So this morning I logged in and saw the following:

The position of the author image has moved from the far right to inside the organic listings – this will undoubtedly increase CTR’s considerably – especially on search results where there are currently no other authors using the correct markup. As you can see in this screen grab, my site is currently loosing the battle against all these other pretty listings i.e. Rand, Matt Cutts and Mr Sullivan!

Although I have now set this up, thanks to My Blogger Tricks:

Click to expand:

What’s interesting is where the data is being pulled from, you’ll see in the screenshot below that Google takes “Facts from 7 websites including en.wikipedia.org, gb.kompass.com and linkedin.com”. This is quite a powerful addition to any brand listing having this appear and supports the need for brands to have positioning on those areas.

Now I’m still looking at why some brands are showing these and some are not, I’m confident that a number of big brands which I’ve checked have more link value and authority than this blog so there must be another deciding factor – or alternatively it’s still being tested on different queries/geographical locations.

Another interesting point is that will sites now need to optimise more for the first 30/40 characters to avoid poor descriptions on the sitelinks? – maybe.

Either way it looks that this will be a more standard roll-out of organic sitelinks which will certainly help brands retain visitors and make it that little bit harder for competitors and affiliates.

**Update 11/07

I’ve been looking at potential triggers that sets off the extended sitelinks, I looked at most of the big brands online and got a mixed bag.

Search Query: “Lloyds” (http://www.lloydstsb.com/)

Search Query “Confused Car Insurance” (http://www.confused.com/)

Search Query(misspelling): “deisel” (http://www.diesel.com/)

So from looking at these various brands that have triggered expanded links we know that:

• Misspellings work
• Brand name can trigger them
• Number of links are not always 12 but sometimes can be 8
• It is working with brand + generic terms

The homepage is much smaller than before, it does look crisper I do admit.

Once you perform a search you’ll see the following (click to enlarge):

Yesterday Google released their new iPhone browser layout which coincided with the dark grey bar at the top of Google on desktops. For a while now people had noticed URLs being displayed above listing descriptions, this appears to be now live although I’m not 100% if I’m just getting a test from a data center. The left toolbar has now been changed too, everything is now grey/red which is more “serious” looking in my opinion.

1. Google Webmaster Central on YouTube – Google and more importantly Matt Cutt’s help answer questions focused around search which helps clear up a lot hearsay and new developments.
2. Twitter – If you don’t know what Twitter is please venture out of your cave at least once and give it a try. More important know it’s been confirmed social signals contribute to organic search rankings. Very useful for finding business contacts and having SEO news delivered to your screen (depending who you follow obviously).
3. SEO Dojo Training – I’ve been a long term fan of Dave Harry and his blog, SEO Dojo training is a great commnity and I massivly suggest you join in. Lot’s of testing, sharing and training for even the most experienced SEO’s.
4. SEOMoz – Great SEO blog and community for beginers up to experienced SEO’s. Rand Fishkin has done a great job of cementing himself in the industry, new developments and discoveries are often discussed with data to backup theories.
5. Open Site Exporer – Essential link analysis tool for all SEO’s. Find out where your competitors get their links from and discover the value of each link.
6. SEOBook – Essential reading on a regular basis for any SEO and some of the free downloadable tools are great to use.
7. Yammer – Knowledge share will be as important as ever, Yammer lets you create mini communities like Twitter to help share news/links and updates – great for agencies and internal departments that might want to keep persnoal and business life separate!
8. Search Engine Land – A hub of all activity search related, of course you can use Sphinn too which is their sister site which still delivers great SEO articles.
9. Google Insights – If you want to know trends of particular search phrases or websites this is a great place to find free data. Take the results with a pinch of salt but generally Google’s providing good insights here plus if you’re stuck for keyword ideas there’s some relevant suggestions.
10. SEOUnique – An SEO blog written by me that you are reading now (and hopefully you’re enjoying) meant for beginners and those interested in a few SEO theories and tests. 
11. Search Engine Roundtable – Another blog/community website which I’ve been using for years, often very quick to announce new SEO developments so definitly one for the RSS.
12. Majestic SEO – Another link analysis tool and a rather good one too. It’s been around for a while and although sometimes the links aren’t updated frequently enough it has a great admin area and reporting layout.
13. Hitwise – More important for the advanced SEO’s out there, Hitwise provides industry insights at an incredibly granular level. Costs and absolute fortune but they do release bits of free information and data through their blog, well worth bookmarking.
14. LinkedIn - Really important business social site, think of it as a place to map out your career path and past work experiences. A lot of headhunters for agencies and client side jobs in SEO, not only that but you can take part in group discussions and help answer questions which help increase your business profile.
15. Search Engine People – I’ve been a big fan of this blog for many years and can tell you Jeff Quipp is an extremely interesting SEO and blogger. Great search blog posts can be found here!

I’m sure there are many other sites that SEO’s should know for 2011, if you have any suggestions please let me know and I’ll build up a bigger list.

I for one have used this method for a while and for the last few months have noticed some odd activity on 2 of my extact match websites.

Setting the Scene:

The two websites in question  target keywords that have an average search volume of 2,000 per month so with some well placed on-site optimisation and very little link building they can rank at number 1 for their targets, until a few months back they did this well. Then one day they both dropped out of the search results for the keywords in the domain name, and just these not the additional long tailed keywords that were driving other traffic. You can se an example of this for site 1 below:

 I did no paid links what so ever so I knew this was not a penalty given by Google but had a really hard time finding out what the problem was. Based on experience I often find if you’ve done nothing wrong and there’s no obvious errors then Google should sort it out. Last week I saw site 1 ranking number 1 again for the exact match keyword almost like someone had just switched it back on.

Now if this had just happened for 1 website I would probably just put it down to a “one off”, however as you can see below site 2 also had a sharp drop from just 1 keyword (the same as the domain name) and no longer ranked at all, whereas it had ranked in the top 3.

You can see the initial drop in the first box and then in the second box you can see that for a short period it went back up to the original position. Again this site had no paid links or black hat SEO, so what’s the deal?

There’s a good post on SEOBook about whether or not you should buy exact match domains, I for one think that these kind of sites usually never compete on the scale of actual big brands but can provide useful information for niche subjects, I’ll be interested to see if this activity is a test or not.

It was only a couple of months ago whereby Google gave more value to brands by letting them occupy up to 7-8 positions for their brand name (not great news for affiliates). This could of course be a test but it’s been happening for over a week in the UK now so I thought I’d share my findings.

Few screen grabs below (I liked the “Predators” film by the way):

You can see the “Show more results for …..” which is quite common at the top of the SERPS, however it’s now popping up elsewhere:

Anyway, moving forward, I have created a new list of websites that every SEO should know or at the very least is aware of.

1. http://www.seomoz.org – seomoz have not held back over the last year and 9 months, most notably the addition of Linkscape and Rand’s constant travelling have done nothing but push this company to the top of the industry.

2. http://www.linkdiagnosis.com – this website has also come a long way since I first started using it back in early 08, this link analysis tool is actually quite accurate although the results are only taken from Yahoo, link building can be very effective using this site

3. http://www.twitter.com – Twitter was a must in my previous list and it’s a must now. Any budding SEOs can learn a lot from following some of the leaders in the industry and seasoned SEOs can get a lot of good stories aggregated straight to your twitter home with absolutely no effort.

4. http://www.wolf-howl.com – A search blog with a different stance from many other industry leaders, not always agreeing with Google tactics and methods Michael Gray provides a good contrast in perspective and a sometimes light hearted Friday afternoon read.

5. http://googlewebmastercentral.blogspot.com – The official Google webmasters blog, there’s always a lot of activity happening over at the big G, it pays to keep on top of developments.

6. http://www.huomah.com/dojo – I can’t stress enough how good this website is, recently voted as number 1 for the “best paid subscription SEM community” by readers at Top Rank Blog. I’ve spoken to Dave (the ninja boss) many times and the amount of SEO he knows is scary!

7. http://www.sphinn.com – Sphinn is the equivalent to Digg for anything search related, the community has continued to grow over the last few years and although some recent technical decisions have caused some negative chatter – it still feels ace.

8. http://www.seobook.com – Aaron Wall has been in this business a long time and SEO Book provides great resources for SEOs around the world, I especially like the tool “Rank Checker” for snapshot views into ranking performance.

9. http://raven-seo-tools.com – The Raven site provides excellent SEO tools in the form of benchmarking, I used the site in it’s early days and it’s continued to get better and better – solid SEO blog too.

10. http://www.seo-browser.com – It’s important to know how search engines view your website, using SEO Browser can easy display what’s working and what’s not, very useful for performing site audits.

11. http://www.youtube.com/user/GoogleWebmasterHelp – A lot of good SEO questions have been answered by Matt Cutts and co through the video format on YouTube, great watching, even if you just want to find out what T-shirt colour Matt wears.

12. http://www.avivadirectory.com/strongest-directories – Link building from authority based directories does still hold SEO value – fact. Aviva Directory created this list a while a go but many listings are still valuable, decent bookmark to have.

13. http://www.google.com/insights/search – Alas another Google link but extremely important for identifying keyword opportunities on generic and local based levels, although take a pinch of salt with the data provided.

14. http://searchengineland.com – one of the most important search blogs online with great insights and in depth discoveries, it would be rude not to include these boys.

15. http://www.hobo-web.co.uk/seo-blog – This website has grown in authority and reputation over the last few years with much deserves. Constantly providing good SEO blog posts, free e-books and valuable insights, you’d be crazy not to be subscribed to this blog.

16. http://www.seounique.com/blog – I felt the need to add my blog on the list because I do run tests which may provide insights, I’m by no means like the others on this list but I’d appreciate the signup to my feed!

17. http://www.seroundtable.com – Great site for breaking SEO news stories or developments within the industry, plus they have great resources and a forum

18. http://www.bruceclay.com/blog – Solid SEO advice and one to keep on top of.

19. http://www.reelseo.com – Video SEO is something that’s been “around” for a while but never implemented to the full potential. Learn how to maximise this at this great site.

20. http://www.mybloglog.com – Essential for bloggers and online community builders.

21. http://technorati.com – I don’t think I need to explain why you should be aware of this site, news is information, knowledge is power.

22. http://econsultancy.com – An absolute must for any internet marketer. Community content, breaking stories, industry insights and a gazillion more things related to SEO.

23. http://www.seodesignsolutions.com/blog/ – I’ve been in contact with Jeffery for a long time and his blog has never stopped producing quality SEO insights, theories and discoveries over the last 20 months, I suggest those of you who aren’t signed up do so!

24. http://www.google.com/analytics – This is quite an obvious one really, analytics packages are the backbone to any good online marketing campaign as they show the results and RIO for campaigns. The positives include extended insights and functions, landscape benchmarking, in depth data breakdown and its free!

25. http://socialmention.com/ – Brands are becoming more important in natural search and from social aspects, this website helps you monitor brand mentions online through various channels, best thing about this site – it’s free, unlike competitors.

However around the beginning of June 2009 the results in one particular high value industry (travel insurance) changed overnight to match the results seen in the USA back in February. Sites that had been in the top 10 for years all of a sudden have been forced into the depths of pages 2 and 3 being replaced with well known high street brands. I have collected some data which some of you may find interesting if you work in this industry, even if you don’t it’s worth taking note because this sort of activity seems to be spreading.

This first table shows a snap shot of the top 40 websites that rank under the term “travel insurance”, the results are compared from the start of June to the 6^th of July. A green arrow indicates a positive increase, red showing a negative drop and a green plus symbol indicating a new entry.

• Some sites worth mentioning:

• Post Office moving from position 12 to number 1

• Tesco’s moving from position 20 to number 7

• Essential Travel, Go Travel Insurance and more massively dropping

The next diagram actually shows the rankings over the last 5 months for the term “travel insurance”. In this diagram you can clearly see that this update has hugely effected the landscape in this industry.

I have heard this is happening for other financial terms too such as “car insurance” and Job related terms

I ran my competitor reports this morning and have noticed page rank updates happening across the board.

I have noticed many increases and some decreases in some large brands. This will make it the second page rank of 2009 and the third page rank in nearly 6 months.

If you want to check your own page rank visit Dig Page Rank

Let me know what you guys find out