How Special is Your Website?

[TheMadScientist]

People seem to be totally confused about the new quality piece for Google's algo, and I wonder how 'special' the sites of those who used to rank and no longer do really are?

How many sites do you run?

How many sites do: Amazon, eBay, Twitter, FaceBook, WikiPedia, and all the other big players run? Now, again, how special is your website, really? Is it so special you only need one?

I only work on 5 right now, only run 4 of them, of the ones I run 1 is for a separate business, 1 is personal, and 2 are sites I can concentrate on basically full time, 1 of which is noindexed ... How many do you run?

Do you have the latest word press installed? It's a dime-a-dozen piece of software. Nothing special about WP ... Do you have the newest directory software on all of them? How many other people do too? How about eCommerce? Do you have the latest osCommerce or Zen Cart installed with friendly URLs? You and how many 1000s of other people?

Really, sit down and look at your site(s) and ask yourself how special it is when you compare it to the sites the 'big players' build ... Is it close? Is it really the quality of the highest caliber?

None of the sites I saw listed on Google's report a quality site wrongly demoted page were anything 'special' to the point where I thought I would really be missing out if they weren't included in the results ... Not one.

I see so many 'nothing special' sites out there I don't know what people are actually complaining about and I really wonder how honest their evaluation of their own sites is?

If you're wondering why you might not rank like you used to, imo you might do well to sit down, really look at your site, and ask yourself, what makes my site special?

Forget about other people's sites and the sites out ranking yours and trying to chase the algo for another round, and sit and ask yourself what makes your site special and then: what could I do better?

[viggen]

And, I would guess some of them do share about your site occasionally...

...of course they do, my point was just because Google says something it doesnt mean its a law. For example they introduced the nofollow link and while it might be a good thing for some situations, in others its a complete disaster for the Google Algo, actually this is my biggest pet peeves ever, so imho, websited that cite a site as a references and bless that site with a nofollow should be given a -50 penalty in an instant... ;)

[TheMadScientist]

...websited that cite a site as a references and bless that site with a nofollow should be given a -50 penalty in an instant...

I can't argue there...

...just because Google says something it doesnt mean its a law.

No, only 'law' related to rankings, and even then the 'law' frequently changes and is often subject to a wide variety of interpretation ... lol ... But I think there are things we can do as site owners to set ourselves apart from others, although as we're discussing, overcoming the 'big players' may be very difficult ... Again, I think it's possible though, which is part of the reason I started this thread ... I'd like to see more people accomplish that, rather than complaining when it doesn't happen and I think understanding Google has to be a bit 'big biased' helps with understanding how much work and how difficult it is...

[wyweb]

@scientist

Competing with Amazon as a whole?
Probably not going to happen for Mom & Pop...

No. It won't.

Competing with Amazon in a concentrated area for some specific terms? I think it's doable...

Oh I think it is also. You need some deep pockets for advertising though. You need to spend some dollars.

but how about for a specific niche where Mom & Pop get more word-of-mouth exposure than Amazon gets?

I don't know if they can get more word of mouth than Amazon but they definitely depend on it more heavily. Word of mouth can make or break a Mom & Pop. If they don't have an ad campaign setup I mean.

[wyweb]

my point was just because Google says something it doesnt mean its a law.

Of course not.

I'm not a google fan anymore.

I was at one time though.

[TheMadScientist]

Let me clarify: I think it's entirely possible Mom & Pop could get more word-of-mouth for Specific Terms than Amazon does ... Remember, with Google it's all relative, so could Mom & Pop get more word-of-mouth than Amazon as a whole? Probably not. But, could Mom & Pop get more word-of-mouth for Specialized Widget Sales? I think so, but I think to do it their site really needs to stand out...

Back to the original question, rephrased again: What about your site makes it more likely to be a type-in, word-of-mouth traffic generator than Amazon is? Where and how could it be better?

[netmeg]

Also, let us not forget that the entire internet is not made up of ecommerce sites (can't believe I'm saying that)

Which leads right back to a slightly rephrased version of my original question: Is your site 'special' enough to generate word-of-mouth traffic at a rate that exceeds the other closely related sites you're competing against?

Yep. In fact, it gets written up in newspapers and mentioned on TV. Thriving FB community, all that stuff.

But the larger point is that if you want to get that special word of mouth so you can compete with the big boys and lessen dependence on the big G, you need to make it EASY for your users to SHARE.

Don't like Facebook or "the twitter" ? That's okay, some of your competitors probably will. But how about coding in a button that makes it easy to email one of your pages? Shorten your URLs? Bookmark to Delicious? Print and/or PDF a nicely formatted page?

Make it easy. Make it one-click.

[TheMadScientist]

Great points netmeg!

And, imo all of those things go into the footprint of a site a search engine sees and make it 'stand out' there in ways which in the long-run can help too...

So, a few more questions:
How sharable is your website?
How can you make your site more shareable than your competition?

What about your site makes people want to share it?
How could you make it so more people want to share it?

[netmeg]

Also note that many of the big brands and larger players had email and print buttons before it was fashionable; which their visitors were already using and sharing content. Think that didn't help to make a big brand even bigger? Or contribute to their search profile?

Google is all about patterns. What's yours?

[wyweb]

Google is all about patterns. What's yours?

Whoa. Nice shot. I've definitely got a pattern but I need to get some sleep.

You haven't outlined your pattern though.

And that's okay. I'll go first. But not right now...

Right now I'm going to bed.

[Dan01]

I have been thinking about this thread.

Most people that sell on Amazon and eBay have sites of their own. Typically they use Amazon and eBay like businesses use the newspaper to advertise. In fact, there was a lawsuit against eBay years ago. I think someone wanted to hold eBay responsible for a bad purchase. eBay said they were like a classified ad in the newspaper.

[Dan01]

MS:

How can you make your site more shareable than your competition?

One of the more interesting coding problems I had last year was making a twitter button. I forget which one, but I remember I spent a few days on it.

I think your point is - spend the time and make your site right. Make it stand out from the rest.

Who can argue with that. It is our baby. It is our business. Make it right. Why was Walmart so successful? Because Sam worked at it, night and day. It was his baby.

[TheMadScientist]

I think your point is - spend the time and make your site right. Make it stand out from the rest.

BINGO!

And, when you're done with that, go back through and make it 'righter' (lol) ... Continue to rinse and repeat ... That's what the 'big guys' do, just like you say about Sam, and where it seems the 'little guys' often stop, then complain when they don't rank ... Listen to Singhal talk about making an improvement today and then going back next week and making it better ... Google didn't get where they are from 'settling' or 'stopping at good enough' they have, what, 80% market share world wide? and they're not sitting still ... Huh?

[TheMadScientist]

<rant>
Has anyone ever just spent time watching this site?

Yes, WebmasterWorld.Com is a Website a guy named Brett Tabke decided to build one day ... It's a Website ... AFAIK, one person built it, and now he has help improving it, because he did a Great Job when he built it...

WebmasterWorld hasn't stood still since I've been a member here ... It keeps moving forward and progressing and even though it's great, they keep working to make it better ... IMO People should either be the same way or not complain because they don't rank ... Sorry again for the bluntness, but if you don't follow the examples the 'big guys' set, then imo you don't have much room to complain, because to really be one of them and deserve to compete or beat them in the rankings you really have to build a site like them and the crazy thing about the Internet is anyone can build anything here.

Let me say that again: Anyone can build anything here. It's the Internet and if you have a website you can build it any way you decide ... There's nothing stopping you from building the next Yahoo! or Google or FaceBook or Twitter or WebmasterWorld, except: You

People use Yahoo! because they built a better site than others, not because they're Yahoo! It's the Internet, you can build a great website too ... Look at FaceBook ... Where on earth did it come from? A guy sat down and built a website ... That's all it is ... FaceBook is a Website.

Yeah, it's getting tougher to compete, but here, right here, you can learn how to do anything you need to do if you're willing to put in the work ... I'll let you in on where I got a bunch of my knowledge:

For HTML HTML Forum [webmasterworld.com] and HTML Documentation [dev.w3.org] If this is what you do for a living, don't you think you should read the specs? Or at the very least the parts that apply to what you do ... It's like the rules for websites.

For PHP PHP Forum [webmasterworld.com] and php.net [php.net]

For Apache & Mod_Rewrite Apache Forum [webmasterworld.com] and Apache.Org [apache.org]

For JavaScript JavaScript Forum [webmasterworld.com] and jQuery jQuery [jquery.com]

Notice anything about the links?
Yeah, half go right here on the site you're visiting...

If you don't have time to learn the tools of the trade, then, please, quit complaining when your homemade site doesn't rank, because there are people out there who approach things very professionally, and if you do this for a living, then IMO you should put yourself into it...
</rant>

[wyweb]

That's not a rant. That's good stuff.

Let me get back in here.

[Dan01]

I agree with what you are saying. I will likely ask a question in the PHP section soon too.

Here is a comment: Someone once asked Bill Gates about gambling. He said that he wouldn't gamble for money, but for time. I see his point. There are tons of projects to do. LOL

Every now and then I get a wild hair and have to modify something on a site. I have to admit though, I spend most of my time creating quality content. When I do make major changes (or even minor ones) I try to plan it for the weekends while most people are out having fun. LOL Just kidding, sometimes I get to take a weekend off too.

[TheMadScientist]

Thanks wyweb

LOL Dan01 ... I know what you mean about days off ... Now, here's another perspective about what you do ... You spend most of your time creating quality content, but (hopefully this will push you in to the php forum) great content does not make a website great ... There's way more that goes into it...

[wyweb]

@netmeg

Google is all about patterns. What's yours?

My pattern is to make money. Google is a set of tools to me. They're no different than the tool bags I used to strap on every day when I hung drywall. They're a means to an end, just like my tool bags were. That end is getting my bills paid and paying off any help I owe.

That's it. It doesn't go further than that.

I was much gentler at one time. The web was just a way for me to run my mouth, and I did so on a regular basis.

Then I found out I could make money on the web and I got mercenary. I wanted my piece too. And I got it.

Now what's your pattern? And don't ditch me on this either. You started it.

[Leosghost]

The song TMS is singing is "Evolve or die" ..opus #:4286522
a "classic" :)

And what makes a great song by a great singer? talent and practice and a unique voice ..and working and learning how to use them best .

[edited by: Leosghost at 11:43 pm (utc) on Mar 23, 2011]

[wyweb]

@Dan01

Someone once asked Bill Gates about gambling. He said that he wouldn't gamble for money

He's already gambled for money. He's taken serious chances. Risks. And he's got hammered for them too.

Can you say United States v. Microsoft?

Antitrust?

Ring any bells?

Hell, that's when it gets good anyway, when there's money on the table. That's when your heart starts pumping. When you've got something to lose.

[Dan01]

LOL Dan01 ... I know what you mean about days off ... Now, here's another perspective about what you do ... You spend most of your time creating quality content, but (hopefully this will push you in to the php forum) great content does not make a website great ... There's way more that goes into it...

Great content helps make a great website too. You could have the best looking website in the world, but without any good content, no one will see it.

Now if you want to build trust, making a trustworthy "looking" website is important. I think everyone wants that too.

I look at Facebook at it looks junky. There are some bells and whistles, but even those are clumsy and not intuitive, IMO. But people still go there. Sure Facebook is getting a little better, but during their big growth I thought they looked hokey. There is nothing fancy about Wikipedia either. But their content is king.

[TheMadScientist]

Ah, but there is something about those sites you mention, and even this one ... They're the definition of functional simplicity ... It's not a small project or an easy task to create the functionality or a FaceBook, WikiPedia, Twitter, WebmasterWorld, Yahoo! and keep them simple to use ... Remember there's a bunch of functionality built into WikiPedia that makes it what it is, all of them for that matter ... One of the craziest things about WebmasterWorld is how complex the site is, yet how simple it is to use and looks ... It's highly functional simplicity at it's finest, imo...

Great content helps make a great website too. You could have the best looking website in the world, but without any good content, no one will see it.

Definitely ... A website is inclusive of all aspects, rather than limited.

[Dan01]

I think of Wikipedia as being pretty basic, but they were a non-profit and that helped. I think people were more willing to work for free if the website was non-profit.

Facebook and Twitter and WebmasterWorld do have functionality. That was important. Without the functionality, no one would post.

Your point is taken. When I spent that time making the Twitter button, it answered some questions I had been asking for a year or more. I made a programing breakthrough that I would never had made if I didn't make that little button. LOL

I don't try to reinvent the wheel. If there is no plug-in or module, I will look into writing one myself or modifying something to make it work. I did that recently too.

[Dan01]

I am not the world's best programmer obviously. The only programing class I took was Fortran about 30 years ago. Most everything I have learned, I have had to read about it on my own. But even before I took that Fortran class, I had to learn basic on my own. Sometimes I get a chance to sit down and read something in a book, but most of the time I learn on a need to know basis. The Internet is great for that.

[TheMadScientist]

I think of Wikipedia as being pretty basic...

How difficult do you think it is to make the user posting on WikiPedia open to everyone? It's a very advanced site ... It's beyond what most people are capable of coding ... Click on edit and look at the code they're parsing to put the pages together ... It's so advanced it's not even funny ... See what I mean by functional simplicity? It looks simple, but it's faaaaaar from it.

[Dan01]

I know they use a wiki CMS, but I don't know how advanced it is. Compared to other sites, it doesn't look that advanced - at least from the outside.

Have you installed a wiki? The reason I ask is: how does it compare to the standard. I played with a standard wiki installation once and it didn't seem too intuitive. In fact, if I remember right, it took a lot of work just to post.

[TheMadScientist]

To give people an idea of the time, energy and effort put into the 'big players' sites, I'll share a little bit I 'have a hunch' about, have read or know or about WebmasterWorld...

Unless it's been changed since I read about it:
1.) It runs on a flat file database.
2.) It runs on a single box.

Meaning not a cluster of 6 or 8 like other popular forums I've read about do.

3.) It's always one of the fastest sites I've visited.
4.) It has 500,000 registered users (or something around there if I remember correctly).

5.) It has search term highlighting.
6.) The search they wrote for it is phenomenal.
7.) If you look down at the bottom of the page, there are forum specific and global newer and older links.

8.) There's an onsite sticky mail system.
9.) There's auto code insertion for posting messages.
10.) There's thread and forum specific notifications on a per thread, forum, and member basis.

11.) I would guess they don't have an issue with duplicate titles in the SERPs.
12.) There's malformed code notifications for new posts.

And on, and on, and on ... And none of it afaik is off-the-shelf...

To get an idea of how advanced it is, try to figure out how to have 1,000,000 page views (or so, I think) a day on forum running on a single box and still be one of the fastest sites on the Internet ... Forget about the bells and whistles for a minute, just try to figure out how much thought had to go into the structure of the site to make that possible ... It's an accomplishment and a half and it didn't happen on accident...

[TheMadScientist]

Have you installed a wiki?

No, I don't use anything off-the-shelf, and I would guess if they use something off-the-shelf as a starting point it's highly modified ... I could be wrong, but most of the off-the-shelf software I've looked into, including WP for example (if I remember correctly ... yes, I know it's not a wiki) are only good up to a certain traffic level and then they aren't coded well enough to handle the volume ... They're just not built for super high volume like a WikiPedia or WebmasterWorld or the High Traffic sites get ... Things may have changed in the few years since I spent any time reading about them, but that's what I remember from when I looked into off-the-shelf software packages.

[Leosghost]

IIRC "here" is Brett "rolled" in perl.

[TheMadScientist]

The operation of Wikipedia depends on MediaWiki, a custom-made, free and open source wiki software platform written in PHP and built upon the MySQL database.[185] The software incorporates programming features such as a macro language, variables, a transclusion system for templates, and URL redirection. MediaWiki is licensed under the GNU General Public License and it is used by all Wikimedia projects, as well as many other wiki projects. Originally, Wikipedia ran on UseModWiki written in Perl by Clifford Adams (Phase I), which initially required CamelCase for article hyperlinks; the present double bracket style was incorporated later. Starting in January 2002 (Phase II), Wikipedia began running on a PHP wiki engine with a MySQL database; this software was custom-made for Wikipedia by Magnus Manske ...

The Phase II software was repeatedly modified to accommodate the exponentially increasing demand. In July 2002 (Phase III), Wikipedia shifted to the third-generation software, MediaWiki, originally written by Lee Daniel Crocker. Several MediaWiki extensions are installed[186] to extend the functionality of MediaWiki software. In April 2005 a Lucene extension[187][188] was added to MediaWiki's built-in search and Wikipedia switched from MySQL to Lucene for searching. Currently Lucene Search 2.1,[189] which is written in Java and based on Lucene library 2.3,[190] is used.

[en.wikipedia.org...]

So theirs is custom built ...

Wikipedia receives between 25,000 and 60,000 page requests per second, depending on time of day.

Your average off-the-shelf software would have an epic fail long before that type of volume hit it ... lol

[upload.wikimedia.org...]

ADDED: Tired of double posting so I'll add to this one again ... here's WebmasterWorld's box: [webmasterworld.com...]

[netmeg]

Now what's your pattern? And don't ditch me on this either. You started it.

Global Domination via reign of terror.