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In essense, the problem is that computers are very bad at understanding website content. They use a set of very simplistic metrics which are an extremely poor substitute for comprehension.
It is upon this heaving, lurching foundation of those very simplistic metrics that all of SEO, and the bulk of real-world web-use, not to mention virtually all web-based businesses are built.
Link popularity simply STINKS MIGHTILY as a way to determine if a website is a really great online shop - or a really awful one. It's a reasoning error to assume that a good shop will acquire many more links than a bad one.
And investing years to accomodate this fundamental stupidity - by building link popularity, is a truly sad and tedious way to pass time and spend energy.
HTML tweaks to move keywords up the page whilst preserving a table layout; padding text to make the body text as big as the leading website, re-naming pages to contain keywords - all of these are idiotic consequences of the fact that the search engines are so dumb.
Keyword Prominance, keywords link text, and on and on - are simply VERY BAD measures of anything significant - and of course, they are easily manipulated so that very bad sites, tweaked by very smart or very energetic people - get to the top.
And yet this is the state of the art on our planet today, and Google is the best of the lot. There is no real practical alternative here, nor any in site, so Long Live SEO.
But if someone finds a better way - the world is going to love it, they're going to become very rich, and Google is going to have to think again.
Chris
Like it or not, keyword analysis is the only option available for search engines. And if users continue to pass keyword lists to search engines as I do, then alternative methods are bordering on impossible however much cpu time is thrown at the problem.
Having said that, there is definitely room for improvement in the analysis/indexation of page-content and keywords.
google's algo was never developed to pinpoint the best on-line shop, and i doubt even humans would be able to agree on it too.
The google algo is best to pinpoint the best non-commercial specific data. PR and citation indicies are good at that.
Look at the money query SERPS. A lot of spam. Same as other engines.
Google has never promised to provide a way to help people go shopping by finding the "best shops". However I argue that much better systems for pinpointing good shopping and commercial destinations are Adwords and Froogle within the google dynasty and OV and others beyond it.
To answer your questions Ive accepted that Google's main index (their algo) is not a good place to promote our own commercial sites, and not a good place to find others. When i shop I always look to the right! No pesky information or spam or "dated filler keyword rich" stuff masqueradings as content. Every link goes to a service i am looking for with credit card in hand.
But for information the algo is working well for me as a researcher, and i look to the left.
Im very accepting of Google's algos, as long as im smart enough to look for the right content in the right index.
However, the social issues (privacy) are not as easily overcome as the technical.
The next phase will be a desktop application where preferences are stored locally and used to query an index without sending user data, this addresses both issues, personalized search results and privacy integrity.
Do not forget that part of the responsibility for good search results lies with the searcher using more keywords or advanced search options in the search query.
(Maybe some spam is necessary to push searchers in that direction ;))
Given time and extra processing power, I'm sure Google will come up with more sophisticated measures to "qualify" the quality and quantity of links (the research papers are full of them).
Also they might have other stuff up their sleeve:
Methods and apparatus for employing usage statistics in document retrieval [appft1.uspto.gov]
Already search results seem to be different geo-location wise.
As well, IMO most "link collecting" goes on in the PPC (pills p*rn Casino) area, where for the moment, I am sure Google just says -let it be - the searcher will get what he wants anyway.
If Google can keep search results Fresh enough, aren't 99+% of search queries still fantastic anyway?
[edited by: vitaplease at 3:15 pm (utc) on June 2, 2003]
The more factors used, and how they are used apropos each other, the harder to spam, and harder to reverse-engineer.
In short: If they index and rank the commercial web it's legitimate to take a critical look at the way they do.
I don't necessarily buy Coke because they have the most prominent shelf space.
I still look at the regular search results.
The change will be evolutionary - (maybe even organic!) as users find the reuslts in the main SERPS are sub-standard they will look more to the right, and google itself has an interest in "encouraging" commercial web sites and on line ads to advertise on the right.
My position remains that what is "acceptable" must be contextualized by what it is used for. And the era of comprehensive broad based web page databases being able to deliver useful SERPS in these areas is behind us. Adwords stares us in the face with better results from what ive seen for commercial or Iwannabuy searches.
I do agree with you that "...If they index and rank the commercial web it's legitimate to take a critical look at the way they do...", but from a pragmatic personal business perspective I think its a fairly useless exercise given my (admittedly subjective) peer into the future. That's not to say it isnt an interesting academic exercise but what we here find "acceptable" will porbably do little for my bottom line.
[edited by: chiyo at 5:06 pm (utc) on June 2, 2003]
That will be the moment Google will have to introduce suggested search query expansions a la Vivisimo/Altavista Prisma and drop the top two ads to make room for it.
chiyo, you should know that you stress the google language tool by dropping such words! However, i feel a bit more educated now. ;)
>The change will be evolutionary - (maybe even organic!) as
>users find the reuslts in the main SERPS are sub-standard
>they will look more to the right, and google itself has an interest
>in "encouraging" commercial web sites and on line ads to
>advertise on the right.[/quote]
These are exactly my thoughts! Can't see anything wrong with this strategy.
>Adwords stares us in the face with better results from what
>ive seen for commercial or Iwannabuy searches.
Yep, that's what they are for. Imho, even with this commercial stuff google does a good job. The balance between targeted ads and lesser spammed results in shopping / money areas is sometimes amazing. I have no problem to click at the right instead of the left to find (and prob buy) what i'm looking for.
What I don't buy at all is the seperation of the web into commercial and non commercial. If we do that than the non commercial content is nothing any SE can impress Joe User with. Want to see geo cities pages on SERPs?
And I predict the general SE which really is able to bring all the web including the semi and fully commercial web to the user in a meaningful way will be Je User's fav engine.
Advertizing is not a true substitute for meaningful indexing and ranking. Bid based ranking is the opposite of quality based ranking.
Specialist Commercial engines will work for special formats, like catalogue searches, but not for the vast area of infomercial content.
We already have that trend in full bloom, where commercial sites generate content like there's no tomorrow, we have affiliate sites putting up content heavy sites which basically are doorway sites.
It's not 1996 anymore, and it won't come back.
How could any person determine what a "great online shop is"? It is purely subjective. The only way I can see is to vote. This is what link popularity is about. Although not perfect by any means, it works quite often.
BTW, I don't recall Google ever saying they ranked sites based on what was great. They are simply trying to combine relevance and authority.
You have touched a raw nerve here. These geo cities pages have made me link-phobic. You kill one pop-up and the second one appears immediately. Even in the Open Directory many of these geo cities sites are occupying entries in coveted PR5-PR6 ategories.
Any SE that filters out these geo cities (and tripod, ..) sites will be getting Humanitarian SE of the Year award from me!
You say,
"Bid based ranking is the opposite of quality based ranking"
I suggest that bid based ranking will, in the end, form the basis of *relevant* ranking for commercial sites. Only for sites that offer stuff users want to buy and sites that users feel comfortable buying from will the ROI in Adwords make sense. Spammy lists of affiliate banners will be driven out of the market - the conversion rates won't justify the price of the bid.
If you think that this means only businesses that throw the most money at Adwords will succeed you are mistaken. That was the philosphy that saw the collapse of the dot-com bubble. Sensible economics is now taking over. Businesses are going to have to build websites offering products and services that people want, and also be forced to differentiate those services from their competitors (which obviates the need to pay to be at the absolute top). This will see the end of the "me too" websites and those adding no value for the user. It doesn't mean the end of affiliate marketing, but it will mean affiliates are going to have to build vertical content; this is harder and will mean the end for affiliates who can't create original offerings.
As for the idea of "quality" - that is unquantifiable. What is quality to me is not quality to you. Only relevancy counts - and the only way to measure what the market finds relevant is to monetise it.
Its called the free market - it works.
ROFL
Powdork, that is one for the album! I'd say: great find - not: bad result! ;)
Or maybe "New scientist" should target Britney Spears, and drop their adword campaign -;
Have seen a lot of great geo cities (and tripod, ..) sites.
However, the popups are painful and are about as irritating as a poorly structured web page overloaded with text.
Agree totally, its not on purpose so much as they *can't* in the future rank "money query" web pages in the general index as well as Adwords does. Devaluing SERPS is a no-no of course as that is what brings eyeballs who may click on adwords. But "rotating results" in keyword areas where there is no "real substantive" difference between the top 50 for example and ranking is more the result of good spamming or good SEO, will not devalue their results for the user. It may however, may make the ROI for SEO and spamming less profitable.
heini also said: >>What I don't buy at all is the seperation of the web into commercial and non commercial.<<
Agree also. - that the categorization is crude. Most info sites do have some commercial content, from ocassional to very frequent affiliate links to amazon for eg, or they are "selling" a "person" or the body who created the information. So there are many shades of gray. However that's why I referred to the "organic" and "evolutionary" concept - sites will eventually find the spot that returns the best ROI. SEO does take money after all, same as paying per click. just dont think the main google algo can keep up with thousands of sites all chasing the same high-profit keywords where ways they can make their site original and different is very limited.
This will see the end of the "me too" websites and those adding no value for the user. It doesn't mean the end of affiliate marketing, but it will mean affiliates are going to have to build vertical content; this is harder and will mean the end for affiliates who can't create original offerings.
This is completely at odds with what selling ( marketing) is all about. The visitor on a quest for a given product isn't the least bit interested in wading through a 100 page, vertically built website, including widget history, etc. in order to make a purchase. Just serve them a page that offers the product or service in an understandable and reasonably tasteful way and enables a quick, secure buy. That's the key to commercial success on the web. Its proven time after time. Why should the web have to be any different that an ad in the Sunday Supplement?
If commercial sites are going to have to produce Pulitzer prize level "original and compelling content" in order to survive, then the web as a commercial medium will fail miserably, and they won't survive. Moreover, there just aren't enough folks in internet marketing possessing the skills you would demand, even among direct sellers.
Why should the web have to be any different that an ad in the Sunday Supplement?
In Sunday supplements, businesses aren't given free publicity as a matter of course--instead, they pay for advertising.
If Google were to emulate print media (or broadcast media, for that matter), it wouldn't have any e-commerce listings except AdWords.
Why should the web have to be any different that an ad in the Sunday Supplement?
If I'm going to buy something, I want as much information as possible. That's what makes the internet valuable to consumers. Free information. Being able to sell something cheaper on the internet is a thing of the past, at least as a marketing tool. You must be able to inform better, and present the product better, just as in a 'real world' business model. It's been long enough that the internet is part of the real world, and must conform to that model. Coincidentally, if you do that, you'll likely survive any hand check that comes your way.
What I mean by vertical content is "vertical services"; I don't mean putting a whole lot of extraneous information about the "widgets" in front of the buyer that he has to wade through before buying - I agree with you that would be a marketing disaster. Adwords are certainly good at getting users to the correct landing page. It is what happens after that.
I feel that sites which offer integrated and related services/products to that which the user is interested buying will win out in the long run. So for instance the user wants to buy widgets - how about offering things like "widget insurance", "widget cleaning services", "his & her widget accessories", ("books about the history of widgets"?). And don't do this by ugly pop ups or flashy banner ads either - use well integrated, simple text navigation.
Affiliates are in a prime position to build these sorts of sites. A widget manufacturer may not be best placed to also manufacture widget accessories and vice verce; and widget insurers sure as hell don't want to make them. This provides the real space for affiliate marketing to operate in.
In the end, affiliate marketing has to be about increasing the total amount of money spent by consumers, not just about sites trying to get a greater share of the same spend.
Currently, there are too many affiliate sites that are just lists of links to "widget manufacturers" with no focus, simply trying to capture as much "widget" traffic as posible. Great sites for the spammers if they manage to get to the top of search results for free; however, they don't really attract repeat visits, users don't generally put them in their favourites folder and, as their conversion rate is isn't good enough to pay for listings, they have no long term traffic potential in the face of ever tougher Google algorthms. As far as the user is concerned, one "shopping directory" is much the same as the next - there will be no loyalty to either.
I have built both sorts of sites. Looking at my stats and monthly cheques the ones offering me a real chance of long term success - in the face of fickle alogorithms - are those that offer the vertical services. The skills required aren't so much web design as putting yourself in the consumers shoes and saying to yourself - "what's gonna make me spend £200 when I only plan to spend £100".
Take three steps back and look at the Emporer again!
To all SEO's who try to manipulate the results, don't complain, take advantage of the situation.
To all "innocent" providers of information who are really losing out in what is happening here....if you think it is you, then you are not so "innocent" and you need to join group #1 above!
Yo folks....the Emporer is as Naked as he has ever been.....this is the time to develop your future stategies based upon the current nakedness......if you can't do that then please don't whine about what is about to happen to you!
This depends a lot on what you tend to search for. Earlier today I was looking for some site about the late 1960s-1970s rock band "Shocking Blue" (anyone remember "Venus"?) #1 site, which wasn't bad, was on Geocities. When the topic of the search is something like pop culture, quite often many of the good sites will be on free hosts.
