Google setting the rules for the Internet?

[GraphicsGuy]

Based on several threads I have noticed lately it seems that Google is becoming the unofficial ruler of Internet marketing and site design. They have so much of the search market that they can't be ignored by e-commerce operators. Because of that influence, their rules and guidelines effectively become the rules for internet marketing and site design. In many cases these rules extend well beyond the pervue of search engine concerns.

 

So, what are your thoughts about it? Is this good for e-commerce and the Internet in general by establishing rules and consistency? Or is it inappropriately restricting the marketing strategies and content of sites?

[timinark]

I think that this is natural and evolutionary. Google has become dominate because they are able to deliver a product (search results) in an efficient manner. They will remain dominant until someone does it better, cheaper, faster.

 

Now, what I hope is that Google can remain non-evil and will continue to innovate to be dominant and I think that they will. There have been signs that Yahoo is using their size and market position to undercut prices ( like in digital music) I don't think that is healthy. It's the same playbook as MS and Intel and I think that it stiffles innovation and competition.

 

Having Google say " Here is how I operate and here is what you need to do to work with me " seems fairly open and democratic. Trust them as much as you can but don't ever take your eye off of them.

[zprod69]

it is it inappropriately restricting the marketing strategies and content of sites.

unfortunatly this a setup that we can recognise allother across the medias.it is the

the hand print of the "democracy". control is power.and market.

[FalseDawn]

Google has its place, but also has flaws.

 

Its adsense program is responsible for millions of crappy little sites with no inherent value, apart from to create revenue via ads. These sites clutter up the indexes and generally are a waste of space.

Then again, any site relying on ad revenue from any source for its existence is the same, so this is not entirely down to google.

Google has admitted that its own employees can take part in its adwords program, and in fact actively encourages it, which is a huge conflict of interest.

When a company becomes as big as google, they tend to think they don't have to play by the same rules as everyone else, and so far they've gotten away with it.

 

As far as search engines, the days of spending hours and hours on SEO tactics will soon be over. What's the point when SE companies can move the goalposts as often as they want and your ratings plummet like a stone.

Google is also incredibly tight lipped about any of its internal rating processes.

 

Unless you are on the first page, you may as well not bother.

I'd sooner spend 20cents per click to get visitors that fruitless hours trying to optimize, for little reward.

The days of "SE optimising companies" are limited IMO

[FalseDawn]

Or is it inappropriately restricting the marketing strategies and content of sites?

 

I don't think so - If your site is clearly a load of badly written phrases designed to target rankings, why should your site rank higher than a well written site that is in the same field, but puts user experience above marketing BS?

This is part of google's mission - to determine which sites do actually provide valuable content.

 

If your site has quality content, you will get visitors and rankings. If it's crap, you won't. Simple as that.

 

Because of that influence, their rules and guidelines effectively become the rules for internet marketing and site design

 

"Playing by goolgle's rules" is not such a bad thing, when the rules themselves are there to punish mediocrity and reward originality and value.

[Guest]

i love google. no pop ups and a plethora of ads on their search results, fast loading and i've made a bit of cash on the side from their adsense program.

 

by following many peoples' SEO recommendations, i have also learned to make better websites! this of course, is nothing i will invest hours of my time into trying to figure out. if i come across a suggestion that seems sensible, i will try it. otherwise i don't care how bad my PR is, people are still finding my websites anyway :)

 

google has some things to work on. i still come across MANY "ebay" websites (sites that contain nothing but links to ebay auctions), and it's a waste of my time to visit those. no other search engine seems to have them..

 

like most major companies, i'm sure once they realize they're too big for their britches they'll wreak havoc on the internet :blink:

[goldie]

We are just selling goods online, never pay for any ads to any search engines.

We noticed yahoo! in our site indexing for days and nights for weeks, google comes in and out staying only a few minutes, but the we found our major referer is google 55%

 

For that we think google's technology is better and google is still keeping its honesty despite the adsence etc. They have to survive like any other businesses.

[dreamscape]

Its adsense program is responsible for millions of crappy little sites with no inherent value, apart from to create revenue via ads. These sites clutter up the indexes and generally are a waste of space.

Then again, any site relying on ad revenue from any source for its existence is the same, so this is not entirely down to google.

<{POST_SNAPBACK}>

 

While I agree that adsense has prompted the creation of thousands of sites that provide little value, I don't agree that any business relying on ad revenue is a waste.

 

Is tv a waste?

Is radio a waste?

Are newspapers a waste?

Are magazines a waste?

 

All of these, as well as many others, rely on ads as a primary source of revenue.

[cannuck1964]

Is tv a waste?

600 channels of lousy tv with massive time for advertizing?

Is radio a waste?

only if it plays stuff I do not like....

Are newspapers a waste?

good for my litter box...

Are magazines a waste?

good when waiting in a doctors office..

 

Advertizing is fine, but marketing has gone even further then this, with the selling of ad space in movies, programs etc. The idea of setting up a site which caters to nothing other then the promotion of an adsense listing really is a waste of time and is mis leading to the public in so many way...

 

Cheers,

Peter M.

[GraphicsGuy]

The idea of setting up a site which caters to nothing other then the promotion of an adsense listing really is a waste of time and is mis leading to the public in so many way...

<{POST_SNAPBACK}>

I couldn't agree more. Anymore when you do a search often half or more of the top 20 listings are these worthless sites masquerading as "helpful" but are really just a list of adsense listings.

[Guest]

I have a question,

 

I have noticed google does not always obey the robot tags for some reason. I have seen login pages and contact_us forms cached when their headers indicate noindex,nofollow. Then they do not cache other pages where there is content and clearly states index,follow. I've seen other spiders that do follow these rules but mysteriously, or at least in some cases, google doesnt. Its also funny as these pages have the worst description and keywords (if any). Anyone else knows more about this?

[parsnipsius]

I have a question,

 

I have noticed google does not always obey the robot tags for some reason. I have seen login pages and contact_us forms cached when their headers indicate noindex,nofollow. Then they do not cache other pages where there is content and clearly states index,follow. I've seen other spiders that do follow these rules but mysteriously, or at least in some cases, google doesnt. Its also funny as these pages have the worst description and keywords (if any). Anyone else knows more about this?

<{POST_SNAPBACK}>

 

I too noticed this and even inserting specific googlebot meta tags still ended up with pages cached that specificaly stated noindex,nofollow. Is this just a bug perhaps or do Google know this is happening but refuse to act? I can't see alot of benefit for them however in doing this which leads me to believe it is a bug..

 

I'm also interested if others had noticed this..

[Guest]

I can't see alot of benefit for them however in doing this which leads me to believe it is a bug..

I have the suspicion they might doing this to improve the spider indexing speed & search results. I also think if another site places a direct link to your login page say that somehow it ends up with the search engines. Google also seems that is ignoring descriptions but yet adds forms?? it may find at the beginning of the page. Has a hard time detecting the page content.

 

I checked with combo boxes/drop down lists that logically should be ignored yet google will just grab them and use their content in the short summary they have :lol: (just because it finds it first I guess). Talking about SEO and algorithms :lol: So I think I am gonna try put my keywords in a drop down list at the header of the page to see what happens. :blink:

 

Well you can get rid of the problem if you simply put the content of the sensitive pages in a jscript or adding a redirection towards the login page where spiders go one way and users go another using the referer field. And let them penalize the login page.

[Guest]

after wandering for a few link exchanges, i'm a bit irritated with google.

people won't exchange links "unless your link page is a PR5 or more"

 

i just redid my entire site, so the only thing with a PR is the main page.

 

i find it quite pathetic people are only interested in link exchanges to up their PR, and are uninterested in the overall quality of your website. i just want to exchange links so people interested in my field can find what they're looking for. i don't make my site for search engines, i make it for my visitors.

 

i believe google made a big mistake by releasing information about "Pageranks" - that's all people care about! so instead of coming across a very useful page from somebody's link page, you're going to come across some useless pile of crap that's full of nothing useful except links to ebay auctions and unheard of search engines.

 

and to top it off, i've come across SEVERAL of my competitors that are keyword spamming in their title's (for example: bandname shirts, bandname cds, banddname hats, bandname posters, bandname poop bags, etc"

 

and when you click on the page, there's only one lonely item - NOTHING related to what's in the page title!

so while they're on top position in google for every keyword i'd like to have, i'm scraping the bottom of the barrel trying to make sure my site doesn't get blacklisted from google for doing these types of things.

 

i've also reported these types of sites many many times over the years - nothing has happened. i've heard the same complaints from just about everyone else that has reported these types of sites.

[Guest]

Ok, Here is what I think people do not realize with SEO.

 

1. The most important for a site is the overall PR. (not keywords)

2. Keywords have no effect unless the site has a good PR

 

So consider this:

Someone sets up a site with woderful description, content, keywords etc., but has a PR of 0. Now PR0 means there are no references around the web for this site. Therefore noone can find it.

Someone else sets up a site with poor content, descriptions etc but has lots of references around the web for his site. So now his keywords, description etc does count because the PR means the references search engines have for the site. In turn they scan the keywords and bring the results up. The order of the sites the results are coming up are based on the overall PR (for .com - for .gov the way they are processing them I think is slightly different)

 

So link exchange is critical. Even when you exchange links with sites of PR0. Keywords by themselves have no effect or friendly urls and things like that. All search engines do not know if a site exists (unless someones submits the site url or places some references for the url in known sites) And if you exchange links make sure your partner provides a static html reference and not some javascript or redirection around your link since the spiders do not execute such scripts.

[Guest]

i agree with all of that, but it seems somebody is out there telling people that if you link to sites with no PR, it's going to hurt YOUR PR.

which i find to be rubbish, my site's only been up a week and the main page of my site never lost it's PR. i can't help that google hasn't updated their overall pageranks to reflect my new pages or anything.

 

i miss the days of the internet where anybody and everybody was just willing to exchange links to steal your visitors, now they have to calculate what PR they can gain from you before they'll even consider. very dumb.

[Guest]

i can't help that google hasn't updated their overall pageranks to reflect my new pages or anything.

 

It will has no choice really, because if it doesnt spider your site, some other search engines will and you know :D they want to be at the top don't they?

 

But they do deploy algorithms to rule out artificial exposure. The problem is there is always a solution to a problem and vice versa :blink:

 

For the PR0 exchange: I've seen partners that specifically exchange links with PR0 because its far easier to raise their exposure. (They get no resistance for a link exchange you see)

[Guest]

sorry, this part confused me a bit:

It will has no choice really, because if it doesnt spider your site, some other search engines will and you know :D they want to be at the top don't they?

:lol:

 

 

i don't think google's algorithms are working very efficiently nowadays, people are finally outsmarting them :)

 

 

For the PR0 exchange: I've seen partners that specifically exchange links with PR0 because its far easier to raise their exposure. (They get no resistance for a link exchange you see)

really? i have not come across these yet. once google's PR updates i won't be at a 0 (most likely), but i wouldn't mind exchanging links with laid back sites like that

[Guest]

i have not come across these yet. once google's PR updates i won't be at a 0 (most likely), but i wouldn't mind exchanging links with laid back sites like that

 

Ok, also consider this:

 

Say someone has a site with PR8. Now he competes with some other sites that have PR10. Lets say all sites have 100 references for this example (The PR10s have simply refs from higher PR sites). He needs to increase his references on the web (ie the sites with links back to him). He does link exchanges with sites of PR0. Those sites go to a PR > 0 now because they get references from a PR8 site. At the same time he gets more references overall than his PR10 competitors. And his overall PR is much more consistent. The more references you have the more consistent your PR is. The less references the more volatile your PR becomes. Because each reference site has a reciprocal link in a secondary page. (ie not at the root of the domain) Now secondary pages are volatile because the search engines bring them up based on the keywords entered. You might see a secondary page with 100 refs and after an hour the same page has 10 refs.

[Guest]

now it makes a bit of sense :lol:

what started passing out the idea that if you link to sites with a lower PR, your PR will be downgraded? i have never understood this idea.

 

from what you're saying - any link is a good link (except the obvious link farms, etc) - why do many others seem to disagree?

 

i have also read recently, that if you have your site LISTED on a link farm, that can't hurt you - it's when YOU link to link farms.. this is correct?

my common sense tells me so, i mean you can't necessarily control what bad sites link to you - otherwise there would be sabatage abound

[Guest]

ok about link farms. Now how do you define it? If it to say a directory is a link farm so every directory around that we submit our sites :lol: is a link farm, weeee, we are in big trouble :lol: Same happens for an advertising page. So if a news site say, connects to 100 external news agencies around the world on the same page is that considered a links farm?

 

Now the problem is that when you do setup your pages your links ideally should be natural. So at some point you may have references for an article or affiliates, for a products categories or a manufacturers page, or a page with links to friends and so on. Now as long as you keep a low count of external links on the same page you should be ok. But now if you make a page with 1000 lines full of links, well search engines will simply ignore it. But if you segment your links pages to say 5-10 external links/page that should be ok. Also the higher the PR of the site the deeper a search engine will go on; and also the higher the number of updates to the site content helps to get frequent visits from the spiders.

 

Again 2 main things to consider for links. Static html direct links should be present and the page where the link is present should be connected to the root of the domain; directly or indirectly. So the spider can find it. And of course if you see pages with hudrends of links you could inform the site owner about the pitfalls because first it hurts his site as the spiders may ignore his pages. Also when you link is a good idea to link the relative pages of your site with your partners. Say you sell music cds and books. So maybe the category page for the cds could go to your music partners while the books categories go to the articles partners. Your overal PR will still rise for the root of your domain while references to your site are now better because you're covering more of your site's content with the external references.

 

Most sites get out of PR0 btw. Their rankings eventually are improved. Its better to position your link exchange early than late. There is always the risk the site owner may change or drop the links pages but usually they are aware of the benefits of an exchange even when they sell domains.

[Guest]

well said :) i didn't mean to imply every directory was a link farm though :lol:

 

what are your opinions on redirect links (like the link manager contribution here) versus plain old text links? do you believe those may have any impact on your overall PR? which is better/worse?

[Guest]

what are your opinions on redirect links (like the link manager contribution here) versus plain old text links? do you believe those may have any impact on your overall PR? which is better/worse?

 

ah yes, so when I deployed this contribution I had to modify the code to provide static links and no redirections be default. That was the first thing I did because you know many of your requests for a link exchange may go unanswered and you may could wonder why :lol:

 

Now I kept the redirection code however and use it as an option just in case someone offers a redirect on his part. So I do the same. The best exposure you will get it from a banner exchange, not because of the picture, but because they usually appear on an important page like the home page. Even if its random like the default osc a spider will still see the url as it scans the various pages. The problem is, there is a redirection there as well to keep track of the banner statistics so that part has to be modified to have an effective exchange.

 

Also I could not use the links manager's reciprocal scan facility simply because it scans a url word and does not verify if its a valid html link. So I had to build a separate set of scripts as a spider. But I cannot use it easily from the cpanel because of the php script timeouts till it scans the entire domain. Probably I will have to re-do that part to scan page by page. It takes long time though to scan an entire domain and I usulally launch it if I suspect something is wrong. For example if I cannot find the reciprocal where it supposed to be.

 

Overall redirected links are not good. You will have hard-time exchanging.

[Guest]

spiders don't follow redirected links? is there any other downfalls other than some people not wanting to exchange links with you?

[Guest]

the redirection goes through an extra page where are no headers just this meta-refresh that goes to another site so you do not get exposure easily; it's used better when hiding things :D for example to pass a parameter to the link for an affiliate. And I am sure link partners don't want that.