The
Google Toolbar has been around for a couple of years, but I never
bothered to install it. I had installed the Alexa Toolbar
when it first came available as a beta release, years ago - and
just didn't see the need to install yet another "search
tool" on my browser. Besides, I rather like the Alexa
Toolbar 
.
Recently, though, I
came across a statement by a 3rd party claiming that installing
the Google Toolbar could get your page indexed by them in just a
couple of days. Well, of course that would pique
the interest of any Internet Marketer - so I had to go have a look
see.
I couldn't find anything on the
Google pages to confirm the statement I had read, but when
discussing their Page Rank™, Google does say, "In
order to automatically update this display for each page you
visit, the Toolbar sends information about the page you are
viewing to the Google servers." (installing with the advanced
option is required for this). Note that they don't say that
they will send the "URL" to the Google servers, but
rather - "information about the page".
What
other information could they possibly send? The description
and keywords from the meta tags? Maybe even some information
to indicate the keyword density? Is it possible that by
installing the Google Toolbar, you have essentially installed most
of the functionality of their spider right in your browser, and
that simply pulling up the page with the Toolbar active has
replaced the normal manual submission? If not all that, they
certainly could! In fact, as long as they differentiate the
information gathered from Toolbar users from that gathered by
their normal spidering mechanisms, they could even begin to
calculate not only ranking based on incoming links, but
also popularity, based on the traffic the page receives (vis-a-vis
Alexa).
I know that I am
reading between the lines, and maybe I am letting that initial 3rd
party statement influence my thought process too much - but,
serving up relevant Search Results is Google's primary
focus. Many other companies license their technology, so it
only makes sense that they be as innovative as possible to
differentiate themselves from their competition. I have to
admit that I am also intrigued by the possibility of leapfrogging
the normally long lead times usually required to get indexed by a
search engine.
And...
It
just so happens that I have a situation that should give me a
chance to test the original statement, and at least some of
my assumptions.
You see,
I have just created 2 almost identical sites, and published them
under 2 different domain names. When I say almost identical,
I mean the logos are different, and the contact information is
different. That is all! Neither has been submitted to
the search engines, nor has there been any promotion of either, at
this point. Currently, they are your typical corporate
presence sites, but one will evolve into a marketing
site.
It seemed that I had a
pretty sound "control" in place from which to begin an
experiment, so here's what I've done so far...
Experiment
1.
Once I had both sites published,
and the Google Toolbar installed in my browser, I went to each
site, and navigated each page in the site (giving Google every
possible chance to prove out the initial statement - just indexing
the pages). In testing the links on the sites, etc. I have
been sure to visit each site equally - giving them equal exposure
to the Google Toolbar, and maintaining the control conditions as
much as possible.
Result 1.
As
I write this paragraph, four days have elapsed since the 2 sites
were "exposed" to the Google Toolbar.
Neither
site is ranked by Google, as yet. Likewise, checking the
Page Info thru the Google Toolbar for either site returns "no
results found" for "Backward Links" (there are no
external links from other sites, so this is accurate) and for
"Cached Snapshot".
However,
when querying for "Similar Pages", the same dozen or so
web pages from other sites are returned as being similar to the
web pages from both of the new sites. From this, I infer
that at the very least, Google has indeed collected certain
information about these 2 sites, and has, in fact, stored the
information it has collected and categorized it in some fashion -
in order to recognize the similarity to web pages from other
sites.
Note - the returned results
didn't seem to be "similar", but given that neither of
the 2 sites currently has any meta tag information, I would expect
any categorization to be crude at this point.
Experiment
2.
It may be too early to start
destroying my "control", but these sites have been
developed for a client, and I can only delay progress on the
development of the sites to a certain degree (besides, I am
anxious to start seeing the effect of other changes on the sites).
On
the marketing site, I have now set up the meta tags containing
a relevant description and keywords for each page. The other
site has not been modified.
Once again,
every page of each site has been "exposed" to the Google
Toolbar an equal number of times.
Result
2.
Sorry, but if I wait
for this result, I'll have to write some other article for this
month's issue of iMarketing iNsight. So look forward
to Part 2 in next month's issue. I'll let you know if and
how these changes made any difference, and we'll set up Experiment
3.
In the meantime...
There seems to be at least some corroboration of the
original 3rd party statement that instigated the experiment in the first
place.
The results weren't overwhelmingly favorable, using these
rather "naked" sites, but if you have established sites that have
good content and meta tags (even if they have already been submitted to the
major search engines) it might be worthwhile to at least give the Google
Toolbar a shot at delivering your web page information to Google.
Note - Internet Explorer ver 5 or greater is
required
If any of you are interested in giving it a shot, install
the Google Toolbar
download and let me know if you see any results that you think are
attributable to its use. If I publish anything you send me, I'll give
credit where due, everyone will get the benefit of your input, and it may shed
more light on the results I will be seeing, as well.
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