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Being a Bigdaddy Jagger Meister
By Jim Hedger, StepForth News Editor, StepForth Placement Inc.
June 7 2006
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It took a little while to start to figure it out. Such things almost always
do. After months of observation, research, discussion and debate, Search
Engine Optimization experts appear to be getting a better handle on the
effects of Google ’s Bigdaddy infrastructure upgrades.
From mid-winter until this week, StepForth has strongly advised our clients
to be conservative with any changes to their sites until enough time
has passed for us, along with many others in the SEO community to observe,
analyze
and articulate our impressions of the upgrade. About ten days ago, the
light at the end of the intellectual tunnel became eminently visible and
SEO discussion
forums are abuzz with productive and proactive conversations regarding
how to deal with a post-Bigdaddy Google environment.
To make the long back-story short, in September 2005, Google began implementation
of a three-part algorithm update that became known as the Jagger Update.
Shortly after completing the algo update in late November, Google began
an upgrading of their server and data storage network that was dubbed
the Bigdaddy Infrastructure Upgrade. The Bigdaddy upgrade took several
months to completely roll out across all of Google’s data centers,
which are rumoured to number in the hundreds.
In other words, the world’s most popular search engine has, in one
way or another, been in a constant state of flux since September. The
only solid information SEOs had to pass on to curious clients amounted
to time
tested truisms about good content, links and site structure. Being the
responsible sort we are, no good SEO wanted to say anything definite
for fear of being
downright wrong and misdirecting others.
Starting in the middle of May and increasing towards the end of the month,
ideas and theories that had been thrown around SEO related forums and
discussion groups started to solidify into the functional knowledge that
makes up the
intellectual inventory of good SEO firms.
Guided by the timely information leaks from Google’s quality control
czar Matt Cutts, discussion in the SEO community surrounding Bigdaddy
related issues has been led by members of forums WebMasterWorld, SEW
(1) (2) (3),
Threadwatch, SERoundtable (1) (2) (3), and Cre8asite (1) (2). SEO writers
Aaron
Wall, Jarrod
Hunt, and Mark
Daoust have also added their observations
to the conversation in a number of separate articles.
By now, most good SEOs should be able to put their fingers on issues
related to Bigdaddy fairly quickly and help work out a strategy for sites
that were adversely affected by the upgrade. The first thing to note
about the cumulative effects of Jagger and Bigdaddy is the intent of
Google engineers
to remove much of the poor quality or outright spammy commercial content
that was clogging up their search results.
The intended targets of the Bigdaddy update go beyond sites that commit
simple violations against Google’s webmaster guidelines to include
affiliate sites, results gleaned from other search tools, duplicate content,
poor quality sites and sites with obviously gamey link networks. In some
cases, Google was targeting sites designed primarily to attract users
to click on paid-search advertisements.
After the implementation of the algo update and infrastructure upgrades,
SEOs have seen changes in the following areas: Site/Document Quality
Scoring, Duplicate Content Filtering and Link Intention Analysis.
The first area noted is site or document quality scoring. Did you know
there are now more web documents online than there are people on the
planet? Many if not most of those documents are highly professional and
some are
sort of scrappy. While Google is not looking for perfection, it is trying
to assess which pages are more useful than others and attention to quality
design and content is one of the criteria.
Quality design simply means giving Google full access to all areas of
the site webmasters want spidered. Smart site and directory structures
tend to place spiderable information as high in the directory tree as
possible. While Google is capable of spidering deeply into database sites,
it appears
to prefer to visit higher level directories much more frequently. We
have
noted that Google agent visits do tend to correspond with update times
set via Google Sitemaps.
Accessibility and usability issues are thought to make up elements of
the Jagger algorithm update, marking the way visitors use a site or document
and the amount of time they spend engaged in a user-session associated
with a site important factors in ranking and placement outcomes. Internal
and
outbound links should be placed with care in order to make navigating
through and away from a site as easy as possible for site visitors.
Another quality design issue involves letting Google know which “version” of
your site is the correct one. For most, a website can be access with or
without typing the “www” part of the URL. (ie: http://www.stepforth.com,
http://stepforth.com, http://www.stepforth.com/index.shtml) This presents
a rather funny problem for Google. Because links directed into a site might
vary in the way they are written, sometimes it doesn’t know which “version” of
a site is the correct one to keep in its cache. To Google, each of the variations
of the URL above could be perceived as unique websites, an issue known as “canonicalization”,
a subject Matt Cutts addressed
on his blog in early January.
“Suppose you want your default URL to be http://www.example.com.
You can make your webserver so that if someone requests http://example.com/,
it does a 301 (permanent) redirect to http://www.example.com/. That helps Google
know which url you prefer to be canonical. Adding a 301 redirect can
be
an especially good idea if your site changes often (e.g. dynamic content,
a blog, etc.).”
Quality content is a bit harder to manage and a lot harder to define.
Content is a word used to describe the stuff in or on a web document
and could include everything from text and images, Flash files, audio
or video
and links.
There are two basic rules in regards to content. It should be there
to inform and assist the site user’s experience and it should be, (in
as much as possible), original.
Making an easy to use site that provides visitors with the information
they are looking for is the responsibility of webmasters but there
are a few simple ways to show you are serious about its presentation.
Focus on your topic and stick to it. Many of the sites and documents
that have found themselves demoted or de-listed during the Bigdaddy
upgrade were sites that delved across several topics at the same time
without
presenting a clear theme. Given the option between documents with clear
themes and
documents without clear themes, Google’s choice is obvious.
Google is working to weed out duplicate content. Google appears to
be looking for incidents of duplicate content in order to try to promote
the originator of that content over the replications. This has hit
sites
in
the vertical search sector; affiliate marketing sector, real estate
sites, and even retail sites that carry brand name products, especially
hard.
Several shopping or product focused database sites have seen hundreds
or even thousands
of pages falling out of Google’s main index.
In many cases, there is little or nothing to do for this except to
start writing unique content for products listed in the databases of
such sites.
Many real estate sites, for example, use the same local information
sources as their competitors do and all tend to draw content from the
same selection
of MLS listings. It’s not that Google thinks this content is “useless”,
it’s that Google already has several other examples of the same content
and is not interested in displaying duplicate listings.
Many of the listings previously enjoyed by large database driven sites
have fallen into a Google index known as the supplemental listings
database. Supplemental listings are introduced to the general listings
shown to
Google users when there are no better examples to choose from to meet
the users
search query. This is the same index that is often referred to as the “Google
Sandbox”.
The last major element noted in the discussions surrounding Bigdaddy
is how much more robust Google’s link analysis has become. Aside from
site quality and duplicate content issues, most webmasters will find
answers to riddles posed by Bigdaddy in their network of links.
In order to ferret out the intent of webmasters, Google has increased
the importance of links, both inbound and outbound. Before the updates,
an overused tactic for strong placement at Google saw webmasters trying
to bulk up on incoming links from where ever they could. This practice
saw the rise of link farms, link exchanges and poorly planned reciprocal
link
networks.
One of the ways Google tries to judge the intent of webmasters is by
mapping the network of incoming and outgoing links associated with
a domain. Links, according to the gospel of Google, should exist only
as
navigation or information references that benefit the site visitor.
Google examines
the outbound links from a page or document and compares them against
its
list of inbound links, checking to see how many match up and how many
are directed towards, and/or coming from pages featuring unrelated
or irrelevant content. Links pointing to or from irrelevant content
or reciprocal
links
between topically unrelated sites are easily spotted and their value
to
the overall site ranking downgraded or even eliminated.
The subject of links brings up an uncomfortable flaw in Google’s inbound
link analysis that is being referred to as Google Bowling. As part of
its scan of the network of links associated with a document or URL, Google
keeps
a detailed record of who links to who, how long the link has been established,
if there is a recip link back, along with several other items.
One of those items appears to be an examination of how and why webmasters
might purchase links from another site. While bought-links are not
technically a rankings killer, a bulk of such links purchased from
un-relevant sites
in a short period of time, can effectively destroy a site or document’s
current or potential rankings. In an article published at WebProNews
last autumn, Michael
Perdone from e-TrafficJams speculates on the issue.
Google has tried to deal with the predatory practice of “Google Bowling” by
considering the behaviour of webmasters whose site have seen a number of
inbound links from “bad neighbourhoods” suddenly appear. If
a site that has incoming links from bad places also has or creates links
directed out-bound to bad places, the incoming links are judged more
harshly. If, on the other hand, a website has a sudden influx of bad-neighbourhood
links but does not contain outbound-links directed to bad places, the
inbound
ones might not be judged as harshly.
The combination of the Bigdaddy upgrade and the Jagger algorithm update
have made Google a better search engine and are precursors to the integration
of video content and other information pulled from other Google services
such as Google Base, Google Maps and Google Groups in the general search
results.
Before the completion of both, Google’s search results were increasingly
displaying a number of poor quality results stemming from a legion of scraped
content “splog” sites and phoney directories that had sprung
up in efforts to exploit the AdSense payment system. Bigdaddy and Jagger
is a combined effort to offer improved, more accurate rankings while at
the same time, expanding Google’s ability to draw and distribute content
across its multiple arms and networks.
Moving forward, that is what users should expect Google to do. Google
is no longer a set of static results updated on a timed schedule.
It is constantly updating and rethinking its rankings, especially in
light
of
the number of people trying to use those rankings for their own commercial
gain.
The effect of the duo upgrades seems to be settling out. Credible,
informative sites should have nothing to worry about in the post-Bigdaddy
environment.
As Google is trying to move into the most mainstream areas of modern
marketing, credibility is its chief concern. The greatest threat to
Google’s
dominance does not come from other tech firms. It comes from the users
themselves who, if displeased with results being shown by Google, could
migrate en
masse to another search engine.
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