Google wants to see "stickiness" – here's how SpatialMatch will improve your site

You may have noticed a while ago how your searches on Google were starting to produce an inordinate amount of sites that were not exactly what you were searching for.

Instead of real estate information, you found bogus pages with nothing but Google links on them.

While the folks at Google had come up with a clever and revolutionary way to organize the web and help people find what they were looking for, there were plenty of folks who found a clever way to game the system and literally cheat their way to the top.

Don’t think the geniuses at Google didn’t notice this.

That’s why Google recently announced major changes in their algorithmic settings (that’s a mouthful), code-named “Panda” (that’s easier to remember).

And that’s why a content-generating lifestyle search tool that creates relevant content resulting in long user sessions such as SpatialMatch is very valuable to a Realtor.

Don’t worry, legitimate broker and agent sites are not in Google’s crosshairs. It’s the sites that are mainly designed to get high rankings or back-links but offer no real value at all.

Google engineers wrote “This update (in Panda) is designed to reduce rankings for low-quality sites—sites which are low-value add for users, copy content from other websites or sites that are just not very useful. At the same time, it will provide better rankings for high-quality sites—sites with original content and information such as research, in-depth reports, thoughtful analysis and so on.”

There’s no arguing, with its millions of home listings, businesses, schools, parks and other community amenities, SpatialMatch provides useful information.

But there’s more. Google also watches to see if that content is “sticky” meaning, how long do visitors stay on the site and read that content.

Wall Street Journal writer Amir Efrati stated that Google “did say that the company added numerous ‘signals,’ or factors it would incorporate into its algorithm for ranking sites. Among those signals are ‘how users interact with’ a site.”

Our own records show searching for a property, or business or other lifestyle amenity on the SpatialMatch tool embedded on a Realtor’s site can be very sticky.

According to our data, average time of use for a registered visitor is nearly 25 minutes. That’s huge, considering most people look at a web page for 3 seconds.

In essence, once you get home buyers’ hands on SpatialMatch, they’re off and running and having fun finding the ideal location for them. Or, you as a broker or agent, can have fun showing them how great that property is looking because not only is it a great house, but it’s also just down the street from a golf course/gym/Starbucks _____________ (fill in the blank).

When they find SpatialMatch useful, they are also more likely to come back, which results in repeat visitors, another important metric.

And, saving pages on SpatialMatch and then sending links out to those pages results in those very valuable back-links that Google still uses to determine the popularity of a site.

You probably heard the old saying, “Content is king on the web.” Well, some people apparently had a very loose definition of what exactly defines content.

So they got slapped hard and now the new saying is “Quality content is king.”

With the right tools such as a SpatialMatch, you will create your own quality content that both visitors and Google spider-bots will appreciate.

And you’ll distance yourself from those poor saps who tried to fool the world’s smartest search engine.

Here’s a valuable article from SEO Theory explaining Panda in-depth.

For a demo of SpatialMatch, click here.