www.dnsqueries.com/en/googlebot_simulator.php

For the URL: http://www.in2town.co.uk/Entertainment-Magazine

the Google Bot Simulator says:

HTTP CODE = HTTP/1.1 301 Moved Permanently

Location = http://www.in2town.co.uk/Showbiz-Gossip

and for: http://www.in2town.co.uk/Weight-Loss-Hypnotherapy-helped-woman-lose-3-stone

HTTP CODE = HTTP/1.1 301 Moved Permanently

Location = http://www.in2town.co.uk/Weight-Loss-Hypnotherapy

Interestingly, both the NEW URLs work fine although http://www.in2town.co.uk/Weight-Loss-Hypnotherapy doesn't look too good (at least in my web browser) but that's another issue.

You have a fairly complex .htaccess file (hint: I looked up your OLD .htaccess file - you should delete old htaccess files or something so people can't access them via a web browser), so I'm guessing the problem will be within your .htaccess file.

If possible, put a plain and simple .htaccess file on, test it with Google Webmaster Tools and see if the error still persists.

Adam

I know this question has been asked many times in this forum but I still can't work it out.

Why does this link:

http://www.opensiteexplorer.org/links?page=1&site=www.bookpal.com.au&sort=page_authority&filter=&source=external&target=subdomain&group=0

Which is showing all links, external, to pages "on this sub domain" show 1,935 external links but this link:

http://www.opensiteexplorer.org/links?page=1&site=www.bookpal.com.au&sort=page_authority&filter=follow&source=external&target=subdomain&group=0

which is exactly the same but this time shoing followed + 301 links, says "showing 1 - 50 external links) but won't show the total links (and I know the mouse-over on the question mark says it's won't show the total links, but I don't understand why it can't show the total links when it could show the total links when I requested to see "all links" instead of just "followed+301" links.)

but it actually lists 700 links (14 pages, 50 results each page). I know the link list is limited to 25 links per domain but then it means you can NEVER know the total link count unless you download the full report.

This makes using OSE to know numbers of links (internal, external, or otherwise) impossible.

And if anyone uses the API, why the API (external+follow) returns 1,451 links?

I'm sure it's an ongoing issue with people trying to get their head around all of this and I've never really been able to.

Any insight would be much appreciated!

For me, when I hire someon to to "backlinking", it's about links from external websites pointing to the client's site.

I prefer the term "link building" as I think it describes more accurately what I want done.

The link profile on the actual client's site (internal links) is something I usually handle myself. It's more "on site" / "on page" optimisation (SEO) as far as I'm concerned.

So I think "backlinking" is external link building and then there's internal link building or on-page SEO.

Not sure why you're asking but if it's because of some confusion between you and a contractor or you and a client, there's no dictionary definition and so clarification is always required when using these terms.

I'm actually not entirely sure how much access Google has to this kind of information. Over the last few years my opinion is there's been ongoing debate about exactly what Google can see in terms of Facebook data but it's clear that Facebook (social) signals do seem to have a correlation to rankings.

Just to clarify, people can't "like" a website (well, they can like the home page, but that's just the home PAGE, not the web SITE), so you have can have a "like" button on every page of your website.

You can also encourage people to like your facebook page.

And as a side, "like" and "recommend" are the same thing. "Share" takes a little more effort from the user and I don't think many people use "share" any more, not too sure.

But why not have both buttons? - a like button on all key pages of your website and also encourage people to like your facebook page.

Someone liking your web page means it'll appear in their news feed, their friends will see it, and then that's it. Liking a facebook page means you have that person seeing all activity on your facebook page.

I know you're asking about SEO / Google / Social Signals but I thought it was worth clarifying the above as I'm sure while you want better rankings, you also want more traffic to both your site and your facebook page.

You can associate your website with your facebook page and using Open Graph, post updates to that page and they'll appear on the feeds of anyone who has liked your facebook page.

As for which is better? I'd like to see if someone actually has an answer to that. I haven't been able to find specific information on exactly what Google sees, what it indexes, and what social signals it takes into account.

Adam

If it ever happens again, rush to you client and demand a bonus... before Google fixes it!

I love SEMRush for this. Give it a keyword and it'll show you the top organic and paid listings. Give it a URL and it'll give you organic and paid keywords for that URL.

SEMRush (and all tools) can only give an estimate as to the amount of traffic. These tools base these calculations by looking at the position of the competitor in the SERP, the search volume per month of that keyword, and the likelihood of someone clicking on that result.

If you know that x% of people click on the top organic result and you know how many people are searching per month for that keyword, then you can get a pretty good idea of what the traffic is going to be like for that URL.

As for which keywords are converting... you'll need Google Adwords / Analytics for that. You could ask your competitors for access which would be funny, but obviously refused!

But keep in mind, if you trying to find the "top" keywords, tools like SEMRush only report the keywords that are in use / working for a given competitor. It doesn't mean there aren't other keywords you should look into - keywords that your competitors aren't ranking for at all. In fact, that's the goal... find the keywords your competitors don't know about (and therefore tools like SEMRush don't know about).

Adam

Hi Mark,

So you're saying in the API "juice passing links" is the equivalent to what OSE calls "followed + 301" links ?

I'm a little confused between all the link types.

Internal / External - easy

Linking Root Domain - easy

Followed / No followed - easy

But then there's talk about "juice passing links" and I can't quite get how this is defined, and why it's something you can get from the API, but not from Open Site Explorer... or can you get that info from OSE?

In Webmaster Tools, you can "fetch as google bot" meaning you can enter one of those 77 URLs, and see what the Google "bot" sees when going to that URL.

You can also use:

http://www.dnsqueries.com/en/googlebot_simulator.php

For the URL: http://www.in2town.co.uk/Entertainment-Magazine

the Google Bot Simulator says:

HTTP CODE = HTTP/1.1 301 Moved Permanently

Location = http://www.in2town.co.uk/Showbiz-Gossip

and for: http://www.in2town.co.uk/Weight-Loss-Hypnotherapy-helped-woman-lose-3-stone

HTTP CODE = HTTP/1.1 301 Moved Permanently

Location = http://www.in2town.co.uk/Weight-Loss-Hypnotherapy

Interestingly, both the NEW URLs work fine although http://www.in2town.co.uk/Weight-Loss-Hypnotherapy doesn't look too good (at least in my web browser) but that's another issue.

You have a fairly complex .htaccess file (hint: I looked up your OLD .htaccess file - you should delete old htaccess files or something so people can't access them via a web browser), so I'm guessing the problem will be within your .htaccess file.

If possible, put a plain and simple .htaccess file on, test it with Google Webmaster Tools and see if the error still persists.

Adam

If it ever happens again, rush to you client and demand a bonus... before Google fixes it!

Hi Darcy,

I'm going through a process at the moment of a very thorough analysis of every tool I can get my hands on - more from a technical perspective because I was getting sick of the varying results from different tools / utilities.

I wrote my own scraper utility to get live results from Google as well. I tested 800 keywords using broad, phrase, exact, etc and the results from Google compared to every tool out there is different.

I'm currently writing a document on all of this. Maybe I should post it somewhere, I don't know, but my strong feelings at this point is:

• check with each provider (of the online tool or downloadable software) whether they use broad match, phrase match, or exact match. SEM Rush displays results for "phrase match" but shows [exact match] search volume for that phrase. You almost need a database to remember what criteria each tool uses to return results.

• do they allow you to filter results by domain (google.com, google.com.au, etc)?

• in addition to the above, do they allow you to filter results by only showing results for that country (eg, if you can select "Australia", do they search on google.com.au AND give you the choice to see results for only .com.au domains, or all results that google.com.au would offer up?)

• How recent is their data? Everything costs money - whether it's in API units from Google, API units from a competing tool, or even time and money spent on writing their own scraping software. Free tools aren't going to update their databases every day. SEOMoz (who I've found to be quite accurate) updates their Keyword Analysis Tool database monthly. A lot can happen in 4 weeks. Getting this information can be tough. You need to email each vendor and get their answer - and then trust their answer.

• Tough one... but how savvy is the developer of the tool? I've written my own tools and it's damn hard to get accurate data even from Google directly! There's so many variables. Poorly written software returns poor results. In writing my own stuff, different proxies would return different Google results, even different user agents (web browsers) would return different results. You need a thorough understanding of the technicalities behind obtaining data from or about Google.

There's a few considerations off the top of my head. As I say I'm still putting together my findings. I'm using this reply as an opportunity to hopefully spark a little discussion on this as I think many people have the same problem.

The immediate solution? Write your own software, or use a few tools and average the results. I'm quite the analyst so varying results do my head in. However at the same time, is your goal to get 100% accurate results, or get a good "feel" for the competitive landscape and move on? Sometimes I like to get things perfect, other times my client doesn't have the time to wait, and I'm not paid enough to be that anal!

Being new here I'm pressing all sorts of buttons and breaking things...

I posted a question, liked someone's answer so click "good answer" thinking it was like a "thumbs up" but it actually set my question to "answered".

How does one set their own question to un-answered?

Ah so people get points?! I'll have to research what they do but don't worry Dana, the points you shall keep!

But yes, a good feature would be to be able to set a question to unanswered.