20 things about Google - Thing 09 - What is beautiful to Google?
Take a look at this picture of a whale. I do not think it would be controversial to say that most of us would describe this as beautiful, magnificent, awe-inspiring and so on. If this image was put up straight from Getty Images (which is where it came from), it would have the exciting title of ThinkstockPhotos-588367274.jpg. That doesn’t tell Google (or anyone else) what it is in even the most basic terms.
Let’s say that we remembered my second blog (Google is Blind) and used our Content Management System (CMS) to change the Alt and Descriptive Tags for this image to something like “Whale rising out of the water, it still doesn’t really convey how beautiful / majestic this image really is.
This got me thinking about what does Google consider to be beautiful. After all, Google is blind, cannot hear, has no sense of smell, all Google can do is look at the source code that is behind a web page and look at the content of that page. How does Google make value judgements?
Whilst thinking about this, I started thinking about one of my clients: James Little of Little and Lampert Pianos. I mentioned them in my last blog. They are both blind and they import used Yamaha pianos from Japan, taken them apart and completely rebuild them. They do it brilliantly and their beautiful pianos are in homes around the county.
The owners of the pianos appreciate how beautiful they look, how beautifully they play and how beautifully they sound. They do not, one the whole, know why this is. Little and Lampert do and the videos on their website demonstrate their high level of expertise in what they do. They literally get into the nuts and bolts of each piano and make sure every aspect of it is working at its best. That doesn’t leave anything to chance, they know that by never cutting corners, every piano they sell will stand up to the closest of scrutiny.
The way Little and Lampert assess a piano is by pulling it apart and examining every aspect of it. This is exactly what Google does with a website. Google isn’t swayed by beautiful images but I know for a fact it is swayed by beautiful code!
If you or your web designer buys a template from one of the many template shops on the internet, I can be confident in saying that it will contain both Coding and Accessibility errors. It won’t be possible to fix these errors unless you really know your code and if you really know your code you wouldn’t be buying a template anyway!
So there you are. If your website has few coding and accessibility errors (or better still, none at all), it will be beautiful to Google. Google will show its appreciation by giving you better rankings than your competitors. Make yourself beautiful to Google!
If you would like us to give your website a makeover, why not give us a call on 01243 776399?
Clive Loseby
Access by Design
