Yesterday we made a discovery regarding one of Google's advanced search parameters. When you do a Google search, if you exclude a keyword by putting a minus sign in front of it (e.g. -keyword), you are not only excluding results that contain that particular word in their on-page copy, but we also now believe that it also excludes any webpage with at least one link pointing to it with that word in the anchor text.

Liberty team member Steve made this discovery when he responded to a tweet by Rand Fishkin, founder of SEOmoz. Rand had seen the "Weirdest SERP" (which stands for Search Engine Results Page) for the search query ["johnnie walker" -johnny] and couldn't figure out why the third result was ranking (here is a screenshot that Rand posted). The third result was an Edinburgh web design company that didn't have the words "Johnnie" or "Walker" anywhere in the text on its homepage, let alone the full phrase, yet it was ranking for that keyword. Steve examined the site's backlink profile and assessed that the site had quite a few in-bound links pointing to it with "Johnnie Walker" in the anchor text. It turns out that Johnnie Walker is a member of staff at the company.

Steve offered this explanation to Rand, and while he thought that the "anchor text likely helps" with its high ranking, he believed that it "just doesn't seem like it would be enough for such a tough-to-rank SERP."

This was a fair enough point. A typical search for ["johnnie walker"] in the US would show Johnnie Walker whisky's official website, Wikipedia pages for the whisky brand as well as the BBC Radio DJ and other pages talking about and relating to the two. While some of them had spellings of both "Johnnie" and "Johnny" on the page, others only had the former. So why are all of them removed when the word "Johnny" is excluded from the search query?

The answer lies in the anchor text of in-bound links pointing to the pages. Steve's next step was to look at the backlinks of the official site's homepage, the relevant Wikipedia pages and other sites that ranked normally for ["johnnie walker"] (i.e. without excluding the keyword "Johnny"). He discovered that other sites were linking to those pages - perhaps naturally - with the incorrect spelling of the whisky and the radio DJ: "Johnny Walker." Regardless of whether or not the word "Johnny" appeared within the text on the page, if the word appeared in the anchor text of at least one in-bound link to the page, Google would remove it from the results if "-johnny" were included in the search query. Therefore, sites such as the Edinburgh web design company were ranking for the ["johnnie walker" -johnny] search because they didn't have the word "Johnny" appear in either instance: it doesn't appear in the on-page text, nor does it appear in the anchor text of any in-bound link pointing to the page.

What is interesting to note is that in its Web Search Help section, Google explains how the keyword exclusion parameter works and claims that:

"Attaching a minus sign immediately before a word indicates that you do not want pages that contain this word to appear in your results." (Our emphasis)

Perhaps this statement needs updating - it is potentially misleading, as "pages that contain this word" suggests that the word must be visible and apparent somewhere on the pages, whether it is somewhere in the copy or in its META data. Obviously, the anchor text of any in-bound links are not actually contained within the page - they appear elsewhere on the Web.

So what does this all mean for businesses? Is there any way to take advantage of this discovery? Sadly, not that we can currently think of. Only an extreme minority of people use minus keywords when conducting searches - those who do are often SEOs, perhaps conducting research and therefore using advanced search parameters to make deductions. However, for those purposes alone, it is still something to be aware of as it could affect the results and conclusions of one's research. If that is the case, it can affect a business via its in-house staff or the online marketing agency that it employs.

Whether you are a fan of Google's new Instant search or not, if you are running a PPC campaign then this post will be of interest to you.

There appears to be a glitch in Instant search that could be costing top spot advertisers dearly. Whilst Instant search is turned on, if a search returns Adwords ads above the organic SERPs and you hit enter twice in the search field you will automatically open the number 1 Adwords result. This costs whoever is in the top spot, but the user won't have made the choice to click the ad, so what will they do? Click back, because they were expecting a Google search results screen.

This will have a detrimental effect on top position bounce rates and could be wasting a great deal of advertiser's budgets.

Google has now launched “Instant Previews”, which provides a preview of the organic search results without a searcher having to click through to the site itself. These previews appear on the right hand side of the Google search results screen when you click the little magnifying glass icon next to the search results.

This new addition comes hot on the heels of Google's launch of Google Instant. Unlike Google Instant search, Google Instant Preview is by default turned off, the magnifying glass must be clicked to activate this new feature. The preview istself is a graphic overview of a search result that highlights those sections which are most applicable to the search term used making it easier to see whether a site is worth visiting or not.

Google Preview will start showing up from today, 9th November 2010 and should be available in 40 languages and to all users within a couple of days. Google claims that during the testing of Google Instant Preview, those using Instant Preview stated that they were about 5% more likely to be satisfied with the results they clicked. This new visual comparison seems set to change the way visitors evaluate websites and choose whether or not to visit them.

At this point Google Preview doesn't extend to Google Ads, even though every Google Ad ends up at a web page. Google has thought about the option, but isn’t including it in the initial launch. Although incredibly fast and powerful, Google Preview still finds including sites created in Flash difficult with the majority of flash sites not yet being turned into a preview. Unlike Google Instant, which shuts off when your web connection slows, Google Instant Previews is available even on poor internet connections.

We recently saw a job vacancy being advertised on one of our clients' websites. It caught our attention because even though it was a great role and one that the company really needed filled, it was hardly noticeable on the web. The company did not want to spend money on advertising on a job board, so the only way this job opportunity could be found was via the search engines.

We have been interviewing graduates for a number of trainee positions at Liberty over the last year and many of them have expressed their difficulty in finding a job advert that didn't have a horde of other candidates interested in the role. Just looking at reed.co.uk today, a search for marketing jobs in Cardiff displays vacancies that have had 50-100 applications already.

A search query to find rare jobs

Many people use search engines when looking for jobs, particularly when trying to find those that are relevant to their career and in their desired or current location. This is when we had the idea to create a customisable search query to assist job hunters in finding those vacancies that are hidden away:

[location1 OR location2 OR location3] [type1 OR type2 OR type3] [job OR jobs OR vacancy OR vacancies OR role OR roles OR career OR careers]

Simply copy and paste the above search query into Google and replace each instance of "location" with suitable locations and each "type" with the types of jobs you are interested in. If Google thinks a web page contains relevance to at least one of the locations, one of the job types and one of the words in the third set of brackets then it will appear in the results.

Here's an example for someone looking for jobs in and around Cardiff relating to search engine optimisation and online marketing:

[cardiff OR "south wales"] ["online marketing" OR "internet marketing" OR seo OR "search engine optimisation"] [job OR jobs OR vacancy OR vacancies OR role OR roles OR career OR careers]

For the above example, for a web page to appear in the results, it has to contain relevance to at least one of the two locations, at least one of the four job types and at least one of the following words: "job", "vacancy", "role", "career" or one of their plural forms. The words do not have to appear in that order - as long as they appear somewhere on the page, they will show up in the results. So in the above example, possible web pages that could show up include:

- cardiff + seo + jobs (e.g. "Cardiff SEO Jobs"),
- cardiff + "internet marketing" + vacancy (e.g. "Vacancy: Internet Marketing, Cardiff"),
- "south wales" + "online marketing" + role (e.g. "We have an online marketing role available. Based in South Wales, the company…"), and so on.

A few points to take into account

- The square brackets aren't necessary, as Google will show the same number of results whether or not they are there, but it makes it easier to keep track and make sense of each part of the query.

- If one of the locations or job types is longer than one word (e.g. "online marketing"), put quote marks around it, otherwise the query will not function properly and the words might be searched for separately rather than together.

- The search query is likely to bring up a lot of results, some of which might not be relevant, useful or current, but don't be afraid to dig deep and scan through numerous pages of results. Page 1 of the results might contain the most relevant results according to Google, but you might find something more suitable a few pages on.

- Other ways to reduce the number of results are to take out some of the location or job type criteria, which will also narrow it down more specifically, and to select "pages from the UK" below the search bar, which will also eliminate international jobs that might match closely to your location (e.g. South Wales, UK and New South Wales, Australia).

- It may look complicated but it's really a way to simplify the search process. Referring to the above example, it would save the user implementing individual searches for "seo jobs cardiff", "seo vacancies cardiff", "seo careers cardiff" and so on, as all of these and more would be covered in just the one search query.

This is completely customisable, so don't be afraid to experiment. We have only included a few examples of synonyms of jobs and have not taken into account words and expressions that might differ depending on one's career type (e.g. internships and apprenticeships). If you lose track of what you've done, just start over with the original search query and add, delete and amend as appropriate.

We hope that it helps in your job search. At the very least, you might find a new job board or recruitment agency site to keep an eye on or to send your CV to. However you could also find a job advertised on a website that very few people have noticed and applied for, like the one we found on our client's website.

Best of luck with your job search!