Google Changes

[Mattinblack]

Hope you find this useful, quoted as is, my opinions unrepresented!

Two big things have just happened in Google-land: Jagger and Google Analytics. Together, these two events may have changed the face of search forever.

Jagger

First, let's discuss Jagger... Just like hurricanes, Google updates have names. (A Google update is a change to the way Google determines its rankings. Google makes these changes periodically, and they're universally feared because they can impact dramatically on a website's ranking.) The latest update is called Jagger, and it has search engine optimizers (SEOs) all around the world in a state of panic.

Why was Jagger such a fearful update? Simple... With Jagger, Google once again outsmarted huge numbers of SEOs. You see, many/most SEOs spend their time (and their clients' monëy) trying to trick Google into thinking that their websites are more relevant and important than they really are. They do this mostly by swapping links, buying cheap links, and placing links on frëe directories. While there's nothing wrong with these sorts of links (i.e. they're not considered 'black-hat'), they don't really show that the site is relevant or important. All they really show is that the site owner has made a deal with another site owner. In these deals, the incentive for the linking site owner is a reciprocal link, monëy, or increased link volume. Google much prefers it when the linking site adds the link simply to enhance the value of their content or to increase their own credibility and authority.

In other words, Google wants its search results to contain relevant, important sites, not sites that merely appear to be relevant and important. To this end, Google invests mill*ons of dollars and employs the world's smartest mathematicians to create algorithms which identify sites that are trying to trick them. And that's exactly what Jagger did; and when it found those sites, it simply adjusted their ranking to more accurately reflect their true importance.

>From a technical standpoint, Jagger was well described by Ken Webster in his article, Google's Jagger Update - Dust Begins To Settle?. The most important points noted by Ken were:

1) Increased importance placed on IBL (Inbound Links) Relevancy
2) Increased importance placed on OBL (Outbound Links) Relevancy
3) Promotion of relevant Niche Directories (related to No. 1 & #2)

Some other interesting effects were reported by WG Moore. By monitoring the links to his test sites as reported by Google, he established that:

"... Google is down-grading or eliminating reciprocal links as a measure of popularity... a few of our reciprocal links did come back up... from articles where we discussed our area of expertise: Web Analytics... So we feel that these links came back because of content, not linking."

In short, Jagger undid the hard work of thousands - if not mill*ons - of people! As a result, hard-won high rankings and revenues plummeted.

Interestingly, article PR (article submission - came through Jagger seemingly unscathed. My SEO copywriting website DivineWrite.com, for example, went from no.4 to no.1 worldwide for "copywriter", and I've employed article PR almost exclusively. Whether it was promoted or the sites around it were demoted, one thing is clear: article PR is one of the best ways to obtain a high ranking.

Google Analytics

The second monumental event to occur recently was Google Analytics. Google Analytics is a frëe web-stats solution which not only reports all the regular site stats, but also integrates directly with Google AdWords giving webmasters an insight into the ROI of their pay-per-click ads. According to Google, "Google Analytics tells you everything you want to know about how your visitors found you and how they interact with your site."

Why is this such a landmark move? Because for the first time ever, Google will have access to your real web stats. And these stats will be far more accurate than those provided by Alexa. Furthermore, Google's privacy statement says: "We may also use personal information for auditing, research and analysis to operate and improve Google technologies and services.". Nöw let's put two and two together:

1) Google is 'giving' every webmaster in the world frëe access to quality web-stats.
2) Mill*ons of webmasters will accept this 'gift', if only because it integrates directly with their Google AdWords campaigns.
3) Google will then have full access to the actual web stats of mill*ons of commercial websites.
4) Google will have the right to use these stats to develop new technologies.
5) What's the next logical step? Google will use these statistics to help determine its rankings.

It should come as no surprise. It's been on the cards for a long time. For example, Jayde Online CEO, Mel Strocen, recently published an article on this very topic, The Future of WebSite Ranking. He quite rightly asserts that:

"Google's "democratic" vision of the Web will nevër be achieved by manipulating algorithm criteria based on content. It will only be achieved by factoring in what is important to people, and people will always remain the best judge of what that is. The true challenge for search engines in the future is how to incorporate web searcher input and preferences into their ranking algorithms."

From an SEO Newsletter

[Linkster]

Calling Danger Dave!!! Is it gonna be you or me first


Ahhh what the heck - Ill jump in head first - this article is the biggest load of crap I have ever read - its all BS!

[DangerDave]

Last t time I saw that much BS in a post...... Kevin Burke wrote it.....

DD

[Wazza]

You can also read it here

http://www.sitepronews.com/

[Surfn]

Originally Posted by Wazza

You can also read it here

http://www.sitepronews.com/

Their emails are like a herd of cockroaches. Just when you think you've gotten rid of them another one shows up.

[Linkster]

Originally Posted by DangerDave

Last t time I saw that much BS in a post...... Kevin Burke wrote it.....

DD

Hah hah - I miss his entertainment value - although thats about all I miss of his existence

[Wazza]

Originally Posted by Linkster

Hah hah - I miss his entertainment value - although thats about all I miss of his existence

I preferred him when he was Dawn...

[eman]

Originally Posted by DangerDave

Last t time I saw that much BS in a post...... Kevin Burke wrote it.....

DD

Perhaps he should stick to fiddling
http://www.kevinburke.com/html_home.html

|band

[Linkster]

Heh heh - man dont put that fine Irish fiddler down like that LOL

[Mattinblack]

Sorry guys but maybe this will make up 4 it. I think I have found a way to speed up free listing on google. I got my site crawled within 5 days - previous site was not crawled for 6 weeks!

Basically if you put your site url in as a search term without the HTTP then you get back eg:

* If the URL is valid, try visiting that web page by clicking on the following link: ukescort.kwikfire.com
* Find web pages from the site ukescort.kwikfire.com
* Find web pages that contain the term "ukescort.kwikfire.com"

Now click on the top link (the other two wont work cos your site aint crawled)

Do this once or twice a day from a selection of IP addresses (mates PC's or get your mates to do it) and google seems to take the hint and index it early!

This was a tip given to me I tried last week and it worked for ukescort.servik.com now trying for kwikfire which went active yesterday.

Dunno if it works on any other SE's but I guess there has to be a mechanism for adding popular sites quickly or they would look like dummies.

Malcolm

[Linkster]

Theres actually a much easier way than all of that (and Im not so sure that is really causing it to get indexed - assuming you dont use the google toolbar - as that will get it indexed too so the rumour goes) - just get a link up to the site on another page that gets indexed every day - the new page will normally get indexed within 24 hours

For good reliable information about updates without the guessing and spewing that occurs alot - go over to Matt Cutts' blog - he lays everything out with no hype or BS - its good to hear it straight from the horses mouth so to speak

[cd34]

google is also an ICann registrar, which gives them access to the domain name registration data as well as new domains as they appear.

I've had domains that I have registered that had googlebot hits within 5 hours that had nothing pointed at them.

[Bill]

C'mon guys, it's no use to anyone to just cry bullshit without explaining why. All you have then is a battle of opinions, and you know the old adage about opinions.

Now, Mattin does the topic a disservice by posting some excerpts from a larger article, without including links to the article, which includes links to the source material, so I'll stipulate that the post as presented doesn't add to the discussion much.

Leaving aside the part about google analytics, are you familiar with the source material that led to the statements about the devalueing of reciprocal links?

What is it that you disagree with regarding the source's experimental method?

[Linkster]

Bill - Im very familiar with the source of those "propositions" about recipricol linking - interestingly the source article was written on the 10th of November - the same day that Matt Cutts posted on his blog that the update was just finishing up and starting to propagate to the data centers - and its trying to promote all types of analysis of the results - before the results are even visible
http://www.mattcutts.com/blog/jagger-winding-down/

So how did he get all of this testing done and have the results from his test sites before the update was completed - easy - he made it up - like I said - total BS

I will also come out and say publicly that the day Google really devalues recip linking is the day that MSN takes over the search market - and Google knows it - why do you think they are trying this new analytics tool - theyre hoping that enough idiots install it to watch their site - so that Google can feed that into their algo as well

Google wouldnt spend the millions it does trying to filter out dupes, doing quality reviews and the hundreds of other steps they take - if they were planning to get rid of recip linking as a part of the algo
MOST important - the whole concept of their engine mathmatically is the democratic voting among sites - and they are not going to destroy the accepted method of linking among web sites that is established on huge old sites - just to get rid of a few spammers - they have much better ways of doing this and just because a few hundred WMs get hit for buying links or setting up loads of fake sites like goes on around here with fake interlinking for SE purposes only - doesnt require a devaluation of anything - it requires just what Google has done and installed smart filters that can tell the difference
The IBL OBL thing has been around for 3 years now so thats nothing new

[DJilla]

Originally Posted by Linkster

Interestingly the source article was written on the 10th of November - the same day that Matt Cutts posted on his blog that the update was just finishing up and starting to propagate to the data centers - and its trying to promote all types of analysis of the results - before the results are even visible
http://www.mattcutts.com/blog/jagger-winding-down/

So how did he get all of this testing done and have the results from his test sites before the update was completed - easy - he made it up - like I said - total BS

Google knows it - why do you think they are trying this new analytics tool - theyre hoping that enough idiots install it to watch their site - so that Google can feed that into their algo as well

Google wouldnt spend the millions it does trying to filter out dupes, doing quality reviews and the hundreds of other steps they take - if they were planning to get rid of recip linking as a part of the algo
MOST important

1) Is there ANYBODY that doesn't get sitepronews... sometimes interesting mostly not I'm always surprised that people quote stuff from here.

2) I read Matt Cutt... though he may be GUESSING my experience tells me some people are real good guessers based on knowledge, inside info, and maybe he's trying to hint at something once in a while.

3) Google Analytics... dubious at best. Linkster you hit it right on the head! Only an idiot would give Google that kind of access to their site. NO WAY!

4) Googles' mission is to deliver the "best search result" they don't have to devalue recip links, they only have to increase the value of one way links which makes perfect sense from a lot of different points of view, I think there may be some real smoke here.

5) What's up with MSN? I've had 226 visits from them in the last two months? I was shocked. Granted I've been doing a lot of optimizing but I'm thinking more likely somewhere I'm bouncing their bot around and its getting trapped (he,he)

6) A couple of months ago there was news about Google's app for a patent and the info it reavealed. Since then I've not really heard anything. Anybody got a link to an in depth analysis of that application (please don't give me the trademark.gov link)

7) Finally, what I really am amazed about is the employee loyalty over there at Google. They are almost leak proof. I would have thought by now there would have been an ex employee that would have written a tell all book or something. However, one generally is loyal to another that's made you a millionaire.

[Linkster]

Originally Posted by DJilla

1)
2) I read Matt Cutt... though he may be GUESSING my experience tells me some people are real good guessers based on knowledge, inside info, and maybe he's trying to hint at something once in a while.

Since he is head engineer of the quality results dept at Google and probably the leading contact for WMs that are trying to learn white-hat SEO as well as most people pretty much assuming that he is the "googleguy" that posts around the web based on his bio and things he has posted about in the past - Id say that his postings are far from guesses

He wrote the safesearch part of the google engine as well as writing new guidelines for WMs - if you havent looked recently the Google pages about how to stay on their good side has been updated in the last few months.

[DangerDave]

Bill...

Sorry but we don't have to "explain why".. ....

The poster and the article writer should "HAVE TO".....


Shit... I could write articles all day long on Google, and make it all up as I go along.... and they would get reposted all over the net! That does not make them right, valuable, or worth the energy it took to type them..

Almost every statment in that "article" is unsupported.. thereby making it nothing more than an opinion... and we all know about opinions..


The most basic is the first statement - Just like hurricanes, Google updates have names. - No they don't..... that is just a name made up by a website owner who DOES NOT work for Google.

Even the original article that this article was skived from is nothing more than unsupported opinion.


I think I might start an SEO Newsletter - the only thing it would say... is "Ignore All SEO Newsletters"

DD

[Bill]

For those that don't follow these things, the source material for this article is this fellow who claims to be a web analysis expert. He says he has a set of sites that he uses just to measure the google algorithims.

Part of these test sites are based on reciprocal linking. He says the reciprocal linking pages crashed in the serps in the middle part of the latest update.

There's a bunch of other details, but they're mostly only interesting to se people.

This is I think the link to the original article:
http://www.sitepronews.com/archives/2005/nov/9.html

Anyway, from these test sites he comes up with a list of things he thinks have changed in the algo.

It's an interesting article, worth reading.

Now, it's easy to see there could be a bunch of problems with his method and conclusions.

But, I don't disagree with his main conclusions.

[RawAlex]

Writing a google SEO newsletter is like writing a horoscope page... generalities, suggestive words, and bland unexplainable conjecture.

It's easy.