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Careless Whispers? The Power of George Michael in Google’s Algorithm
By Paul Richlovsky | February 29, 2008
I’m never gonna dance again, but George Michael’s video appears to keep dancing, long after the music stopped.
Wonder what an iconic 80’s song has to do with Google and SEO? Here’s the skinny: I googled 1-f looking for a result from the world of science, and the very first page of my return displayed some eye-popping video:
You’ll note on the right that most of the results deal with math, sound waves, or the proper name of a satellite. All fine and loosely relevant, but the 8th-entry video caught my eye. A video in the results? Okay, score one for Universal Search!
But upon closer inspection, the video tells us something else about Google’s universe. Despite the fact that the video has currently been removed by its original poster, the image, titles and description are still very much alive. And the result shows that the 5-min. video received 5 stars. Since stars indicate popularity–and anyone who’s lived through the 80’s can attest to George Michael’s popularity–the singer behind “Faith” and “Wake Me Up Before You Go-Go” must surely carry some heavy weight among YouTube denizens.
The clincher in all of this is that even if we knew nothing of George Michael or his videos, you can logically argue that the previously posted video of his “Careless Whisper” song is popular because it turns up in a search for 1-f.
What’s the connection between 1-f and George Michael? 1-f appears within a string of code in the URL of the YouTube video. Google’s search engine results have noted it in boldface type.
Let’s review. The video for “Careless Whisper” is so visible that it was able to push through organic website listings associated with satellites and “pink noise” … all because it incidentally contains 1-f in its URL.
SEO takeaway:
2. Keywords in the URL matter. Even if whispered. (Also discussed in the Fathom Forum.)
3. Together they may make an unbeatable combination.
Google-algorithm-watchers’ takeaway:
1. Google is careless to allow its Universal Search algorithm to pull exclusively from random URL code to produce a Top-10 result.
2. George Michael is truly a juggernaut. Google, wake me up before you go-go!
Update: Less than 24 hrs. later, George Michael is now in the #4 position. Check yourself to see where he is now. And don’t let anyone tell you the 80’s are dead.
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February 29th, 2008 at 10:21 am
Wow! You would think the random YouTube URL string would be ignored in the algos, seeing that YouTube is a Google property. Nice catch Paul.
February 29th, 2008 at 2:06 pm
You gotta have faith that Google will fix this.