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There has been some speculation here and there as to whether or not Google tweaks its own, i.e. PR10. In a recent post GoogleGuy claimed this was not so. This #4 placement in Google has set it in my humble mind and opinion that they do not as stated by GoogleGuy. [webmasterworld.com]
Q: Are the ODP and Google sites naturally occurring PR10 (PR11 for Google?) or is there some manual intervention for larger sites to ensure they have suitable PR?A: It's all natural.
Do you really get any significant amount of traffic from ATW?
I rank high on a lot of searches over there, many of them are higher than my Google ranking, and they still only send me less than 1/1000 the traffic that google.com sends me.
This month that works out to one referal a day for this month. That's less than 10% of the amount of traffic I get from such search powerhouses as ASK and AV.
In fact, now that I look at last month's results, I was averaging 1.5 visitors per day from ATW, so that is a significant drop.
My results are not dramatic but constantly increasing. I have have much more lately since Google's tantrum.
I think the new bolt-on tools in ATW will make it a favourite.
I'm UK based, dealing with UK only clients - that may play a part in the equation but I don't have any other figures to make a comparison.
and if a user is already on Google then they don't need Google as a result for the query search engine.
But what about the users who are not on Google, but who are getting Google results? It's one thing to be impartial and another to send newbie eyeballs to AV from Yahoo!
I guess Google makes up for it by ranking #1 for:
allinurl:search-engine
although neither word in the phrase is in their URL (or even their title tag).
Hmmm.
Google.com comes up on #2 on Altavista if it makes you feel any better? ;]
No, they don't need to. But is indicates how good their algo is at delivering real world results (at this time - I know, I know, the dance is not finished yet).
The point is that exactly. Google is the woprld's most popular and influential search engine and should certainly show up in the top 3 for search engine NATURALLY. LEt's wait and see how it plays out...
Would someone really go into a search engine and type 'top search engines' ... and take the results seriously?
"A shoemaker's wife is poorly shod".
If they wanted to be serious about it, they could form some alliance so the the top five SE's support each other in SE results... but they don't because it isn't important.
We probably look at it with SEO goggles on as opposed to how Jo Public sees it.
Nope!
"dumb search engine" returns yahoo.com as #1.
hahah lol cline
You are missing the point completely. NO, it does not matter to Google's business if they Rank highly on search engine (other than some potentially embarrasing press). Also, it is unlikely that someone on a search engine will search for one they already know of.
The point is, that Google generally provides very relevant results by using a combination of a:
1) A pages popularity (links)
2) A pages importance (PR)
3) A pages votes (anchor text pointing to that page)
Google completely dominates all 3 of the above. So much so, that it is an extreme case where other factors (on page) seemed unlikely to matter much.
When you search jobs you get Monster, when you search books you get Amazon. It would still be relevant to the search if you searched books and got "Joes Book Store" #1, but it certainly is not a great result. The point is Google is by far the most important and "voted for" search engine in the world. It makes one wonder why they barely crack the top 20 on the new index.
I suspect this means much will still change, if it sticks it's indicitave of a large algo shift that may be less than stellar.
Without a good "scoring algo" all the SE's are basically the same. You can find most pages in every search engine. The ORDER is which the results are displayed is what has always made Google king.
I agree with your analysis. I just want to add a two points: It seems that after the esmeralda update neither Google nor Altavista, Alltheweb or Yahoo are in the top ten. On the other hand, a search for engine yields Google as #1.
My response to that colleague is copy pasted below.
Please note that the queries mentioned below are from 2 weeks ago.
(Sorry about the bad formatting. It's direct copy paste from an email client.)
Without sounding like Google's spokesman, I would like to say that what you mentioned only goes to show the integrity
of Google's search. Some SEs would manipulate the
search on keyword 'search engine' alone to ensure they
show up as number one, but not google. It's
interesting to note that the same search on altavista
(at the present time) yields altavista as search
result 1 and google as search result 2.
More importantly the same search on EXCITE puts Google
on Number 6 and some unknown search related companies like
reinventbusiness.com and searchenginepromotion.biz
ahead of Google with a true search engine 'Altavista'
nowhere to be seen. Can you believe that? That goes to show how serious excite is about
delivering high quality search.
I can tell you from an SEO's point of view that google's page is not
well-designed (in terms of keyword density and
content) for the keyword 'search engine'. For ex. the
term 'search engine' is nowhere to be found on the
page, more importantly in the title, or in any h1 tags. That tells us clearly that their priority
rightly so is not ranking well for that term, but
rather creating a page that loads very quickly and
does not carry the riff raff that a lot of portal pages do.
For a company like google which is one of the most
profitable privatey held companies in all of Silicon
Valley, and #3 traffficked site on all of the web behind Yahoo
and MSN, there is no incentive to try to manipulate or
fix the search result to rank well for the term
'search engine'.
Also, algos change regularly and 'fixing' a site to rank #1
regardless of the algo would certainly be foul play
and bad practice. Afterall the idea is that you have a
fair and balanced algo, regardless of what your own
position is for a given search.
Really? I always thought the idea was to return the best results to the user.
a fair and balanced algo which returns the best results to the user. :)
Perhaps.
More likely they have better things to do than sit there and tweak searches nobody cares about.
I rest my case.
Slim to none.
That, however has nothing at all to do with my point.
Pretend this is a search for widgets, if it makes it easier for you.
Wouldn't you find it the least bit odd for a page to have over 200,000 backlinks/PR11/the most pages voting for widgets (anchor text) and still appear #21 (on the new index)?
Of course, the ranking may change. But, if it doesn't, you would have to be blind to not see the implications to the new algo.
I also ran a search in Google Sets for ... search engine.
Google does not appear at all!
Allinanchor search engine on new index Google #1. Also on www?
I would hope their algos were good enough to discount allintitle and url when there are soooo many links saying search engine.
Google does, and has for some time ranked top couple for allinanchor: search engine. Also it's PR has been tops for quite some time. They have ranked at least top 5 for search engine for as long as I can remember and have not changed the title or URL (allinurl), so something must have changed in the algo of the new index to drop from #3 to #21.
it may change before the index finalizes and it won't matter...
