Why has Arsenal lost their top spot?
As it happens I’ve just been watching the football while tweeting and I got a message through my site from Malcolm Coles telling me what he had just noticed.
Yep Arsenal-World has taken over the official Arsenal site for the top slot in Google.co.uk, which then got me looking at how the search engines keep us folks up to date with the latest football scores. If you follow me on Twitter @davenaylor you will have noticed that I was bashing on about The Oscars and Live … well check out these 2 results.
1 – 0 to the Arsenal … well in Live anyway and thats from the game a few hours ago.
DaveN (LUFC for ever)
jaamit 1576 days ago
http://blog.freshegg.cominteresting stuff again after your tweet about oscar winners SERPS.
however i would say Google’s #4 result are news stories with tonight’s score plus a picture of van persie and the photo makes your eyes jump straight to that IMO (plus its above the fold).
ok ok, I’m just reluctant to concede that live.com is better!
glad the gunners got through tonight but it shoulda been 3 or 4, roma were pants.
David Saunders 1576 days ago
http://www.seowest.co.ukOn first glance in my Google Reader I thought “…because they’re chronic and Theo is the only Brit….”
Plus I now dislike them more intensely as they beat my beloved Plymouth Argyle. plus I think Arsene Wenger just isn’t as cool as, say, Sir Alex.
Now I read the post in depth there are some others, than the actual Gooners, that are more interested in everything Arsenal than Arsenal – if that makes sense.
When I lived in Charlotte, NC the local PD had a cool Twitter account whereby every crime or incident was reported as it was reported – really cool
I Twittered through the shambles today against Rome….
David
Plymouth, UK
Chis 1575 days ago
Google should just stop messing abound and put Villa above Arsenal!
Darrell Freeman 1575 days ago
http://www.darrellfreeman.co.ukNoticed the same thing on ‘Chester City FC’. Their official site is nowhere in Google for their brand name.
Matt Cutts 1575 days ago
http://www.mattcutts.com/blog/I see it at #1 for me, plus that handy sports onebox as well.
DaveN 1575 days ago
@mattcutts on the .com maybe.. but we get cookie dropped to the co.uk remember
malcolm coles 1575 days ago
http://www.malcolmcoles.co.uk@mattcutts – I emailed Dave about it. So I can confirm it’s a discrepancy between google.co.uk and google.com. If you search for arsenal, then arsenal.com is second on google.co.uk but first on google.com.
[So close to having a link on my blog from Matt himself .... Must try that little bit harder ...]
Adam C 1575 days ago
http://www.adamcrawford.co.ukGood to see this result. I’m not an Arsenal fan, nor have I looked at either the top site here or the official Arsenal one, but in my experience independent football comminity sites are often much better than the official sites.
Maybe they have some super relevant link juice from the other Arsenal communities, who shun the official site.
Mikkel deMib Svendsen 1575 days ago
http://joblr.netI guess Matts message not only confirms (as if we did not kjnow!) that there is a discrepancy between co.uk and .com – but it also proves how little they seach outside the .com. No wonder results here are so often so bad
Matt Cutts 1575 days ago
http://www.mattcutts.com/blog/Mikkel, I left that comment really late at night, so I was a bit bleary.
Mikkel deMib Svendsen 1575 days ago
http://joblr.netFair enough, Matt
However, the issue still remains interesting – why do local Google results often seem less good than .com?
I do know that you have local Googler’s that do search locally – but not as many as on .com I assume and also, I am sure you get far less feed back from users in small countries than on global .com searches.
But even with that – shouldn’t your systems just be able to make the right local results?
malcolm coles 1575 days ago
http://www.malcolmcoles.co.uk@AdamC – they be much better, but you wouldn’t expect them to rank higher would you? Arsenal is the only one I can find where the club’s own site doesn’t rank first for a search on [club name].
This is despite, for instance, every page on the BBC which reports on Arsenal having a link to the club’s site (admittedly using ‘Official Club website’ as the link text). What’s more, search on ‘Football’ and Arsenal is the first football club to come up in the SERPS.
Then again, if you search for “The Official Website of”, Arsenal is the first footbal club in the results. So maybe instead of having their home page Title as “The Official Website of Arsenal Football Club | Arsenal.com”, they should move Arsenal to the front of it …
David Saunders 1575 days ago
http://www.seowest.co.ukMy home club Plymouth Argyle Official isn’t top – probably because it’s all locked down and log in stuff
The fans site ranks above the PAFC site….
Fan power.
Be back soon
D
malcolm coles 1575 days ago
http://www.malcolmcoles.co.uk@ DavidSaunders are you sure? I get http://www.pafc.co.uk when I search for [Plymouth Argyle]
malcolm coles 1569 days ago
http://www.malcolmcoles.co.ukI’m now talking to myself on this post. But if anyone’s interested in the Arsenal Website Mystery, I asked the arsenal-word site editor if he had a clue why, and he wondered if it was because his site was originally registered several years before the official one. Surely that can’t be the only reason?
Anyway, if you want another football SEO conundrum, how about Man Utd not appearing in the ‘UK pages only’ search: http://www.malcolmcoles.co.uk/blog/man-utd-not-uk-club-says-google/
Not sure if the alleged new weight to given to brands and google SERPS has quite filtered through to the football sector if neither Arsenal nor Man Utd can rank first / at all for their own names …
jaamit 1568 days ago
http://blog.freshegg.commalcolm – I’ll save you from talking to yourself then!
i doubt the older domain thing is the reason since that’s always been the case and arsenal.com has always been #1 previously.
seems more likely that they’ve been hit with some kind of google penalty but i cant see evidence of that for other keywords…
oh and I’ve commented on your post about man utd not appearing in “pages from UK” – their Server IP is in the US… (North Carolina to be exact) – http://whois.domaintools.com/manutd.com
David Saunders 1568 days ago
http://www.seowest.co.uk@ Malcolm – funnily enough I’m in North Carolina (as I type) and this could be the reason I’m not seeing PAFC at the top – hey we beat Wolves last week
@ Jammit – Although I’m in North Carolina I am not guilty as far as Man United are concerned
@ Everybody I am in my native Devon next week and will be following my beloved Plymouth Argyle again. Any American vieweres? It’s FOOTBALL not SOCCER…..
David
malcolm coles 1568 days ago
http://www.malcolmcoles.co.ukJammit. Thanks for the comment. I guess if you’re US-owned, your servers live in the US
On the Arsenal thing, the one thing Arsenal do do is muck about with their Title on their home page. I’ve always considered this to be a brilliant idea and I’ve been dying to try it out somewhere.
For instance, it you check it now, their home-page Title (by which I mean HTML title, the thing that shows in google) is “Arsenal v Burnley – Tickets from £43 ON SALE NOW || Arsenal.com”. I presume they imagined they would always rank 1st for [Arsenal] so they’re not too bothered, and just change the title every few days as a promotional tool.
I’ve not seen anyone else do this, as I’ve been hunting around for other examples as I thought it would make an interesting blog post. But maybe this has triggered some sort of google penalty. So not a good idea after all.
They also sometimes run a ‘splash page’ – a marketing page – at http://www.arsenal.com/, with the real home page at http://www.arsenal.com/home. This may be the other reason for the penalty.
Either way, sort it out google …
Dave 1566 days ago
http://www.lets-do-diy.comWon’t matter soon anyway, when Arsenal miss out on champions league, google will forget them and put arseweb.com ahead of them. Ahahahahahahahaha
malcolm coles 1566 days ago
http://www.malcolmcoles.co.uk21. A website with a .com address may be ambiguous for geo targeting. The location of your web hosting company is also a factor in geo targeting.
http://www.labnol.org/internet/google-search-conference-notes/7721/
That’ll explain Man U, as I thought …
Tops 1564 days ago
Arsenal just happen to be going through a difficult period at the moment with injuries to key players such as Fabregas, Walcott, Rosiky and Adebayor.
I believe that you will all see much improved Arsenal side upon the return of these players.
I am new to this blog world and I hope I will gain a lot of knowledge as time goes bye.
Just want to say big up to DaveN for his great presentation at the Think Visibility conference in Leeds.