Google Sees Blogs and Websites Differently

How To Build an E-Business

Does Google consider all platforms (ex., WordPress-created blogs, news, etc.) as "just sites"? Not at all. There would not be a blogsearch.google.com or news.google.com, if that was the case.

Google recognizes the difference between news, blogs, images, theme-based content sites, local sites and so on. Google has specialized search tools for them because their very nature is different.

But here's the kicker. Folks don't use these tools very much. They just want to search at Google. So Google came up with "universal search." Now...

If a search is more news-oriented, Google will deliver more news-oriented sites and blogs. If it feels that images do the job better, you'll get more images. Same for blogs.

So, for example, if all you want is news about Anguilla, search "news.google.com." If you're looking for general info on Anguilla, use "regular" search. If there's a hot news item, an extra news site or blog covering the news, it may be inserted for a while.

Let's continue with another "difference"...

Here's a note by Google in their Google Analytics help...

"Another consideration is blog sites - you'll see high bounce rates here as well, since mostly all of the content on the site will be available on the homepage."

http://bit.ly/9Nurzb

That statement also recognizes a fundamental difference between blogs and SBI! theme-based content sites, which structure their information into tiers of subtopics and sub-subtopics. A "3-tier" blueprint makes it easier for human visitors and search engine spiders to find all of the related content about a particular theme.

With WordPress, if you set your home page to be a blog, your next "tier" is merely categories, each with a list of posts, not a true tier. If you set your home page to be that of a site, you relegate your blog to the second tier, a disadvantage.

You could, of course, hack your way around it so that your WordPress blog looks like a theme-based content site, although that type of navigation does not work cleanly since you can get a ton of posts for a given "category keyword."

Bottom line? People don't bother reading year-old newspapers and they feel the same about blog posts... "old news" and too difficult to find all of the information you want.

As for the Search Engines...

Google can tell the difference between WordPress blogs and theme-based content sites (such as SBI! sites) and it will deliver results depending on the apparent or likely intent of a search term.

Click here for more details about blogging vs. theme-based content sites.