This is a tale about a tail -- and it's no short one.
Last month, when Google's main Spokesgoogler Matt Cutts reemphasized the search giant's renewed efforts to help "higher quality sites to surface for long tail queries", he wasn't talking about searching for monkeys. The "long tail" in question doesn't belong on some long-tailed macaque: it's a Search Engine Optimization (SEO) term,
This kind of "long tail" is what you key in when you google something like "houses for sale in Dubuque, Iowa" instead of just "houses for sale". The longer a search term is, the longer its tail...and this is the second time in less than a year Google has led us to believe they want to zero in on long tail search results.
This is no monkey business: it's vitally important to our websites, our industry, and ultimately, sales. You may question exactly how Google is going about adjusting its formulas, but I don't think this particular 900 pound gorilla is kidding when it puts in print that it's working overtime "to reduce rankings for low-quality sites - sites which are low-value add for users" or which "copy content from other websites".[ Official Google Blog.]
In Google's words, when an online user searches for "houses for sale in Dubuque, Iowa", they want to come up with "sites with original content and information such as research, in-depth reports, thoughtful analysis and so on". And those sites better have more fresh info than just today's version of the MLS listings, because it has to be "original".
We might call this Google's ‘monkey see, monkey do' penalty.
This is great news for anyone who has time to research, write and post thoughtful analyses and in-depth reports...at least a couple of times a week. Google will be delighted at your effort, but only when you keep it up month after month. Of course, if you also have the notion of running a real estate business at the same time, that might not be such good news (not by coincidence, RealtyPLR can help in this regard, but that's a shorter tale).
Anyone who has had the delightful experience of hearing "Google has you on top" knows how important paying heed to the SERPs (Search Engine Results Pages) can be. It means phones ringing and appointments queuing up -- especially if the other agents in town are only monkeying around.
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