Forum Moderators: open
"This thread is ONLY for serious, generic discussion of changes that you are observing with the new algo in this update. As in things like "Looks to me like PR is less important this month, and anchor text of inbound links counts more.", etc. How your site is doing has no relevance here unless you can explain why you think so in terms of a general algo analysis."
This thread is NOT for y'all to say how much you think Google sucks, or alternatively how great the new SERPs are. The idea is to pick apart how Google is working, and not to criticize their quality.
Actually, I agree with your general point here. Database driven drivel sitting on long, hyphenated domains, and pretending to have relevency to the search term.
It is most apparent to me in relatively non-competitive geographic related searches where one is bombarded by breast augmentation, singles clubs, electronic retailers and such. Absolutely overwhelming there, to the point of not being able to find useful information.
Disclaimer - I am still maintaining good position in my niche' for my search terms, so please don't consider this a whine.
WBF
Real content is relevant. These results are full of PRETEND RELEVANCE. Pseudo-relevance. Fake relevence. Sites pretending to be on the topic but actually absent anything of merit except links/leads to the true point of the site
Yes. They're parasites that feed off of real content sites like ours. They're total junk but they do well in all the SE's. Imho, they should be shot and p*ssed on, not necessarily in that order.
ADDED: Meant to mention... I only ususally check serps for our site, about 15-20 that seem to bring in the most traffic, but for those, 64 moved across virtually exactly as we first saw it before it went live...
Are the SERPs you are looking at commercially oriented (which very few people give a rat's ass about), or straight info sites? E-commerce is a bane on the WWW, and if such sites show up only as Adwords, this is a major improvement.
Which brings me back to yankee... my point is I would much rather see a Chicago Tribune article that mentions the Cubs in passing to rank in the top ten for Chicago Cubs rather than phantom/piffle domain pretending to be about the Chicogo Cubs. That "pretending" domain exposes a serious flaw in search algorithm that is not easy to address. The Tribune article in contrast is a much smaller problem -- it is simply a high quality site that is not genuinely relevant to the query. THIS IS BETTER THAN A LOW QUALITY SITE NOT GENUINELY RELEVANT TO THE QUERY. That's all. It may seem like a minor point, but in fact it isn't. The thing is, with the Tribune "mistake" sites, this problem can be addressed by the algorithm learning better niche relevance...
...which leads to...
64.
Those results valued good quality authoritative sites within a niche. But those diappeared and now we niche/authority/relevance is now greatly diminished in the current serps. The true quality, relevance and niche authority knobs have been turned down and the relevance-equals-anchor-text knob has been cranked way, way up. This leads to piffle sites being able to pretend like they have relevant information when in fact they are just trolling for piles of inefficient (but somewhat profitable) traffic.
I'm not saying stuff like that Tribune article would be a good result. It wouldn't, but I'd much rather see those than these keyword focused nothing domains based on links links and links coming back.
Make no mistake about it, the occassional Tribune-like high-quality/lower-relevance results of last month directy and logically leads to the high-quality/high-relevance 64-type results... while the current emphasis leads to seeing the phrase "link campaigns" appear in your email box.
==
I'll add that these results are still fairly decent, but what they are is a step back in the process... and as such I doubt they will hang around long.
E-commerce is a bane on the WWW, and if such sites show up only as Adwords, this is a major improvement.
Hang on - I thought this was a SERIOUS thread (not my capitals - the initiator's.) As such, it's a bit much to start a thread with (what many might view as pompous) restrictions, and then start a personal, biased rant about the non-value of e-commerce sites.
(Just my 2 cents worth - I hope it was SERIOUS enough :)
Someone Wrote:
Are the SERPs you are looking at commercially oriented (which very few people give a rat's ass about), or straight info sites? E-commerce is a bane on the WWW, and if such sites show up only as Adwords, this is a major improvement.
This is unbeleivable on a public forum of professionals.
I have a feeling that ALT tags are now more important than ever - I know a lot of you will disagree with me. But before Brandy I had no ALT tags at all on my sites and yet did really well in the G SERPs. I applied some recently and have gradually moved back up to the higher end of the rankings. Call this coincidence or whatever, but all I know is that the sites that now dominate in my chosen field are teeming with ALT tags with the sites keywords on everything from 'contact us' buttons to graphical bars etc. Maybe a new form of spam? I wonder if anyone can back me up on this?
I think Brett and the rest of the mods have succeeded in throttling discussion about Google updates of late.
If you check, this is a forum about Google. The real question isn't what I think is important, but with *Google* thinks is important, and what sites they rank high on the SERPs. I've read many posts here by commercial webmasters commenting that even on obviously commercial search terms, what's ranking high are blog entries, posts on website message boards, etc. If we want to look at this seriously, then the question is what is it these blogs, etc. doing that causes them to rank way above commercial sites? If you run a commercial site, then it is very much in your interest to figure out how the algo works, and adapt your strategy to rank high. For example, Brett in his guide to ranking well on Google suggests a couple links to external sites on every page. Gee, that sounds a lot like what is common for amateur sites, but not common for most commercial sites. Maybe Brett is onto something there. The way to rank well if you are a commercial site is to use a link structure that makes the Google algo think it is an amateur site. And lets not forget that Google is in the business of selling Adwords. From a bottom line perspective, what kind of sites does that suggest Google should want to rank high?
On a wider note: there should always be a place for discussion of Google serps, "SERIOUS" as you put it or not. And hey - there will be some noise / nonsense in there - but it has always been valuable to me.
Consider the above post by me to be a replacement of that "rant", and the original retracted. The point I was trying to make is that the current Google algo seems to be showing a definite bias toward info sites. Note at [google.com...] Google states:
"Google continues to grow and to discover new ways for search technology to improve the lives of users. Google's mission remains unchanged: to organize the world's information and make it universally accessible and useful."
Notice the use of "information" in there. That looks to me like they aren't particularly trying to be a shopping engine.
I think Brett and the rest of the mods have succeeded in throttling discussion about Google updates of late.
Seems to be fairly freewheeling. A tremendous help to me.
I really think we are all in it for the greater good whether commercial, info, blogs or whatever. There is room for all at the Inn.
The potential error is this: we live in a technological age, and a commercial age - people love technology, and people buy technology and people want info about the technology they are buying.
You can't artificialy separate high quality 'info' sites from high quality 'commercial' sites these days. We're not living in a medieval era where the 'info' sites would be about theology and the nature of God, and the 'commerce' site would sell mead and loaves :)
We love our technology - and a site that successfully explains this technology to a buyer is potentially as valuable as a site that describes the workings of that technology at a quantum level.
This is why RFGs (now retracted) post is so off the mark. I sell a technological product, and make a reasonable amount of money from it. But I also have a deep *interest* in my product - so my site contains a lot of information and enthusiasm. This information isn't aimed at the post-graduate - you don't need a doctorate in chemistry to put detergent in your washing machine - but it is valuable, and appropriate for the interested and educated consumer.
The thesis is a simple one (and also the reason why I disagreed so strongly with RFGs original assertion) to falsely make a strong distinction between 'information' and 'consumer information' is a mistake in today's society. The evidence lies before you - people use the Internet to find information and to buy.
p.s. How do you put detergent in a washing machine ;)
My observation is sites like yours tend to be a rarity. E-commerce sites usually basically are just shilling something. My comment was intended to refer to what e-commerce sites by and large, and for the most part, are. If your site is as you say it is, then it really doesn't describe the sites my "rant" was about. It may also be the Google algo now is taking into account sites like yours. If your site is linking out to a number of info sites and/or has lots of backlinks from info sites, then to the algo it wouldn't have the chracteristics of a typical e-commerce site.
Of course it wasn't a total roll-back; it was largely the disastrous and miscalculated semantic part that was rolled-back, leaving only the stemming elements.
But the semantic part will be back - the big miscalculation in the algo was a limited 'thesaurus' (for want of a better term), and a lack of understanding that megasites / megalists are likely to cover all synonyms and rank ridiculously highly at the expense of small, specialist sites that might not, for very good reason, include certain terms.
I sincerely hope that Google does some thorough testing before pulling such an incautious stunt again. Hopefully my customer base will be large enough by then to stop worrying about their irresponsible antics.
You all run totally free sites no cash involved at all and you are not trying every day to look after your own interests you are really here because you love the average surfer so much you will give up all your spare time to make Goggle a better place.
I think not hypocrites comes to mind as I don¡¦t wish to be rude on this forum I can smell it all the way from here in England
Bull***t
Don¡¦t forget keep it real ƒº
Tom
(anything out of the ordinary that is, except for the odd troll :)
You can't artificialy separate high quality 'info' sites from high quality 'commercial' sites these days. We're not living in a medieval era where the 'info' sites would be about theology and the nature of God, and the 'commerce' site would sell mead and loaves :)
Or THE PASSION OF CHRIST coffee mugs? :-)
Seriously, I don't think quality per se is the issue here. Even if Google's algo were to favor information sites over e-commerce sites, that wouldn't necessarily mean that intellectual-information.edu would rank higher than crass-commerce.com because it was better; it would simply mean that its content, structure, and linking patterns were perceived as being more in keeping with Google's mission of "organizing the Web's information and making it universally accessible." That, in turn, would yield better search quality as defined by Google's stated corporate mission.
If one takes Google's mission statement at face value, it isn't hard to picture Google's powers-that-be saying to each other:
"Hmmm....If we were to tilt the scales to weight pages with shopping carts or booking forms one percent lower than pages that our algorithm defines as 'information' pages, we'd eliminate most duplicate clutter near the top of our SERPS in one fell swoop. And users wouldn't mind, because how many users care if every one of the 1,000 virtually identical catalog pages for the Widgetco WC-1 camera or every third-party booking page for the Hotel Whatsit is easy to find in our search results?"
>"Hmmm....If we were to tilt the scales to weight pages with shopping carts or booking forms one percent lower than pages that our algorithm defines as 'information' pages, we'd eliminate most duplicate clutter near the top of our SERPS in one fell swoop. And users wouldn't mind, because how many users care if every one of the 1,000 virtually identical catalog pages for the Widgetco WC-1 camera or every third-party booking page for the Hotel Whatsit is easy to find in our search results?"
Yep. And, since amateur sites can't afford SEOs, and the average webmaster of such knows very little about SEO, giving a substantial boost to info sites could be seen as "leveling the playing field." Sure there will be some collateral damage. However, to make an omlette you gotta break a few eggs.
[edited by: rfgdxm1 at 2:43 am (utc) on Mar. 3, 2004]
bread a few eggs.
Ah, breaded eggs. That is a good description of the Florida and Austin SERPs :)
Can I have some word stems in my breaded egg omlette please.
WBF
(Please don't be offended, this really is meant in fun. We all make the occassional typo.)
Looks fine to me. Likely because I did a Winston Smith on that post. ;)
in particular sending a query for a very niche localized "repair" sort of term, you would normally be expecting to find a few shop front sites that takes on the repair of the product in question.
unfortunately, google is delivering alot of sites that are not relevant.
google, i have a feeling agreed with my opinion on what sort of results this particular term should have been displaying by "manually" including one of the url(s) i happen to of optimized in the past that should rightfully be there.. (this is a shopfront, local site). (well at least i think they manually included it, 1hr after i sent in a dissatisfied results query the site was now back amongst alot of garbage, imo)
if google wishes to continue with this algorithm, somehow i would have to adapt(which i have been doing!) but i hope they do see where people like me are coming from & outlining a very strong case in the messages i send to them in the help us improve? form.
