SEO Failure in Action: Sarah Palin, the Washington Post and a $150,000 Wardrobe
Posted by junger - 10/28/08 at 10:10:42 pmCan you find this story for me?
It's called "After a $150,000 Makeover, Sarah Palin Has an Image Problem" and it's from the Washington Post.
What? You can't find it? That's weird.
What You Just Did (And Your Readers Will, Too)
If you're anything like the normal Web surfer, you grabbed that headline, pasted it into Google, and looked for the top result.
But the Washington Post is nowhere to be found.
In fact, the direct link to the story is nowhere to be found in the four pages of search results. (When you search with quotes around the title.)
If you're the Washington Post, you've got to be worried. Something is preventing your story — when searched for using the all-important headline — from showing up in Google results.
That's scary for a Web publisher.
What Happened Here?
Why isn't the direct link to the story coming up in Google?
Honestly, I have no idea. But I'm more inclined to blame the Washington Post for doing something funky than to say Google screwed it up. They don't mess up too much when it comes to search.
Whatever the case is, there's a problem. And you, as the person who makes your site run, needs to ensure that you're not being left out of search results when you own the content.
What good is a blog post or a research paper online if it can't easily be found using search?
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Looks like Google/WaPo caught up. The link embedded in the story to the search results now has the article at the top of the list.
Comment by junger — October 31, 2008 #