Mark Vang talks about embedding your Google Calendar on your site.
Mark Vang talks about embedding your Google Calendar on your site.
I'm of two minds about embedding my calendar.
What do you think? Views? Pros? Cons? Bottom line: will you do it?
Of course, I'm stoked that he chose The Midweek Zap as an example.
Thanks Mark!
#googlecalendar #websitetips #embedgooglecalendar
Originally shared by ****
Can Google Calendar events be used to influence organic search results?
This morning I was checking search results for some of the HOA Calendar social channels and picked the Midweek Zap event produced by Zara Altair for a quick test.
I figured the unique name would be easy to spot and it was. There were lots of results for this popular show.
On page 4 of the results I spotted a blog post I wrote titled: "Google Plus Business Page - The Swiss Army Knife of Google+"
http://markvang.com/content/google-plus-business-page-swiss-army-knife-google
Puzzled by why it would even show up in a search for "MidWeek Zap Hangout" I took another look at my post and noticed that I embedded the Google Calendar for the HOA Calendar in the blog post as an example of a Google product that is enabled when you create a password for a page.
The "Midweek Zap" event was indexed from the embedded calendar and created a link between that event title and my blog post in search.
Of course, this wasn't the intended result but I think you can see how quickly this feature could be turned into an exploit.
Create events with search friendly titles and use an embedded calendar to drive site visits from organic search.
Keyword stuffing via calendar event titles.
I'm not sure if this is really practical, and my blog doesn't have a lot of traffic to create any significant data to study but from what I've seen... if something is easy and it looks like it can be used to game the system... sooner or later it will be exploited.
I can see the cheezy webinars now... Get your site on PAGE 1 of search using Google Calendar! Woot!
I think Google should stop indexing event titles in embedded calendars. What do you think?
#googlesearch #googlecalendar
I wont be embedding my calendar because it doesn't make sense with my work flow. I use my calendar heavily to keep me focused and organized, and making that public just wouldn't have a purpose. to anybody viewing it.
ReplyDeleteMark Vang's find here is interesting, and I agree with him that Google should close this down, or we're going to see Google's search results get even worse.
Oh, and he made a good choice of show's for his example. \m/
Phil Bowyer I use my calendar very heavily as well. The main reason I would not embed.
ReplyDeleteAnd, yes, closing down would be a great filter.