Don't take this too seriously unless you have experienced a similar issue. We are now receiving Email from non-clients asking for advice regarding their websites' loss of position at Google. Regardless of whether or not they are clients, we try to help anyone who asks us for our opinions and advice. What is bugging me is that many of the people writing us DO NOT have commercial sites or SEO techniques applied to their sites! Several SEOs have speculated that it is only commercial sites or sites with obvious SEO techniques that have had their rankings disappear at Google.
I can't say I know why this is happening but it is a heads-up to others studying the FLORDIA update. It's not only commercial and/or SEO driven sites... have a nice day.
Happy Thanksgiving to our friends in the United States. American Thanksgiving marks the beginning of the end of the previous year and the start of the holiday season. It is the perfect time to kick back, visit family and friends and reminisce about the year gone past. It is also a great time to look forward to the coming year and have a little fun. That's what our staff wanted to do today so here is our predictions for the State of Search, 2004.
* Google will issue an IPO in March (odds = 99%) via the Dutch Auction format. (odds = 50%) Google will make billions on the IPO and will purchase the financially strapped Calgary Flames Hockey club, move them to the Silicone Valley and rename them the Silicone Flameouts. (odds = 5%)
* We will see a continuance of large mergers, takeovers and buyouts until the end of the first quarter of 2004. More of the smaller players will be absorbed by the larger ones including at least a portion of ASK.Com. (odds = 60%). Jeeves himself will be found drunk in an alley behind the Stardust Lounge on Rodeo Dr. slumped over his friend, that other unemployed mascot from Pets.Com (odds = 5%)
* Yahoo will become the dominant search service in China (odds = 85%) and will become known as the "Portal to the World's Largest Marketplace" (odds = 65%)
* Terra Lycos will surprise the search world with successful innovations and services. (odds = 99%) Furthermore, Lycos will become one of the top international search tools with a strong focus on European and Spanish Language search technologies. (odds = 55%)
* Contextual Advertising opportunities will expand, allowing more opportunities for the advertiser to become the advertising medium for other ads. (odds = 85%)
* Asian language SEOs will be a driving force of the SEO industry as the focus of the international economy continues to move from North America to Asia. (odds = 75%)
* The Toronto Maple Leafs will finally win the Stanley Cup. (odds = .05%)
* Google will be officially labeled a weapon of mass destruction based on the recent Florida update. (odds = 99%)
* Non-Spammy results will be found at Google very soon. (odds = 10%)
* Every major search engine will introduce their own tool-bars. (odds = 90%)
* MSN will make a major purchase, possibly ASK.Com's TEOMA (odds = 50%)
* StepForth Placement will expand to double it's current size and staff (odds = 80%+)
* StepForth Placement will add a new division (details pending, odds = 100%)
LycosUK has introduced an extraordinary tracking service allowing users to shop between various financial services in a partnership with MoneySuperMarket.Com. The service promises savings of up to 10% of a users annual salary, if used properly. Users can check different rates, move money between credit cards, see different loan and credit opportunities and track bonus offers such as loyalty points and programs. This looks like an excellent tool for individual users and small businesses. If successful in the UK, Lycos will expand the program to Europe and North America sometime in 2004.
Google's recent update (FLORIDA) has been discussed and dissected by the SEO community for the past three weeks. WebMasterWorld moderator, Barry Lloyd has taken the time to compile and analyze much of the discussion and has packaged it in a well written and easy to understand article. This is a must read of SEOs and webmasters interested in Google (this likely means you...).
Spam makes lots of people angry. Lots of spam makes certain people too angry to control themselves as was found by a Victoria company earlier this week. Douglas Mackay, president of DM Contact Management was repeatedly threatened by a man in southern California who had received one too many penis enlargement spam emails, and mistakenly targeted DM Contact Management as the senders. Since the spring time, Douglas Mackay has received strange and threatening emails from Charles Booher, a 44 year old computer programmer in Sunnyvale California. Booher was frustrated by the same level of spam we are all frustrated by except Booher foolishly decided to try to scare Mackay's company into making the spam stop. Problem is, Mackay's company never sent the offending emails in the first place. Booher said he would, torture Mackay with an ice pick, deliver an envelope full of anthrax spores to his office and disable him with a bullet to the knee-caps. He was arrested earlier this week and could face up to five years in jail and a $250,000 fine. According to the Globe and Mail newspaper, "...News accounts say that Mr. Booker is a survivor of testicular cancer, and therefore found repeated messages dealing with penile extension 'frustrating.'".
Google has been showing really bizarre results today. Just when I start to think Google is coming back to some sense of normal I see a client report or conduct a random search that shows that Google has not gotten back to normal. Before the recent Florida Update, I could be reasonably sure that if a site was in the Top10 at Lycos or Alta Vista, it was almost certainly Top10 at Google. Today, that is not the case, or at least not all of the time.
Ross noticed something interesting a few minutes ago. Google does not seem to be measuring back-links in any noticable way. Ross re-worked an optimization effort for one of his clients' sites last week on the assumption that really strong SEO would beat sites with high link-densities and suddenly, the site is in the #2 spot on Google after being dropped during the Florida Update. We are attempting the same practice on another couple of sites (with client permission of course) in the hopes that our assumption is correct. With Google spidering and re-spidering like mad these days, we hope to see results withing three or four days.
Longhorn is slated for release in 2005 however, based on the hype, I suspect we will see it ramped out earlier. According to most writers and reviewers, and according to Microsoft itself, Longhorn has the potential to change the search world by incorporating search directly into the desktop system. Not only that, Longhorn will have personalization features that might make it far more useful than the current spate of search tools. Check out the Globe article. We're going to research it and hopefully have more information in tomorrow's StepForth Weekly Newsletter.
Ross just received a call from another SEO asking why we haven't publically bashed Google for their most recent ranking weirdness. In reality, I think we've taken it to Google several times in the past year and rightly so. Google has a tremendous impact on the world of search and the availability of information to the general public. On a business persective, companies can be made and broken based on their Google ranking. This is important and we can't forget that every business has an impact on real people's lives. I think Google has a responsibility to live up to but I have no idea exactly how they should live up to it. More warning perhaps.
I think I will start taking pot-shots in print at Google's expense and here's the first. Google's rankings were thrown totally out of whack last week with the oddest update we've ever seen. SPAM and totally unrelated sites ending up with the top rankings under specific keyword phrases. Sites that had been placing in the Top10 for months or even years suddenly gone from the listings... ARG. This update has been named the Florida update and, in a strange way, that figures. We've suspected the math in Florida to be sort of whacky for a couple of years now... :)
Garrett French has pasted StepForth all over the front of WebProNews and his newsletter today. Amazing... We're getting a lot of attention and a lot of visits to the site. We just wanted to say thank you Garrett, you are the entire Top10, IMHO
The west coast of Canada is beautiful and StepForth is about as far west in Canada as one can go before drowning. Because of our location, we are about three hours behind the Eastern seaboard, two hours behind Chicago and one hour behind Salt Lake City. The bonus is that the Noon news in New York is the morning news in Victoria so in many ways we have a jump on our local competition. The down part is in passing it on to readers, it always appears to be a bit behind the times because, in point of fact, it is.
Welcome to our BLOG, hope you enjoy it. Please feel free to write to any of us if you like it, wanna lump it, or have any questions or comments.
Last week it was reported that Microsoft and Google had met to discuss a possible buy-out. This week, Microsoft Chairman Bill Gates stated that the discussions never happened. Four weeks ago, it was reported that Google was going to issue an IPO in February 2004 through a "Dutch Auction" format. The next day, Google Communication Director David Krane, was all over the phones demanding retractions of the story. Obviously someone is telling stories somewhere along the line...
In this case, we think someone either at Google or associated with one of the companies hoping to float Google's coming IPO, has leaked information to the press. We are almost certain the most recent rumour did not come from Microsoft. Even though Gates & Co. have a reputation for ruthlessness, Microsoft is a public company and is not allowed to make up stories that might have an effect on the share value of Microsoft stock. Also, Microsoft is introducing its own search tool and we see no reason for MSN to devalue it's product (unless Google was going to be the backbone of that product).
Google, on the other hand is a private company and does not have to follow the same set of rules as a company with shareholders. Google is considered "in play" by the investment community and there is a heck of a lot of buzz around the coming IPO. It stands to reason that someone associated with the IPO, perhaps someone from within Google itself is looking to increase the value of the initial offering by increasing the number of rumours floating out there.
This is an increasingly difficult and dangerous trend. We are seeing the mainstream media being used as a promotion vehicle for Google, often promoting subjects that are erronious using quotes from Unnamed Sources. In the past month, major financial news outlets such as the Wall St. Journal, the New York Times and the Financial Times have printed articles that have turned out to be based on erronious information. We have too and the trend should stop. We will no longer print articles with quotes attributed to unnamed sources unless we have two other confirming voices backing the story, at least one of which must be willing to go on the record endorsing the story. To all readers who have felt misled by our articles, please accept our apologies, we too, like the NYTimes, WSJ and Financial Times have been misled and we are not terribly happy about it. We promise to strive for better in the future.
Something big is happening at Google but we're not sure what it is. What we do know is that since a major update of Google's database started on Friday night, the search returns have been extremely buggy with long-term Top10 pages dropping from existence, recorded back links decreasing or disappearing for many sites, and more than the usual amount of spam appearing in the Top10. We have also noted the disapperence of one their major servers (www-sj.google.com).
Google has been delivering questionable returns for several months now with spam and duplicate listings often making it into the Top10. The last time their listings have been this upset was in October 2002 when Google tried introducing Blog entries and news releases into its general listings. Within two weeks, the listings had been restored to a shakey state of "normal" but that marked the beginning of strange and often spammy entries into the Top10. This month's update is being referred to in the SEO community as the "Florida Update" and has a lot of SEO practicioners scratching their heads. Our current advise is to wait it out for at least two weeks and see what Google does next.
Have y'all taken a look at Google today? Yes, what you are seeing is real. Google is showing totally different listings on the search engine returns pages today. Actually, this weirdness started sometime on Friday night or Saturday morning. Most of our clients have not been affected and the only one we have seen effected has had his rankings rise dramatically. Our site has been affected though, rather badly at that. From the #6 spot under the phrase "Search Engine Placement", the happy-go-lucky StepForth site has dropped past the fifth page of returns.
I think this is a temporary thing. We last saw such a massive shake-up six months ago and the listings went back to normal after a few days. This sort of shake-up generally indicates that Google is re-ordering their entire database of spidered sites.
Recently we have received a great deal of mail on the subject of SEO Spam, especially as it relates to Google. It seems lots of folk are complaining about the quality of the SERPs (search engine returns pages) at Google and the fact that many (not all) of the Top10 found at Google seem to have gotten there by using Spam tactics. We are getting a number of inquiries asking what a webmaster should do when they find their site(s) pushed out of the Top20 by sites using Spam and if SEOs should start using Spammy techniques on their client's websites. These questions have raised a number of important ethical and practical discussions amongst the staff here and has generated more than one debate at our quarterly staff/client parties. At the risk of generating even more email, here are some of my thoughts on the issue.
First of all let's examine the current state of the environment.
- Google is the worlds most popular search engine and provides results for many other search tools from directories such as Yahoo to online media such as the New York Times. Google's reach is so massive it can only be described as the largest repository of information ever created by humans. Larger than the Library of Congress, Google pushes more data in one day than many governments do in a month. If your business depends on being found on the web, a Top20 placement at Google can make the difference between abundance and bankruptcy.
- As Google continues to base its ranking algorithm on the number and quality of incoming links, it is remarkably easy to manipulate if one is willing to use Spam-techniques.
- The SEO sector is one of the fastest growing service sectors on the Internet and the concept of "ethical SEO" is being diluted by a growing number of new service providers.
- As new technologies and features are introduced by Google, designing Spam-filters that don't create more problems than they solve is increasingly difficult.
The crux of the debate at StepForth revolves around the question of how to best serve our clients without falling into the Spam-trap. On one hand, we see Spam-based campaigns being rewarded by Google, but on the other hand, we are committed to following what we consider "ethical SEO techniques" that stay within the guidelines published by Google and other search engines. We continue to feel that if some SEO practitioners use Spam techniques on a regular basis, those SEOs may poison the well we all draw our sustenance from for short-term gain and are doing their clients a disservice in the long-run. Regardless of our commitment to remaining on the SEO high-road, we still have clients paying us their hard-earned money to get results in an environment that sometimes seems dominated by "under-ethical" practices. Fortunately, the vast majority of our clients are in the Top10 under their chosen keyword phrases but there are three who's listings are being displaced by sites using spam-techniques. Here's our plan for these sites...
1/ Perform an in depth analysis of the Top5 sites under the keyword phrases our clients are targeting.
2/ Reverse engineer several elements (aside from the Spam) of the Top 5 sites including (but not necessarily limited to): keyword densities, link-densities, site mapping, and the use of titles - tags and text on the site.
3/ Compare results from our analysis with our client's site(s).
4/ Simplify our client's site(s) in order to present page-specific information in the most concise manner possible. It is important here to be sure the page represents one topic or theme only. If new sites(s) are needed to present completely different themes, we'll recommend that the client use a sub-domain as opposed to misleading searchers with a new site. For example, StepForth accomplished this by creating news.stepforth.com, stats.stepforth.com, www.stepforth.com.
5/ Suggest each client participate in positive link-building and cooperative competition with others in their sector who are not direct competitors or chasing the exact same market group.
6/ Revisit their campaigns and add fresh optimized content on a weekly basis until they get into the Top20.
I believe it is only a matter of time before a massive clamp-down happens in regards to Spam. Google and other search tools only exist because people use them. Too much spam in any one place threatens user loyalty. Google and the other search engines do monitor their SERPs and are concerned with the quality of results shown. They owe their existence to displaying the strongest and most relevant results possible. There are many who predict Google going the way of Alta Vista if they don't get their house in order soon. There are others, including myself, who figure the end-user is the ultimate arbiters of what does and does not work. The users decide what is and is not relevant to them and make their opinions known through their usage. As long as the majority of search engine sessions are conducted at or through Google, the users are clearly stating their preferences. As for the SEO sector, we owe our clients the highest levels of diligence and honesty. Don't spam, it will come back to haunt you or your clients later.
In the meantime, I strongly suggest that SEO practitioners read and re-read the guidelines posted by Google, especially new SEOs. We provide a necessary service for webmasters and, when working properly, for the search engines themselves. It is very human to cheat if you know you will be rewarded for cheating. On the other hand, it is said that there are only two species of animals on the planet dumb enough to defecate in their own drinking water. The first is the Irish Wolfhound, a large but somewhat slow beast. The second species is humans.
Google has recently released Google Deskbar, a search tool that allows you to search all of Google's various databases (Google, Google News, Froogle, Google Groups, etc...), without opening your browser. When installed, Google Deskbar operates in the lower tray and automatically opens an Internet Explorer window to display results. Google has introduced this tool in response to rumours that Microsoft will be bulking search directly into its new operating system Longhorn.
Overture and NBC have signed a deal in which NBC will display paid-results from Overture in returns from the search feature on the TV network's website. NBC joins other large media outlets such as the New York Post and CNN in introducing sponsored advertisements to search results in a bid to cash in on the growing contextual advertising market. Whenever a site user performs a search from NBC, the results returned will include advertisements that have bid on specific keyword phrases in an auction-like format. Under the two year deal, the top 3 bidded sites at Overture will appear as Sponsored Links above the traditional listings.
Blink
Del.icio.us
Digg
Furl
Google
Simpy
Spurl
Y! MyWeb
