Forum Moderators: Robert Charlton & goodroi
Udi Manber is Google's VP for Search Quality. This week he made a blog post that gives an overview of how Google's Search teams operate.
Some key points I noted:
We are, to be honest, quite secretive about what we do. There are two reasons for it: competition and abuse.
Does that remark and this entire blog post signal a little bit of a shift in the secrecy area? Time will tell.
we made significant changes to the PageRank algorithm in January.
Tantalizing - not changes to the overall ranking algo, but precisely significant changes to PageRank.
The original penalized domain that just came back really has no content that would cause it to be a trustworthy site. It has been hollowed out and ignored for years. It still does have links though and is probably similar to a lot of other PR3 sites - so the PR is likely right.
Back in 2001 those that were penalized argued that they were all innocent and the penalties were without cause - Google must be "broken". We have all heard that same line many time since then but 2001 may have been the first - and it just may have really been "broken" - and recently fixed.
If anything, my site was far better and more trustworthy back in 2001 than it is now.
Just make a good site that is useful with clean code and you'll do well.
Sorry to stir up a couple of you, but I'm only speaking from experience. Gaming the algo has worked short term for me. I'm not saying you're going to get it less than a year. This is a long term strategy from someone who's been doing it a while. Links will come if you actively participate on the internet, not just exist as a stand alone site.
Not trying to evangelize of what is the only way, just saying what has worked for me....a site that provides value to users and is just clean html code to make sure spiders index your site properly, and yes I'm speaking specifically of google SERPS, you'll do well.
I'd say page load speed is becoming more of a factor than ever before. When the official Google blog starts talking about page load factors in deep technical terms, I pay major attention. Your site's user experience has a lot to do with whether Google wants to send you traffic, and Google is measuring that in more ways than ever before. See [webmasterworld.com...] for more.
In short, When Udi Manber makes a public statement - or any prominent Google employee - It's a good idea to notice where Google is putting their attention.
thread being hijacked
Apologies Dugger.
My focus was on user experience first, then making sure your site is indexed properly, and I didn't make that clear. Some people sometimes want to accomplish that (User Experience) with flash, ajax or whatever new and exciting technology is out there.
The piece that always catches me is "make it better for the user". Always do this first, but make it spider friendly. Whatever technique makes you money, more power to you and keep doing it. Was merely sharing my own experience and apologies again.
