There are many huge Sites that are well organized and provide good service, run intelligently. One I was particularly impressed with recently are those under the JupiterMedia umbrella:
http://www.jupitermedia.com
But living in a small town, I know which town I need to go to for different services and I am not going to drive 100 miles to see a Dentist and I am not likely to stay 80 miles away from someone I visit for a few days.
Many Sites are running as fast as they can to buy their positions in "local" searches.
Here is what I am talking about; Google; "Dobbin Texas" without the quotations:
SERP#3
http://w ww.roses-nationwide.com/Texas/Dobbin/Dobbin_TX.htm
(link broken at primary domain level on purpose because breaking it at any subsequent level is ineffective. A near same page resides at all folder levels for every City in the US) Spend a little time there go to any state and scroll down...There's plenty of dissimilar content in multiple location listings) In fact the primary domain has a PR8! Have they achieved trusted Site status and are the SE's allowing that level of spam? If so, maybe we should all do it. 10 million web development companies in every town! Where are we going with local searches?
Read that intro paragraph:
…. “We offer nothing but the freshest and best quality flowers with a 100% satisfaction guarantee direct from a Dobbin flower shop.”
There are no flower shops in most 1 traffic-light rural towns, this one included! In fact, the guys out here are more likely to send their wife a chainsaw instead of flowers, so they can clear the woods together.
Look how many times “Dobbin” was used in the header, introductory paragraph and even the URL - very intelligently mass regurgitated from an
SEO perspective! The page is beautiful, very appealing and….. they have a PR0 at this level, all the way down from an "8".
Is anyone really going to search for “Dobbin Texas” or any other “BFE” to send flowers? Hell no… They are going to search for “send flowers”, “send roses” or something along those lines.
Where does mass advertising and Spam diverge?
IMO - This is what Google is now targeting!
I could cite many more examples of the same regional and local "gateway page" practice for, lawyers, real estate agents etc… etc…, check out your own local area SERPS.
This webpage proliferation practice is not going to fly any more with Google. In fact, I have been monitoring MSN in several categories for total SERP counts and I have been watching a trend to trim most of those SERP’s Total Returns by quite a margin for 3 consecutive months. Will MSN beat Google in "trimming the fat" to gain an edge on search relevance? It will be interesting.
Dealing with this mess is an important aspect of SE relevance and will continue to be. The problem is much larger and more difficult than one might want to imagine. The Traffic-Power scandal was just a "warm-up" practice session.
I hear that garbage truck coming down the street again!
All rights reserved, Mountain Eagle Marketing.
Ken