Forum Moderators: open
I find this frustrating. It seems that Yahoo places greater weight on actual content, whereas Google is completely fixated on the number of incoming links. In these days of link building fatigue, new high quality sites are penalized by G for not having the critical mass of incoming. Meanwhile G shows old dinosaur sites with Korean War vintage content on its first page of results simply because they have 1500+ incoming links.
On my key word Google is still showing a site on its first page which has been dead for over a year now.
Anyone else find this to be true?
If I were running Google this would be a major concern.
I have a 1 month old original and heavy content site which I update almost daily. Yahoo & MSN bots visit everyday and I rank on page 1 for many of my key terms. Surprisingly, Yahoo & MSN have been providing pretty constant traffic for a couple of weeks now.
What hits me is not Google's slowness but Yahoo & Msn's speed at indexing my new site! Frankly, I was expecting a 3-6 month wait & the sandbox etc...
Last year I was a Google fanatic now I think it's a second rate SE.
One of my sites competes against a bunch of old dinosaur sites started back in the mid 1990s. These old fossils haven't added any new content in years, but since they started so long ago they have thousands of incoming links which puts them on Google's 1st SERP.
So new sites with great content in this age of "link exchange fatigue" are basically screwed when it comes to Google.
What's the problem? Go get the incoming anchor links. You are in control of your ranking. I only know this because last year when I started my site I was not found in Google. Now I am #1 for KW1 and #3 for KW2.
If you are an expert at finding great SE results, then just wait it out. If your right, then market forces will destroy Google and the rewards will be yours. If your wrong, well...
Personally, I think there is some merit in Google's approach over the long haul. I subscribed to paid inclusion and was on page 1 for a competitive phrase in Yahoo nearly overnight - no incoming links, the website was only days old. I did that with a spam-cluttered page that was ugly from the reader's standpoint. But I was now in a constant battle to out-spam the competition - too much work.
I've revised my approach and now think that "Content will be King" over the long haul. I think this will happen because that is what the market really wants - good content.
My bet right now is with Google because that is their primary business. They don't have a portal, they don't have a my.google page. You go to their page and submit a query - that is what distiguishes them from all the rest.
I have faith that Google will continue to refine and improve their results because of the focus they have in that area - no distractions like Yahoo and MSN - Which have a completely different value proposition to the average surfer.
We have dozens of #1 keywords on Yahoo, MSN and Jeeves. There is no doubt that they are almost completely content orientated.
Search for our keywords on Google and you will find us somewhere after page 20 for most (if you find us at all).
Without doubt Google will adapt it's algorithm over the coming months to reward those sites with good content. It is no accident that G is #1 choice for most. They have had to work hard and be more intuitive than the others to acheive their status. They read the market more accurately than most and are on top of their game.
They will already have realised that there is no future in giving people link farm search results. They know you can't show people less relevant results than those that would depose them.
My advice (for what it's worth) is hang on in there. Develop good quality relevant links...
Content WILL be rewarded one day soon.
You can have a PR 4 site with only a handful of outside links. As long as the links are from authority sites.
Yep. The above 3 word reply says it all. Dinosaur sites are king at Google. Lkely forever, barring an asteroid whacking this planet.
Real businesses are not grown in a day, month or even a year. The only way that a new business in the real world will pop to the top is if there are a few people of influence that point it out to people.
That's the model here, Get others to point to your site and Google will notice. You may not lie it, buut it is generally a good model.
It's called link fatigue.
The old established site with thousands of incoming are not interested in helping a new competitor by exchanging links.
That leaves crappy sites to contact but even they are too beaten down to put in the effort of trading links with you.
Up until a couple of years ago everyone traded links. All you had to do was ask. Now for every 20 request you get one and that's from a site with a PR of 2 or 3.
Under Google's system old dinosaur site started in 1995 which have accumulated in coming by virtue of their longevity rather than their quality are rewarded over newer sites with superior quality.
Do a side by side search using Y & G anyday and you'll see what I'm talking about.
That leaves crappy sites to contact but even they are too beaten down to put in the effort of trading links with you.
So don't "trade". give something that is worth a link. For example, I see a lot of "free" tools available that have a link built into their interface. I see things like RSS feeds with links imbedded in them.
Be creative. Every problem has a solution. One of the interesting things about this gig is trying to stay on on the face of the wave. You can't do that by using last year's techniques.
WBF
It will work great for commercial sites, but not for content sites, because content sites don't really have to be well established to offer the best content.
Eventually Google will have to calculate PR based on the number of links PER YEAR, or number of new links, rather than total number of links over the history of the web. Otherwise it will never show a result less than ten years old.
Yahoo! search
bigger
easier
bingo!
I guess they see a window of opportunity.
Where are they on G?
Well, the first is around page 5 and the second is not even in the first 50 pages!
Perhaps we should edit the titles - "we are a legitimate site--really!"
It seems that Yahoo places greater weight on actual content, whereas Google is completely fixated on the number of incoming links.
Not in my experience.
At the beginning of the year we threw up a new site. It's the very first to focus exclusively on a hot political issue. It has great content which explains the issue objectively with high quality original essays. Within a month of launch it was on Y's 1st SERP. I have no idea where it is on G.
That experience showed us how crappy G is. With them it's all about incoming links and not actual content.
For one thing, it does not make a damn bit of difference what sites are not listed.
What matters is that *some* of the sites that *are* listed are *good enough*.
As a general rule, you are the only one searching on that term looking for your site. Everyone else is searching on that term looking for an answer to their query.
If your site really is all that good, you will start collecting all sorts of free incoming links. Especially if it is on a "hot political topic".
Once again, in the real world, no matter how "correct" and "informitive" you view on a topic is, you will have very few people listening to you until you have gained some sort of reputation that says that you are worth listening to.
I have a very well informed opinion on both presidential candidates, but I have yet to be asked to go on CNN and share my view.
And it's considering I have not lost a single good position in google - even climbed a few steps higher for a few landing pages.
Does anyone experience anything similar?
