![]() How 1. 6 Companies are Dominating the World’s Google Search Results. Comments 1. 3 minutes. Redditor lancertons makes a great point in his lifehacks subreddit post: When you see a great life hack, the comments probably have good, if not great, life hack. Ed Anderson, Global CIO, World Vision International sat down with Dark Reading editor, Sara Peters, at the InformationWeek News Desk at Interop ITX to talk about. Great Post. Its interesting to see the results vary (back into sellers) and away from these media brands the minute search terms omit words like review, best, etc. Some people are fans of the Tampa Bay Bucs. But many, many more people are NOT fans of the Tampa Bay Bucs. This 2017 Deadspin NFL team preview is for those in the. In the Academy Award- nominated film Food Inc, filmmaker Robert Kenner reveals how the varied choice of items we see on the shelves of supermarkets is actually a false presumption. Instead, that seemingly endless variety is actually controlled by just a handful of companies. Today I’m going to reveal how the huge diversity we perceive in Google search results is once again a few large corporations controlling what we assume to be choice. More specifically I’ll reveal how just 1. To begin our journey down the rabbit hole together, I want to take you through a series of events which uncovered something I had never considered before about the industry in which I operate: Are the Google rankings I aim to get for myself and my clients actually controlled by just three hands full of companies? Around two weeks ago I came across a post on Reddit about Hearst Media. I was unfamiliar with Hearst Media but very familiar with the brands they own such as Esquire, Elle and Cosmopolitan. Great World City Website Hacked Redirects SoccerGreat World City Website Hacked Redirects DefinitionThe Reddit outing, which was shared on a new account, claimed that Hearst were using their powerful brands to “game Google” and rank a new website of theirs very quickly, using slightly shady practices. Being an inquisitive marketer I had to check it out for myself. The quick summary is that Hearst clearly were (and still are) using their authoritative brands to point links to their latest venture, Best. Products. com. While I expected Best. Products. com to be receiving a lot of traffic from the brands linking to them – which also include Marie Claire and Woman’s Day – I didn’t expect Google to have taken such a huge liking to them. Especially when the site in question had zero reason prior to be ranking so well (it was owned previously then the domain dropped a few years ago). To give an overview of what was happening for those who are skimming this article, the situation looks like this. The arrows in this picture represent links. There are far more brands involved in this network, but we’ll get to those in a second. As I stated earlier, I was far more surprised by how Google reacted to this. Launched in October, They Now Receive More than 6. Visitors from Google Per Month. Here’s the graph that kick started the countless days of research I did for this blog post. As we can see, the estimated traffic to Best. Products has shot up dramatically in the last few months. SEMRush is showing similar numbers, as we’ll get to in a second. With 6. 2% of their traffic estimated to be coming from Google, that’s at least 6. April. I expect the data for May will be significantly higher, but I have to wait until June 1. Similar. Web confirm they’ll update their reporting). So Why Am I Surprised? Tons of authoritative sites linking to you is obviously great for SEO. But as anyone who has been involved in search engine optimisation for a period of time might wonder, surely getting so many sitewide links in a short timeframe should raise a bit of a red flag? Even if the links in question are from some of the biggest media brands in the world. Here’s a few examples. Esquire. com (Product Reviews)Elle. Beauty Reviews)Cosmopolitan. Beauty Reviews)Marie. Claire. com (Reviews)Popular. Mechanics. com (Product Reviews)Now, I will say that 9. In fact, you’ll see the majority of this post is focused on why I’m surprised Google give the resulting website so much traffic. Quite simply if I owned a lot of websites, I would be fine linking them together. If for nothing more than from a usability standpoint. That being said, 1. I think it’s a bit risky on their part. As of publishing this post, Cosmopolitan use ‘Beauty Reviews’ as the anchor text of their footer to the site. Previously it was in a different placement and used the anchor text ‘Style Reviews’. These are not static footer links that have been left alone (and not just on one site). They’re changing to different pages – and using different words – on a fairly frequent basis. To me this takes the situation away from “they’re just linking to their own site” to “they’re doing a lot of tweaking to see which results in higher rankings.” You could argue they’re testing it for usability reasons, but you’ll see in a moment why I think they know a thing or two about SEO. Before I get into that, I wanted to see if I could figure out when these links were added to their network. Were they all thrown up at once and it took a while for them to have an impact, or was there some clear plan behind the links from Hearst Media’s various brands? Here’s some of the data I managed to uncover on when each site first linked to Best. Products (I bolded those that linked on the same day). Popular. Mechanics. November 5th. Esquire. November 5th. Cosmopolitan. January 1st. Seventeen. January 1. 2th. Redbook. Mag. com – February 2. Elle. com – March 1. Country. Living. com – March 1. Womans. Day. com – April 5th. Marie. Claire. com – April 5th. Roadand. Track. com – April 1. For my own curiosity, I was glad I took the time to trawl through every screenshot on Archive. It’s now obvious that the people working for Woman’s Day, Marie Claire, Popular Mechanics and Esquire had some conversion that went along the lines of, “Don’t forget, today’s the day we have to put those links to Best Products in the footer.”As I said earlier, I don’t really care too much about what Hearst media are doing with their “link network” of magazine brands. I don’t see anything wrong with it and don’t think Google should either. That being said, because I’ve done more research for this blog post than any other, I do want to add that they purchased the most successful SEO agency on the planet just a few years ago. If you can’t read that because of my small post width (I’m working on a redesign), they paid $3. SEO clients. At the time of acquisition i. Crossing were also the biggest search agency in the world based on revenue numbers. In other words, the staff at Hearst Media comprises of a large number of people who know a lot about SEO. To me this explains the slow buildup of network links and the semi- frequent changing of URL’s and link text in their website footer. I Have No Problem With What Hearst Are Doing. Google’s Reaction Is What Really Interests Me…I’ve said it a few times but I’ll say it once more for anyone skimming the post: This is by no means an attack on Hearst Media. They own the websites so they’re welcome to do with them as they please. They also made Best. Products a rather attractive looking website. Then again, I’m surprised at how well their strategy is working. I’m not naive – I know that authoritative links equal a good chance of increased search rankings – but I didn’t expect they would be outranking some of the biggest brands on the internet for search terms that can make them a lot of money. From Zero to $5. 83,0. Free Search Traffic. We’ve already looked at the data from Similar. Web, but the stats from SEMRush are interesting as well. SEMRush pips Best. Products at ranking for over half a million dollar’s worth of search queries (if you were to buy them via Google Adwords) in a very short space of time. Their Top Keywords According to SEMRush. Some of those incredible rankings they’ve achieved include: hairstyles: 1. They’re still ranking for these terms, which is why I predict the Similar. Web traffic graph will increase a lot when they update their data for May. Their Top Keywords According to Similar. Web. It’s interesting to see how different the data from Similar. Web and SEMRush seems to be, but they’re at least right that Best. Products are ranking for what they state they’re ranking for. Hey, I did tell you all just before new year that you should be writing 2. I could make this page infinitely scrollable if I show all of their rankings, so I’ll just share a couple to show they really do rank. While they aren’t a top result for this one it does show that they’re likely still getting hundreds of clicks per day for just one search term. It’s certainly not just with Best. Products that Hearst are having a lot of SEO success though. Just look at how their brand is doing as a whole…Hearst Alone Absolutely Dominate Certain Sectors of Google Search Results. Worried about ranking top three? Why not just take all of the spots. Sadly, Google Search Results Will Never Look Diverse Again. At least not to me. You may think Hearst are some kind of exception and partly, you would be right. However, they’re certainly not alone. Purch also own some of the biggest sites online. Elon Musk Launches Mystery Website, X. Elon Musk just announced the launch of a new website, x. The billionaire founder of Tesla and Space. X made the announcement on Twitter at 1: 2. Pacific time this morning. But so far there isn’t much to look at. The website is just a single letter X. Musk formerly owned x. Pay. Pal (that’s how he made his fortune) but lost the domain when the company went public and he left. Musk purchased the domain back for an undisclosed sum earlier this month. Guesses for how much he paid are in the 8- figure range, but nobody knows for sure. In 1. 99. 3, ICANN, the international group that regulates internet domain names, decided that single- letter domain names would no longer be available for sale. The six domains that had already been scooped up were grandfathered in, including “q. In 2. 00. 5, ICANN toyed with the idea of freeing up the single- letter domains, but that didn’t happen. There are now plenty of other single- digit domains, including Twitter’s link shortener (t. Facebook’s Messenger shortcut (m. Q, X and Z are the only . Musk has promised that x. No one really knows. What’s your guess? What do you suppose Musk plans to do with x. Will he use it for one of his existing companies like Space. X or Tesla? Or will this be for a new venture, perhaps exploring his love of floors?
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