Howdy, Stranger!
It looks like you're new here. If you want to get involved, click one of these buttons!
This forum is in permanent archive mode. Our new active community can be found here.
Google on the warpath
Overnight Google has been slamming tons of bloggers in the Page Rank arena. Not just crap blogs either. Engadget just dropped from a Page Rank of seven to a Page Rank of five!!!
Some are saying it is over paid links while others are guessing that Google has just changed its algorithm. Personally I wish Google would just scrap the Page Rank system or make it an internal Google metric. Google has the right to do whatever it wants with Page Rank but by making it a publicly known quantity they ask for people to game the system. Even worse they force people to dance to the Google dance because advertisers (among others) place value on Page Rank. Sort of like Alexa, a metric no one likes but people are forced to use it because a portion of the advertising world believes in it.
Granted you can use other search engines but Google pretty much owns search (and paid search) so you are forced to play by their rules or suffer. I think Google may soon supplant Microsoft as the "Evil Empire".
Sorry for the rant but I had a rough night when one of my "super exclusive" news stories went bust. what the writer promised and what he delivered were two totally different things.
Some are saying it is over paid links while others are guessing that Google has just changed its algorithm. Personally I wish Google would just scrap the Page Rank system or make it an internal Google metric. Google has the right to do whatever it wants with Page Rank but by making it a publicly known quantity they ask for people to game the system. Even worse they force people to dance to the Google dance because advertisers (among others) place value on Page Rank. Sort of like Alexa, a metric no one likes but people are forced to use it because a portion of the advertising world believes in it.
Granted you can use other search engines but Google pretty much owns search (and paid search) so you are forced to play by their rules or suffer. I think Google may soon supplant Microsoft as the "Evil Empire".
Sorry for the rant but I had a rough night when one of my "super exclusive" news stories went bust. what the writer promised and what he delivered were two totally different things.
Comments
For example, if you use Google Analytics or Statcounter one page view is when one page is fully rendered and deliver to the reader. To AWStats or Webalizer one page view is when one file is sent to the reader. Thus, if your site uses PHP in such a ways as it takes 10+ php files to render a page your AWStats/Webalizer will show a page view metric 10 times as large as what the other services will show.
It's not just Page Rank either. If you do something Google does not like they will remove your entire site from their search index. With such a large portion of the Internet using Google for search you can understand how deadly that is.
Google is no longer a company interested in giving the best search results, they only care about making money via their AdWords program. Text-Link-Ads is gone from the Google search database but, they can still buy a spot in the sponsored search section of Google.
People talk about Net Neutrality what about Search Neutrality? What if your local phone company told you that they would no longer carry your free white pages listing and you would have to buy a yellow pages listing for your business? What good is search if the "search" company is actively filtering out content that they do not like or approve of? Google is begining to sound like China.
I do have to point out, however, that Google still consistantly gives the best search results bar none. I have never been unable to find something I sought, and the top links are consistantly exactly what I seek.
Frankly, I imagine that, whenever they change the system, they watch the rankings to see who reacts. Were I Google, I would systematically lower the rankings of any web site or cluster of sites that consistantly realigned after every update, since they're obviously engaging in SEO shenanigans.
It's not just Page Rank either. If you do something Google does not like they will remove your entire site from their search index. With such a large portion of the Internet using Google for search you can understand how deadly that is.
Google has never removed anything that I wouldn't have removed myself were I in their shoes. It's their service. It's not a monopoly. I use them precisely because of their continual diligence in pushing crap web sites to the bottom.
One one side, you have people like me. We just want to find shit. We want to find what we are looking for, quickly and easily. When we look for something, and there are many relevant choices, we want the "best" choices first. When I go to Google, I want the link most relevant to my search term to be on top. When I go to Digg, I want the latest news and entertainment that is important in my geek culture to be there. As of right now, Google is doing an amazing job. A recent study that had people rank the quality of search results, showed that Google had the best results more than half the time, and other search engines took up the rest. Meanwhile, Digg is doing a worse and worse job with more and more of the links on Digg being useless trash.
On the other side we have people like you. SEO people. Personally, I have to say, fuck these people. Google is not a tool for you to promote your shit. If Google ranks you high or ranks you low, that's just tough shit. Google's search algorithm still provides the best results. Every time they change that algorithm, the results only get better for me, the searcher. As long as Google keeps helping out the searchers, I couldn't give two shits about what the promoters think about it. Google offers many services. Google search is for searchers. If you want to promote something, they have another service for that. It's called Adwords. You pay money, and your link shows up right there on the front page. If your sites have a poor rank in the search results, that's probably because there are other sites that are more relevant and useful than yours. Make your site better and honestly more useful. If you still don't like where you show up in search results, I give you two choices. Buy some AdWords or shut the fuck up.
I do agree with you on one point, however. Google, and Digg also, are causing a problem by keeping their ranking algorithms and such only semi-secret. Google allowing people to see pagerank only encourages this sort of problematic SEO behavior. Digg showing the number of Diggs and who Dugg what only encourages the sort of Digg spamming behavior. If I were in charge of any site that people might use for promotion, I would go one of two ways. I would either keep absolutely everything a complete secret, or I would make nothing a secret. If everything were secret, SEO people would basically be playing a guessing game. They would have no idea what was going on, and I would always be able to outpace them if they developed a technique to game the system. On the other hand, if I made everything wide open, people would game the system all the time. However, it would be ludicrously obvious to everyone out there who was honest, and who was a spammer.
If your web sites are honestly quality and useful, people will find them and use them without you gaming the system to artificially promote them. The honestly popular sites like Craigslist, eBay, Engadget, BoignBoing, Digg, Slashdot, etc. You don't see them playing the SEO game or dancing the Google dance. They just have awesome and useful sites and the word of mouth gets around. People link to them often because they have quality stuff. They never went around artificially hyping it up. If your site doesn't get popular "organically", it probably sucks. Just honestly build your site up to be a good site. Make a site that is genuine and is designed to be useful for the visitors, so that they will actually get use out of it. If you do that, everything else will happen on its own. If you are attempting to artificially improve your search results, what you are doing in my eyes is decreasing the quality of search results for all the searchers out there. Fuck you I say.
I still have doubts about PR because I have some very high PR sites that suck ass and I have some very low PR sites that are great. I was talking last week with a guy who has a site with PR6 but less than 10 visitors a day. I have unranked and low PR sites that get 15-20K visitors a day!
The problem with Google slamming sites that sell advertising (paid links) is that they are effectively calling themselves out as an advertising company because they are using their market dominance in search to force people into using their AdWords system. If my content is good and is on the first page of results on every other search engine why does Google push me off or remove my links?
It has been found in the past that if a site sells things Google will nudge their search results down to the point where the site in question has to purchase AdWords campaigns to get any traffic from Google.
There was an interesting story not too long ago about how you can buy a PR10 link directly from Google for $1K. Google had some thing they were promoting and if you paid into the program ($1K) you would get a link on their PR10 page.
I do not engage in SEO practices because it is too much work and things like this can screw you big time. Companies that advertise with me do look at PR and Alexa and a drop in PR can be equivalent to a $100 drop in revenue per month per advertiser. Most of my sites get a PR and stay there, forever.
As to the big boys on the net, once you reach "household name" status you can ignore Google. It's getting there that is the tough part. As for Engadget, that got pwned last night with a 2 point PR drop, do you consider them a scummy site that uses SEO? What about Joystiq or Washingtonpost? All of them got whacked last night.
In the end you will either make a truly genuinely useful website, or you will make shit. If your site is genuinely awesome, field of dreams people will come. If people come, you will know because your forums will fill up and your comments bin will overflow. At that point, advertisers will come to you and you can set the price, regardless of bullshit like pagerank.
As for Engadget and their two point drop, no they are not a scummy site that uses SEO. They probably don't even know or care that their page rank dropped. They are the #1 consumer technology news website, hands down. They have thousands of comments on some of their stories. They could care less if Google delisted them entirely. They make a good site, and people come.
Treating your visitors like points in some game you are playing is not a way to make them happy. Your visitors are people you are tying to help by providing them with information and services they desire, and helping them better than anyone else can. That should be your only concern. And if that is your only concern, odds are that eventually you will be at the top of Google.
If I do a search for "Front Row" I will likely get a ticketing company website. If I search for "Front Row Crew" I should get the GeekNights page. When you get delisted from Google a search for "Front Row Crew" will not contain a link to the GeekNights page. This is what is referred to as SERPs.
Page Rank is what Google thinks of your page It works on a scale of one to ten with each level meaning your site is about 10 times better than one at a lower level.
What happened last night (and two weeks ago) is like this:
You have a tomato stand in the market. Mr. Google comes buy and says, "damn this tomatoes are good! I give them a 6 out of 10!" Mr. Google then walks away and rates some other tomatoes.
You then put up a sign saying, "Mr. Google rated my tomatoes a 6!" A few enterprising vegetable vendors see your sign and say, "Hey Tomato man, can I place this sign on your stand to direct customers to my cucumber stand over there? I'll give you $5."
A few days later Mr. Google comes buy to see you and says, "Selling advertising and you are not doing it through me? I now declare that these tomatoes are only a 4 out of 10. If you want that rating of 6 back then you have to ditch this sign to the cucumber cart and do you advertising through me."
Right now I have a site with a PR of zero but 500K+ genuine page views every month. I can not get any advertiser to pay crap for an ad on this site because it lacks a Google Page Rank! Even though the site is super targeted to a niche that spends money they are not interested. That is the only reason why I give a rat's ass about Page Rank is because my advertisers care. I would be much happier if Page Rank and Alexa went away and I could just hand an advertiser my server stats showing uniques, page views, etc...
Why would a newspaper place an ad in another publication? Newspapers are sellers of ads and they do place ads in other publications, but we call those things TV shows. They also advertise on billboards and radio. I guess I am just too dense to get your point.
Penny Arcade and Digg are in the upper echelon of websites. Like I said earlier, PR does not matter once you become a household name. Also, only fools advertise on digg. There is too much competition on that site for clicks. The site is designed to send people to other sites not to read content and leave via an ad.
When I Google search something and it turns up a site with ads, that's a huge turn-off for me. I want to find the information I'm looking for, not have a bunch of ads in my face. I think that Google is doing its job well. After all, like Apreche said, I'm not looking to buy anything from a stupid flashing ad. I'm just trying to find what I'm looking for.
Don't try to make money off of ads. Don't try to make money off of Google. To me, Google is a merely a search engine used to find what you're looking for, nothing more. Instead, make money off of your site. Make me want to buy your shit, and I'll come to your site. If your site has what I'm looking for, then I'll come to it. To me, it sounds like you are just trying to draw in viewers from Google. They'll come if you have what they want.
The Homestar guys make a living off CD/DVD/T-shirt sales and are famous for their lack of ads. Pure Pwnage makes money off their store and screenings of episodes before they are released to the Blagoblag. (Side note: Seriously, check their stuff out. Sci-fi+comedy+drama+gaming for the win.) Of course, these are forms of entertainment, and not websites with functionality. Digg makes very little from clothing sales compared to ads.