Wordpress vs Custom Test

[cambaby]

So I put up a couple of mainstream sites last week, same niche, using different text and images. I updated both once per day every day. One was using Wordpress 3 with some SEO plugins nothing fancy, the other was a custom CMS that Ive had for years that was optimized for SEO. Both on fresh new domains on different IPs no other promotion.

Google sent the Wordpress site 1202 uniques over the one week period, Google sent the custom CMS site 819 unique over the one week period.

I think Google likes Wordpress way too much.

[Jdoughs]

Not enough info to come to any conclusions.

Try 20-30 of them, preferably more.

They were same niche but everything else was different, pointing to the cms as the sole reason they had separate results wouldn't be a fair evaluation.

[cambaby]

Not enough info to come to any conclusions.

Try 20-30 of them, preferably more.

They were same niche but everything else was different, pointing to the cms as the sole reason they had separate results wouldn't be a fair evaluation.

Understandable and logical, curious have others done such a test?

[VladS]

Not concludent, it's the site structure, the HTML code the script is writing, be it a custom CMS or WP...

[cambaby]

Not concludent, it's the site structure, the HTML code the script is writing, be it a custom CMS or WP...

So you are saying that the actual HTML code of the website has a huge bearing on how much traffic Google may or may not send?

Say XHTML compliant etc.

[fris]

its well known that goog loves wp

[VladS]

So you are saying that the actual HTML code of the website has a huge bearing on how much traffic Google may or may not send?

Say XHTML compliant etc.

Of course. It's the site structure and code. A proper logical easy to follow for the bots site structure and a clean HTML code it's what matters for this aspect.

[cambaby]

Of course. It's the site structure and code. A proper logical easy to follow for the bots site structure and a clean HTML code it's what matters for this aspect.

I thought Google was made for humans not bots.

[itto]

I thought Google was made for humans not bots.

humans also benefit from a logical site setup, fast loading pages and good site structure.

[cambaby]

humans also benefit from a logical site setup, fast loading pages and good site structure.

For the record the custom cms actually loads faster than the wordpress site, not by much but measurable.

When you say "site structure" I think you mean underlying html code not the actual user interface?

[fris]

change the header of your custom script to add the wordpress version tagline see if it increases ;)

[cambaby]

change the header of your custom script to add the wordpress version tagline see if it increases ;)

Haha brilliant, I actually might try that.

[cambaby]

Oh I also noticed that my VIDEOS on the Wordpress site showed up in Google video search yet the ones on my custom CMS did not. WTF?

[fris]

Oh I also noticed that my VIDEOS on the Wordpress site showed up in Google video search yet the ones on my custom CMS did not. WTF?

video sitemaps maybe?

[VladS]

I thought Google was made for humans not bots.

Google needs to understand your site, to find your content, pages, etc... How do you help Google do that? Site design? Fancy graphics? It's the site structure and proper code.

[harvey]

it's quite proven Google will give preference to WordPress sites, I think the main reason is Google Blog Search.

This being said, WP can be well built in terms of SEO (and no offense, but I highly doubt your CMS is as well constructed as SEO based WP sites in terms of SEO) or it can be average, but it's pretty difficult to make it horrible unless you have a custom theme made by a retarded.

Just think about this, for starters: do you have an automated way to let all the main SE know you have changed your site? Do you have a perfectly built sitemap regularly sent to Google? Well, in WP it's almost default And that's just for starters, let alone semantic building, logical structure, taxonomy, and so on and so on and so on. And finally, the WP badge, which, as you have noticed, has some weight.