2005 Acknowledged Google Changes

[tama]

I apologize in advance if there is a post similar to this. I searched around but did not quite find what I am looking for.

I have referenced Brett Tabke's 26 Steps post for a few years with great success (thanks Brett!). 2005 is a different story. From just about the first day of the year, my sites fell into oblivion. At first I resisted changing the sites because I did not want to chase my tail until more facts were known. In recent months, I have tested many things which I felt could be the problem, with no improvement. However since my sites generally adhere to the rules outlined in Brett's post, which have served me well, I did not want to stray too far from that.

I have found numerous posts which have been helpful but where there are basically two or more camps for every issue. I realize there is never going to be a 100% consensus on many issues pertaining to Google. But I think it would be helpful to many to have a discussion of the basic "truths" which are generally acknowledged by most SEO's regarding the Google changes in 2005.

[EBear]

Ok, I'll start.

Greater use of LSI and other semantic algoritms in indexing, meaning that pages and sites that are "on theme" with the search phrase are considered for the SERPs.

[randle]

(A quick guess at the question, to be taken as such)

Less emphasis on pages being ranked, less interior pages ranking high.

Google will rank a site about widgets better when it touches on big widgets, small widgets, tall widgets and short widgets.

Age of the site is important and the rich get richer. (all else being equal)

The sandbox is a serious element, not to be taken lightly or dismissed whether you can get by it or not. By now assume its intended and here to stay.

Page rank, or what you see on the tool bar is irrelevant for where you rank.

Massive amounts of reciprocal links don’t help as much.

Think theme when it comes to the site, content and links.

Outgoing links help.

[SEOPTI]

PageRank is still very relevant.
Age of link is relevant. New links get sandboxed.

[Lorel]

I have noticed an increase in traffic for all the sites I manage (27) since google's last update. I assume that Google has eliminated a lot of spam with it's recent changes and also it's attempt in not credit the 302s to the wrong site and this is the reason for the increase in rank/traffic for all those sites which were all designed according to google's guidelines, btw.

[tama]

Age of the site is important and the rich get richer. (all else being equal)

Are you talking age of live indexable sites or age of the domains?

[rfgdxm1]

>Age of the site is important and the rich get richer. (all else being equal)

>Are you talking age of live indexable sites or age of the domains?

My best guess is live, indexable sites. This theory could be falsified if someone has a 10 year old domain name they never used for an idexable site, and were able to slap up a new site with that ancient domain name and get it to rank quick.

[tama]

>>>My best guess is live, indexable sites. This theory could be falsified if someone has a 10 year old domain name they never used for an idexable site, and were able to slap up a new site with that ancient domain name and get it to rank quick.

I'm actually developing a site on a domain I've owned for about 5 years. I would imagine this site won't do any better than a site that registered it's domain name yesterday and put it's site up today. But if someone has found otherwise, I'd love to hear about that!

[randle]

I was referring to a live, indexable, ongoing site that has been continually looked after. We have not had any increase in the success of a site when we had owned the domain for a few years without launching the site.

The competitive gap between well established sites and new ones has increased tremendously over the past 18 months, (in our experience, for others it may be different).

[Marval]

randle - that effect is one that I watch closely, and have convinced myself that the age plays into the "authority/hub" feature that seems to have been introduced. I also tend to agree that the relative number of outgoing links to other "themed/authority" sites plays a much larger part now and have recently noticed that the "number of links on a page factor" seems to have either disappeared or Google has upped that number incredibly high in their attempt to add more pages to the database.

[mrMister]

Age of the site is important and the rich get richer. (all else being equal)
Are you talking age of live indexable sites or age of the domains?

It's age of indexable sites, not domains.

To be more specific...

It's the age of the backlinks to a site that counts.

If you've had a site for 5 years and nobody's ever linked to it, and then yesterday, you got one new link, it's considered as being a new site.

[KlausWright]

One somewhat silly yet consistent thing I've noticed in 2005 in my industry (widget reservations, of course) is the appearance of several sites using a similar techinique which basically consists of using the keyphrase "4 star widgets" over 120 times on a page (mostly in hyperlinks to other pages on the site)

Their top positioning is consistent for most of the 120 pages using the same keyphrase. I think that it is scary that a site can get away with this for months without notice.

So, my ackowledged change in Google for 2005 is that stuffing one keyphrase into pages until they're ready to pop will get you the #1 (and sometimes #1 & #2) spot for that phrase.

Got a spare domain laying around? - party like its 1999 and start churning out those "keyword turkeys" and gain top placement thanks to Google's retro, AltaVista-esque 2005 algo tweaks. (its definitely a niche-type thing - so I'm pretty sure it won't work for searches like "Ipod", but slightly less popular 3-4 word phrases are a sure bet)

[fom2001uk]

So if you've parked a domain, you need to link to it, even no there's no content for the user.
Hmm.

[Rollo]

So if you've parked a domain, you need to link to it, even no there's no content for the user.

No, this would send a bad signal to Google. Remember Google's prime obsesion (along with scoring billions in ad revenue) is relevancy. Link you site when there is something good for the user. I think there is a correlation with age only becuase, on average, older sites have had more years to add content so they tend to be bigger. As well, they've had more time to add more backlinks. It's the size, backlinks, and relevancy and not the age.