Finding your real competition on Google
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By Senior Writer
Published on 11/1/2006
Seems to me that doing a simple query on Google and then having
a glance at the amount of results returned isn't really the best
way to gauge how competitive a keyword or keyphrase is. This
figure represents all the pages in Google's index which are even
only a small bit relevant for the query, it does not give a fair
indication of the amount of naturally relevant pages or the
pages which have been specifically optimised to appear for the
searched upon query.
A better way is to use a combination of Google's advanced
queries to run a much stricter search to filter out all the
pages which are 'accidently relevant'. Examples of these
advanced queries include 'allintitle:', 'allinurl:' and
'allinanchor:'
A search with 'allintitle:' before it on Google will only return
pages that have all the words following 'allintitle:' in their
HTML title tags. An example is href="http://www.google.com/search?hl=en&lr=&rls=GGLD%2CGGLD%3A20
06-04%2CGGLD%3Aen&q=allintitle%3Afootball+tickets"
target="_blank">'allintitle:football tickets' which returns
376,000 results, all of which have the words 'football' and
'tickets' anywhere (regardless of position) in their titles. A
further restriction on this would be
06-04%2CGGLD%3Aen&q=allintitle%3A%22football+tickets%22"
target="_blank">'allintitle:"football tickets"' which only
returns 226,000 results. Notice the double quotes around the
search phrase, this basically means that football and tickets
have to be A) in the correct order and B) one after another. I
think you'll agree that these figures are a lot more useful than
the figure returned for a basic search for href="http://www.google.com/search?hl=en&q=football+tickets"
target="_blank">'football tickets' which currently returns
over 55 million results, a figure which is dominated by pages
which are accidently relevant and thus don't provide real
competition.
Allinurl: is basically the same kind of idea except it looks in
the URL of pages and not the title. Using the football tickets
phrase in conjunction with allinurl to run
href="http://www.google.com/search?hl=en&lr=&q=allinurl%3Afootbal
l+tickets" target="_blank">'allinurl:football tickets' and
href="http://www.google.com/search?hl=en&lr=&q=allinurl%3A%22foot
ball+tickets%22&btnG=Search" target="_blank">'allinurl:"football
tickets"' against Google.com returns 116,000 and 65,000
results respectively. Again these figures are both massively
less than the 55 million results returned for the basic search.
Pages with keywords in their URLs are very likely to be your
real competiton and tough enough competition too.
A final advanced query and perhaps the most useful one is
allinanchor. I know some people have been experiencing 'issues'
with this type of search but it appears to be working for me at
the moment and thus deserves inclusion. Using allinanchor:
before keywords/phrases in a search forces Google to return only
those pages that have all those keywords and phrases present in
at least one of their backlinks, these backlinks can be internal
or external. Search Engine Optimisation consultants know the
power of keyword rich backlinks thus it is likely that many of
the top results for an allinanchor search have had their
sites/pages optimized and thus are going to be hard enough to
outrank. For instance AKAMarketing.com is currently #1 for a
href="http://www.google.com/search?hl=en&q=allinanchor%3Asearch+e
ngine+optimisation+ireland" target="_blank">'allinanchor:search
engine optimisation ireland' search, this basically means
that I have loads (well more than the competition) of valuable
links to my site which use the words the four words 'search',
'engine', 'optimisation' and 'ireland' scattered about the text
which links to me. Due to this #1 ranking you can bet your
bottom dollar that my site is going to be a 'tough competitor'
on the normal href="http://www.google.com/search?hl=en&q=search+engine+optimisa
tion+ireland" target="_blank">'search engine optimisation
ireland' results, and hey what do you know I'm #1 on those
normal results too. If the figure returned by an allinanchor
search is in the millions get prepared for a long 15 rounder
slugfest because there are lots of real competitors.
Of course the figure Google returns for any search basic or
advanced is not 100% accurate but is only indicative, a good way
to find a more exact number of competitors is to run one of the
advanced queries and keep on skipping by 10 results pages until
Google shows you the following:
In order to show you the most relevant results, we have
omitted some entries very similar to the XXX
already displayed. If you like, you can
included.
XXX will / should be a fair indication of the
task you have ahead of you in terms of competing sites and
pages. Please share you thoughts and comments on these
issues.
Article by David Callan. David is the leading search engine
consultant with AKA Marketing.com's
Optimization team. AKA Marketing.com provide full SEO
services as well as telephone based consulting for those
preferring the DIY approach.
About the author:
Article by David Callan. David is the leading search engine
consultant with AKA Marketing.com's
Optimisation team. AKA Marketing.com provide full SEO
services as well as telephone based consulting for those
preferring the DIY approach.
Finding your real competition on Google
Seems to me that doing a simple query on Google and then having
a glance at the amount of results returned isn't really the best
way to gauge how competitive a keyword or keyphrase is. This
figure represents all the pages in Google's index which are even
only a small bit relevant for the query, it does not give a fair
indication of the amount of naturally relevant pages or the
pages which have been specifically optimised to appear for the
searched upon query.
A better way is to use a combination of Google's advanced
queries to run a much stricter search to filter out all the
pages which are 'accidently relevant'. Examples of these
advanced queries include 'allintitle:', 'allinurl:' and
'allinanchor:'
A search with 'allintitle:' before it on Google will only return
pages that have all the words following 'allintitle:' in their
HTML title tags. An example is href="http://www.google.com/search?hl=en&lr=&rls=GGLD%2CGGLD%3A20
06-04%2CGGLD%3Aen&q=allintitle%3Afootball+tickets"
target="_blank">'allintitle:football tickets' which returns
376,000 results, all of which have the words 'football' and
'tickets' anywhere (regardless of position) in their titles. A
further restriction on this would be
06-04%2CGGLD%3Aen&q=allintitle%3A%22football+tickets%22"
target="_blank">'allintitle:"football tickets"' which only
returns 226,000 results. Notice the double quotes around the
search phrase, this basically means that football and tickets
have to be A) in the correct order and B) one after another. I
think you'll agree that these figures are a lot more useful than
the figure returned for a basic search for href="http://www.google.com/search?hl=en&q=football+tickets"
target="_blank">'football tickets' which currently returns
over 55 million results, a figure which is dominated by pages
which are accidently relevant and thus don't provide real
competition.
Allinurl: is basically the same kind of idea except it looks in
the URL of pages and not the title. Using the football tickets
phrase in conjunction with allinurl to run
href="http://www.google.com/search?hl=en&lr=&q=allinurl%3Afootbal
l+tickets" target="_blank">'allinurl:football tickets' and
href="http://www.google.com/search?hl=en&lr=&q=allinurl%3A%22foot
ball+tickets%22&btnG=Search" target="_blank">'allinurl:"football
tickets"' against Google.com returns 116,000 and 65,000
results respectively. Again these figures are both massively
less than the 55 million results returned for the basic search.
Pages with keywords in their URLs are very likely to be your
real competiton and tough enough competition too.
A final advanced query and perhaps the most useful one is
allinanchor. I know some people have been experiencing 'issues'
with this type of search but it appears to be working for me at
the moment and thus deserves inclusion. Using allinanchor:
before keywords/phrases in a search forces Google to return only
those pages that have all those keywords and phrases present in
at least one of their backlinks, these backlinks can be internal
or external. Search Engine Optimisation consultants know the
power of keyword rich backlinks thus it is likely that many of
the top results for an allinanchor search have had their
sites/pages optimized and thus are going to be hard enough to
outrank. For instance AKAMarketing.com is currently #1 for a
href="http://www.google.com/search?hl=en&q=allinanchor%3Asearch+e
ngine+optimisation+ireland" target="_blank">'allinanchor:search
engine optimisation ireland' search, this basically means
that I have loads (well more than the competition) of valuable
links to my site which use the words the four words 'search',
'engine', 'optimisation' and 'ireland' scattered about the text
which links to me. Due to this #1 ranking you can bet your
bottom dollar that my site is going to be a 'tough competitor'
on the normal href="http://www.google.com/search?hl=en&q=search+engine+optimisa
tion+ireland" target="_blank">'search engine optimisation
ireland' results, and hey what do you know I'm #1 on those
normal results too. If the figure returned by an allinanchor
search is in the millions get prepared for a long 15 rounder
slugfest because there are lots of real competitors.
Of course the figure Google returns for any search basic or
advanced is not 100% accurate but is only indicative, a good way
to find a more exact number of competitors is to run one of the
advanced queries and keep on skipping by 10 results pages until
Google shows you the following:
In order to show you the most relevant results, we have
omitted some entries very similar to the XXX
already displayed. If you like, you can
included.
XXX will / should be a fair indication of the
task you have ahead of you in terms of competing sites and
pages. Please share you thoughts and comments on these
issues.
Article by David Callan. David is the leading search engine
consultant with AKA Marketing.com's
Optimization team. AKA Marketing.com provide full SEO
services as well as telephone based consulting for those
preferring the DIY approach.
About the author:
Article by David Callan. David is the leading search engine
consultant with AKA Marketing.com's
Optimisation team. AKA Marketing.com provide full SEO
services as well as telephone based consulting for those
preferring the DIY approach.