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Businesses hate to deal with uncertainties. In brick and mortar business the owner knows that the shop will be there when she goes to work next morning, or next month, or even next year. Contracts with suppliers and workers make long-term planning possible.
On-line businesses depend upon Google to a large extent. However, one day you are #1 on your KW, enjoying healthy cashflows, drinking micro-beer in a pub, and then you come back on-line, and hey, now thanks to algo change at Google your cash-cow site ranks #654! You go to your secondary site and it has become PR0 from PR8!
Google, give us your algo and make advance announcements. Please.
Your remark about a warning when the algo is changing sounds fair to me.
You go to your secondary site and it has become PR0 from PR8
That doesn't sound like an algo change. That sounds like a penalty.
Have you read the Google Knowledge Base [webmasterworld.com]? If you really want to dig in about Google, the knowledge base is a great place to start.
No! Google don't give us your algo and don't give advance warning of a change.
That way, it will keep the spammers guessing!
Contracts with suppliers and workers make long-term planning possible.
Do you have a contract with Google?
maybe he means he's gonna TAKE OUT a contract on google?
and you thought moving from #1 to # 654 was bad lol.
if you have never heard of "daves automatic google optimised website template maker for your keywords" you would the day after google released it's algo.
DaveN
patent pending on
"daves automatic google optimised website template maker for your keywords"
Did your secondary site have identical, or close to identical content, to your primary site? If it did, what else did you expect?
I am not saying they can do anything but its their God given right to do things thats in their best interest
Their algo is a trade secret and revealing it will only worsen its SERP relevence ...
If you want guranteed traffic make google as your supplier... buy adwords!
I will play the game. Lets say that google enlightened one person, and that would be me, to know the algo down to a T. Do you think for one second that I would not exploit it and make some serious bank or at least out source the information. After about 1 or 2 years when I either got tired or just wanted to go on vacation I would sell someone else the information and they would do the same thing. Just a side note lest say a ahem....spammer got his hands on it and flooded the index with crap of his choosing, people would stop using google because the results would not be worth a lick. That is why Google does not want us to know what the algo is.
On the other hand there are a select few here on this forum who either are very close to knowing the algo or know it. Sometimes the new guys get lucky and stumble on something. But for the most part all you need to do is read the posts that have useful information and bypass the rest. The ones about back links and what not have there place but certianly not every other day.
Here is a tip. Read as many quality posts you can. There is something to be said for designing a good page and having links that reflect the page and the info there in. Brett did a post on how to get into google in 12 months. Using that information and a few things I picked up on over the past 2.5 years I have a site showing up in google in position 1 or 2 on most keywords with a PR of three second only to the major corporation. The guy below me has a PR 6 so dont pay too much attention to the PR. Just design a good page with good info and links to reflect it.
I am not suggesting that Google should reveal all components of its algo, but it seems to lack consistency and many of us are never sure how we are going to rank after the next update. Some clear statements and some insight in the algo from the company will be most welcome.
It is true that Google does not owe us anything. But, even it has to follow certain rules and one rule is that be consistent from month to month. Of course, I expect changes in the algo but make it gradual.
Webmasters are already losing sleep over changes in algo, spamming by competitors without getting caught, when will deep-crawling start, when will the update be done, does text in the alt tag count, will I will penalized for linking to other dubious sites and so on.
Instead webmasters should be spending most of their time on improving their websites for the visitors which is becoming difficult in such an uncertain environment.
Now that is the best suggestion. Take care of good SEOing and the rest will follow.
So true ... organic seo will always be a risky business.
Look at the bright side: the unpredictable nature of organic seo will help keep the larger, better capitalized companies away. More opportunities for quick-acting little guys, like myself.
The only algo changes that I think anybody is actually aware of are those that Google puts in place to catch spammy sites: link farms, doorway pages, etc., and now upcoming, hidden text.
I can't say that they don't ever tweak the basic search algo but it would surprise me if they did this on a wholesale basis. The algorithm, along with PageRank, is the foundation and you don't mess around with that without good reason.
Monthly fluctuations in ranking are normal. Search engines reflect the web and are not static. Pages are being added, deleted and changed on an ongoing basis. Each webmaster only has control of his or her own pages. What other folks do to their pages is totally out of our hands and, we sometimes have to say that others occassionally do it better.
And a monthly fluctuation is great (think old Alta Vista where pages popped up and down every day). If you have a good ranking all you have to worry about is what to do in order to keep it after the next update.
Jim
If your business depends on free search engine traffic then you dont have a sustainable business.
The days of being able to ride on free SE traffic for commercial sites because they were just testing their algos and developing is now history.
As someone said, for certainty you need to enter into contracts and pay - PPC, online ads, PFI, its all there.
There's a differnece between an operation that sets up it's fruit stall next to a fairground to get passing traffic and one that enters into contracts with the fairground so they know and can plan for the future. The former is opportunistic (which is not always bad), but they have no security. The latter is a business.
I guess those webmasters need a course in stress managment.
I don't lose any sleep over any of those things!
Matter of fact, I sleep like a baby knowing I've done nothing wrong to upset the Great Google God of Search Engines!
Businesses hate to deal with uncertainties.
Google's mission is to serve users, not businesss.
As others have said, if you want certainties, buy AdWords.
As others have said, if you want certainties, buy AdWords.
<sarcasm>
Because people KNOW the sites in the adwords are good sites, what they are looking for. Browsers are so stupid they won't thing `aha... paid for results? need to pay to get a good ranking?`
</sarcasm>
Just out of interest has anyone compulsively clicked competitors adwords just to up their bills?
Businesses hate to deal with uncertainties.
Uncertainties in your industry are one of the best ways to develop your competitive advantage - by being the best at handling that uncertainty.
Just out of interest has anyone compulsively clicked competitors adwords just to up their bills?
If Google had a cookie on you, they could filter competitive clicks as part of their anti-fraud algo, but then again it's not really fraud is it! You wanna see what your competitors are up to, there's an ad for one...
Thinking about this as a thought experiment, I don't see how this would create certainties for business. If everyone knows the algo, then all of the competition will want to use that to be #1. However, only one site can occupy the #1 spot.
Your sarcasm is misplaced. The person who started this thread was talking about certainties for businesspeople, not certainties in the quality of search results.
my sarcasm was correct. businesses want certain traffic. people are more likely to click on the #1 link than the #1 adword... you can't get that certain traffic from a #1 serp from adwords... they just don't wash ;)
Let's say I sell swimwear. I spent lots of time on building my site, besides stocking up my inventory. My site is ready by middle of April. Google's spiders miss my site, or only freshbot, or deepbot all the pages but index only 13 out of 3000 pages, or get delayed in updates, or penalize my PR for suspecting that I was involved in some link farm program, or ban me for cloaking or whatever - which is for at least 3 months, and so on.
To make the long story short, it is September now and I am left with 100,000 unsold swimsuits!
I think that Google cannot act alone now and there should be an advisory committee made up of experienced members of this forum, Google executives, and a few others from industry, who will layout the plans for Google, while keeping its independece intact.
you can't get that certain traffic from a #1 serp from adwords
Ermm, you do! Week in, week out. No freshbot, no penalties - the only uncertainty is a competitor with a large wallet...
