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Blimey! Time to invest in a windmill...

Blimey, interesting stuff!

Not very up with American politics, so that makes more sense.

So basically in a nutshell it's our fault

So the American Government shutdown crisis drags on, gets ever more serious, and now there is talk it could trigger a world wide recession?

From how I understand it, it's almost like a civil war between Republicans and Democrats, but being fought in the House of Representatives.

The Republicans don't like Obamas Healthcare plan, so they have shut down the Government, laid off tens of thousands of workers without pay, and are now going to let USA Corporation default on debts and not pay it's bills, inviting financial disaster with serious consequences.

Seems a very odd state of affairs, from an outside perspective?

I thought the idea of an elected Government was that they were in charge and running the show. Obviously not

Never been a fan of the lottery, I've made a fortune on the

Hi LInda, WMT is Googles administration tools for site owners, Web Master Tools: https://www.google.com/webmasters/tools/

It's a pretty invaluable resource, and worth playing with if you are directly marketing your site. This combined with Google Analytics gives you so much information, you will prob be a bit bamboozled at first, but it is very important.

I wouldn't worry about the data highlighter tool at the moment, personally speaking. I suspect it's very much a stop gap tool while Google quenches it's thirst for more structured data, but thats just imho.


You need to rethink how people use search engines, and how the users query can be answered.

Career Counsellor Leicestershire is an obvious and easy one to anticipate.

But is that what people are typing into Google to find your services?

I suspect it's more of a case of: I need career adviser in Coalville

Now under the old system, you need keywords with career adviser and coalville to stand any chance of showing up. But in this new ordered and structured data world, Google already knows that Coalville is in Leicestershire. So if your site has citations from directories, confirming your address is in Leicestershire, and this is also on your site, then you stand a good chance of showing up.

That's the difference.

Take it a stage further, you advertise doing redundancy counselling, so in theory, Google knows this, from text on your site, and maybe other external references, and so you may show up if someone types in "lost my job in syston"

In this case, you may have none of those keywords on the page Google sends the visitor to, but it understands what your page is about, (as far as it can, we're not quite at AI yet!).

So this doesn't have to be a scary thing, it's a case of understanding that search queries aren't necessarily changing, its the way Google understands the queries that's changing. Then from this advanced way of interpreting the query, google will then decide on what results to show.

Where it get's a little messy is when carousal results are brought up, which Google has pulled form it's ever growing knowledge graph, and displays the answer within Google, by passing the reference site. But this approach doesn't affect people like yourself, as you don't care if someone gets your number from me, Google or your web site. A lead is a lead.

There's lots of scaremongering and flapping out in the SEO fringes, and plenty of cowboys looking to cash in.

Remember, this new way of doing searches has been live for a month. Have you seen a drastic drop in traffic or enquires? I suspect not.

But interesting times ahead

edit: I pasted in the wrong link in my first post. Just updated it, but if you want to learn more about this from someone who knows and understands this a lot better than me, then I would highly recommend reading up on articles by Aaron Bradley Semantic SEO: Making the Shift from Strings to Things or taking a look at his Semantic Search Community.

Must admit, I've yet to see one I like and think works well. They tend to be (as you say) slow, or (at least to me) a bit clunky, as the one hat fits all just doesn't work in all circumstances.

I think it's easier designing a mobile specific solution to mirror the desktop experience. That said, we are in the process of redesigning our mobile site, a sit's a bit to cut down, so would love to see an example of a complex site using responsive design.

Hi Linda

This has to be the forum question of the year Probably the SEO question of the year on about every SEO Forum and community as well!

Short answer, yes and no.

With the new semantic web, this will make traditional use of keywords as we know it, irrelevant, as Google moves to query searches instead of keywords.

Or as Google tries to put it, "strings not things"