Google Apps is one of the more disruptive products released by Google recently, initially promoted through large and expensive AdWords campaigns, and recently with its outdoor billboards "Gone Google Apps Campaign".  But their team has been less aggressive in flexing its search optimisation weight against Microsoft and IBM until recently.

Following up on research for an article I wrote, I started to notice that Google Apps were starting to rank much higher for their competitors products than they had typically in the past with all results showing in top 10 and above the fold.  While this initially seemed a little paranoid, I decided to check into whether these were just manual changes to the search ranking results or a more effective and targeted strategy by Google.

TechCrunch covered an issue in late September about the rise of Google linking back to Google content and as with the Google Places pages issue.  A similar issue arose with some of the "friendly" URLs being possibly a bit too friendly geared towards competitors. But the main Google Apps website does not have search friendly URLs for sharing the content as discussed with Google Places, but does have very search friendly URLs for content about their competitors products. The URLs shown below are slightly different as I'm viewing the international structure but still you can see how much more user friendly Google has made them.

• Gone Google Campaign >> http://www.google.com/apps/intl/en/business/gogoogle.html
• Microsoft Exchange >> http://www.google.com/apps/intl/en/business/switch_exchange.html
• Lotus Notes >> http://www.google.com/apps/intl/en/business/notes.html 

Quick points about the campaign, the URL where the Gone Google page below is located is quite new as is all the content so it is not likely they were ranking based on established content or links. There is now a different page but it has the same anchor text so I have not updated the image.  The clear use of competitor's product terms as anchor text in the on-page links shown below are fairly aggressive and proactive efforts to rank high for these terms.

 

Microsoft Exchange

So obviously it could be that these terms are relatively low traffic terms, but using Google's own keyword tool there are approximately 40,500 searches/month (exact match) for "Microsoft Exchange". Also you can see that from the keyword tool that this is one of the highest traffic terms out of the related suggestions offered so they have been smart in their selection of keyword to target based on traffic.

Using the SEOmoz keyword difficulty tool, you can see that "Microsoft Exchange" scores 57% which shows that it is a competitive term and the tool advises that top rankings are achievable only with highly optimised on-page content and substantial link strength. The main campaign site does not appear to be highly optimised and since these are sub pages that are ranking for the specific term it has to be link strength.  

 

While most think that meta "keyword" tags do no longer hold much influence, it is a clear way to understand what keywords they are working to rank the page for.  You can see the terms are heavily focused around Microsoft Exchange and various related issues and requirements for running a Exchange server.  

<meta name="keywords" content="save money, exchange, microsoft exchange, msft exchange, ms exchange, exchange 2003, exchange 2007, exchange server, exchange upgrade, hosted exchange, mail exchange, exchange email, exchange account, exchange backup, exchange setup, exchange replication, exchange disaster recovery, microsoft email, microsoft mail, email hosting, calendar, instant messaging" />

Below is the Bing search result for the "Switch from Exchange" page and the image shows how to create a very smart and effective message targeted to attracting attention and standing out in the search results.  

Using the SEOmoz Term Extractor

• switch
• exchange
• apps
• microsoft
• intl
• google
• business

These terms extracted from the page show a very clear and targeted search campaign set around capturing market share from Microsoft Exchange.  Before you call in the witch doctors to exersize the evil, these pages are actually ranking better in Bing than in Google so it appears to have come down to more effective and ongoing improvement of their targeted search optimisation campaigns. 

Lotus Notes

So obviously it could be that these terms are relatively low traffic terms, but using Google's own keyword tool there are approximately 60,500 searches/month (exact match) for "Lotus Notes". Also you can see that from the keyword tool that this is one of the highest traffic terms out of the related suggestions offered so they have been smart in their selection of keyword to target based on traffic.

Using the SEOmoz keyword difficulty tool, you can see that "Lotus Notes" scores 49% which shows that it is a competitive term and the tool advises that top rankings are achievable only with highly optimised on-page content and substantial link strength. The main campaign site does not appear to be highly optimised and since these are sub pages that are ranking for the specific term it has to be link strength.  

While most think that meta "keyword" tags do no longer hold much influence, it is a clear way for understand what keywords they are working to rank the page for.  You can see when I first examined the page for this article on the 20th October 2009, they had just copied the meta keywords from the Exchange page which would appear lazy.

<meta name="keywords" content="save money, exchange, microsoft exchange, msft exchange, ms exchange, exchange 2003, exchange 2007, exchange server, exchange upgrade, hosted exchange, mail exchange, exchange email, exchange account, exchange backup, exchange setup, exchange replication, exchange disaster recovery, microsoft email, microsoft mail, email hosting, calendar, instant messaging" />

NOTE: To ensure I wasn't corrected as being incorrect by the first person to check this meta data, I checked again this had not changed even with the new webpage, so at the time of posting they should consider updating the page meta tags. The other view is to think how aggressively they are going after Microsoft Exchange users and Lotus Notes is a secondary target?

Below is the Bing search result for the "Lotus Notes" page and the image shows how to design a very smart and effective message targeted to attracting attention and standing out with a clear call to action.

Using the SEOmoz Term Extractor

• notes
• apps
• move
• make
• lotus
• intl
• google
• business

Again, these terms extracted from the page show a very clear and targeted search campaign set around capturing market share from Lotus Notes.  Before you call in the witch doctors to exersize the evil, these pages are actually ranking better in Bing than in Google so it appears to have come down to more effective and ongoing improvement of their targeted search optimisation campaigns.

The other quick point is that there are slight differences with local country specific search results showing this campaign appears to be mainly based around benefiting from Google.com links...

So the question I had after reading an article by PCWorld that highlighted the growth of the search market and how Microsoft has so far fallen flat against Google in "The Search Market Created Microsoft's Worst Enemy" is this happening again with SEO?