Forum Moderators: Robert Charlton & goodroi
If you want to search G books, videos, maps, news, god-knows-whats-next, you can do it through the appropriate categories - you don't need it in the main serps.
Natural search results do not earn money. Google is spending more and more money trying to monopolise the web as quickly as possible. Therefore, they have to make the natural search results still relevant enough to retain people whilst cramming in as much commercial items as possible to fill the war chest.
--> I notice you are frustrated with the Google-spam but made no intimation that you were going to stop using Google? They obviously haven't crossed that line for you yet. <--
As Google grows, the amount of traffic generated from the No.1 natural search spot will decrease at a similar pace. Remember, sometimes you might be losing traffic because 3 new advertisers jumped on the Adwords program and the sponsored ads are above your listing now. Nothing to do with ranking issues at all.
[edited by: tedster at 11:25 pm (utc) on Oct. 1, 2008]
eg a search for a specific site (lets say there a site called the WIDGET guide) and the search (on G) is "widget guide to blue". Further we also have a page devoted to blue which carries an adwords ad from the WIDGET GUIDE (albeit intermittently)
this cant be right surely - we are number 3 for a search for "widget guide to blue" - surely the the search should throw up the widget guide and its not in top 50
any thoughts? - or am I merely discussing with the converted ?
just noticed that we rank for a term contained on the page VIA AN ADWORDS ADeg a search for a specific site (lets say there a site called the WIDGET guide) and the search (on G) is "widget guide to blue". Further we also have a page devoted to blue which carries an adwords ad from the WIDGET GUIDE (albeit intermittently)
this cant be right surely - we are number 3 for a search for "widget guide to blue" - surely the the search should throw up the widget guide and its not in top 50
this is a fun little observation that would cause me to go on a rant so large,
i would be permanently kicked off this site.
Let's just say,
- Yes, you saw correctly
- no, it is not an accident
- yes, it's an attempt for Google to get people to spend more money on adwords
- yes, you will find you rankings disappear for that term over time,
whether they spend more money on adwords (via different phrases) or not.
- yes, it totally debunks EVERY single Goog defender out there that says Adwords and Search are separate or the multitude of "please don't be mean to Goog" arguments we hear regularly.
- No, i really don't have the time or patience to battle all the counter-arguments that will come because of the above statements. ;)
Just know that it happens, and what that actually means for everyone's business relationship with Google.
(the beloved fighter of truth and justice on the internet) :snicker:
If you were software giant, would you allow bloated software to undermine your market position
If you were one (or indeed several) of the biggest investment banks in the world, would you allow yourself to become overextend, leaving open the possibility of collape
If you were an search & advertising giant, would you allow your search branch to maximise profits of your advertising branch (in such a way as to be almost undetectable, and certainly broadly unintrusive)
Rank by liklihood, and by risk to business model. Google's strategy seems most likely and least risky, IMHO
edit- took out specifics
[edited by: Shaddows at 8:47 am (utc) on Oct. 16, 2008]
The point is that an assumption that a huge corporation wouldnt do something that would risk their reputation is clearly wrong.
Doing something that would destroy their reputation and/or business model is much less likely, and much more stupid, yet still these multi-billion dollar companies succeed in doing one or both.
And this particular infringement by google isnt exactly what the Americans amongst us might call a 'game-changer', at least for all those USERS (not webmaster/ SEOs).
Ok, even though I said 'almost', undetactable is probably not reasonable. Detectable certainly by those such as Whitenight, whom I understand has a very large database and a reasonably clear idea about how a page should rank on merit, or by SEOs who are specifically looking at their own pages, or analysing a competitor page to see why it ranks and the ONLY INSTANCE is in EMBEDDED ADSENSE advertising.
However, I stand by "unintrusive", although maybe it should be "unobtrusive". Either way, its not in-your-face obvious. As such, its not really a big risk, and every little bit of extra revenue helps. Especially when you share price is crashing, the economy is tightenign and Ad revenues might sensibly be predicted to drop (usually people spend less on advertising during a downturn, though this may not turn out to be the case online)
[edited by: Shaddows at 10:25 am (utc) on Oct. 16, 2008]
I could give you even more nefarious examples of what Google does to induce adwords buying through SERPs placement,
but until you've seen it and understood what they were doing, then you would probably chalk it up to "algo changes"
It's subtle and sneaky and would go unnoticed by 99% of most businesses and webmasters, but I study (and understand) the SERPs like a hawk, and know which keywords I should be ranking for and which one's i have no business ranking for.
----------------------
I am seeing an update in the serps I watch, not a major one though
What I wanted to ask is if a site runs Adsense does that seem to help in the SERP?
I monitor my own and many other sites and I am seeing an almost equivalent percentage reduction in the number of indexed pages according to both site: and WMT data. Looks like Google has a space issue.
Maybe that's not a serp change though, maybe that's just more people getting in on the action.
I can't explain it other than I must have done a money dance to the algo gods... I'm hoping some here can explain. I have made zero changes to the site.
I think that the results numbers given by the serps is a completely useless number now.
I don't know what to make of this.
What I wanted to ask is if a site runs Adsense does that seem to help in the SERP?"
I'm going to throw this out there because I haven't seen it mentioned yet. If everyone will recall, about two months ago Google said that they were now going to start indexing javascript and javascript links on a limited basis. Wouldn't it make sense for them to index their own Adsense code since it is trusted?
If they were indexing the Adsense JS code, then that would mean that the advertisers would receive backlinks from relevant on topic sites for their targeted keyword phrases. In return, this would create hundreds or thousands of links that could help to boost their natural search rankings for those keywords.
Just a thought. This may be an unintended consequence of this. It could also explain why some sites that use Adsense are now ranking for their competitors brand name.
Here's the complication. The Adsense algo decides which ads to display on a page. That requires some semantic indexing that can't be too far removed from the phrase-based indexing that Google uses for the organic results.
Eyebrows get raised when a page is ranking for a phrase that includes a word that is not in the on-page content. But even without running Adsense, that kind of traffic is relatively common with today's Google. It is possible that both the Adsense and the organic algorithms decide the page is relevant for the query - and the word happens also to appear in an ad occasionally.
That said, there are some interesting bits in the patents about monitoring who you sell advertising to as a trust metric. What isn't 100% clear is whether this trust metric is a "query independent" factor or a query dependent factor.
There are also patent statements for image search about looking at related sites and blending in the term co-occurences discovered. This is for image search, I understand, but the idea of looking at other domains for your site's relevance is in the wind, so to speak.
[edited by: tedster at 8:40 pm (utc) on Oct. 17, 2008]
Many business with access to all the data Google has would take actions like this in the blink of an eye.
Sigh, so are we comparing horribly unethical to less horribly unethical?!
These are the types of apologist's arguments that make me "sarcastic and cranky" on this board.
If everyone will recall, about two months ago Google said
that they were now going to start indexing javascript and javascript links on a limited basis.
Wouldn't it make sense for them to index their own Adsense code since it is trusted?
Rest assured, the statute of limitations on this action is carefully being watched.
That requires some semantic indexing that can't be too far removed from the phrase-based indexing that Google uses for the organic results.
What I wanted to ask is if a site runs Adsense does that seem to help in the SERP?...I also wouldn't put it past the Big G to implement a +1, +2 scenario in the algo for using Adsense and Adwords.
Cheers
Sid
'm getting a growing sense that anchor text has been dialed down and on-page factors are dialed up. What I've noticed is that pages that were "Google bombed" into ranking for odd phrases are no longer getting that traffic. And added, I'm seeing more sensibly targeted traffic based only on on-page content. If this is so, I like it.
Maybe G just putting more emphasis on anchor variation. I'm guessing Google bombers are usually to lazy to vary it.
p/g
I wonder whats happening.
Yo-Yo Effect - Observations and Understandings
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