Google Shows 7 Hidden Features in Google Trends via @sejournal, @martinibuster

Google published a video tutorial with seven tips for using Google Trends to research and share keyword and topic data. The tutorial shows how to find hidden filters and search tools in the Trends interface and explains how they help identify actionable data.

The seven ways to explore and share are:

1. Punctuation
2. By Language
3. Comparison Functions
4. Seasonality Discovery
5. Year Over Year Trends
6. Interest By Country
7. 3 Ways To Export Or Share

1. Punctuation For Finding Hidden Insights

Omri Weisman, Google Trends Engineering Manager, shared how to use advanced search operators to dig deeper into the data and extract actionable user query insights.

He presented an overview of three advanced search operators:

• A. Quotation marks
• B. Plus operator (the + sign)
• C. Minus operator (the – sign)

He started with the example of search a two-word keyword term without punctuation, explaining that the keyword query volume data is for both words in any order. He also pointed out that no misspellings, variations, or plural versions are included in the search volume data.

A. Quotation Marks

The first search operator he discussed was the quotation mark. The quotation marks shows data for the exact match phrase, including when embedded as part of a larger phrase, with words before or after the exact match search query.

B. Minus Sign

Adding a minus sign to a search phrase filters out the word that’s modified with the minus sign, like this:

Keyword -Phrase

In the above example the word ‘phrase” will not be included in the search query data. This is a great way to manipulate the data and extract more precise variations.

C. Plus Sign – Good Way To Research Topics

Searching with a plus sign and two keywords shows query volume for one or other keyword. As such, this way of searching provides the broadest keyword query amounts and represents an excellent way to research a topic. With a plus sign you can add in all the related phrases for a topic and then see all of them lumped together.

2. Segment By Language

…if you’re interested in a specific language, you might want to look only for that language. They use the example of identifying how many searches for cat are done in Japanese in the United States, which allows you to segment searches with greater granularity.

You can also combine two languages using the plus sign search operator to see the combined query volume.

They said:

“For example, if you enter the Japanese character for cat… You might miss the overall trends, since many people in the US, for example, search for cat in English.

To get the full picture. Compare searches for the Japanese character for Cat and English searches for cat using the plus operator.”

3. Use Filters To Identify More Actionable Data

Daniel Waisberg said that comparing keywords helps identify more meaningful trends. In order to do

He said:

“Getting the data you need is essential, but to understand what it means, you need a comparison point. For example, is the growth localized or global? Is the growth seasonal, and if so, how does this season compare to the previous one?

To create a meaningful comparison, you can use the filter capability inside the search term.”

The following screenshot shows where a three dot menu in a drop down to access the filters.

4. Seasonality Discovery

He next showed how to use the filters to discover seasonality.

He explained:

“First enter the term in the trends explore section and change the time frame to five years.

This will create an interesting chart showing that this term is highly seasonal. People search for boat trips significantly more in the UK summer than in the winter. “

5. How To Remove Seasonality Trends

Next he explained how to use the built-in filters to analyze year over year trends.

This is again accessed through the filters that are somewhat hidden in the Google Trends interface.

He showed how to do it:

“While it is interesting to know the time of the year when the term has a higher interest, you’ll need more information if you want to make decisions based on the data.

You can use a special filter to analyze trends year over year. This will help you neutralize the seasonality effect, making sure you’re comparing like for like.

Start by changing the date to past 12 months.

Add an identical term to the compare box and hover over the box.

Click the three dots menu and select Change Filters.

Here you see two options, location and time range. Click the time range and select the custom time range to choose the previous time period.

If you’re looking for full years, you can use the built in capability to choose the past five years. That would make your search quicker.

After these steps, you’ll end up with two lines in your chart, one for the past 12 months and a second for the previous 12 months.”

This comparison can be done with up to five searches, which has the effect of being able to see the general trends in comparison, without the noise introduced by seasonality.

6. Compare Interest By Countries

The comparison by country allows users to compare search query volumes by country, two or more countries together.

The way to do that is with the filters that are accessed by the three-dot menu located next to the search query being researched.

Screenshot Of Country Filter

7. Save Or Share Trend Results

Ori explained that there are three ways to save or share Google Trends results.

1. URL
2. Embedded
3. Export to spreadsheet

Share By URL

Sharing by URL is easy. Just copy the URL from the browser then share it.

Embed Trend Data

Embedding is a way to generate an embeddable card with the data that can be inserted into a web page, with bonus that the data is constantly updated.

“Another way to share a chart is to embed it on your website. You can generate an embeddable card to add to your website from almost any card on the page.”

Screenshot Of Embed User Interface

These cards will show up to date data and may also reproduce some in-product interactions.

Export The Data

Clicking the export icon will provide the Google Trends data in the CSV format.

Screenshot Of Download Icon

Use Google Trends For Research

Google Trends is an excellent source of keyword and topic research and it’s completely free. Using these advanced methods will help get even more actionable data.

Watch The Google Trends Video Tutorial

Google Trends Advanced Tips

Google Says If Internal Nofollow Links Send A Quality Signal via @sejournal, @martinibuster

Google’s Martin Splitt answered a question about whether internal nofollow links and noindex meta robots directives send the wrong signal to Google that the website is low quality.

Nofollow Link Attribute

The nofollow link attribute came about as a standard created by Google, Yahoo and Microsoft that publishers can use to signal that a link can’t be trusted (such as links in user generated content) or for paid links. The idea is that the links can’t be trusted or used for ranking purposes or for whatever reason.

SEOs discovered that PageRank didn’t flow through links that had the nofollow attribute so naturally the self-identified “white hat” SEOs tried gaming Google by adding nofollow links to their privacy and about us pages in order to funnel the maximum amount of PageRank to the pages that mattered. This practice was called PageRank Sculpting and it shows that adding nofollows to internal links is longtime practice and that it’s never been a problem before.

For the record, PageRank sculpting doesn’t work because, in a highly simplified explanation, Google essentially counts the amount of links on a page, including links with nofollows and divides the amount of PageRank that flows as if all the links counted. That’s how it was explained many years ago and that may have changed over the years, we don’t really know.

Noindex Robots Meta tag

The noindex robots meta tag is a directive that crawlers like Googlebot are required to obey. It allows a publisher a way to block crawling at the page level.

There is nothing about the noindex value of the meta element that indicates whether the page is untrustworthy or anything like that. It’s just a way to control crawlers.

Google’s Martin Splitt narrated the question:

“Can a lot of internal links with nofollow tags or many pages with noindex tags signal to Google that the site has many low-quality pages?”

Martin answered:

“No, it doesn’t signal low-quality content to us, just that you have links you’re not willing to be associated with. That might have many reasons – you’re not sure where the link goes, because it is user-generated content (in which case consider using rel=ugc instead of rel=nofollow) or you don’t know what the site you’re linking to is going to do in a couple of years or so, so you mark them as rel=nofollow.”

Nofollow Is Not A Quality Signal

Martin confirmed that there is no signal indicating a value judgement about “quality” that’s associated with the use of a nofollow link attribute or the noindex robots meta tag. Using them on internal links or for preventing crawling is fine and have no effect on Google site quality judgements.

Listen to the podcast question and answer at the 1:17 minute mark:

Featured Image by Shutterstock/Cast Of Thousands

Google Says Best Practices Can Have Minimal Effect via @sejournal, @martinibuster

Google’s John Mueller answered a question the question of how long it takes for SEO to work and what it means if rankings don’t change after a year. Sometimes best practices doesn’t work and John Mueller explains why this sometimes is the case.

What Is SEO?

There is no single definition of SEO. What constitutes good SEO is subjective and highly dependent on where one learned about SEO.

• Some believe that SEO is adding keywords into content and building links.
• Others don’t really bother with links and are more concerned with building content.
• Some are highly focused on technical aspects like site performance metrics and structured data.
• In some corners of the SEO community, there are those who passionately believe that SEO doesn’t matter because Google prioritizes ads, big brands, YouTube videos, more ads, and then leaves the crumbs of what’s left for small businesses.

So when someone asks why their SEO isn’t working, the answer can be a toss-up, and if ten SEOs agree, there’s a chance they haven’t identified the problem—they’ve only agreed on the most obvious reason. This was the situation John Mueller encountered when asked why a site wasn’t ranking despite following SEO best practices.

Hard To Answer Without Specifics

John Mueller narrated the question:

“I changed my website a year ago and did a lot of work on SEO. Should this be affecting my website’s traffic by now?”

It’s a hard question to answer when you don’t have the specifics of the webpage in front of you. So Mueller answered in a fairly general manner that ends with him recommending he ask someone else for advice in Google’s help forums.

The first part of Mueller’s response acknowledges the difficulty of answering the question.

He responded:

“It’s tricky to say much here. I don’t know what specifically you did to work on SEO, and I don’t know if that would have resulted in significant changes.”

Why SEO Doesn’t Work

Mueller’s right. Maybe the website has a great layout, fast page speed performance, spot on structured data and a logical site architecture that optimizes internal linking.

What could go wrong with a properly SEO’d website, right?

• Well, the content could be incomplete.
• The content could be too comprehensive.
• The content might be unfocused, lacking a clear comprehension of the topic.
• The content might be too focused on keywords and not focused enough on users.
• The content might not match the topic suggested by the keywords in the title and the headings.
• Maybe the content is aiming too high, trying to rank for a highly competitive search phrase.

No amount of SEO is going to save a website with the above listed problems… and that’s just a sample of what can go wrong.

Mueller addressed this shortcoming of SEO in situations where it has zero effect.

He continued his answer:

“There are many best practices which have minimal effect on the day-to-day performance of a website. For example, having a clean page structure helps search engines to better understand the content on a page, but it might not necessarily result in immediate search ranking or traffic changes.”

Ranking Criteria Is Different Across Topics

Another factor that Mueller touches on is that what’s important for SEO varies according to the topic. Some topics require fresh content, some content requires establishing signals of trustworthiness and authoritativeness, maybe even signals that communicate user brand preference and popularity, signals that indicate that users expect to see a specific brand for certain queries.

There could be a geographic component that prioritizes local signals. It could be an intent thing where a user just wants to read what a person wrote in a forum.

This may be what Mueller is talking about when he says that the best elements of SEO vary across websites.

He answered:

“The most effective elements of SEO will vary across websites, it takes a lot of experience to go from a long checklist of possible items to a short prioritized list of critical items.”

Experience Is Important

The last factor Mueller discussed is the role of experience in making one a better SEO. Here’s an example: I thought I was pretty good at creating content that ranks and then I wrote a couple thousand articles for Search Engine Journal and it opened up a whole new conception of content creation, I discovered levels of understanding that could only come from writing about a couple thousand articles.

Mentorship, is an option that can cut down the amount of time it takes to learn, but experience is still important.

John Mueller recommended experience as an important factor for understanding SEO.

He wrote:

“Your experience here will grow over time as you practice.

I recommend getting input from others, and practicing by helping with challenges that others post in help forums. Good luck!”

Getting input from others is good advice.

Listen to the podcast at the 17:43 minute mark:

Featured Image by Shutterstock/Cast Of Thousands

Google On YouTube “Cannibalization” Of Web Content via @sejournal, @martinibuster

Google’s Martin Splitt answered a question in the SEO Office Hours podcast about whether reproducing YouTube video content into text on a web page would be seen as duplicate content and have a negative impact on the web page rankings.

Although duplicate content is not a negative ranking factor, content published on a more authoritative site can cause the content on the less authoritative site to be outranked. It’s a valid question to ask because content on an authoritative will outrank the same content on a less authoritative one.

Some in the search community refer to one piece of content usurping the rankings of another as ‘cannibalization’ of the webpage’s ranking potential. This is the concern of the person asking the question.

Google’s Martin Splitt narrated the submitted question:

“If I create a YouTube video and then take that exact text or content and place it on a web page, could Google flag that web page or site for duplicate content?”

Different Content Media Are Treated As Separate

Martin Splitt answered that the two forms of content are different and will not be treated as the same content, thus publishing text content extracted from a video will not be considered duplicate content.

This is his answer:

“No, one is a video and the other one is text content, and that would be unique content!”

Publishing Extracted Text From Video

Martin praised the idea of extracting text content from a video and republishing it as text, noting that some people prefer to consume content in text form rather than watching a video. Reversing the flow of content from text to audio or video is probably not a bad idea also because some people have trouble reading text content and may prefer listening to it from a video or a podcast format.

Martin commented on publishing video content in a textual version:

“It’s also not a bad idea, some users (like me) might prefer a text version and others might not be able to use a video version of the content in the first place due to bandwidth or visual constraints.”

Takeaways

The idea behind the question is repurposing content and it’s a good idea. Search is more than Google, it’s also YouTube and wherever people get their audio content, like Spotify. The fact that there is no cannibalization of the content between mediums makes repurposing a viable approach to extending your content reach.

Listen to the podcast at the 8:20 minute mark:

Featured Image by Shutterstock/Roman Samborskyi