Forum Moderators: Robert Charlton & goodroi
I received a communication last night that discussed a buzz going around that Google is going to shake up how it deals with backlinks. Specifically that Google is going to give less weight to less relevant linkage. This source also heard from another direction that a big change was coming in the next few days.
Anyone know anything?
If less value for off-topic links is indeed what the root of the change is, I'll be a happy camper. I already am, because I've seen lots of positive improvements for sites I work with. I'll do some analysis of all the changes I'm seeing and get back to the thread.
[edited by: tedster at 11:26 am (utc) on July 1, 2009]
One site which has held top position for the single most competative term in the industry for 2 years had droped a single place for the past 72 hours - they have many of thier links from somewhat unrelated sites.
#1 for my main target phrase on google.com, NOWHERE for it on .co.uk. this happened just in the last 30 minutes.
this is after being nowhere for anything on any google site for 2 weeks.
so maybe they are rolling back the june changes? or maybe what tedster says is happening already.
I would welcome less weight on non relevant pages. However...how will they go about that? Lets say I have a website that is about michael jackson. And lets say a lot of my backlinks come from general music websites and pop music websites...these websites wont be about michael jackson, but are related because they are related to music...how will google see this?
[edited by: brinked at 2:29 pm (utc) on July 1, 2009]
I see this ALL the time and have been wondering when they would be disqualified or devalued to allow the sites that don't participate in this type of spamming to come back up.
We are having a positive flux right now so Tedester's info last night might just be on spot as I have always sought relevant within the nitch links for all our sites.
Google being Google is once again going to throw the baby out with the bath water only this time there is something to actually fill it's place. I won't name it because it causes the Google fanboys heads to explode when they talk about it.
I'm already seeing some really horrible search results in Google.
Google likes to think about money yet they are trying kill the affilaite industry, even though I'm quite sure a major portion of their adwords revenue is from affiliates. If they kill off affiliates, their earnings is going to drastically drop.
Google has PHD vapor lock. To many PHDs in the same room causes everybodys brain in that room to lockup as they all discuss why everybodies brain is locking up. I don't care how smart somebody is, some of the smartest people do the dumbest things.
well, since June 1st or maybe a little before, the keyword/phrase that had the highest % of click through and usually had my site on page one; got dropped and put me a few pages back, traffic dropped by about 75%! so, i re-started my adwords campaign, and now my site is back on the on the 1st page.
interesting.
[edited by: Robert_Charlton at 8:03 pm (utc) on July 1, 2009]
Right on bwn! For the past two years I've focused on relevant links only from reputable sites. Despite that I haven't been able to get past the second page as link spam sites pass me by. Suddenly, these past few days my site keeps showing up low page one for my primary term.
I hope this lasts...
If less value for off-topic links is indeed what the root of the change is, I'll be a happy camper.
Don't hold your breath.
I see this ALL the time and have been wondering when they would be disqualified or devalued
Again, this update doesn't show that "relevancy" has been increased.
or
that "off-topic-ism" has been decreased.
For the past two years I've focused on relevant links...
I hope this lasts....
It's nothing more than "wishful thinking" and ultimately detrimental to your SEO efforts.
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Just calming down the "chicken bone throwing" before I have to spend 6 months debunking the "Google-is-ranking-based-on click-thru" type arguments again.
Let's see the update finish and then make conclusions.
Until then, one is just pigeon-holing oneself with incomplete information.
Interesting, I wonder what criteria might be used in that assessment (if this is indeed what we are seeing)
I know that for most of the sites I watch traffic and rankings have been on a steep curve upwards in the last week to two, and most of these websites only have relevant inbounds (no resources, recips, paid etc)
Google is entangled in their own land of spaghetti code. I'm sure they have a few summer interns trying to sort out the mess, as we speak....
"give less weight to less relevant linkage"
Aren't all irrelevant links artificial? How could white hats complain about a stricter algo on backlink relevancy?
If Google does make its algo more strict, it won't surprise anyone. It will be keeping with its core principle. In fact it may simply be an implementation of an old major Update a few years ago with higher standards.
What was that one called? Big Daddy? This could be the 2.0 version.
p/g
i feel a thread discussing what defines "relevancy" coming...
Either way, this updates isn't particularly tackling that issue from what I can see.
(Of course, this depends on how "I" define "relevant") lol
Result: traffic increase of roughly 15% over the past 2 days when compared to the average for the same days over the past 3 months. Primary keyword ranking dropped 30 odd places in the serps but secondary keywords raised significantly accross the board.
Something changed with Google starting Monday, Yahoo and other engines show no change.
"social links, forum links, directory links BLOG links all should be toast as they make it to easy to out rank more qualified sites thus polluting the net with spammers being paid to post in forums with anchor text."
Again, this update doesn't show that "relevancy" has been increased. or that "off-topic-ism" has been decreased.
Agreed. I posted that original idea for discussion and brainstorming purposes, since it was being rumored as a kind of insider "leak". Sorry for any confusion that I created -- I never intended to say that it IS reality. And as I look at the changes I've collected so far, the idea does not hold up. If such a shift is in the works, then it's not yet live - from what I see.
Again, the only factor I see that appears to be active is changed approach to user intention - more SERPs showing diversity. This could result from a re-categorization of frequent query terms, with more of them now being tagged as ambiguous intention.
We often tend to focus on the on-page, off-page and off-site factors, but give very little attention to Google's growing taxonomy for query types. The minus fifty thing is also showing up for another batch of site and that still seems quite curious to me. So far, I don't get the point for many of those.
If you want to experience stability, you go for the adwords.
