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The industry heavyweights and household names? Not likely.
Should they be?
Who dominates the results? PageRank-inflating affiliate sites -- affiliates of the industry heavyweights and household names.
Makes me think that the big guys, while losing the battle for direct top positions, are still winning the war and reaping the profits of PR Guerrillas with throwaway domains who scuttle from bunker to bunker if Google finally bans one of their hundreds of domains.
Are most of these affiliate sites spam in the eyes of Googlebot or not? They don't offer particularly useful or informative content. Even if you augment your "<snip>" query with a few descriptive words, it's still tough to find relevant non-commercial content. The linking schemes of these sites scream spam. The keyword-loaded copy, if you want to call it copy, well . . . spam, spam, spam, spam, eggs, and spam.
With less competitive keyword phrases, Google is wonderful, but what is a highly relevant site to do in such a pig sty? Adopt a long-term approach of conservatism and hope that they, as cream, may rise to the top of the Google heap one day?
From my tone, you may think that I feel strongly about this, but actually, I have not yet reached a point of reflective equilibrium about this topic. My opinion still changes from time to time.
This phenomenon is not exclusive to Google by any means, but so many people lavish such praise on G. for its relevancy and lack of spam. It's a great search engine, but like everything else, not perfect.
What are some other opinions?
Wooden
[edited by: NFFC at 2:38 pm (utc) on Aug. 30, 2002]
[edit reason] Key phrase removed [/edit]
It's not the phrase that's important to me, it's the concept.
W
He/she searched for the service and found sites that offer that service.
Google has done its job.
If a member or members here profited should be of no concern to Google.
imho
If his/her credit card still works the surfer could try [answers.google.com...] Google Answers ;)
[edited by: NFFC at 3:09 pm (utc) on Aug. 30, 2002]
Id have thought if a searcher was searching for information on widgets they would probably do a more specific search than 'widgets' anyway!
uniquely Google actually ONLY has support and information sites in the first twenty positions...almost all other SEs are littered with publicity sites for films or fan sites for bands
I would argue that our site should really be on of the top three (it's 11th) of the 3.2 million results...but I wouldn't argue at ANY of the top twenty being ranked highly as relevant for that word
not spammy IMO
Don
W
I view this from the commercial side (shopping catagory) where in my industry one retailer has been able to dominate the results on all most all "widget" search terms. They have created there own affiliate directories and doorways with a link structure that I can not compete with. Every month new domains appear in the index. Using four of my search terms I counted 17 domains scattered through top 20 results. These are big money guys who offer quality sites and are giving the user what they were looking for, But I would not go to a mall that made me go in and out of the same store seventeen times.
As of this index I am now seeing a couple of other competitors starting there own campaign just to survive.
I have for two years kept myself from being a tattle-tale with the spam that comes and goes. This however goes beyond a site or two using cheap tricks. These guys are good and continue to impress me with their ability to dominate the results.
So .. Last month I reported them and this month they have more domains in the index. So .. after this update I reported them again. This same thing happened on fast a year ago and with in a few hours the index was cleaned up. I am afraid that next months google update will not clean this up.
I keep looking at this and honestly am not savy enough to fully understand how they have accomplished this. It looks to me like the themed linking structure is how it was done.
The question I have is for Googleguy ...
Is this spam ?
Don
i know we don't discuss specific sites or searches her, and for good reasons. the downside of this is that sometimes it's hard to get to the generics without jointly looking at the specifics.
see this thread [webmasterworld.com] for another example (i'm glad the specifics were thrown in by a moderator there).
Item one: Ive read enough PR articles in the past week to kill the average billy goat and I havent seen anything about a page linking to itself inorder to help retain PR by diluting the other outbound links.
Item two: If I MUST link out, amd I MUST maximixe PR on the same page - can't I embed a flash button with an actionscript directed outbound URL.
Any tips would be helpfull
-stimpy
first point: the theory (random user model) IMHO suggest that a link to the very same page doesn't carry PR. but honestly i don't know.
anyway i wouldn't do it for usability reasons (or do you want to upset your users?).
second: see these threads:
[webmasterworld.com ]
[webmasterworld.com ]
muesli
