Google doing away with blogs :)

Not sure if posted yet but anyway

[xcandyman]

[theregister.co.uk...]

Looks like no more blogs in main index anymore YAY!

What does everyone else think? Sorry if posted before

Steve

[Nick_W]

Interesting stuff...

It isn't clear if weblogs will be removed from the main search results, but precedent suggests they will be

Nick

[DaveN]

will this stop googlebombing?

Dave

[vitaplease]

Bloggers too are likely to welcome their very own tab as a legitimization of the publishing format

Not to sure about that.

What will we see soon, a Blog tab? [webmasterworld.com]

and what will be the clear definition of a blog?

[Nick_W]

>>and what will be the clear definition of a blog?

And there's the killer question. What about websites that have a blog format for only part of the site? - Will they be relegated to the blog search section?

Nick

[xcandyman]

This is going to turn out very interesting. I wonder what search features they will have and I am also wondering about what nick_w said about blogs being only part of the site.

I'll be happy to see the last of "blog only" sites in the main index anyway, I see no point in them.

Steve

[richardb]

Damn

And I was going to become a Macromedia evangelist and get an automatic PR 7, just for having a blog %)

Rich

[creative craig]

Should be interesting how this one turns out, if Google got it wrong then it would mess the results up for a few people.

Craig

[digitalghost]

>>and what will be the clear definition of a blog?

I can't wait to see the definition for that. Some of the best analysis and commentary on the web comes from bloggers.

To me it looks like bloggers have shown Google what SEOs have known for a long time. PR is easy to manipulate. Rather than admit that PageRank is flawed Google has opted to shunt an important section of the web into a "tab".

Screw information, commentary and analysis, sell more widgets. ;) I bet Google won't turn down Adword money from bloggers.

It will be interesting to see how Google discerns between a CMS and a blog.

[Nick_W]

>>CMS and a blog

Well, I for one will be re-working filenames in a personal project ;-)

Nick

[chiyo]

it would be a major mistake to use a simple definition of a "blog". All the simple one- variable filters would be too broad. Filtering by CMS system via required links out or patterns or filenames or default templates, filtering out sites featured on "blog rolls" or those incredibly long lists of "freinds blogs".

I would expect Google would filter intelligently using a mixture of factors - possibly centred on link patterns, which seem to have a certain "character" for blogs.

There are several dozen blogs with original excellent content (I can think of several just off hand written by journalists, academics, professors who have actually managed to turn the "personal diary" into something more than their freinds to read) that deserves to be on the main google search instead of being lost in a tab filled up with the remaining 99% of discountinued, perosnal-writing-therapy, narcissitic, cat-lovers and family blogs. How Google filters is critical. It would be a pity to see sites like Andrew Goodman's and many others categorized with the crud and banished from exposure to information and news seekers.

That said, i would think a lot who follow Google's indexing strategy on WebmasterWorld saw this coming for quite a while. A "Blog" tab i remember was foreseen by several in WebmasterWorld threads after the blogger acquisition.

[edited by: chiyo at 12:05 pm (utc) on May 9, 2003]

[Clark]

I dunno about all this. So what will they do with a link? A link doesn't count for PR if it's from a blog? Anchor text doesn't count? Or it does count, but the actual data from a blog goes into a blog tab.

I just think this harder to do right then it seems, but who knows, maybe they'll find a way?

[teeceo]

My 2cents, I going to be honest, i just fould out about bloggs resentlly (and there linking power) and was planing to build like 50 blogg sites, link them together, put up another 50 links(my affiliate sites) on these sites and go for broke:). looks like that idea is down the drain now(:. And don't you dare be mad at me(with all the thousand of people doing this already, some of them even members of this fine forum:) i'm just keeping it real. We all know its about the links (and don't give me that "targeted links crap") becouse the bottom line is that if you have thousands of "any kind of links" the fact is that your going to win, period. honesty is a great thing, some of you spam reporting, google browning, cyber crybabies should try it.(thats only for those it apply to, if thats not you, then no harm, no foul:). Peaceout.....

teeceo.

[edited by: teeceo at 12:23 pm (utc) on May 9, 2003]

[teeceo]

"However, through dense and incestuous linking, results from blogs can drown out other sources."

I love the way he worked in "incestuous linking":). Just though that was funny.

teeceo.

[john316]

>So what will they do with a link

They'll probably keep it within the "community", google will probably try to contain blog data like they do for news and groups.

Good idea actually, the blogging community (clique) will be covered well and others won't have blog skew interfering with results.

[europeforvisitors]

We all know its about the links (and don't give me that "targeted links crap") becouse the bottom line is that if you have thousands of "any kind of links" the fact is that your going to win, period.

For how long?

[John_Creed]

I think this is a bad move.(if it does happen)

Maybe the blogs get their own tag, and those who want it can choose a filter to remove all blogs from the search results? Rather than removing them by default.

Personally, i've NEVER had trouble with blogs showing up in my search results. I hardly ever see them. If you examine the hit counter for the average blogs, you can clearly see that they get less than 10-15% of their traffic from search engines. Almost all their traffic comes from links they usually have on at least 20-30 other blogs.

Although personally I hate 99% of all blogs, my site is linked to by several popular blogs. Why should I not recieve that PR boost? A link is a link.

If a site has too many links than google should devalue the importance of a link from that site. Problem solved.

As much as I hate them, a blog is a ligitimate website. No reason to descriminate against them.

Also it's impossible for google to filter out all blogs without attacking non-blog sites that have similiar characteristics.

My personal definition of 99% of blogs are websites that have almost zero content, extremely poor writing, lots of porn and off-site links, and yet still manage to get a fair amount of traffic.

How does google filter that? lol...

[rogerd]

Kind of interesting, though in my areas of interest blog pollution hasn't been a problem at all. I might have expected a mild PR degradation for blogs in the main results, as opposed to complete segregation. I just don't see blogs as unique or useful enough to justify their own category.

I am a bit concerned, though, about sites that use blog software for straight content management. I have a few sites where I've set up a Movable Type system that allows non-technical experts to add articles to their sites. I fear a repeat of the Zeus scenario (a couple of years ago, link directories identified as being created with Zeus got penalized - regardless of actual quality) - an unlucky choice of tools might get your great content banished to blogville.

[brotherhood of LAN]

Sounds good. If it's a fresh link your'e after...try a news site :)

[fmonk]

No.
I don't think it's a very good idea, esp since I recently made my main page a blog, but the rest of my site is a traditional site with my comics and icky poetry etc. Will the whole site be deindexed?

And as many have already mentioned how do you define "blog" a site that's updated often? has many reference links? is dynamically generated? Hell, will they pull news-sites off? discussion forms? amazon?

Instead of doing something drastic like pulling so called "blogs" off the main index maybe they should change their algorithm... but I think they should leave it alone.

[div01]

I too feel that the line between Blogs and Content Management Systems (used for non-blogging content) is blurred. A quick look at the hundreds to software packages available at hotscripts/freshmeat/etc illustrates that. An effort by Google to start filtering out these sites would cause a much larger reaction than say the recent expired domains "debacle".

[europeforvisitors]

For my topics, "blog pollution" isn't a problem. I don't even recall encountering any blogs in my travel-related searches. What we really need in the travel category is a separate tab for e-commerce sites and pure affiliate sites. :-)

[eaden]

Defining a blog is near impossable. Is slashdot a blog? They seem to think so. What about Journals? What about news pages.

There is so much roll-your-own blog software out there, that blogs can take any shape or form. I guess the most common definition is "A page of short entries sorted cronologically". I think that would be the one they'll use. Index the site. Watch the content drop down the page. It's a blog. .. Or is it a news page?

I don't think many bloggers would want to be left out of the main index, and seeing as google bought blogger, I don't think google wants a bunch of angry bloggers any time soon, so I think the'll keep them in the main index.

[rcjordan]

IMO, they're going to be forced to do it. Blogs (specifically, blog software as CMS) are the new trebuchets being rolled out in the siege of SEs.

time-warp: 1 year back [webmasterworld.com]

[rogerd]

Gee, nice metaphor, RC. I had never figured out how to get the word "trebuchet" into the pages here. (If we spin this into its own thread, we could probably dominate the SERPs for the term...) ;)

[beebware]

But sometimes blogs are a good thing: a recent visitor to my personal blog commented that they found exactly what they were searching for (a method to do something using Media Player) and I've had quite a number of comments to that entry. Reason I made that blog entry? I searched the internet for a way of doing that thing and couldn't find it: so once I found out, I "returned the knowledge" by blogging about it.

If Google does "drop blogs" (which I personally doubt it will), then people wanting to do the same thing as I spent a couple of hours figuring out will have to work it out themselves instead of using a useful search engine to find out how to do it.

[xcandyman]

Please note I think some of you are thinking google's not going to allow blogs in whatsoever. If you want blog content or you cant find the info you want in the main index go to the "blog" tab.

Remember also some of this is purely speculation but it doesn't take a genius to know what they are up to.

Remember the Deja days? They was in the index at one time as well. It's the same thing. People may think deja content should be in the main index too.

Steve

[EliteWeb]

Google seems to be wanting hard news, content and information which is where blogs fall short, they are opionated to all degrees. Now I know many people use blogs to post true information and factual information. The way blogs display are nice, and the ease of changing/adding content works well for many people so I think that actually moving blogs away wouldn't be the smartest thing.

Google didn't like blogs so they bought out blogger to get rid of them? ;)

[rogerd]

I agree, Xcandyman, that the issue is similar to the Groups content. I'd like to see that content in the main index, perhaps with an algo adjustment so that newsgroup stuff doesn't dominate the results but is still available for tightly focused searches. I often find obscure technical solutions in the Groups content (when I remember to search there!).

[xcandyman]

The only time I use G Groups when I need troubleshooting information on hardware or software its the best place for it, When I need fast news I use G News, and when I need average joe opinions on something I WILL use G Blogs. ( if it happens that way )

They should be seperate from the index IMO. More manageable as well :-)

Steve