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We have been doing a lot of SEO work recently on many of our sites and have found out some interesting things along the way.
One which has got me thinking is that there seems to be so many if's and but's with Google e.g. i read about the 3 massive changes in the last year, the sandbox, PageRank not working, the uncertainty of what is happening next, jumping back to old cache, dropping sites then bringing them back etc etc etc (all topics read on this forum).
Now, i do use google, and i am not against it in anyway .....
.... I just sometimes wonder why a search engine with so many "Discussion Points" is the number one Search Engine.
It is also fairly hard to get a good ranking - although i do agree it is partly to do with the number of sites it crawls. However, we have a few sites that are on results page 1 of SE's such as MSN, YAHOO and ASK (as examples), yet through the same search terms our sites are found on pages 10+ on Google.
Our sites do not use spamming techniques. If anything, we concentrate on not using any technique that could be considered spam, and we strive to make most, if not all, of our sites HTML 4.01 valid.
Like i said, i am not against Google, i think it has quite a few positives and we try to build our sites to do well in its rankings, but i just wonder why a Search Engine with so many downsides (which can cause pages and pages of threads in this very forum) is the one everyone aims to be number one in.
Anyway, this is not a criticism, its just a point for discussion. Would be good to hear other peoples views on this.
cheers,
Webboy
.... I just sometimes wonder why a search engine with so many "Discussion Points" is the number one Search Engine.
Webboy:
I think it is the other way around. Google is, at least for now, the number one search engine, thus any change in its algorithm is of great importance to webmasters. If MSN's new search engine becomes as popular as Google now is, you will see just as much discussion in the Microsoft Search forum.
Now, why is Google so popular? Because they were, by far, the best when they started a few years ago. Their results at that time were so superior to those of Altavista and Yahoo that all the geeks were thrilled when they discovered Google, and told they friends, who tried it, were thrilled, told their friends too, etc.
As a result, Google eventually became synonymous to internet search. I think that they are still the best if you are doing research on obscure subjects because of the size and comprehensiveness of their database. The results are more variable for popular searches, and at times weired (after the Florida update, for example). It is clear that the spammers are to be blamed for that, as Google has to constantly try to work their way around to prevent this cr@&**p from taking over the SERPs. How long can they stay ahead is the question. It is a real challenge, so we have to give them credit for trying so hard.
I just sometimes wonder why a search engine with so many "Discussion Points" is the number one Search Engine.
The reason it is so popular is that its popularity stems from the punters, not the webmasters - it is the users who make it popular.
One which has got me thinking is that there seems to be so many if's and but's with Google e.g. i read about the 3 massive changes in the last year, the sandbox, PageRank not working, the uncertainty of what is happening next, jumping back to old cache, dropping sites then bringing them back etc etc etc (all topics read on this forum).
The vast majority of users are not even aware that these problems exist so they don't see any problems with Google.
