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My observation so far: little change this month from last. Anchor text of inbound links still counts big time, and PR seems to be worth the same as before. IOW, its the same old, same old. One aspect that isn't relevant with the SERPs I am most familiar with is "spamminess". I don't see much more spam, but then these SERPs don't tend to be the ones that spammers would be found on. Thus, the index may be more spammy, and I wouldn't see it.
In my field the site with the #1 rank for an important query, seems to have gone one PR down (from 5 to 4). Other sites remain at the PR 6 they always have. My own site which looks like it went up to PR 7 and got 15% new backlinks stayed at #8.
My own little conclusion: I won't focus so much on PR or backlinks - maybe I should take everybody's advice and optimise the inbound anchor text.
Finally a question: I seem to recall that google would return max. 400 results (40 standard pages), but now it's returning 1000 results. It wasn't like this last month, was it?
Okay, this time I really am going to bed. :)
in this update i see far less weighting for dmoz sites!..i see some spammy sites gone but cant work out why because crosslinking multi domain networks and links from sub-domains still buy top billing!
Have to do abit more digging to see whats happening!
Craig
Just intial observations.
Any idea what this means in a listing for a link to a site:
"4. * magicxxxxxx"
Notice the "*" in front of the listing when doing a link: www.mysite.com...
The link is a link farm, BTW. On one of our competitors sites, and only shows up on www., not www2 or www3.
[google.com...]
[google.com...]
I have noticed on Google 3 that some of the sites seem to have a freshdate next to them (currently 5 March). What does this mean?
1.Anchor text in those linksMost sites this was the only changes completed for this update and seems to be the major factor for SERP increases.
2. Quality inbound links (theme and non theme)Many pages that had already obtained #1 ranking - concluded that they didn't need excess PageRank. Thus added link anchors to other internal pages having SERP difficulties. On average - four PR5/6 were added pointing to problem pages - all obtain #1.
4. H1 and H2 tags play a big partDoes not appear to be any change in weight - thus still important.
3. Good meta title and description
5. I mention my keyword approx 7-10 times per 100 words of text.
6. Absolutely no flash on front page or any other pages. Nothing kills you faster than flash.
Totally disagree. I work with Shockwave (same thing). The great benefit here is removing bytes/file size off page. All visitor content/context in applet. 1. 2. & 3, a major importance here.
Example: A title - (5 keywords arranged in order of importance), and making a short sentence, with body - 23 "on-page" words plus applet ranks 1st - 5th on 27 individual keyphrases + plus a single keyword (ranked 4th -- results 6.2 million). HTML File size 7K.
17 internal anchors (all PR6) + 24 external anchors (most PR3 - PR5 using only the single (most important page keyword) produced this.
Prior to this update this single page produce an average 1200 search click-throughs per day (ranked 8 - 20).
7. Clean code, no useless code, junk code.
Agree - anything that could be externally load -- is.
8. I have a cardinal rule against putting any image on the front page and it is probably the most significant factor for me. Nothing "weighs" you down more than images. I understand for a lot people this is not possible but in my opinion - I am glad my competitors love to use 27 images on the front page.
hmmm... applet is the first string -- title attribute used in element.
9. Related to that: Download in 3-4 seconds max.
10. Add fresh content every month. Write one to two more pages if that is all you can do.
Agree - throughout month pages repeatedly placed higher in results on refresh. This included existing pages just by re-arranging "on-page" text.
One new client - using only the above (making quite fixes) and 4 new links obtain top ranks position on primary phrases where previously not ranked in top 100.
Exceptional update IMHO.
[edited by: fathom at 10:04 am (utc) on Mar. 7, 2003]
I have two URLs pointing to the same site, distinguished only by .co.uk and .com. I have put 301 redirects on a couple of other URLs pointing to the same site, but this last one is complicated by the fact that some third party technology partners are using the old URL in POST statements in code in their sites (yeah, yeah, complicated, don't ask - it won't last long now...)
In the last update my preferred URL went from PR6 to grey, and all its backlinks "disappeared". The old URL stayed at PR5, and continued to produce a large number of results for a large number of searches.
I wrote to Google, explaining the situation. (I also got the DMOZ entry changed following an intervention by a fellow member here - I won't name him in case he get inundated with Stickies but he knows who he is and I am very grateful to him!)
In my email to Google, I asked them to "switch" the penalty, if it was a penalty, from my preferred URL to my old URL.
Subsequently pages from both URLs were extensively crawled.
I now have my PR6 back (I think!) and am very happy with the results as showing. The strange thing - and I am guessing that this means human intervention - is that I am no longer getting any results for pages from the old URL, even though the home page itself still appears.
I can't see any way in which this could have been effected in a systematic way, so the lesson that I am drawing (and thought worth passing on) is that where you have a genuine problem, write to Google and explain it.
If anyone has an alternative explanation I would be interested to hear it, but until I hear a better theory - thank you Google for listening.
jeremy goodrich,
calculating PR is solving the linear equation system Mx=b (not calculating eigen vectors). b is a constant vector resulting from the constant "self contribution" of the pages (probably 0.15).
To everyone in general:
One thing, meta title is undoubtably super important. Meta title is a top 3 algo factor IMO. Remember, Google interprets literally. So when you put "Easy Weight Loss!" It reads the exclamation point literally. I counter this but putting one space before any punctuation.
In addition to your words, singulars and plurals give much different results so webmasters should plan for this.
I can usually optimize one page for two key phrases. I write my text, meta, h1 and h2s and alt tags (which I forgot to mention) accordingly.
That is my secret to ranking high in Google and it really is no big deal or secret IMO.
Keep in mind that I said Quality links. Junk links will kill you quick. There are no easy ways to getting good links. It is a time consuming, laborous process but it pays off big time.
One term i'm looking at now has over 100 identical content free sites with only one word different on each. These are sites that I got dmoz to look at a while ago and they removed from the ODP, but doesn't look like Google sees anything wrong with them.
One thing, meta title is undoubtably super important. Meta title is a top 3 algo factor IMO. Remember, Google interprets literally. So when you put "Easy Weight Loss!" It reads the exclamation point literally. I counter this but putting one space before any punctuation.
ya agree... mis-read your original thought "keyword" meta was there.
As far as flash/shockwave - can significantly increase SERP potential, if used wisely.
IMO (and agree with you) an open intro is bad marketing... but the implementation or use of flash/shockwave only has positive affects on SERPs (I wouldn't design a whole site in these - but as site resources you can't lose).
In my category, image is more important than optimization and the flash is killing those sites in competition to mine. But doctors and clinics hire webdesigners for image, not optimization, thereby forgetting a basic marketing principle:
"It doesn't matter how wonderful your web-site is, if nobody can find it then nothing else matters."
translation - put your url on your business cards and brochures as this will be the only way people will find it and raw internet marketing will do nothing for you.
And fathom also brought up something that needs repeating. Think of every internal page as a possible entry point and optimize internal pages for secondary and minor keywords. If those internal optimized pages are low in the SERPs, new reciprocal link agreements should point to those interior pages, with the anchor text reflecting the kws you optimized those pages for.
The best result for me this update was to jump from #18 to #6 on an important secondary keyword off an internal page for which I optimized it for. After building up strong links/pagerank for my index.html page, I began steering new reciprocal link requests to this internal page/secondary kw I was gunning for.
It paid off.
Now that I got that page high in the serps I was aiming for, I will go on to work with other interior pages. Having all interior pages rank high for the secondary kws they are aimed for is more important to me than ranking #1 for my singular main keyword.
With any luck, I can achieve a good serp for one or two pages each update. 6-9 months from now all my important pages will be ranking top 10 for their respective kws and I will have achieved diversification.
As I said earlier, longevitity is my goal and diversification is a major factor in achieving this goal.
I hope my posts and fathom's follow ups have helped others. I am going to sleep.
Zapatista!
RECOMMENDATION NUMERO UNO FOR GOOGLE! Read the spam reports or just remove that form from your site. At least I wouldnt be frustrated if there was no place that it could be reported..
Buying a domain for each secondary keyword is spam. It's also a waste of good PageRank. I take interior pages that are there anyway and optimized them for secondary kws as i mentioned earlier. Once I have the main page built up with links and PageRank, I get my link partners to link to that interior page.
So what I might do after optimizing an interior page as mentioned in my post previously:
www.mydomain.c*m/secondary_keyword_one.html and if My main page has PageRank5 and my interiors are PR4s, I will ask the next 10 quality link partners to link to precisely that page with "Affordable Secondary Keyword One" in the anchor text.
There is no reason why a business should have 50 domains. I get link requests from these people and I ignore them. Why? Most of those sites have PR2 and lower which i don't touch and if they are higher, they won't last there for long.
Here's another Golden Nugget that is just between you and me and no one else so don't tell anyone.
I have no "proof" but I am convince that an ICRA tag in your metas and a listing in surfsafely.c*m are minor factors in the 100 factor Google algo. I say this for two reasons:
1. On many minor kws, I will rank #3 for a two word phrase with an interior page and the surfsafely.C*m page with MY OWN LINK on it will rank #4.
2. Look at Google preferences and there is an option for "safe surfing"
Now, I have no proof on this so don't quote me on it but I have a good hunch this ICRA/surfsafely.c-m are factors in the Google algo. But that's just between you and me, wink, wink.
Okay, I really got to go to sleep. IF anyone has? about my posts please sticky me and I will help unless you are a doctor or clinic.
So either the toolbar PR that I'm seeing is still not accurate, or the "link:" command has different methods for deciding what it's going to display, or both.
Better wait until the end of the update. ;)
So far, no change in PR for any of those 13, and only minor changes in the numbers of backlinks.
Zapatista:
Google interprets literally. So when you put "Easy Weight Loss!" It reads the exclamation point literally.
Are you suggesting that "loss!" is seen as a separate term from simple "loss"? If so, I don't see that. Google seems to ignore punctuation even on searches put in quotes.
I don't normally do commercial searches, but came across some shocking spam the other day. The top three results for a particular term were different sites for the same company -- with only slightly different content. Since the update it's almost the same -- now three our of the top four results are for that company. I guess that's progress of a sort. Spam report has been sent.
somebody said somth. about dmoz Data in a earlier reply.
Has Google updated the directory? This would be very suprising for me because I have a site, which is listed in the dmoz since about 4 month, but it is not listed in the Google Directory.
windsun, putting asterisks in link: can bring up some weird results.
Wow, this looks like a list of "golden sites"
links from these clearly are good thing.
