Google searches: “page four software” and PageFour
About 6 weeks ago, I noticed a gradual increase in Google traffic to this site. Without revealing precise figures, I’m getting about 4-6 times more hits from Google today than I was only a few months ago.
It’s always difficult to pin down the precise reason for such an increase, as many different factors come in to play. Back in April, I redesigned the site from the ground up. The old site - in all its green ugliness - was the first website I ever designed, and it suffered from many of the more common website design mistakes: poor wording in page titles, no use of header tags (h1, h2, h3 etc.), static content…
It was not designed with search engines in mind, and the traffic reflected this. The redesign addressed these issues, as did pulling the PageFour blog into the site. To this day, I have no idea what possessed me when I decided that hosting the blog under a separate domain was a good idea.
Most of the ‘new’ Google traffic is very relevant to PageFour, with search values such as “creative writing software” and “software for writing novels” appearing regularly. What has surprised me though, is the high number of people searching for “page four software” rather than “PageFour.” This breaking of the name in two is a VERY recent phenomenon, and I don’t know where or how it began.
Someone, somewhere, must be writing about PageFour in this way, or speaking very slowly when they talk about it, pausing after the ‘page’ to catch their breath before moving on to the ‘four.’ I’m convinced of this, because these searches only began two months ago. To date, I have had no luck in tracking them down.
The title of this post is a signpost to Google - just in case any of these potential PageFour users have difficulty finding me.
By far the most common ‘useless’ search value is a variation of “strikeout shortcut”, with MS Word often appearing alongside. I can’t help but feel there’s a message here for the Microsoft Word development team.
On a lighter note, I’m always amused to come across a search value such as “pagefour license crack.” Those cracks may or may not be out there, but if they are, does anyone really believe they’d be hosted on the PageFour site?
June 12th, 2007 at 7:28 pm
your blog is very technical and I haven’t read most of your posts but this one does make a very good observation! I will be moving to wordpress soon and I am thinking of the similar issues - I called my site ‘Interesting Observations’ but the url is fresh-perspectives!! why i did this - have no clue!!
tc and kit
PS: bounced here from darren’s site of course..:)
June 12th, 2007 at 7:57 pm
I‘m a great fan of Wordpress Pearl. It’s built with SEO in mind, so all you really have to worry about is creating the content and choosing a good post title. On top of that, the themes are fully (if not easily) customisable, so they can fit into an existing website seamlessly. The current Wordpress release makes importing a blog from Blogger a piece of cake, and as you have your own domain name (i.e. not blogspot), you shouldn’t lose or upset any of your existing readers.
From taking a look at your blog though, I’d be inclined to say that “Fresh Perspectives” is a stronger title than “Interesting Observations.”
June 13th, 2007 at 2:48 am
Darren, I think the whole PageFour thing is just people getting used to it. It is natural to type in “page four” instead of “pagefour” in a search.
I honestly thought it was a typo when I first read about the application in an on-line review and I am probably just as guilty of typing in “page four” as any newbie out there.
Course, now I know better
Not until I came to the site and saw it’s really called “Pagefour” have I been able to make the switch and refer to it by its’ proper name.
June 13th, 2007 at 11:47 am
Maybe I’m just being paranoid Aaron. I monitor every reference to PageFour, whether on websites, blogs, or forums, so I pretty much know whenever someone is talking about it online, and they all seem to use the whole word.
That’s why I’ve been scratching my head so much lately over the ‘alternate’ spellings.
June 14th, 2007 at 12:30 am
Hi, I think I was one of those who searched for Page Four, and to satisfy your curiosity, I just took time to research where I have seen the separated form:
http://www.outlinersoftware.com/messages/viewm/1903
I should know better, since I have an older version installed for evaluation, but once I have seen the message above, I was reminded to check for updates, guess what….used Page Four instead of PageFour.
In fact, it was probably impossible to find it using Page Four alone, so it was necessary to restort to longer search phrase…. “page four software”
June 14th, 2007 at 10:16 am
Thanks for that. I’ve just checked out the outlinersoftware discussion board, and indeed it is broken in half. The problem, as you found, is that the two words ‘page’ and ‘four’ are just too common for this site to reach the Google front page without help.