Drupal, The Onion and Google

By Kobus on 7 Dec 2005 at 07:19 UTC

Due to just some plain sillyness, I did a search for "THE" using Google. Why anyone would search for something like that is quite beyond me, but I try to maintain my sanity with this excuse: I wanted to search for a word in the English language that is guaranteed to get a lot of hits - got 9.5 billion hits for the word.

However, whether or not Kobus is sane is not the reason for this post. Go ahead, do the search yourself. My results indicated that The Onion was on the top of the list for a Google search for the word "THE". Some others indicated that they saw The Onion as the third result, which is still impressive. A search just before I started to write this page indicated again that The Onion was first in the list for me (see screenshot in attachment).

Big deal, but, did you notice how the listing for The Onion is even higher up than The White House and higher than The Economist?

Get to the point, you say? Okay. The Onion uses Drupal. Whether this indicates Drupal's search engine friendliness or their hard work, or a combination of the two, I don't know, but simply knowing that such a popular site is using Drupal is quite heart warming!

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Comments

That probably just means

ixis.dylan commented 7 December 2005 at 11:21

That probably just means that more people link to The Onion than the other sites.

demolicious | leafish

But also fine SEO!

gateone commented 7 December 2005 at 12:35

True, however, The Onion is listed in Google including a subpage. That is propably due to Drupal's fine SEO :-)

browser...

narkoba commented 7 December 2005 at 13:40

hey man you're using the WRONG browser :-)
cheerio

you mean...

alexandreracine commented 10 December 2005 at 20:51

THE wrong browser :)

Alexandre Racine

www.gardienvirtuel.com Sécurité informatique, conformité, consultation, etc

www.salsamontreal.com La référence salsa à Montréal

Okay...

Kobus commented 13 December 2005 at 14:36

I get it... THE WRONG ^_"browser"... :-)

The reason why I still use this wrong browser is because I have a particular site that I work on that currently doesn't work in any other browser as expected. I am trying to convert it to XHTML+Voice, but then it will only work in Opera. So now what? :-)

-- Kobus

influence of domain name

cel4145 commented 7 December 2005 at 13:47

I wonder if it also has something to do wi the fact that, unlike those other sites, The Onion has "the" in their domain name?

That is indeed...

alexmarkley commented 7 December 2005 at 14:02

That is indeed what I have heard. If the search term appears in the URL, it's considered a search engine bonus. (The primary argument for pathauto, imho.)

Things like how long the domain name has been registered for also impact search results greatly. (They figure that domain names that are only registered for a year or something are probably spam.)

Alex Markley--
--A warehouse is just like any other house, except it turns EVIL under the light of a full moon.

incoming links

chx commented 8 December 2005 at 14:03

What really matters are incoming links. Now, if your site name and your URL also contain 'the' then so will the incoming links. Hence the high rank.
--
Read my developer blog on Drupal4hu. | The news is Now Public

--
Drupal development: making the world better, one patch at a time. | A bedroom without a teddy is like a face without a smile.

Search for news

NaX commented 7 December 2005 at 14:27

The Onion is a news website. So I searched for news. This is a very competitive search term with big companies with big wallets. And the onion is not on top, but wait the onion for me was found on the seconded page, in 19th positions.

Now that is more amazing for me because companies like bbc and cnn pay specialist to optimize their sites. Probably on a full time bases.

So that shows you that Drupal can compete.

Definitely true. Same experience here.

Marc Bijl commented 7 December 2005 at 16:26

Quiet often, in my stats applications (www.bbclone.de and www.wettone.com/code/slimstat for the interested ones :D), I can see visitors coming to my site after searching in Google for keywords that usually lead to loads of webpages. Visiting Google then, I notice that my site is in the top 10-20, even though I didn't have the least intention to be there with those keywords! Moreover, my site isn't finished yet :)

It's amazing, it's cool. It's simply fab... Drupal rocks!

___________________
discover new oceans
lose sight of the shore

Is this an attempt to be as

nathandigriz commented 7 December 2005 at 15:08

Is this an attempt to be as satire as the onion? I don't think Drupal has much to do with their google status. Didn't they just switch to Drupal not to long ago? They were not at the top before switching?

I'll have to comeback to this later. Right now there are some aliens at my front door asking for proof of God's existence. ;)

No satire!

Kobus commented 7 December 2005 at 15:28

Not meant as satire. I tried to humour the post up a bit, but it is in fact a serious post.

I just found it amazing, and I never claimed that it was because of Drupal, but it would be good if part of it was :-)

-- Kobus

Unfortunately not Drupal

georgehotelling commented 7 December 2005 at 15:15

The Onion was ranked first for "the" before they switched to Drupal, if my memory serves. Yeah, I was in the same boat as you (looking for a word that would guarantee a lot of results).

Interesting

Kobus commented 7 December 2005 at 15:30

Strangely enough, a search for the word "onion" also produces TheOnion at the top. :-)

Okay, enough jokes now. I got quite a mixed bag of responses here. Nice! But it was interesting to see a Drupal site (whether or not *because* of Drupal) at the top of the list for such a commonly used word!

-- Kobus

It's hard to say if it is because of Drupal...

Marc Bijl commented 7 December 2005 at 16:19

...but I think it's fair enough to say it is *easy possible with* Drupal.

Of course -so please, don't shoot- it's easy possible with any type of site; just like it has been easy possible for ages with all traditional type of sites (I mean, HTML coded). But...

There are a few guidelines to follow when building a website that needs to score in search engines. No one knows them for sure, but a few of them seem to be: keywords in url, keywords in website's title (head), keywords in description, keywords in headers (h1, h2, h3), keywords in menu items / links, and some more.

I think by using Drupal, it's features (like url aliasing, cron), and some extra modules (like nodewords module, gsitemap module), anyone can create a pretty solid base for a site that will score. I know, additionally one needs to get links from other relevant sites as well (and one needs to take care of all the other things no one knows for sure), but Drupal isn't too bad for a good start...

Is it?

___________________
discover new oceans
lose sight of the shore

exactly!

kors4r@www.zalety.linux-disc.com commented 8 December 2005 at 07:06

IMO - like you sad: " it's fair enough to say it is *easy possible with* Drupal"

let's search in google "allinanchor:the" - it gives the same results, like just "the" - that mines: in links to onion stay word "the", so google "things", that The Onion is good site about word "the" :)

for me, drupal is best cms, it gives nodewords.module, clean urls and cache,
I heard, that google likes small sites, whitout server-side scripts, by using drupal, in efect site looks, like "google-best-model" site

ps. sorry for my english

jiggonaut commented 7 December 2005 at 17:46

http://www.vaughns-1-pagers.com/internet/google-ranking-factors.htm this website describes very clearly the different factors that deternine the ranking. Most important is search term in URL, search term in header and of course number (and importance) of links to your page.