I have never noticed this before. In fact, I know I have ran this test before and didn’t see a change. My first thought was that it had to do with Google’s multiple data centers. Perhaps one query is getting results from California, while another one is coming from New York.

Yet, if this is true, wouldn’t we see these kind of shifts just by hitting the refresh button? To shed some light on the matter, here is what others are saying:

Pipsbank wrote, “yeah, I saw it and this is my first time seeing this.
but i tried few keywords and nothing is changing”

Mediapro said, “G has been emphasizing on title keyword capitalization for a long time now. I lot of people including myself have been tricked.”

ShaunG added, “im getting different results, this is interesting. The first 5 or so are the same, but make sure you look at all of them or write them down and compare. There is a slight difference. I wonder what causes this? Title, heading, content, meta tags (someone once told me capitalization mattered in meta tags, although i disagree i figured it was worth mentioning)?”

Deccanbazaar.biz replied with, “me too seen this thing earlier i have a website which rank on tiop position for the keyword in Caps like : Play Online but when you seach the same keyword in small letters play online nothing will show of my site on top position”

I’m going to keep an eye on this a bit more, but in the mean time I’d love to hear your thoughts.

Have any of you noticed similar results?

Hi Paul,

Thanks for the great question! I’m not a huge fan of directories myself. While I still continue to use them, I’m becoming more and more picky about the ones I waste my time submitting my websites to. I still believe we should continue to submit to directories, if only because of how easy and quick it is with the right software.

Using something like RoboForm or a semi-automated directory submission program, I can submit to a directory in under 30 seconds. While the best directories have a waiting period before your site will get added, once I hit submit all I have to do is sit back and wait.

But more and more I am beginning to like community forums. It take a bit more research to find the good ones, but it’s well worth the effort. My biggest complaint with forums, is that they usually have more rules and less structure (if that makes any sense) then a directory or static web page.

You can’t just sign up and start linking on a lot of forums. You first have to build a reputation by posting a certain amount of times before links in your signature become active - and many forum administers will ban your account and remove your postings if you link to often.

On top of that, most of the SEO related and high traffic forums either make use of the No Follow tag, making links nearly useless, or have such a high outbound links per page ratio that the forum becomes virtually useless for link building purposes. Still, some forums are gold mines and it’s foolish for any SEO to forget about them completely.

I love very small niche forums that been around for years. I remember joining a forum for knife fanatics, and while links in a signature were allowed & followed, the audience in general wasn’t very net savvy. As a result, the pages had very little wasted link juice. Even better was that many of the forum’s posts showed up in the search engine results pages (SERPs). And by being active in a few forums, you not only get a few link backs to your website, but you also build brand awareness.

I can’t tell you how many times I been contacted because I helped someone on a forum and the person just liked me. Building trust and brand awareness is something I value much more then any link back could provide.

My advice is that we should all be looking at forums the same way as directories. The same old rules apply: when was it last crawled, are the internal pages ranking, how does it relate to your site, etc etc. And don’t just stick to directories and forums… you also got blogs and social media sites worth looking at.

Thanks again Paul for your awesome question!

To my readers: Do you ever find yourself looking for reviews on a product and stumble onto a forum? If so, what’s your typical reaction? Do you click the back button or do you give it a read and follow the links?

Warning: I’m giving away some pretty advanced knowledge here. If this peaks your interest, you will need to do additional research on this topic. I will not lie, this is considered a high risk black hat method that can get your website banned! Follow my advice with caution.

A Primer on Content Writing Hierarchy

Create hierarchy in your content writing using heading and sub-heading tabs. These work great at breaking down content into easy to digest chucks and search engines love keyword rich headings.

Next, do some additional reading on Landing Pages. Then read up on the effects of writing for print verse writing for the web. Here are two great resources to help you get started:

Creating Effective Landing Pages - Topics include: What is a landing page? The basics of developing landing pages; Call to action; Short statements; Length of pages; Ask and answer questions; Use of testimonials; and much much more.

Difference Between Paper and Online Presentation - This is a nine-part article at Sun Microsystems. Although dated 1999, it’s just as valid today. Excellent read in my opinion.

Stealing Content and Getting Away with it!

Scraping content is blackhats’ most important weapon. Most Blackhat SEOs that I speak with write very little if any content on their pages. With content being king, queen, and ace; blackhats don’t have time to sit there and write the hundreds of articles they push out by the hour. Instead the Black Hat SEO will pull out his secret weapon: the RSSGM Open Source Portal Builder.

Automatic Content Writing Magic

In short, RSSGM is nothing more then an automatic content generator. Here is the quick and dirty method of getting this nasty little program up and running…

Step One: Download RSSGM

Download RSSGM from http://sourceforge.net/projects/rssgm/  and unzip the RSSGM archive into a folder called rssgm.

Step Two: Upload Using Your FTP Client

Launch your FTP client of choice and login to your hosting account using your ftp username and password. Navigate to your website directory and upload the entire rssgm folder you just created. Next you’ll want to change the permissions on the uploaded rssgm directory.

Final Step: Complete the Installation

Browse to http://www.yourdomain.com/rssgm/install.php and follow the installation instructions.

But butt… Mr?! Won’t content scrapping get your site banned? Yes kids, and Marijuana kills. While it’s true that Content scrapping using automated bots and scripts can be detected, but Google often does a poor job of detecting it when things are setup right.

There are also other programs out there such as DITY which is even hardier to detect (at the cost of also being harder to use), but if you want to play it safe — and yet still want to data mine other people’s content, then readon for my next piece of twisted advice:

Manual Site Scrapping

Think back to your high school days of plagiarism book report writing. We all did it, and let’s not pretend otherwise.

The teacher asks you to write up an article, but you were to busy parting with your friends, so instead of risking an F you Googled for a article summery then changed all the “Donts” to “Do Nots” and the “Him’s” to “I’s.”

Apply the same techniques by manually going out and and data mining for content on your favorite sites. Be careful to not post the entire article and always site your sources– you don’t want lawyers knocking at your door after all.
When content just can’t ooze out of your genius little brain, result to what works: plagiarism content scrapping!

Top Ten Tips for Writing for the Web

• Use short sentences, words and paragraphs
• stick with one idea per paragraph
• Use half the words you would use if you were writing for print
• Put the most important points first.
• Don’t complicate things. Use simple words
• Write in a objective language tone to build credibility
• Use bulleted lists. People (and Google) can’t get enough of them!
• Emphasize your text (bold, color, or hyperlinked) for scannability
• Have meaningful headlines and subheadings
• When all else fails, hire an editor or copywriter.

Back in early 2006, the cDc launched the “Goolag” (a play on gulag, Soviet concentration camps) campaign in response to Google’s decision to comply with China’s Internet censorship policy. Now cDc continuously uses the phrase Goolag to reference the giant search company. This new tool is just another jab at Google and their decision to censor internet to the citizens of main-land China.

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The newly released exploit allows security experts, hackers, and just about everyone who’s up to no good, the ability to scan websites for known vulnerabilities using the power of Google’s search technology.

Using individual searches to find security flaws can take a long time. Goolag Scanner is an application that rapidly runs lots of flaw-finding searches and returns results in an easier to digest fashion.

Despite the controversy, the Goolag Scanner is a very useful tool for website owners when used to check your own websites.

To see the tool in action check out: http://www.goolag.org

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASESECURITY ADVISORY: The following program may screw a large Internet search
engine and make the Web a safer place.

LUBBOCK, TX, February 20th — Today CULT OF THE DEAD COW (cDc), the world’s most attractive hacker group, announced the release of Goolag Scanner, a webauditing tool. Goolag Scanner enables everyone to audit his or her own website via Google. The scanner technology is based on “Google hacking,” a form of vulnerability research developed by Johnny I Hack Stuff. He’s a lovely fellow. Go buy him a drink.

“It’s no big secret that the Web is the platform,” said cDc spokesmodel
Oxblood Ruffin. “And this platform pretty much sucks from a security
perspective. Goolag Scanner provides one more tool for web site owners to
patch up their online properties. We’ve seen some pretty scary holes through
random tests with the scanner in North America, Europe, and the Middle East.
If I were a government, a large corporation, or anyone with a large web site,
I’d be downloading this beast and aiming it at my site yesterday. The v
ulnerabilities are that serious.”

Goolag Scanner will be released open source under the GNU Affero General
Public license. It is dedicated to the memory of Wau Holland, founder of the
Chaos Computer Club, and a true champion of privacy rights and social justice.

GOOLAG SCANNER FUNCTIONS AND FEATURES

Goolag Scanner is a standalone windows GUI based application. It uses one
xml-based configuration file for its settings. All dorks coming with the
distribution of gS are kept inside one file.
–

Press Contact
Oxblood Ruffin
oxblood at hacktivismo.com

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I then thought to myself, rather then try to rewrite the definition on 301, why not just quote Google’s very own Matt Cutts. This is the best definition of a 301 and 302 that I have come across… and why not, Matt Cutts is the most respected and outspoken Google Engineers of them all. And I’m also a big fan (Hi Matt!!!)

What’s the difference between 302 vs. 301?

The “302″ refers to the HTTP status codes that are returned to your browser when you request a page. For example, a 404 page is called a “404″ because web servers return a status code of 404 to indicate that a requested page wasn’t found.

The difference between a 301 and a 302 is that a 301 status code means that a page has permanently moved to a new location, while a 302 status code means that a page has temporarily moved to a new location.

For example, if you try to fetch a page http://example.com/ and the web server says “That’s a 301. The new location is http://www.example.com/” then the web server is saying “That url you requested? It’s moved permanently to the new location I’m giving you.”

By the way… thanks John for the tip.