Google Updates Toolbar
PageRank for Many Pages
Courtesy of
SearchEngineNews.com | May 2005
Around the
22nd of April, Google implemented a long overdue large-scale
update of the toolbar PageRank for many sites. You might want to
check your PageRank to see if you were affected. Google's
backlinks feature (the number of
incoming links to your site Google shows when you do a
link:www.yoursite.com command) was also updated.
While many
sites saw a nice PageRank increase of one or two points, a fair
number of heavily over-optimized sites actually saw their PageRank
drop significantly, in some cases all the way to PR=0
(zero). This result was
largely due to Google's much more aggressive detection of what it
sees as artificial links structures.
While it's
nice (and a bit of an ego boost)
to see your PageRank go up, keep in mind that toolbar PageRank is
only a very general indicator of how well your site is going to
rank for a given keyword. There are many other factors involved
and the site with the highest PageRank does not necessarily always
rank the highest.
The point is
to not get too caught up in obsessing over your site's PageRank.
In general, sites with a higher PageRank will rank better, but not
always - and Google itself has said that toolbar PageRank differs
from the actual PageRank Google uses to rank a site.
However,
should one of your pages that previously enjoyed high PR suddenly
drop to PR=0, then THAT can spell trouble - and likely indicates
that the page has been assessed a serious penalty for violating
one of Google's guidelines.
Planet Ocean
Communications
Reprinted by permission from:
SearchEngineNews.com
SEO Compass: Site Map and 404
Error Pages
By Kent
Lewis, President of
Anvil
Media Inc.
These days,
it's much easier to get lost in search engines, than to be found.
As the Web grows and evolves, many sites are redesigned, leaving
orphaned or "dead pages" in their wake. While site visitors
appreciate improved content and features a new site can offer,
they get frustrated by clicking through to blank white 404 error
pages on the old site. Building a custom 404 error page is an
elegant solution to this problem.
Mapping
it Out
Before we go into too much detail on 404 error pages, let's take a
brief detour into the world of site maps. If you don't have a site
map on your Web site, you need one. It's simply a visual outline
of primary, secondary, and tertiary pages within your site. Some
site visitors appreciate visual navigation as a quick way to
assess the overall size and structure of a Web site and get to the
information they want within one or two clicks. Additionally, you
should ensure the integrity of your site's link structure. This
can be easily done through software applications like
Link
Defender that can automatically verify the integrity of your
web site's links including image, FTP, and dynamic links.
Intentional Errors
Now that you have a better understanding of the benefits of a site
map, we can get back to the topic at hand: custom 404 error pages.
As described earlier, a standard 404 error page is a blank white
page that says "The page cannot be found." While the fine print
suggests visiting the home page of the URL in question, visitors
often find it easier to click the back button to return to the
search results and visit another site (like your competitors).
The best way
to capture visitors from dead pages still visible in search
results is to create a custom 404 error page that looks like your
Web site template. It should have your logo and navigation, and in
the main content area, it should say something like, "We're sorry
this page is not available, please visit the links below to find
what you are looking for." The "links" that follow would be
content from the existing site map. Now a visitor is able to
locate what they are looking for rather than leaving.
Once you've
developed your site map, use that as a baseline to build a custom
404 error page. Since you've already submitted the site map to
search engines to ensure all current pages are indexed, you don't
need to do anything more but sit back and watch your traffic
increase (using
WebTrends of course). Once the spider is served a 404 error
page instead of a dead link, two things happen: the current
listing maintains position longer and the spider is directed to
the current pages, improving overall visibility.
In the end,
creating a custom 404 error page based on the site map allows you
to retain current search engine visibility while driving lost
traffic to the appropriate areas of the site and improving overall
site conversion. For more information, check out the resources
below.
Resources
Google Reveals Ranking Components in
Patent Application!
...by sketching their ideal search engine, Google dropped a
truckload of clues about how their engine actually ranks sites!
Courtesy of
SearchEngineNews.com | May 2005
Have
you ever played the game Clue where you run around a mansion and
try to collect information to figure out who killed Mr. Body?
Well, optimizing a site for Google is a lot like that game. SEO's
collect clues, try to put two-and-two together, throw in some
educated guesses and ...voila! ...it was Ms. Scarlet in the
Conservatory with the Candle Stick! Or, in the case of search
engine optimization, they win the game as they watch their site's
SE ranking rise.
With
Google's recently released Patent Application we've been handed an
enormous clue as to what goes on behind the closed doors at
Google. Mind you, this document does not provide answers, but it
does point us in the direction of what Google can do and what they
are considering doing in the future.
Let's
take a closer look at the clues and see what we can find...
The patent, titled Information Retrieval Based on Historical Data,
was authored by several Google engineers and originally filed
December 31, 2003. Now, over a year later, the patent has finally
been published and offers several clues regarding how Google ranks
pages, what Google considers to be spam, and how they go about
detecting that spam.
While most
of what is covered is not particularly surprising, it does help
confirm a lot of what was previously educated-speculation. The
real questions are, how many of these ideas are actually being
used at Google? ...and, if not in current use, will they be used
in the future? ...and when?
Though we
seriously doubt Google employs all of the proprietary methods they
list in the document, the patent still covers a huge number of
techniques they could use (or are reserving the rights to use) in
the future. The patent itself takes a shotgun approach to covering
as much ground as possible, as opposed to closely documenting any
current or future methods.
The patent
also makes frequent reference to the concept of using a web page's
score to rank that page, as well as what factors play a role in
raising and lowering that score. The implication here is, of
course, that high-scoring pages will rank better than low-scoring
pages.
Reading
Between the Patent's Lines
So what does all of this mean to you and your optimization
efforts? Let's run through the patent step-by-step:
Historical Data: The bulk of the document is devoted to ways
in which Google could use domain- and site history-data to help
determine relevancy. This patent application reveals what kind
of history they might consider to be important when it comes to
scoring web pages and identifying spam. Some factors include:
- How old a page is.
- How frequently page content changes over time.
- How links to a page are added and removed over time.
- The rate at which links are added or removed.
- How the anchor text of incoming links changes over time.
- The current and previous levels of traffic to a page.
- What position Google ranked the page in the past.
- The age of the domain the page is on and how long it's
been registered for.
Document Age: The patent implies that Google closely watches
the date documents are created, the average age of documents on
the site, and how frequently the page changes over time.
Document creation date is determined by the date on which the
Google spider first indexes the document, either through its
regular crawl or through the page being manually submitted to
Google.
For
example, a page that is one day old and has ten incoming links
may have a higher score than a page that is ten years old and
has 100 incoming links, since the younger page has a higher rate
of link growth. However, an excessively fast rate of link growth
may actually hurt the score of a page, since, to Google, that
looks like artificial link accumulation.
The
indication here is that older pages will generally be given
higher scores than newer pages, but only if those older pages
are continually adding new incoming links at a moderate pace.
Also, Google takes into consideration the average age of all
pages on a site. This means that a new page on an old site will
score higher than an equally new page that resides on a new
site.
However,
for some time-sensitive queries, newer pages may be considered
more favorable than older ones. For instance, Google might rank
new pages more highly for a phrase like nuclear option, since
new pages will be more likely to be discussing issues in the
current US Senate. Old pages, in contrast, might be about Cold
War politics, and probably not satisfy today's searcher's query.
Rate of
Document Change: In general, pages that are updated
frequently will score higher. However, Google may watch to see
if all web pages on a site are updated at the same time, which
may signal a navigation or site template change, as opposed to a
page-content change. In such a case, pages may not get credit
for being updated, since the change more likely applied to the
look of the site, rather than to new information being added.
Individual
pages changing frequently may signal a news or blog page, or
some other important content, and indicate to Google that those
pages should be spidered more frequently, and perhaps ranked
higher for their targeted keywords.
When it
comes to determining if a web page has been modified, Google
will give greatest weight to changes in the title of a page,
followed by changes in the anchor text of outgoing links on a
page, then to changes in visible page text. Little weight is
given to changes in Javascript, on-page ads, date/time tags,
comments, or navigational or template elements.
To make
things even more challenging, the patent also takes into account
the rate of change. This means that, even if a page is updated
regularly, it still won't score as highly as a page that is
increasing in its rate of change.
For
example, imagine that you update your pages once a week and your
competitor updates their pages once a month. If your competition
switches to updating their pages once a week, they'll receive a
higher score than you. This is because, even though you're both
updating once a week, they will have accelerated their rate of
updates, giving them the advantage.
The patent
also discusses how a "stale" document, or one that hasn't
changed for a given amount of time, should perhaps be ranked
higher than a more recently updated document, if it gets clicked
more often than more recently modified pages. This brings us
to...
Traffic, Click Tracking, and User Data: Google gives us a
few clues to indicate that pages that are clicked more
frequently in the Google search engine results pages (SERPs) for
a given search term may get a higher ranking.
The patent
implies that Google is tracking not just how many clicks a
search result is getting, but also what kind of traffic is going
to the page in question. Higher relevance is awarded to pages
that are accessed through browser bookmarks, for instance, since
those pages are assumed to be more valuable to searchers.
High
scores are also assigned based on the amount of time a user
spends on a page. But how can Google know how long you're
browsing a page and whether or not you accessed it from your
bookmarks? Now you know what things like My Search History and
the Google Toolbar are really for (cue ominous-sounding music).
And what
happens if people used to spend 30 seconds on average looking at
a page, but now only spend an average of 5 seconds looking at
that same page? You got it. Page score goes down.
Even more
Orwellian is that the patent indicates that Google may employ
information stored in a user's browser cache and cookies to
determine the popularity of a page.
Further,
Google may look at the rate of traffic, whether it's increasing
or decreasing, and in particular the seasonal variation in
traffic. This could help them to identify sites that may be
important during some parts of the year but not others. Examples
could include travel sites, or sites that sell holiday related
merchandise.
One of the
more potentially controversial aspects of the patent involves
the way Google may look at advertising traffic. In particular,
Google's rating of the "quality" of the advertisers. A page
featuring ads that link to sites that Google trusts (such as
their good buddies over at Amazon.com) will likely score higher
than a page with ads that link to lower-traffic, less-trusted
sites.
While this
may make a certain amount of sense, it also raises some flags
about the ways in which the online behemoths are able to use
their power to collaborate and squeeze the little guy out of
contention.
The patent
also discusses assigning higher scores to those pages that have
higher click-thru rates on their ads. Obviously, the easiest way
for them to track this is if you're running AdSense on your
site. (Who knows, maybe this whole patent was just a devious
attempt by Google to convince more people to put AdSense ads on
their pages?)
Links:
Google watches how quickly inbound links develop over time,
including how quickly they disappear. Google's not just
factoring in how many links you have now, they're also taking
into account the way in which those links behave and analyzing
trends in the growth and decline in the number of links a page
has.
A downward
trend in the number of links to a page may indicate that the
page is "stale" and hence deserves a lower score, while an
upward trend indicates fresh content and deserves a higher
score.
Changes in
the anchor text of links pointing to a page may also indicate
fresh content, as can other changes to the pages on which those
incoming links appear. This means that it helps to not only have
fresh content on your own page, but also for your page to be
linked to from other fresh pages.
And, of
course, the rate at which those new links are added is critical.
Add them too fast and you risk a penalty. As the patent plainly
states:
A
typical, "legitimate" document attracts back links slowly.
By now, you know our advice here at SearchEngineNews.com has
always been to create a natural-looking incoming link structure.
This means growing your links gradually, avoiding run-of-site
link purchases, varying your incoming link anchor text, and
limiting to a certain degree your number of reciprocal links.
Much of
this patent just reinforces that advice. You should always be
asking yourself if your links fit a natural-looking development
cycle.
Domain-Related Information: The patent also covers a few
ways Google may distinguish between illegitimate and legitimate
domains. One aspect is the length of time a domain is registered
for. According to the patent, legitimate domains are more likely
to be paid for several years in advance, while doorway and
spam-heavy domains are rarely registered for more than a year in
advance, since the owner knows they'll likely be penalized
anyway. Does this mean you should go out and register your
domains for the next ten years? If you plan on being in business
that long, we can't see how it can hurt.
Google may
also take into account the rate at which whois info, IP address,
and name servers change for a given domain. Domains that are
frequently being shuffled between owners and locations may be
tagged as more likely to contain spam.
And if
that hasn't ratcheted up your paranoia, the patent also
indicates that Google may look at the other domains that share a
name server with your own domain. If there are a lot of
questionable domains on your name server, you may get lumped in
with a bad crowd, causing your rankings to suffer.
Avoid
Artificial Flavors
The primary theme of this patent is that Google is looking to
profile web page value based on factors that are naturally created
and influenced, as opposed to those that are artificially
manipulated. That's essentially what this is all about - finding
ways to detect and score documents that deserve to rank highly
even if search engines didn't exist.
Something
Google Software Engineer Matt Cutts (one of the co-authors of the
patent) has frequently relayed in the past was the importance of
building pages for human traffic, while trying to ignore the
search engines. For those of us who market products online, that
may be easier said than done, since so much of what we do is
focused on getting our pages to rank higher in the major engines.
The question
is, what is truly natural? Considering that SE optimization is
built into almost every facet of online commercial activity, the
line is somewhat blurred.
Keep
Things in Perspective
Of course, it's also important to keep in mind that this is only a
patent application. There's no proof that any of these ideas are
actually being implemented at Google. For all we know, this patent
could just be a brilliant attempt to foster paranoia amongst
search engine optimizers and make us second guess the techniques
we're currently using.
Further,
note that this patent was not put out by Google, but rather by a
team of Google engineers. Of course, we're not so naive as to
assume that the two aren't one and the same.
Regardless,
it does show that Google is quite intent on discovering pages that
develop a natural course of growth, as opposed to pages that
search engine marketers try to put on the Fast Track to high
rankings.
See for
Yourself...
Since the patent itself is actually fairly readable, we recommend
you check it out yourself (skip the claims and go straight to the
description, about 2/5 of the way down). The contents of this
patent application have already generated more online buzz than
any other previously released Google publication.
Google USPTO Filing - A must read for SEOs
As we've always said: when it comes to Google, if it can be done,
then assume it is being done. Familiarizing yourself with this
document will give you an idea of just what Google is striving for
and will prepare you for what you can expect to see, if not today,
than very likely in the near future.
Keep it
natural...
Esoos Bobnar
SEM Specialist and Technical Analyst
Planet Ocean Communications
Reprinted by
permission from:
SearchEngineNews.com
Google Limits Link Popularity
Searches?
Some Google
searchers have been noticing a new limitation when checking link
popularity using the "link:" command. If you perform too many of
these searches within a certain period of time, a page is returned
claiming that your computer has spyware installed on it and
requires a code to be entered on the page before the search
results will be returned. The message can be a bit misleading: in
most cases, spyware has nothing to do with it. The problem? Too
many link popularity searches were performed in too short of time
period from your computer. The limit is usually imposed for only a
few hours.
Link
popularity searches on Google take the form of
link:www.domainname.com, and when used, return the number of sites
within the Google index that link to whatever domain you are
querying about. It's a useful feature to measure trends over time,
but most agree that the results are filtered and not
representative of the actual number of links for a given domain.
Reports
suggest that the amount of link queries allowed usually run into
the hundreds, and only when the requests are sent at a fairly
rapid rate.
WebPosition uses the link popularity searches very sparingly,
so it should never be a cause for this block being placed.
WebPosition recommends users always use best practices in their
SEO efforts.
For more
information about this feature, see the section "Who Links To
You?" at the bottom of the Google Web Search Features page.
Using MSN's RSS Search Results
MSN Search
has made syndicated RSS search results available for any search
term you enter. This can be a valuable tool to monitor your
keyword positions as well as your competition on MSN. We are
keeping a close watch to see if the other major search engines
follow suit. If they do follow suit, there are some obvious
features that may be added to
WebPosition.
See an
example of an MSN RSS search result page
HERE.
Last Month:
Last month
we talked about several important topics including:
April 2005
- What is "organic search and how can it help your company?
- The Local Search Revolution has Arrived!
- Google Goes Mobile
If you
missed these or other key discussions, you can find the back
issues at:
http://www.marketposition.com/newsletters.htm
Other Resources:
Download a
FREE trial of WebPosition
You may
call us at 1-800-962-4855 if you have questions not addressed on
our site. You will also find an array of additional tips and
techniques for improving your search positions in both the
WebPosition Help File and the Reports it generates.
This publication may be freely redistributed if copied in its
ENTIRETY. Portions of this newsletter may be
reprinted with permission
(c)
Copyright 2005
WebTrends Inc.
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