getting some recognition
  • chonakchonak
    Posts: 9,215
    Woo-hoo! Some improvements to the CMAA website are paying off in one area: search engine placement.

    A few weeks ago the CMAA home page was not showing up in search results for "church music", and I was starting to look for ways to improve our poor standing.

    Today we leapt onto the first page of Google results for that important search term, scoring the sixth and seventh positions in the list: one for musicasacra.com and one for the Sacred Music journal. I hope this will bring some additional visitors to the CMAA sites.

    Am I pumped or what?

    Thanks to friends who supported the effort by linking in!
    Thanked by 3Ben Kathy irishtenor
  • chonakchonak
    Posts: 9,215
    Also, this site is the #1 search hit for "church music forum".
  • Adam WoodAdam Wood
    Posts: 6,478
    I'm assuming you are doing your test searches on a neutral machine?
    Thanked by 1SkirpR
  • Adam WoodAdam Wood
    Posts: 6,478
    For anyone who cares, but doesn't know-
    the reason I ask is that Google (and probably other search engines as well, I think) change your results based on your own browsing history. One of the side-effects this has to make people think their own sites (which they visit often) rank higher than they actually do on "neutral" searches.

    I assume chonak knows what he's doing, but on the other hand- I'd hate to have not mentioned it in the off-chance he didn't know that or had forgotten.
  • CharlesW
    Posts: 11,978
    Google tends to also - librarian in me speaking - place sites at the top of the list which have had the most activity and which are searched for the most.
  • Protasius
    Posts: 468
    I just checked using a free proxy server, and for "church music" it appears as the fourth hit from top (strangely the first hit isn't even in english but german).
  • chonakchonak
    Posts: 9,215
    Good point, Adam: I'd noticed that Google treats searches differently depending on whether the user is logged in, so I've been testing from a browser not logged in.

    I hadn't tested from a different IP address, but it's possible to do that through an anonymous web proxy such as kproxy. I just did that now, and curiously, our position improved a notch!
  • Adam WoodAdam Wood
    Posts: 6,478
    I also like to use Tor Browser for this sort of thing- it guarantees Google has no idea who you are, and also shows you what outside-of-US search results look like.

    (That's why, @Protasius, the first link might not be in English.)
  • CharlesW
    Posts: 11,978
    I typed in the term, "church music" in several places to see how far down the list CMAA was.

    Yandex - 20th
    Bing - bottom of page 3 - lost track of the number
    DuckDuckGo - below 400 - I quit counting
    Ixquick - 69th
    Chrome - 8th
    Yahoo - 57th
  • chonakchonak
    Posts: 9,215
    Yes, the others have not caught up yet.

    Chrome would be using Google's search, and Yahoo uses Bing.

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