As a web analytics junkie I tend to notice trends and changes in my blog statistics. One recent trend I’ve noticed is that I get more search traffic from Google Blog Search than I used to get.
One tip I have for people on this, is that some web analytics applications make it hard to tell the difference between regular Google Search traffic and Google Blog Search traffic. Google Analytics for example lumps them both together as “google(organic)” in the search keyword statistic. My new favorite easy analytics application of the moment Clicky has a link to each actual seach query so you can see that it’s from Google Blog Search instead.
Why am I seeing more Google Blog Search traffic? I think it’s a combination of reasons. I would bet that Google Blog Search is getting more traffic and queries than the past as blogs grow in the public conscious and people realize Google has such a tool. (Why isn’t it an option on the Google home page?) I also think that this blog has continued to get links and gain relevance which helps it rank higher in Google Blog Search results.
That last point brings up a question though, how do you optimize your blog for Google Blog Search? Is it the same factors that the normal Google search uses? I’d guess that the normal factors still apply, but the Google Operating System blog has done some Google patent research and talks about both positive and negative factors that influence your blog’s ranking.
A couple of interesting positive factors were the number of feed subscribers (how does Google get this from other feed providers? Or is it just Google Reader?), links from webmail and chat (how do they know if someone clicks a Yahoo mail link and lands on my blog?), and using tags to categorize posts. The negative factors seemed aimed at spam, but some tips there would be to make sure you have multiple links in posts, avoid spammy words, and don’t duplicate too much content.
