When I agreed to help Star Properties with their new website I thought it would be easy to make them appear first at Google for “Talent Oregon Real Estate“. Why? They are easily the most relevant site for that search being the (only?), first, and best Real Estate office here in Talent.

Maybe I’m expecting too much from Google, but what seems to be happening is that my blog posts are rising to the top for this term rather than Star Properties’ (more appropriate) Talent Oregon real estate site.

It’s somewhat reasonable for Google to wait until a site is verified as “non spam” before they rise to the top for highly targeted searches, though it is also a search defect as it keeps the best sites from appearing for that waiting period, sometimes called “sandboxing” by SEO peeps.

I think what this indicates is how significant blogs are becoming to the search experience. Google correctly assumes a blog is fresher and more relevant than most sites.

Note that under the local listings there is a “Star Properties” but it links to the wrong site – one that just mentions them but has incorrect email and old website info.   Google does have a procedure to correct this bad listing.