More threads by Linda Buquet

Linda Buquet

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I'll be honest and say I'm not quite sure what I'm seeing here and I'm going to throw out some ideas. Hoping techy types smarter than me will weigh in and maybe Mike will even stop by. He likely would know if my suspicion is right.

Helped a guy awhile back at the Google forum. It's been bugging me ever since and I decided to share what I'm seeing to see if anyone can make sense of this.

If it's what I think, then it COULD POSSIBLY help account for: the attack of the one-boxes and all the Hummingbird guano and the old buried spam that's recently risen from the dead.

A search for the company name Vius, yields a pure organic listing because Google is not sure which Vius you are looking for.


Pure Organic SERP


Vius1.jpg



Add city to name to get local branded one-box


Vius2.jpg



Those results are for the same domain/page. The top listing is still pure organic, as is the top screen shot, but the title tag changes to full site title tag and the site links are added.

However BELOW the organic listing check out a 2nd listing - a branded one-box. One-boxes normally blend the organic and maps listing. But the organic part of the 2nd listing is different. The description is different than the organic ones are and instead it warns about an infected plug in. But that's not pulling from the Place page because that plugin is on the site. The name also changes to all caps which is the way it is on the Place page. And that's what happens with blended results, but in this case there is still that separate organic result that didn't blend.

So there you can clearly see 2 different search results for the exact same URL.

What's interesting too is that normally for a brand search you are not able to see 2 separate listings like that. Normally the organic and local listing merge together into one.

Here is the post at the Google forum: Google Groups

The owner of Vius said he cleaned up that plug in and is wondering when the index will update. Then he said: "This particular result is obviously being compiled from a different index than the straight organic index."

So I'm not totally sure what's up. But I think this clearly shows 2 separate indexes. And the 2nd listing is essentially coming from an older index.

So I guess I'm wondering if this separate index for his one-box, sheds any light on all these crappy one-boxes that Mike suspects Hummingbird is pulling out of some old index somewhere.

So what do you guys think? Does this anomaly shine a light on anything? Or is it just a fluke due to the bad plugin that the listings separated, didn't blend right and show up like this?

Vius1.jpg


Vius2.jpg
 

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