Quote:
Originally Posted by Fitz
Surely the SI label or index is not the real issue. Surely it's this simple: if your page doesn't rank, it needs further work (e.g. more IBLs). With the greatest respect, did we need a label to tell us that?
|
And since when did IBLs ever reflect the qualititive value of a page? Never. I've always had an issue with the supplemental index as an entire concept, as I've seen too many quality pages (pages with useful, unique, worthwhile content) stuck in the SI because the site itself doesn't have enough "popularity". Typically these sites are serving a niche - either local services or a highly specialised market. Consequently they will NEVER get the load of IBLs needed to lift pages out of the SI, despite the quality of the pages themselves.
The SI is effectively a links based filter that favours the big, the branded, and the established regardless of content quality.
But if Google wish to persist with keeping the SI in existence, they should WITHOUT QUESTION continue to flag pages in the SI. To do anything else is underhanded and misleading.
One has to question why Matt / Google should be concerned about whether they are tagged or not - maybe its because they are increasingly concerned about the negative press (justified in my view) about the SI. If the SI is such a great thing, why worry about tagging pages. If they want to drop the tags, guess they must have something to hide.