This is the first of a few experiements I have planned. This will be written up (not too long, only covering the basics), and published when (if any) results show up in Google.

I set up two pages on a site, both identical. They both have a “secret” word in them, that is made up and no google results at the moment. They are both linked to from http://www.klikgamers.co.uk/.

page1.php has the word in bold

page2.php has the word in strong.

They both also have an image each, just as an extra test to see what (if) gets higher in Google Image Search (GIS).

Google search results as of Sept 2nd 2006:

Google normal search result for the keyword:

Google image search result for the keyword:

So we’ll see what happens when the pages gets indexed. Is bold or is strong more important. Note: All variables have been kept the exact same. The only differences are the order in which the pages were linked on the previous page (page1.php is linked first, page2.php is linked on the next line down) – this couldn’t be helped, and the date that they were last modified will also be different. Hopefully this won’t bias the results…

Last updated: 02 09 06. This won’t be published untill google has indexed the pages, and a search for the search term (notice how i’m not using the search term in this post, so when you read this hopefully the results will be the same) shows the pages.

UPDATE: 20 09 06

Ok, I kinda forgot about this till now, so i’ll post the findings now.

Firstly, I made a huge error regarding the images – I put the same image on both page1 and page2. Ooops.

Google

Well Google has so far only picked up page1.php – the bold tag (b). A search for justalittletesterfile comes up with just one result – page 1. I feel the reason it only returns that one page is because:

• they are exact copies (ignoring the difference in html tags (strong / bold)
• Google only shows the one result that it sees as higher ranking – ie using the bold tag has more weight than strong

Google conclusion : Bold > Strong

MSN

A search for the keyword – http://search.msn.com/results.aspx?q=justalittletesterfile+&FORM=MSNH – initially shows only one result, page2 (the “strong” one), but both are indexed and it does say “Page 1 of 2 results” (sidenote: Why can’t they say either “page 1 of 1″ or “results 1-2 of 2″, rather than mixing pages and results…).

MSN conclusion: Strong > Bold

Yahoo

Lets… ignore Yahoo. It doesn’t seem to like the klikgamers domain. Hasn’t visitied it for a LONG time. Bad example here, esp from an seo blog…… Oops. I just use it now for a slightly spammy ish site anyway. And forgot about this fact when I started the experiement.

Yahoo conclusion: I shouldn’t make it so spammy and should develop backlinks…

Coming soon: A propper experiment exploring:

• Whether bold (b) or strong (strong) have more weight in Yahoo (and Google/msn)
• Whether italics (i) or emphasis (em) have more weight in all major search engines
• Whether differences between heading tags (h1, h2, h3, h4, h5, h6) makes much difference
• Whether the one with more strength out of bold/strong and italics/em has more weight than the other
• Keyword repetitions in title tag
• And more.

Please note, if you decide to take our fame and do those experiements yourself, please provide a link back to us. Then we won’t mind. But we will still conduct our own experiments.