July 09 Google Australia Algorithm Update?

Here at Found Agency we are fairly interested in watching movements within the SERP’s. Given the recent launch of Bing we thought we take a top level look at the different results being served for a couple of competitive terms.

 Note: This is far from an empirical study in the current differences between the engines. It is also highly likely that the SERP’s have changed since the screen snaps were taken

 We are used to seeing an increasing frequency of “everflux” with Google results however Australian updates in the big G over the past week have left even us scratching our heads about “improvements” in what looks like a significant algorithm change. These changes come hot on the heels of the UK SERP’s getting roughed up by “Vince” & his brand update so one can only assume that “Vince” has come to Australia. However some of the results we are seeing don’t seem to be rewarding the obvious brands and in some instances have promoted (relatively) unknown domains.

 Take for example Google’s “Real Estate” SERP’s that currently features 4 (relatively) unknown domains / brands on page one for a highly competitive commercial keyword.

 Unless I have been living under I rock I haven’t seen any major brand advertising recently for Propertynow.com.au or Realestate.ozfreeonline.com in Australia which leads me to question why some of these sites are enjoying such strong rankings & one would assume traffic.

 The current Google real estate results seem to be rewarding some of the obvious players (realestate.com.au, domain.com.au, Firstnational.com,au etc) and excluding others that have excellent SEO & brand characteristics e.g.: Home Hound. Myhome, Century21.com.au, Raywhite.com.au etc.  The remaining result set is mixture of sites that look like they have been promoted due to domain name & general SEO attributes (e.g.: www.fastrealestate.com.au www.bestrealestate.com.au) and undetermined Brand qualities & SEO attributes (e.g.: realestate.ozfreeonline.com, propertynow.com.au).

 This leaves us with a set of relevant results. But given that the objective is to return the best most relevant sites for any given query I would argue that these results could be improved. I would also suggest that Yahoo is closer to the mark for this term by serving a more diverse selection of results featuring some of Australias leading real estate sites.

 Drilling deeper and assessing “Homes for sale” (another highly competitive property term) Google reveals a similarly head scratching results set. Again there are some of the usual suspects (realestate.com.au, Homehound.com.au, etc). But there are also two International sites (www.hud.gov/homes/homesforsale.cfm & www.homesforsalemiamifl.com) and some lesser known AU real estate sites (noagentproperty.com.au/ & www.fastrealestate.com.au/).

 Analysis of Yahoo also shows an equally disparate result again with a mixture of key brands (realestate.com.au, Homehound.com.au, etc), lesser known AU sites (home-sale.com.au & allhomes.com.au) and non AU sites (680homes.net, bajahomesforsale.com etc). 

Bing returns similar results to Yahoo and Google with a smattering of the Usual suspects (Realestate.com.au), a slightly higher ratio of Internationals (homes.com, burbankhomes.com etc) & then lesser known Aussies ( allhomes.com.au, metricon.com.au).

 My conclusion is that if we are seeing a localised version of the brand update then it looks like Googles methodology for determining local “brand” size as a relevancy factor within Australia and the weighting being applied to this factor may still require tweaking. . However even with the recent anomalies; Most of Googles results are no worse in terms of relevancy when compared to Bing & Yahoo.