New Category Suggestions

New categories too, on top of the new topics being created almost every minute that's been going on around here lately? At this rate and in no time at all, no one is going to be able to find what they're looking for. IMO, keep it whittled down to the basic subjects.

I'm going out on a limb and predicting that if we can get through the tax season, then we will have smooth sailing again by June 2013 and the auction scene should look a lot more like it did in 2009.

Yesterday, I did notice that the forum jumped 3 spots on Google from number 7 to number 4 for the search term "storage auction."

I tried what you suggested at 10:50 a.m. Pacific time, today, December 5, 2012 and the forum came up at #12 spot. That included 3 paid spots at the top.

Were you searching for storage auction or storage auctions? It makes a difference.

I'm sure the results vary from day to day and even by time of day within a day, but I am wondering if they also vary by WHERE the person requesting the search is from.

Absolutely they do. If I use a proxy to search for the term storage auctions, my Houston site/page shows up on the second page of Google. If someone in Houston searched for storage auctions, it appears #3 in the search results. Location is definitely a factor, even if you use private browsing. Other than the top 5 results, there is usually a lot of movement. Sites are getting crawled at different times, one site looses rank and another gains it. It's a never ending game of musical chairs until you become the top dog.

In other words, the paid spots at the top are probably oriented to the ip # or some such from the person placing the request.

Yes, Adwords advertisers set location boundaries on their ads. For example, StorageUnitAuctionList runs storage auction ads throughout the United States, whereas I target my ads to the 5 largest cities in Texas. The top 3 advertisements aren't considered part of the search engine rankings. The 1st natural listing would be the number one placement. If you use a specific city in the search term, for example "Houston Storage Auctions," your location is less relevant.

You SEO types might be able to speak to this.

Yeah, there are several rank checking tool out there that look for placement in the 3 major search engines. All of this really doesn't matter until we get the forum in the top 5 for all relevant search terms.

Just goes to show it takes a lot of work to get a website recognized by the masses.