Address tags and google

[welshkev]

How does google handle address tags?

The only change I did to one of my subdomains was put my contact details within address tags and when it was reindexed it dropped two pages!

I'm currently dropping all my subdomains and bringing the topics under the main domain address and would like my business contact details within the address tag format but if it causes loss of page placement then perhaps just using normal header tags would be better.

any thoughts
Kevin

[Jazajay]

Hum....
Strange I cant imagine you getting penalzied for that, it's valid XHTML especially with no address micoformat at the mo.

It shouldn't give you a plus or negative effect. The actual addresses you place in it will locally, regardless if it was in the tag or not.

What did you put in it?
Just your address or a paragraph with your address in it?

It is probably just coincedance TBH.
Google wouldn't penalize you for using semantic mark up.

Jaza

[welshkev]

Hi Jazajay

thanks for the reply.
It probably is a coincidence, the site normally goes up and down a few places when new sites come on in the honeymoon period. It's just the number of places dropped that's got me concerned.

The olny thing in the address tags are number, postal address and telephone numbers.

Recent page rankings haven't contributed to it as the subdomain page has gone from no ranking to a PR4.

The only change to the sitehas been the addition of the address tags. What I'll do is take them out and see what happens over the next few weeks.

I have to admit I've never heard of address tags not being acceptable (though differnet browsers do read them differently) but this is the first time I've ever used them on a site so I have no previous personal experience of them.

kevin

[welshkev]

Would you believe it?

I've just taken out the address tags and reuploaded the site only to check on a google search to find the site back on the front page! Not sure wether to change things ack now

One thing I have noticed over the last week or so is that the cached version of the page keeps hopping back and forward in cached date.

first it was a cached verion of the 12th then 14th then back to 12th and now its 17th.

Perhaps server mantainance at google has played a role in the variations?

kevin

[Jazajay]

I cant believe it to be honest. As it is the correct use of markup.

I know it's hardly used and when it is it is probably blocked as it may be in the about us page. But still with local search it would be madness to put a negative effect on it.

The cached date is weird TBH and it may be another issue, again this may be a coincidence. Don't suppose you want to test again do you?

Jaza

[welshkev]

sorry the way I wrote the last post may have been confusing.

Getting back on the front page for search was not down to me uploaded the changed file - the index page is the one with the address tags in.

however I have just noticed something which is interesting - not sure whether it's to do with google or may be my ISP' caching but....

when I hit the reload button on my browser sometimes my site ranks and sometime it doesn't - strange?

it would be good for someone else to try key words are: heathrow airport taxi

and the site is heathrowairport.monmouthtaxis dot co dot uk


You don't suppose there's a bit of local search filtering going on using ip address to change results or is that a bit far fetched.

Though it may also be just which server bank my query gets sent to as I believe there can be a delay in all banks getting trhe same index.


(I'm just playing with ideas really)

kevin

[jimbeetle]

welskev, one of the big problems with ascribing cause and effect of any of changes we make is Google's architecture. It used to be that Google's machines would churn along in that dusty back room and about once a month or so would spit out a new database; the old Google "dance" we saw was the result of the lag in all G's servers being updated. Once it settled down we knew where we stood.

With the change to the "Big Daddy" infrastructure a couple of years ago G no longer does what looks like a regular update, but continually dumps new data into its system. It still takes time for all of this to propagate and it might be (certainly seems like) the system is never entirely in sync.

Added to that is the, for want of better words, the "Distributed Distributed" nature of its architecture. A results page is usually delivered from more than one source: Get the candidate results from Bucket A, filter and re-rank them in Bucket B; meanwhile, pull the snippets from Bucket C and the page caches from Bucket D. Added to this is that each of these "buckets" is pulling from whatever server behind them happens to be available at the moment.

Then throw whatever other variables you'd like into the mix. IP delivery? Sure, sometimes. Different page cache delivered for different query? Yep, we've seen that.

So, the best advice when you make any change is, as you've seen, not to overreact; just sit back, wait and observe.

[welshkev]

Hi Jimbeetle,

thanks for that info, I'd missed out on the move to 'big daddy' - must have been dosing at the time.

I have to admit that I don't take results of a general search term like 'heathrow airport taxi' too seriously because most people tend to search for 'heathrow to ..... taxis'.

However, I like to play with the general search terms though because it's a bit like a giant sudoku game - what challenge is google throwing up today keeps the old grey matter in good form.

I hope that doesn't sound to flippant - I know a lot of SEO engineers take these thing VERY seriously

kevin

[Jazajay]

Hi Jim
Don't worry no debate yet

Then throw whatever other variables you'd like into the mix. IP delivery? Sure, sometimes. Different page cache delivered for different query? Yep, we've seen that.

I totally agree with you of coarse, but a 2 page drop is a bit excessive isn't it?
I do agree don't overreact, that's sound advice.

I hope that doesn't sound to flippant - I know a lot of SEO engineers take these thing VERY seriously

He he SEO engineers love it.
I'll have to get my formal qualification some time soon.
Don't worry I don't.

Jaza