Yahoo likes me, Google not so much

Topics are no problem. I can't walk to the mailbox for my royalty check without being accosted by multiple writing opportunities. Recently my attention focused briefly on a funnel. My world needed to be enlightened about the funnel.

After writing about the funnel, an entire series of kitchen tool-related topics welled up into my fingers. I feel compelled to investigate how my funnel fares in the major search engines. You can come along.

We mostly only care about Google but we really want to care about Yahoo and Bing also. Any traffic originating from any search engine is a good thing, but effort expended to please Google turns out to be time well spent because the other two sites process only a pittance of web queries. In other words, you can sweep your attic but you're better off sweeping your kitchen.

In the interest of diversity we will observe the behavior of my funnel page as it pertains to Google, Bing, and Yahoo. We will act as if they all matter. They all matter a little bit.

Highly skilled software engineers from diverse origins program robots or crawlers. These digital snoopers wander the Internet, analyzing web pages for possible inclusion into search engines. Google, Yahoo, and Bing all control their own little beasts.

Sometimes it's advantageous to keep a page out of the search engines. Usually it's a page that changes frequently and would only confuse anyone who randomly browsed to it. Some sites also prefer a little privacy rather than being announced to the entire whole of cyberspace.
A "no index" flag or meta-tag or keyword inserted into the HTML will keep the search engines away. The browsing experience is not affected in any way. Only your search engine knows for sure.

HubPages deploys this "no index" marker as an arbitrary slap-down. If the HubLords do not like your page, they will refuse to allow your refuse to be crawled. No will see your composition except your Mom; she loves everything you write.

In the High Quality photo depicted below we observe that Google and Bing have indexed my funnel exposé. We do not, however, learn anything about Yahoo. We do not know if no news is good news, or if Yahoo isn't tracked at all.

Based on these informational tidbits, we might reasonably expect my funnel composition to appear in Google and Bing search results. Assuming that we properly compose search queries we should be able to test our hypothesis. It's the kind of science about which Darwin would have been confused, but probably rather proud.

Our reasonably scientific experimental search query was identified as:

today I sold a funnel.

We submitted it to all three engines. As depicted below, Bing and Yahoo recognized us. Google feigned ignorance.

It feels rewarding to be king of a search phrase. This particular phrase probably will not trend upward with Justin Bieber or nanotechnology. We accept these small victories.

Internet millionaires such as myself understand the significance of a search phrase enclosed in quotes. We are requesting Google to return results containing the precise phrase. Omitting the quotes permits the search engine to grab results containing the phrase words in any order scattered anywhere on the page.

The quotes made a difference, but in an unexpected way.

Google still has no clue who we are and why we would be selling a funnel but it now recognizes 3 different pages that might know who we are. Three HubPages indices referencing our composition are returned.

None of the Google results are the original composition.

Another fascinatingly mundane observation: the results of our query are extremely small. There is no other site online containing the precise phrase "today I sold a funnel."

Does Google know that our page exists? Is there any search phrase we might submit that will tease out a positive result?

Perhaps this...

http://nicomp.hubpages.com/hub/Yahoo-likes-me-Google-not-so-much

As illustrated below, Google steadfastly refuses to acknowledge our work.

Research is boring.This has not been disproven.

Anyway, according to HubPages our funnel hub was crawled by Google. According to Google the page was not available for dredging up. Several innovative search phrases were submitted.

We are not sad. Other methodologies for publicizing web pages do exist. Link-building is not limited to publishing, then praying that Google will decide to like us. Incoming links do matter and fortunately they can be accumulated via several different strategies.

Don't you be sad either. The Internet finds a way to love you regardless of what Google, Yahoo, and Bing might think of you. Get yourself on Good Morning America or The Daily Show or C-SPAN. Put in the effort.