Forum Moderators: phranque
Everyone is always posting about SEO and other techniques to get their site ranked higher in Google, what about how to rank it lower?
Accidentally ranking higher than an 'official' site?
That's happened to me also. At first I actually was embarrassed by it. I got over it.
what about how to rank it lower
From my perspective, that's there issue to deal with. Let them work on their site to make it rank higher.
Some "official sites" are so poorly built that ranking higher than them is not very hard to if you build even a halfway decent page.
I don't see the words "miserable failure" anywhere on the President's web page
No, but if you Google on the word "failure", the first listing that comes up is a link to his bio on the White House website! lol
whats wrong with ranking higher then them? surely you make something from the site, why not be at the top and make more?
Done properly, both sites should benefit.
Its refreshing to see someone who prefers things in their proper order
rather than just another opportunity to scam the public. -Larry
You could clearly link to the official site if that makes you feel better.
I thought the provision of the link was very considerate, and I would suspect your accidental visitors would feel likewise.
physics said:
You might be careful about linking to the official site if their name is trademarked.
But if you're concerned about appearances, a small note could be added to the copyright notice and other junk at the bottom of the page, along the lines of "[other guy's name] and the trademark(s) of [other guy] are the property of [other guy]; this site is not affiliated with [other guy]."
Just my $0.02....
Eliz.
Seriously. I run a site where it is quite obvious that I have no affiliation with any of the thousands of authors I list. I get daily e-mails and occassional snail mail from people thinking that I am one of the authors they looked at on the site. Some of them I can blame on the fact that it is younger kids, but others, like those from elementary school teachers are just sad.
You could clearly link to the official site if that makes you feel better.
what about how to rank it lower?
Easy. Just take the following simple steps:
;)
Alternately (and more easily), try disallowing all bots in your robots.txt file, or use Google's URL Removal tool. Any of these should get your site out of the index.
Of course, if you want to still be in the index but just rank lower, none of these will work. Just remove the "offending" terms from your page if possible.
I would have thought the bare bones web page and plain text would give it away that it was not the official site?
As a good example, when I do a search for Interpol on Google, I want to see THIS site as number 1:
[interpol.int...]
But...
I would have little problem if per chance a really great site covering the world’s pre-eminent police organisation in depth and providing a ton of related content happened to rank above the official site, I would be understanding of this.
As things stand, currently some band with the name 'Interpol' ranks as number 1... Frustrating to me, but not out of hand as it is very possible fans of this band may feel the International Police department isn't as good as the music, ok whatever...
If per chance it was some sponsor-filled garbage not even remotely related to either one and evidently designed only for gaining a few clicks and it was misleading in its approach, I would not be pleased.
Word of note: The band site took me a few minutes to realize it wasn't a ringtone site... Almost!
Because yes, it is about proper ranking... Now if your site covers the subject better than the official site, take it as a compliment as google takes other things into consideration besides backlinks and officialness.
As much as the results are skewed at times, in some ways the surfers themselves are responsible.
