We were recently asked by a real estate agent to append his name to a local keyword he believed would help steer search engine traffic to his website. The realtor works in the Vancouver, BC market, so the keyword he wanted us to append was:

• Vancouver real estate [local search volume 3,600/month]

In this post, I’m going to explore the strategy, costs, and possible ROI of undertaking this real estate autocomplete marketing campaign.

Research Of Search Volume Needed

Before we get to the strategy, let’s take a look at what we need to accomplish.

Below are the suggestions I see when Googling “vancouver real estate” with my location set to Vancouver, BC.

As you can see, the top 4 suggestions have an average monthly search volume of between 210 and 480 according to Google’s keyword planner. This volume is from people in Vancouver, BC only.

So, to compete with these terms, you’re going to need a minimum search volume of about 350 per month to have a shot of having your name appear as a suggestion. What’s more, these 350 searches need to come from people located in Vancouver, BC with Vancouver, BC IP addresses, in order for it to show to people who are searching in that city.

If you’re able to achieve that local search volume, it’s certainly not guaranteed your name will appear in autocomplete because suggestions don’t appear in the order of highest volume.

Now, you might be thinking, “Why can’t I just have people all over the world searching this term? Why do they have to be in Vancouver?”

The answer is yes, of course, you could not worry about targeting Vancouverites with your search activity and you’d probably be successful in having your name appear in other cities, but NOT in Vancouver, which is where you want it to appear. For best results and to get the term to appear to potential clients in your city, you’re going to need to geo-target where your searches are being performed.

Local Google Autocomplete Strategy

Let’s move on to the strategy. The mission is:

Get 350 different people living in Vancouver, BC to search the keyword, “vancouver real estate firstname lastname.”

How are we going to target these people? What will their motivation be to perform the search and do it successfully so Google recognizes it as a completed search?

Here are some methods for targeting Vancouverites to complete the task of searching this keyword:

1) Run “gig” ads on Craigslist every day. I’ve done this. Some ads get flagged and removed. You’ll likely need to pay people $5 to complete the task. Direct them to a contact form on a website where they have to perform the search then answer certain questions to confirm they performed the search. Check for accuracy. Collect their email address and pay them via paypal – one at a time.

2) Use Crowdsourced sites. I haven’t seen a single crowdsourcing site that lets you geo-target workers. Microworkers lets you target by state, but volume is extremely limited. Mechanical Turk doesn’t have any geo-targeting. Crowdflower has state level targeting but you have to pay a huge monthly fee ($2,500) to use their service for this sort of task.

3) Use Facebook ads to get people to click a link for “vancouver real estate firstname lastname.” I’ve not tried this and am not sure FB would allow it.

4) Run cable TV ads that say, find us on Google by typing “vancouver real estate firstname lastname.” You could use direct mail to do the same thing.

5) Use proxies. Yes, you could try doing it with proxies, but that is extremely unreliable. Google’s gotten pretty good at blacklisting IPs it feels are suspicious. The best strategy is to get REAL PEOPLE making the searches for you, one at a time, completely at random.

6) Email Marketing. Start by importing all your contacts into Constant Contact and send them a newsletter with news and ask them to perform the search task for you. You won’t have to pay these people. As we recruit new people to do this, I’d create a 2nd email list and send them a monthly reminder to perform the task again to earn another $5.

I’m sure there are other clever methods for getting people to perform the search, but I think you get the idea.

Costs

To run this campaign, you’re going to have the following estimated hard costs:

• $5 per CL search X 350 searches per month = $1,750
• $150/ month for VA to place multiple CL ads per day, every day on CL
• $1,000 monthly ad budget (Facebook, other possible sites)

This estimate does not include management fees (paid to someone like me) for writing ads, setting up splash pages, managing the applicants, checking their work and paying the people who completed it successfully. It’s a lot of work and takes a lot of time. I’d charge $2,000/ month to run this campaign correctly, bringing the total monthly campaign cost to about $4,900 per month.

Assuming you get 350 people the first month (which is going to be tough – I once ran daily CL ads in Minneapolis and only attracted 2-3 people per day), you’ll need to keep advertising on CL every month. We’ll need to be aggressive with other campaigns in hopes of reaching the desired 350 searches per month from Vancouverites from the get go.

It’s likely that it would take 2-3 months to reach the target volume, which is actually a good thing – it appears more natural to Google.

ROI

Okay, let’s say we’re successful. After a 2-3 months, the suggestions now look like this:

Yippee!!

How many people do you think will click on your name now that it appears as a suggestion?

1%? 5%? 10%?

I’m conservative, so let’s say 1%, or 36 people each month click your name and are taken to your website.

How well does your website convert those clicks into new clients? 10%? 50%?

Again, I’m conservative, so let’s assume 10%. So, we’re looking at 3.6 new clients per month. Let’s round it up to 4 🙂

According to Global News in January 2014, the average price of a home in Vancouver, BC is $670,300, so a 3% commission would be $20,109. If you close all 4 deals in a month, you could earn $80,409 in monthly gross commissions.

That’s not too bad for investing $4,900 per month. It’s a return of over 16x your money.

Ongoing Challenges & Risks

The two biggest challenges of running a campaign like this are:

1. We don’t control Google – your suggestion may never appear
2. The suggestion might go away – predicting whether or not your suggestion remains in the top 4 where it is likely to be clicked is not a ‘for sure’ thing (see #1)

As mentioned above, to mitigate the risk, I’d continue trying to advertise and attract new Vancouverites each month, so I always had new people in the pool performing the searches.

I’d probably ask the realtor to email his own list from time to time asking people to perform the search. Even though they aren’t getting paid, some of them will do it, especially if you’re transparent and say, “Help me out, I’m trying to market my business in Google!”

I’d plan on a minimum 6-month commitment to get this campaign underway and then a 6-month maintenance campaign to help ensure your name sticks as a suggestion. At that point, we could look at ways to scale it back and reduce the monthly marketing cost.

Conclusion

There’s a lot of risk involved with this type of localized autocomplete marketing campaign for a realtor, but there’s also a potential HUGE upside if it works.

And there’s another advantage to this campaign, EVEN IF IT DOESN’T WORK AT ALL!

Consider that hundreds of people will now KNOW your name (since they searched for you) and if only 1 of them arbitrarily decides to do business with you, you could recoup a majority of your investment:

• 1 sale = $20,100 commission
• 6 month marketing investment = $29,400

If 2 of those “workers” choose you as their realtor or refer you to a friend, you’re easily in the black.

Other intangible benefits include:

• Increased traffic to your website, better for ranking organically for the keyword “vancouver real estate”
• Prestige/ego of seeing your name amongst suggestions like “market, bubble, and news.” Plus, you’ll likely be the ONLY agent with his/her name in “lights”

As you can see, it’s a campaign well worth considering!

Call 503-890-6663 if you’d like to consider an autocomplete marketing campaign like this for your real estate business.

I can’t say how long ago Bing started localizing its search suggestions, but I can confirm that suggestions are different based on the physical location of the user.

I stumbled upon this because we’ve been working on a client case for several months, trying to push a negative suggestion out. When I check his suggestions from my Portland, OR office, I don’t see the suggestion. But when I change my city in Bing to where my client lives, I see the unwanted search suggestion, still sitting there at the bottom.

Want To Change Your Bing Search Suggestions?
We can help push out unwanted, negative suggestions about you or your business.
Call 503-890-6663 for a quote.

So, while my client’s Bing search suggestions are cleaned up in every other city across the United States, they are still not fixed in the city where he lives and does business.

How To Change Bing Search Suggestions In A Local Market

To fix the Bing search suggestions in his city, we’re going to need to create positive search activity IN THAT CITY and there are three ways to do this:

1. Private proxies in that city. This is the preferred method because it’s easier and requires a lot less time and management. Simply find a group of private proxies (you’ll need at least 20 for low volume cases and many more for high volume cases) and perform searches for your positive keywords from those individual proxies for several months until the suggestions clean up.
2. Hire and pay people in that city. Place ads on Craigslist and hire individuals to perform the searches. This is a hassle for a couple reasons – one is that this type of work is a violation of Craigslist TOS, so your ads might get removed (I know from experience, its a real battle). The second is you’re hiring and managing a lot of people one at a time, so it takes a tremendous amount of work to get your outcome. I’ve done this and it’s effective at helping change the search suggestions in a targeted city, but the amount of work involved is ridiculous.
3. Use Geo-targeted Crowdsourcing. CrowdFlower is the only crowdsource site I’m aware of that allows you to geo-target searches and even they will only allow it at the state level, not the city level. So, it’s at least in the ballpark. The bigger issue is that CF TOS don’t permit you to do this sort of manipulation work without being a paying partner, which costs thousands per month. So, unless you’ve got the budget to afford that (and I don’t), you’ve got to choose one of the first 2 options listed above in order to change Bing search suggestions in a local market.

How To Change Your City In Bing

Go to Bing.com and click the gear icon in the upper right hand corner.

Under location, type in the city/state or zip you want and then click save. Now, you’ll see the Bing search suggestions as if you lived in the city you specified.

If you have unwanted suggestions in Bing, we can fix them for you. Call 503-890-6663 for a quote.

Update May 2015

We recently completed a 3-month test for a large business client who wanted to push a negative suggestion out of the top 4. The customer wanted to target 2 specific cities where he had offices, so the best way to do that is with proxies. We used HideMyAss, as it had hundreds of proxies in each of the cities he wanted to target.

We searched each of 12 terms in each city, 100 times per month from February through April. IP was changed for each search and cache was cleared. Searches occurred in batches on different days throughout each month.

Result

Good news is we were successful in fixing the client’s problem – in both cities the negative no longer appeared and this happened in the first month. Bad news is NONE of the 12 terms we were searching appeared as suggestions.

For me, this further confirms two things:

1. HMA is not a reliable fix for autocomplete
2. Sometimes just “shaking the tree” is helpful in pushing negative terms out.

Regarding #2, I’ve discussed this with associates who do autocomplete work and we agree that even though we don’t always see EXACTLY what we are looking for, the fact that we’ve put energy into fixing the problem is enough to force negative suggestions out.

Of course, if this client had waited and done nothing, he may’ve seen the negative go away on its own.  For big clients with lots of queued suggestions, it’s not at all uncommon for Google to randomly pull in and push out suggestions.

Below, is the original blog post, written in 2014.

---

Hide My Ass is a user-friendly proxy switching service with prices starting under $12 per month. It has thousands of unique IP addresses which makes it ideal for fixing AutoSuggest problems in Google and Bing. It also allows you to choose the location of your IP which is is excellent for fixing local Google autocomplete issues.

Or, at least it was an excellent tool until few days ago.

Hide My Ass IPs Blacklisted By Google

Around June 1, 2014, Google blacklisted all of the IP addresses in HMA and we suspect Bing is soon to follow. This means any keyword searches you do using a HideMyAss.com IP will not count. Further, we believe this algorithm update rolled back to around May 8, rendering any HMA search activity useless.

We have two recent case studies to back up our claim.

We are always testing our methods to make sure they are effective at changing Google autocomplete. In April and May of 2014, I had one of my team search Google.com 50 times each for:

• Mike Munter digs
• Mike Munter linkedin
• Mike Munter marketing specialist

We made sure each search was done from a unique IP address, so that over 2 months, we’d accumulate search activity equivalent to that of 100 different people all across the United States.

However, when Google refreshed it’s Autocomplete algorithm on May 26, 2014, I did not see the suggestions above appearing after my name. “Hmmm,” I thought, this is cause for alarm. Ordinarily, this would’ve been enough search activity and enough time for at least ONE of the suggestions to begin appearing.

I kept an eye on it and about a week later, I have proof of two cases where clients whose suggestions HAD BEEN FIXED, were now not fixed.

AutoSuggest Algorithm Update Nullifies Hide My Ass Search Activity

One of these is a reputation management client.

On Day 1 of his campaign, April 21, 2014, the client¹ had 2 suggestions appearing next to his name:

1. DUI
2. Pensacola FL

On May 8, 2014, we noticed our first  update with these suggestions appearing next to his name in this order:

1. Facebook
2. Twitter
3. Blog
4. DUI
5. LinkedIn
6. Pensacola FL

On May 26, 2014, the client’s situation was fixed and these were the 10 suggestions we saw when Googling his name:

1. Inventor
2. Twitter
3. Author
4. Latest news
5. Blog
6. Press Releases
7. Marriage
8. LinkedIn
9. Facebook
10. Patents Pending

On June 3, 2014, we noticed that the suggestions had reverted back and were very similar to what we saw on May 8, 2014. “Blog” and “Twitter” flip-flopped and the negative had returned.

1. Facebook
2. Blog
3. Twitter
4. DUI
5. LinkedIn
6. Pensacola FL

Since many of the searches we had done for this client were done using Hide My Ass, we now had further proof that Google had banned HMA IP addresses.

In another case we worked on, we had appended a brand name to lucrative keywords in order to help this client increase it’s visibility in Google. With this client, we also noticed that those positive brand suggestions were gone.

What we don’t know yet, is the severity of Google’s update. I believe it’s possible that Google could look at all searches done using HideMyAss IPs and blacklist those keywords. If Google does this, it could mean those terms will NEVER appear as suggestions. We’ll have to wait and see.

Conclusion

In the mean time, manipulating Google AutoSuggest just got a lot harder. We continue to streamline our systems, build our army of people, and ensure that each of our searches is done naturally. But since this work is a violation of Google’s TOS, it’s always going to be prone to algorithm updates.

If you have a problem with Google autocomplete or you don’t like the suggestions you see when you Google your name, we can help you fix it. Call 503-890-6663 for a quote.

 

 

¹ We adhere to strict confidentiality for all our clients and therefore are unable to share the screenshots or identifying client information. Keywords used in the example were substituted for the real keywords.

So, you’ve just invested in fixing Google’s suggestions about you or your business. You’ve got ten positive suggestions that represent you or your brand the way you want. Now, how do you keep the negative suggestions from coming back?

The quick answer is to keep up the search activity for your positive terms.

If you stop all search activity when your campaign ends, you run the risk of seeing your negative suggestion(s) return. Why does this happen? The answer in a moment. First, let me share how Autocomplete works.

Understanding How Google Autocomplete Works

Many clients who call us ask, “How did the negative suggestion(s) get there in the first place?”

If we assume there is no search activity for a term before it becomes a suggestion, then there is only one answer: Content.

Google makes a connection between your name and content posted about you online and adds it to the suggestions that appear when you Google yourself.

So, after your campaign has ended successfully, if you choose not to do ongoing monthly maintenance – in the form of search activity – you run the risk of the negative term coming back, just like it did in the first place.

Of course, you won’t see it right away because just as it takes a few months for Google to recognize our positive search activity, it also takes them a few months to recognize there’s NO search activity.

Over time, positive suggestions can drop off and negative ones can reappear.

How Often Do Negative Suggestions Reappear?

We’ve seen negative suggestions come back in about 50% of the cases we’ve handled.

We know you don’t want to keep paying month after month, but if you don’t maintain a minimal level of search activity that exceeds the search volume for your negative term(s), you do risk losing the impact of all the work we’ve done.

We recommend monthly ongoing search activity for all clients and we always recommend the absolute minimum we feel will be sufficient to keep your suggestions looking good.

Will Monthly Search Activity Guarantee My Suggestions Stay Fixed?

Of course, there is never a guarantee with Google. I’m seeing signs that they’ve already begun honing their autocomplete algorithm. I’ve seen plenty of cases recently where results not only change from one city to the next, but they’re also different from one hour to the next in the same city.

Yes, literally, I’ve checked on a client in the morning, seeing one set of suggestions, then by lunch, the same search pulls up different suggestions. By early afternoon, they’ve changed yet again, back to the original set.

Much like Google search results can change frequently, I believe this form of “Google Dance” can also have an impact on the suggestions we see – especially when search activity has ended.

Again, another reason why we recommend monthly maintenance.

Maintenance Costs

Depending on your particular case, expect monthly maintenance to cost anywhere from 10-50% of your usual monthly campaign price.

If you have questions about Google autocomplete and how it works, we’ve been studying it pretty closely and have handled a variety of local and national cases. Give us a call at 503-890-6663 for a speedy consultation and a quote.

Updated March 24, 2014.

I’ve been waiting for a hot news story to see how quickly Google’s autocomplete suggestions change and now we have one.

Justin Bieber was arrested early on the morning of Thursday, January 23, 2014 in Miami. The earliest dated online news report I could find for the story came from TMZ, which published it’s article at 10:14 am PST.

What’s interesting is that within 6+ hours, Google Autocomplete for “Justin Bieber” was already showing negative suggestions related to the incident, such as:

• mugshot
• jail
• prison
• arrest

But what’s more interesting is that within a week, all of the negative suggestions were gone!

Below, we’ll take a look at what happened – in various countries – and see if there’s anything we can learn from the data.

Justin Bieber Autocomplete For United States

Autocomplete Results – January 23, 2014

Of course, the story has gone viral and by the time I checked Google autocomplete results for Justin Bieber, “mugshot” was already one of the top 4 suggestions. So, it took less than 6.5 hours for enough content and search activity to cause Google’s autocomplete algorithm to update in the US.

Autocomplete Results – January 30, 2014

In Miami, 1 week later, the negative suggestions are gone. But what’s interesting is that 30 minutes ago, I still saw “mugshot” as a suggestion in Portland, OR, New York, NY, and Houston, TX. I did not capture a screenshot. Now, as I check all those cities, the results are exactly the same as Miami, shown below.

Why Did “Mugshot” Become A Suggestion?

The image below is a screenshot of Google Keyword Planner data for all keywords that appear in the suggestions above – for both January 23rd and January 30th. The numbers at far right under “Avg. monthly searches” are a 12-month average of the monthly search volume for each term.

If we didn’t know better, we might think “justin bieber mugshot” is the 8th most popular search term over the last year. By looking at the data above, we might assume Google would ALWAYS show “mugshot” as one of Justin Bieber’s suggestions.

But we know this isn’t the case, since the suggestion was gone within a week and 2 months later, the “mugshot” suggestion is STILL gone. Let’s take a closer look at the data:.

“Justin Bieber Mugshot” Search Volume

Wow! Look at that spike in traffic from 110 searches per month in December to 673,000 searches per month in January. As the story died down, February dropped down to 27,100. It appears as though this surge in search activity is directly related to the term “mugshot” appearing as a suggestion in January.

The massive drop in February probably explains why we no longer see “mugshot” as a suggestion in the United States.

Let’s look at a few other terms.

“Justin Bieber Twitter” Search Volume

“Justin Bieber Twitter” appeared as a suggestion both on January 23, January 30, and as of March 24, it is still a top suggestion. Although search volume for “twitter” spiked a bit in January, you can see that it’s seach activity is far less prone to the traffic fluctuations we saw with “mugshot.”

With a 12-month average of 90,500 searches per month, it’s the 4th most searched term on our list and it’s consistency is likely why we see it appearing so frequently.

“Justin Bieber Instagram” Search Volume

Like “twitter,” “Justin Bieber Instagram” also appears as a suggestion on January 23, January 30, and March 24.  That’s because it’s almost a carbon copy of “twitter,” with 90,500 per month over the last year and very little fluctuation from one month to the next.

Search Volume For Other Terms

“Songs” was not a suggestion on January 23rd, but it was on January 30 and it still is on March 24. At 110,000 searches per month over the last year, it’s tied with “and selena gomez” as the #1 suggestion on our list.

Why Isn’t “Mugshot” A Google Suggestion Any Longer?

When we look at the monthly search activity for all of the suggestions that appear in January and March 2014, the spike in search activity for “Justin Bieber mugshot” stands out like a sore thumb.

It makes sense that the term would’ve appeared as a suggestion while the story was hot and as soon as the story died down, so did the search activity. When that happened, the suggestion disappeared, too.

Conclusions

I’d surmise the following from this data.

A dramatic surge in search activity can cause a term to appear as a suggestion in Google, but unless that search activity is maintained, the suggestion will disappear. Of course, this assumes that there are enough other search terms with adequate annual search volume to overcome the spike for the negative term.

I’d theorize that a client with a sudden surge of activity for a negative term might see similar results: If they have plenty of other positive terms with high levels of monthly search activity, the negative term may disappear quickly after the story dies. Unfortunately, many of the clients we work with have very low search volume, so a negative spike can be much longer lasting.

If you’re interested in going further, I’ve broken out Justin Bieber’s suggestions in different countries when the story broke in January 2014. Below is that information.

Justin Bieber Autocomplete for UK

United Kingdom monthly search volume for Justin Bieber: 673,000

Autocomplete Results – January 23, 2014

It’s interesting to see the suggestions for the UK are different. I’m guessing that because many Englander’s were awake when news of the story first rolled in, they began feverishly searching the internet looking for details.

Justin Bieber “jail”, “prison”, and “arrest” already populate the suggestions.

Autocomplete Results – January 30, 2014

Here’s how it looks in the UK 1 week later. Notice that ALL THREE negative terms are now gone.

 

 

Justin Bieber Autocomplete For Australia

Australia monthly search volume for Justin Bieber: 201,000

Autocomplete Results – January 23, 2014

In Australia, citizens were either going to bed when the story broke, or they just don’t care about Justin Bieber. Either way, there hasn’t been enough search activity “Down Under” to update the suggestions.

 

Autocomplete Results – January 30, 2014

And here’s how it looks 1 week later in Australia. No changes.

 

 

Justin Bieber Autocomplete for Japan

Japan monthly search volume for Justin Bieber: 40,500

Autocomplete Results – January 23, 2014

Lastly, I checked google.co.jp to see what how the news affected Google autocomplete in Japan. Here, we see results more inline with the United States.

Autocomplete Results – January 30, 2014

One week later, “mug shot” and “jail” have disappeared in Japan, too.

 

Total Worldwide monthly search volume for Justin Bieber: 11.1 Million

What Can We Learn From This?

1) Clearly, Google Autocomplete can update very quickly, if there’s enough content and high search activity. We won’t know how much search activity for the negative terms until Google Keyword Planner data is updated. This usually occurs in a couple of months.

Three of the four countries I checked showed at least one of the negative terms related to the story within 6.5 hours of it being reported. That’s fast!

We also see how quickly negative terms can fall out of Google Autocomplete, as just one week later, all 4 countries we checked had no negative suggestions. Keep in mind, of course, we are dealing with an international superstar; we don’t see this much volatility with our clients.

2) Usually when we do work for a client, we ramp up search volume for positive terms starting at a modest level. Most low volume cases take about 4 months to see changes. This conservative approach has worked well.

The fact that autocomplete can change so quickly, might suggest that we can get faster results for clients if we speed up the search activity. Further testing is needed on this before we roll it out, as we need to consider how much content is available (definitely a factor) and we don’t want to set off a Google filter that would cause the suggestion never to appear.

More data to come as time passes and the story ages.

If you would like a quote on correcting a Google autofill problem, please call 503-890-6663.

If you’re only seeing four suggestions when you start typing a search phrase in Google, you probably have to change your preferences to never show Google instant results.

With “Always show Instant results,” you see this:

 

With “Never show Instant results,” you see this:

 

It’s also interesting to see that in addition from going from 4 suggestions to 10 suggestions, we can see that the predictions Google serves up are different.

How To See All Ten Google Autocomplete Suggestions

If you want to see all ten of Google’s suggestions, go to https://www.google.com/preferences and select the option “Never show Instant results” under the Google Instant predictions section.

 

Don’t forget to scroll to the bottom and hit the blue SAVE button. This will save your settings for whenever you sign in to your account.

 

 

Now, you’ll see all 10 suggestions (if there are 10), when you perform your search queries.

I couldn’t find data to tell whether Google Instant is on or off by default or what percentage of people turn if off entirely. See Google’s official statement of use on Google Instant.

Have a problem with Google autofill? Call 503-890-6663 for a quote!

For those of us working to influence Google Autocomplete, Mechanical Turk is a great tool to use. You can easily create an account, upload your .csv file and have random people from all over the United States (or the world) perform your Google searches for you.

If you’ve done any research on how to change Google Autocomplete, you know that diversity is key. The fastest path to success is to get your searches done from as many different computers as possible.

One would hope that Mechanical Turk would be a great help in this effort, but based on a couple of tests I’ve run recently, it’s not ideal. Let’s look at the data.

Test Batch #1

I uploaded a list of 18 unique keywords I wanted searched. Each unique keyword search is called a HIT and by default, MTurk only allows 1 person to work on any one HIT. So, it’s possible that 1 person could perform all 18 searches, since each one is a unique HIT.

In my test batch, I required that each keyword be searched 10 times. So, worst case, I’d get 10 different people performing all 18 searches. Best case, I’d get 180 different people searching for a keyword 1 time.

My result was that I got 21 different people to perform the searches. I was hoping for a little more diversity.

Test Batch #2

On my 2nd test batch, I uploaded the exact same .csv a day later – 18 unique keywords X 10 searches per keyword. Again, the worst case scenario would be I’d get 10 people performing the searches; best case would be 180.

In this batch, I only had 14 different people performing the searches. Not very good.

When I merged the two result files together, I counted 33 different people performed the searches. Thus, only two people worked on both batches.

Test Batch #3

On a 3rd batch, I uploaded 11 keywords as unique HITs and required 15 searches for each keyword. Best case, I’d get 165 unique searchers – worst case, I’d get 15.

I fared much better in this instance, getting 36 different people to perform the searches.

Additional Thoughts On Mechanical Turk & Google Autocomplete

There are some other limitations to Mechanical Turk that make it not an ideal solution for trying to change Google’s suggestions.

1. Batches are completed all at once. I’m not a developer, so I upload batches under the standard interface. In this interface, I have not found a way to “drip” the HITs over time. So, it’s likely that all of your searches are going to occur within a day or two, as opposed to being spread out more naturally. Not ideal.
2. Not location specific. More and more, Google is localizing autofill results based on where you search from. For instance, if you Google something in Portland, Oregon, you might see entirely different suggestions if you Google it from New York. Mechanical Turk only allows you to specify workers by country, not by city.
3. Can’t collect geographic information. I track every single search our team performs, so I know when it was done, where it was done and what was searched. Unfortunately, Turk’s TOS do not allow you to collect ANY identifying information on workers. I tried adding a question, “What is your city and state?” and my HIT was rejected. Without city/state information, my reporting data is incomplete.

Conclusion

The upside to Mechanical Turk is that it works. Once you’ve designed your HIT template, it’s easy to upload a task. Of course, you’ll have to spend time doing setup for each client, in order to make sure the search is performed in a way that Google recognizes it.

The big downside is you can’t identify where your searches are coming from. This is a big problem, since I believe that Google is going to continue to integrate localized suggestions in the future, even more so than it already has.

We’ve seen how local search results have become much more local in the last 12 months, I suspect that highly location-specific autocomplete is not far behind.

We use Mechanical Turk on a limited basis to help get search volume and a little diversity, but to rely on it as the only method for changing Google’s autocomplete would be risky.

I’d be interested in hearing feedback from others who’ve tested it to change Google suggestions. What kind of diversity did you get? Can anyone say whether the developer API allows you to geo-target or drip searches over time?

If you have negative suggestions in autocomplete and need help, please call 503-890-6663 for a quote to get it fixed.

 

 

In a few rare cases, I’ve seen Related Searches appear ABOVE the organic search results. Generally, we expect to see them at the bottom, but in doing some research for a client today, I noticed 3 related searches to “foreclosure attorney” appearing above the SERPs.

 

I’ve also seen this happen one time with an autocomplete client I consulted with. In their case, two related searches appeared right after they started their campaign and they are still there – 6 months later.

Why do Related Searches Appear Above Organic Search Results?

Great question. In the only case where I witnessed this happen, I believe it was because the client did too many searches with the client’s name all at once. This caused Google to pull a couple of the related searches from the pool at the bottom and place them at the top.

They were trying to influence autocomplete and they just hit it too hard. But that’s just a guess.

You might also enjoy reading our case study on how we fixed Searches Related To for a recent client. Call 503-890-6663 if you would like to learn more.

Great question.

And for now, it’s one that Google appears to give a somewhat clear answer on. The suggestions we see in autocomplete come from two things:

1. Content
2. Search activity

The screenshot above is from https://support.google.com/websearch/answer/106230?hl=en.

What Google is telling us is that if there is no content relevant to your search activity, then the algorithm is less likely to update it’s suggestions for the searches you’re performing.

For example, if we were searching for the term “Joe Smith Lollipops,” it would help if Google had indexed pages with “Joe,” “Smith,” and “Lollipops” on them. In my opinion, it would help even more if all three of those words were in the title of at least one web page, as the title of a page is a strong indicator to Google what that page is about. Without relevant content, it’s less likely that Autocomplete will change.

So, looking at this from a reputation managment perspective, if you want to push out a negative suggestion, you’re going to need both search activity and content that is both about the same topic.

Creating Relevant Content For Autocomplete

For clients who don’t have a strong presence online, it can be difficult to come up with enough unique search terms to make your campaign successful. Here’s how you can create the content yourself (or we can do it for you for an additional fee).

From our example above, if Joe Smith wanted to append the word “lollipops” as a suggestion in autocomplete, I would recommend creating at least one great web page all about “Joe Smith Lollipops.”

The easiest way to do this is to setup a blog using free software at WordPress, Blogger (need to be logged into your gmail account), or Weebly. I’d claim joesmithlollipops.wordpress.com and then I’d write 500 words of unique content about Joe’s love for lollipops or how Joe always gave his grandchildren lollipops when they visited, or whatever. It’s not rocket science, it just has to be unique.

This is sort of a silly idea of how you could go about creating content that’s going to be relevant to your searches, but I use it to demonstrate my point. This isn’t to say that you can change Google autocomplete WITHOUT content; maybe you can. I’ve seen other people do it. I just haven’t invested the time to do it myself.

How Did The Negative Suggestions Get There In The First Place?

Since Google is telling us CONTENT + SEARCHES = SUGGESTIONS, it begs the question, “If no one did any searches, how did the negative term get into autocomplete in the first place?”

I’ve seen many cases where clients have had ZERO search volume for their negative term and yet, it appears as a suggestion. In my case study that compares what we see in autocomplete and how it compares to the data in Google’s Keyword Planner, I make the conclusion that “either the keyword planner data that reports search activity is wrong,” or “content alone can cause a new suggestion to first appear in autocomplete.”

My personal feeling is if you have low search volume for your name or business name, it’s much easier for new content alone to influence the suggestions about you. Names and businesses with higher volume are going to adhere more closely to Google’s indication that content plus search activity equals autocomplete suggestions.

We could theorize this all day long, but in the end, all you want is for the negative stuff to go away, regardless of how it got there. And that’s what my team and I help you do.

Conclusion

I believe search activity is more important than content, when it comes to Google autocomplete. I’ve seen mulitple cases like the goofy example above using “Joe Smith Lollipops,” where one, well-written, unique, optimized piece of content combined with adequate search activity has caused autocomplete to include the term(s) we were searching for.

In my case study about a client who’s negative suggestion and home city started with the same two letters, we had to create a series of blogs for terms beginning with “Du—“. No matter how silly those blog titles were, once we performed the searches and accumulated enough volume, Autocomplete updated to include them as suggestions next to the client’s name.

Google is constantly updating it’s algorithm to modify what we see in it’s organic search results and I suspect they may one day modify how their autocomplete algorithm displays suggestions. Let’s hope they tell us when/if they do. For now, we’ve got a decent understanding of how it works, and that makes it fairly straightforward how we can change it.

If you have questions about the suggestions that appear next to your name or business name, give me a call at 503-890-6663. Your consultation will be confidential and I’ll give you an idea of what it will cost and how long it will take to change the suggestions next to your name.

 

 

 

You bet it does! As Google becomes more localized in it’s search results, the suggestions we see from one city to the next can also be different.

We make it a practice of checking a few different cities – including the one where you do business – to see if Google’s autofill is the same.

If the suggestions are the same in a variety of different cities, our work is easier. All we have to do is have our team perform the necessary searches, no matter where they are located.

If, however, the autocomplete results are different in your city, than they are in another city, than it’s probably going to take a number of localized searches to ensure your campaign is a success within your home city.

How To Check Google Autocomplete Suggestions In Different Cities

Thankfully, Google makes it as easy as 1-2-3 for us to see the suggestions from one city to the next. Follow the steps below the image.

1) Go to Google and under the search bar, click “Search tools” (#1 in the image).

Note – You won’t see this option if Google has just been launched and is in the center of your screen. You have to perform a dummy search and hit enter. Then the Google search box will move to the top of your screen and you’ll see the “Search tools” option.

2) Next, click the little downward arrow (#2 in the image).

3) Then enter your location (#3 in the image) and hit “Set.”

Now, you can see how your Google suggestions appear to users in that city. It’s becoming more common to see different suggestions between the cities where you do business and cities outside of your market.

For example, a real estate investor who flips houses in Los Angeles and San Diego may see that “scammer” is the 1st Google suggestion in those cities, but in Chicago, Boston, and Seattle, “scammer” is the 5th term. This is a clear indication that search volume may be different for the different cities, online content may be geo-targeted, and it’s going to require a specific campaign made up of search activity in Los Angeles and San Diego in order to change those local results.

I know it’s a bit confusing, but we work with you to make sure you get the results you want to see in the cities that are important to you and your business.

How This Effects Your Autocomplete Campaign

Our search team is spread out all over the world. We have pretty good coverage and we’re always growing; however, if your Google auto-suggestions are different in different cities, then we have to account for that.

If you wind up working with someone else besides me to help with your problem, make sure they are accounting for localized suggestions; otherwise, it’s possible your autocomplete problem could be fixed in every city EXCEPT the one where you live and do business.

Certainly, it’s more time consuming to target searches for you in a local market. It requires careful planning to ensure proper search volume AND proper location, in order to get the results you want to see in your home city. If needed, we ramp up with additional team members who live in your target city, to make sure you get the search activity where you need it and achieve the results you desire.

You can also join the effort by following our Autocomplete Fix – DIY instructions. Your family, friends, colleagues, and volunteers can aid our effort. Every little bit helps.

Can Autocomplete “Go Local” At Any Time?

Yes. I’ve seen at least two cases where when we began a campaign for a client, there autofill suggestions were the same in multiple cities. However, a couple months into the campaign, we noticed different suggestions in different cities.

Usually what happens is if a client lives or does a lot of business in a certain city (or cities), they are more prone to seeing different suggestions in those cities then they are in the rest of country.

We’re working on a case like this right now where we’ve fixed the client’s negative results in every city EXCEPT the two major cities where he does business. So, we’ve concentrated our efforts with people who live in those cities to ensure that that we build enough search activity to knock out the negative suggestion.

Certainly, “going local” creates much more work, particularly for high volume clients – as you need to have a diverse base of people within a city performing your positive searches on a regular basis. We’ve got good coverage in most major cities and we’re building our network each month, so that we can have greater control.

Have an autocomplete problem you need fixed? Give Mike a call at 503-890-6663 for a private consultation.