Google “Showing results for” Trick to Gain Traffic

I used to play a little game where I would keep an eye on breaking news stories then optimise a new post targeting phrases that I thought people would use when searching for more information on the story.

It was surprising how much traffic you could generate by doing this but I never really used it for financial gain other than having links to some of my other sites or occasionally putting AdSense in the posts.

2020 will be the year when I start doing this more and also expanding on the idea.

One little trick that I picked up on a long time ago is when using recent topic search phrases Google would sometimes use the “Showing results for” feature.

Google “Showing results for” tends to happen when Google thinks the search phrase you are using is incorrect and they then suggest a search phrase they assume you meant.

When I saw this happening on popular search phrases that were too competitive to rank for in their own right I would create a post optimised for the Alternative search phrase, and if this was less competitive rank high in Google for it and pick up all the traffic πŸ˜‰

Nice to see the old “Google β€œShowing results for” Trick to Gain Traffic” still works

2020 has started with a great example of this

Prince William has launched a campaign to repair the earth in the next decade and called it Earthshot Prize.

Unfortunately (or some consider fortunately) Google doesn’t yet understand that Earthshot Prize is a legitimate search phrase and I noticed that when searching for it Google returned “Showing results for Earth Shot Price

Update: 09/10/20 – Google finally realises EarthShot Prize is the correct search phrase, it took them over 9 days though πŸ™‚

Bingo! I thought, a perfect way of testing if my little “Google “Showing results for” Trick” still works.

I quickly optimised a page on UKSBD for the phrase Earth Shot Price, pinged it in to Google and went to bed.

I got up this morning 01/01/2020 to see not only was Google still displaying “Showing results for Earth Shot Price” when searching for “Earthshot Prize” but I was number 1 πŸ™‚

I checked my Stats to find over 700 visitors in the past few hours.

This is a perfect example of how using a little idea can generate lots of traffic from Google

What’s the point? – you may say

I could put AdSense on the page and benefit from the traffic, but with this kind of story I didn’t really feel that was the correct thing to do, so instead linked direct to the Official Earthshot Prize website here – https://earthshotprize.org/.

The main real reason why I do this is for fun and to test Google πŸ™‚

I doubt this will work for long as Google will soon establish that Earthshot Prize is the correct search phrase due to all the searches being performed for it – It’s fun whilst it lasts though and people get to the genuine site from mine anyway πŸ˜‰

Want to know more about the SEO tricks I have picked up in nearly 20 years in the SEO Industry?

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Google "Showing results for" Trick to Gain Traffic

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