Does Google learn to "expect" fresh content?

[tom.holt]

First off, I'm not a 'Web Pro', but I have spent a good amount of time around this & other forums to get a handle on SEO. As a marketing manager for a financial services firm, I set out to get our new website in as good a position as possible from the start.

Having made sure the bases were covered from a navigation/content/tags etc, I specified a CMS to allow constant addition of new content to the site, as this always seemed one of the main areas for attention.

Long story short, I started adding content on a regular basis (around every day) and sure enough, the site started to climb the SERPs (new content was generally linked to off home page). I remember the site getting as high as p2 on Googles' rankings under the term "Mortgage Network". Then I had a week off. The site fell a long way & has continued to do so, even though I have been making time to add content (though not as frequently as before).

I guess I have two questions. 1) Is there a situation where Google might 'see' that a site is updated very frequently and then penalise that same site when the frequency of these updates drops?. 2) Does Google ever assume that a large volume of frequent updates might be spam in some way?

All content added was original, new & not duplicated. The thing that really kills me is that our competitor's site is never added to & remains at the top of page 1 !!!!!

Any ideas would be appreciated.

Tom
Mortgage Network, Mortgage Support Network, Intermediary Network, Mortgage Broker Network

[wige]

I think it may be one factor. The Googlebot seems to be somewhat intelligent when it comes to new content. For example on my site I get a product feed via XML listing all of our products. Every time a new product becomes available, a new page is created automatically and put into a somewhat buried "unfiled" category of the site. I then log in to the site and add content for that page and move it to the correct area with a 301. Through this method we add about 10-15 new products a day. About a week into using this method, I noticed that Googlebot was checking the obscure, almost unlinked to unfiled index page every 2-4 hours, and crawls the new pages daily. My old pages get crawled about twice a month, but new content is crawled within 1-2 days.

[mjtaylor]

I don't believe your site is being penalized for not having content added at the same rate it was before ... your site may be spidered less, though, but that will not affect the position in the SERPs ... the quantity and quality of the content will, though. AS will the quality and quantity of inlinks.

If a site is new, it is not uncommon to see swings in SERPs - I hesitate to invoke the term that spurs the most debate on this forum, the Google Sandbox, but in my experiece it is not unusual for a new site to rank well for a short time when Google first sees it, and then for it to drop considerably while the site and links to it age.

Speaking of links, I would suggest your next SEO priority would be quality links to your site.

And speaking of new, the current design seems to be new as of February, but there was a website there for a long time - for Thornton Mortgage in 2001, and then for the same company as it is now since 2002, correct? So the design is new ... but not the site ... so while it may seen the Sandbox is not part of the equation, Google does sometimes see any signigicant change as a reason to put a site on the back burner for a while. And it does look as though there are fewer indexed pages now than a couple of years ago.

A lot of your pages seem to be in the supplemental index ... another reason to work on getting links ... and to build more content on your site. There is no "news" on your news page for example (just links to dynamically generated content, it seems), and that page is in the supplemental index ... Not sure where you are putting your new content, but if it's in the news section, I can tell you Google isn't seeing it as worthy of the main index ...

Did I mention you need links?

Hope this helps ...

Cheers, MJ

[tom.holt]

Thanks MJ - As stated, I am pretty low on knowledge when it comes to this stuff, but your suggestion that Google is not seeing the "News" as worthy seems spot-on, as this is where I normally add content. There are a number of other places I can hang updates, but the "News" section is easiest for obvious reasons.

I will have to go back to the drawing board a little on this I think. It just seemed that every time I was adding new "News", our ranking was improving, so I presumed Google liked what we were doing!! I'm not 100% sure what Dynamically generated content is, but the "News" area is added to via a CMS system that I have control over, so it sounds as though there is a fundamental difference in the result pages I am developing to those in the main navigation.

I will show your reply to my web designer & see what we can do. Big thanks for the response.

Tom

[ctabuk]

As a FSA authorised Broker I wish you well with the Keyword 'Mortgage' - I know loads of guys say 'forget meta keywords' - I don't prescribe - so I'd lower the ratio a bit - but that's a personal observation.

Google loves fresh content. I've had newsfeeds live for years and it's never done me any harm. Nice site!

[tom.holt]

Thanks a lot - I'll water them down a little! I am pretty sure now that the content I add is invisible to the spiders given what MJ said above & also due to the fact that a recent automated audit of the home page rendered three 'broken links' which were the links to the news articles..... As stated, I'm unsure as to what dynamic content really is & it's implications for SEO, but I guess my next move will be to see if the CMS system can be tweaked to make any added content fully visible to the spiders.

To think I have been adding this stuff for the last few weeks!!!!

PS - Wige, I definately agree that the constant addition of material seemed to up the frequency of spider visits in the early stages. I imagine this visit frequency can go down as fast as it goes up, otherwise the 'bots' would be very busy.

Thanks again for comment - Tom

[jerrypena1]

Just to shed a little light on the dynamic content question. There are two types of content people talk about, dynamic and static. Another way to describe it is static pages vs. dynamic pages. Static content, or pages, have content that is "hard-coded" somewhere, such as html documents. Everytime you pull up a static page the content doesnt change, or it's static. Dynamic content, or dynamic pages, is what you get when the content is generated by a programming language (online CMS, blog, forum, etc. systems are built using a programming language). If you notice all your news articles are found via the same url "members/story.asp" and the only difference between one article and another is the "id" number that is passed to "story.asp". It's been debated that static pages get higher ranking than dynamic pages and it's not in the search engines best interest to tell us the truth, so who knows for sure. Dynamic content has been around for a long time now, so I doubt that you would get dinged much for it, but again, who knows. I could give you all the reasons that I believe that static pages rank higher than dynamic pages, but it's not my opinion that counts, it's the search engines.

That being said, is also another debateable issue when it comes to dynamic content and it's in the use of search engine friendly links (SFL) to mask the url so it looks like static content. The pages generated by this website use this method. This page in particular is generated by a programming language, but if you notice this page ends with ".html". I've heard valid arguments that it does work and that it doesnt. I certainly dont think it hurts, plus it looks better.

My final comment is to firmly agree with MJ in that getting good inbound links is a big key factor. This is one of the methods Google uses for calculating page rank as do many other search engines.

[Matteo]

Google likes Added Content. If you add content that will make Google happy.
Yahoo likes FRESH content. If you leave a page (especially your index page) static too long you may see a dip in your rankings

[dvduval]

I believe that fresh, unique content can play a contributing role to how well a site ranks. I think it is one factor of many.

[kneelsit]

This is a difficult one. I believe that a great deal of what is said by various website owners SEOs etc. is 95% "accepted wisdom" You can try Plan A and notice a difference and then Plan B and again notice a difference in your position. But the big question still remains Is this change due to your work or due to Google engineers tweaking their algorithms.

I have added links on my site on a basis of a bout 1-2 a month if they seems worthwhile.(I don't go looking, they come to me) I add fresh content maybe once every 6 months at most.

My logs show that Google only crawls at most about 20% of my site - as compared to Inktomi.

Yet despite all this Google still places us at No.1. on the results for our 2 major keyword phrases. I might mention that we came on the net back in 1997 - even this could be a factor.

Greg Designer
Ergonomic, computer chair - Kneelsit - the chair for life!

[Peter (IMC)]

Google measures the average age of your pages. When you start adding pages on a daily basis this will change the average age of your pages. The average age of your pages is compared to the average age of pages in your market (ie. keyword(s)). Google decides for each market what the upper limit and lower limit is for the average age of your pages. when you´re outside these limits, you don't rank at all. (google roller coaster effect).

When you started adding pages to your site, the average started dropping. Now, you can imagine that 1 new page on 50 existing pages doesn't have much effect on the average age. But after 50 days of adding 1 page per day, the average age has gone down a lot. Result may be you get higher rankings because you were within the limits. Another 50 days later the average age of your pages may have gone down so much your pages are now way too young.

So don't do accessive new page adding when the standard in your market is different.

Of course there is much much more to the algorithms than this one single factor. Google keeps track of many things. Imagine for example that all those new pages didn't attract any new links,... then what happens? Does it make sense that all that new content does not attract any new links? What does that say about the quality of that content? Maybe its not as good as it you think it is.

One of the biggest mistakes you can make in SEO is to focus on 1 factor only. Getting obsessed with one factor makes you forget about all the other factors and often the quality of the work isn't that good because quantity gets overvalued while quality is much more important. And Google bases quality for a big part on links.

Here too, quality is not based on how many links you have. Who links to you is as important, if not more. A higher pagerank is nice but here too, if you get obsessed with pagerank, the quality will suffer and again you will focus more on quantity than on quality.

Try to understand what makes your website better for your audience and the links will come and when you know your audience, you will find that creating quality content is easy.

When I say audience, I do not mean specifically your customers. Think of all the people that may be interested in what they can (could) find in your website. Very few customers will link to your website, so perhaps it is a good thing to figure out who else you can attract, even if it means they´re not the people that are interested directly in buying your services or products.

[jeffposaka]

One thing to think of is if you don't post anything to your site for 2 years, then starting posting new content everyday for 2 months...it might stand out or raise a red flag. Might seem like you are posting for SEO (Spam).

IMO, might want to slowly increase new content until you have a track record of updating your content regularly.

Good luck.

[ctabuk]

Peter (IMC) said 'Google measures the average age of your pages. When you start adding pages on a daily basis this will change the average age of your pages. The average age of your pages is compared to the average age of pages in your market (ie. keyword(s)). Google decides for each market what the upper limit and lower limit is for the average age of your pages. when you´re outside these limits, you don't rank at all. (google roller coaster effect).'

This may happen with some pages, but most certainly not all - there are sites that are topic laden and have not been changed or updated for years and years and still go top. The most obvious being Authority sites like .govs or film/pop star sites that can just stay and stay. And with all possible respect to Peter - he is in effect saying that Google will compare site with site - Not in my book - adding content as fresh is one thing - asking a google bot to interpret the 'meaning' and compare it to another site - that would have to incorporate 'understanding of meaning' - Only humans can do that - albeit badly sometimes

[tom.holt]

Thanks so much for the responses so far. I guess the fact that nobody knows exactly how Google (etc) works, means that SEO is much like any other science, and people will endeavour to find theories that 'fit'. To this end, Peter's suggestion that an ideal "average target page age" exists is superb. It explains the exact pattern of my site's behaviour perfectly! All I do now, is sit back until we start climbing again & then add content a little more slowly (concentrating on getting the quality up a bit!).

The problem is, I can't help but agree with the post above.... The fact that within my industry I see a first page selection of sites which have no pattern in relation to average page age suggests it is not a hugely influental metric. For one of my major terms "Mortgage Network", I see stagnant old sites which seldom change, right in between news-based sites which are changing & evolving daily. I understand the average page age element is one consideration amoung many, but find it hard to give the theory much weight when I look at the SERPs!!! I'll definately be tweaking the frequency of updates though - thanks Peter!

This forum is fantastic - Thanks so much for all the response. I will get a big kick out of watching my web designer sweat when I start reciting my new-found dynamic-content knowledge!!!!! Tom.

[ctabuk]

Also Tom, and I guess you and I are 'talking shop' - How many Brokers actually search the Internet for networks?? Look at Home - Introducer Today

BM solutions hailed this as the first 'real broker forum' -it fell by the wayside in days. Now if the FSA regulate Introducers then Networks will start to take off with shared views on how to generate leads - Some of us don't have that problem!!!

[kgun]

Originally Posted by ctabuk

This may happen with some pages, but most certainly not all - there are sites that are topic laden and have not been changed or updated for years and years and still go top. The most obvious being Authority sites like .govs or film/pop star sites that can just stay and stay. And with all possible respect to Peter - he is in effect saying that Google will compare site with site - Not in my book - adding content as fresh is one thing - asking a google bot to interpret the 'meaning' and compare it to another site - that would have to incorporate 'understanding of meaning' - Only humans can do that - albeit badly sometimes

Make it simple, as simple as possible, but no simpler:

Think like a bot, write for human beings.

[Tubby]

I have studied hundreds of pages on my own site for over seven years. My own personal observation (in relation to my own site) points neither way.

(I am referring to pages rather than a whole site)

I have a few pages that are updated daily. a few dozen that are update every few days. a few hundred that are updated at around 10 to 14 days. and a host that are rarely updated.

I have not managed to observed a recognizable trend from Google.

I am unable to determine (my own stats) If Google treats my whole site with more preference because of this or any mix as I do not have any different to personally compare with.

But I am in favour of the suggestion that Google likes updates, simply because a few who's opinions I respect have observed a gain through updates.

But users respond.

[tom.holt]

Well I guess traffic levels when it comes to business websites have a lot to do with the product & ours is very niche. I get near 800 visits per week, about 300 of which are new users. From this, I get a a good amount of enquiries, which we would not have without the site. I am hoping that there will be a linear relationship between the amount of visitors & the amount of enquiries, hence my quest for high SERPs!!

I think all consumers are becomming more & more web-savy & the amount of "noise" in the mortgage industry (How many publications????) means that more and more brokers will turn to SEs to find EXACTLY what they want, as opposed to wading through tonnes (literally) of weekly publications.

I see a lot more traffic from the term "Mortgae Networks" than for the singular form of the term, which suggests that there is a good amount of "Cold" research in the industry. I guess what I am saying is that I don't think the amount of traffic is the key - it is more to do with the sheer level of targetting you can acheive from being in front of the right person at the right time!! I had a few banners & links on the big press sites for a while to see how many enquiries they generated. The fact is the traffic we saw from those vehicles had the highest bounce rates/lowest page-views/least time on site etc, of all our visitor sources.

This confirmed to me that the value of being in front of a prospect who has decided to take a few minutes of his/her day to research products like our is invaluable. I know the volumes are not massive, but the wastage is as low as you can acheive from any marketing effort (at present!!)

PS - David, my director, Jason Graham met you years ago when you were setting up apparently! Small (Webpro) World...

[ctabuk]

We set up in 1987 - so that was a long, long time ago. Sorry I don't recall the name.

But if you are getting 800 a week - then with only around 15,000 Brokerages left, you could clean up!!!

[tom.holt]

I know what you mean, but we get a lot of traffic from unqualified new-starts at present. About 50% of our enquiries are from non "competent" advisers etc. We may try to put some sort of training in place in the future to tap into this!

I can see a bit of wastage from our PPC campaign, but even if we write off a third of the new users, we are still pulling a good amount of Mortgage Network, Mortgage Support Network, Intermediary Network, Mortgage Broker Network "virgins", which seems pretty strong given the nature of our product.

I guess I am aiming to get our natural listings in as good shape as possible before everyone else starts bidding on the same keyterms...!!!

[Peter (IMC)]

Originally Posted by ctabuk

Peter (IMC) said 'Google measures the average age of your pages. When you start adding pages on a daily basis this will change the average age of your pages. The average age of your pages is compared to the average age of pages in your market (ie. keyword(s)). Google decides for each market what the upper limit and lower limit is for the average age of your pages. when you´re outside these limits, you don't rank at all. (google roller coaster effect).'

This may happen with some pages, but most certainly not all - there are sites that are topic laden and have not been changed or updated for years and years and still go top. The most obvious being Authority sites like .govs or film/pop star sites that can just stay and stay. And with all possible respect to Peter - he is in effect saying that Google will compare site with site - Not in my book - adding content as fresh is one thing - asking a google bot to interpret the 'meaning' and compare it to another site - that would have to incorporate 'understanding of meaning' - Only humans can do that - albeit badly sometimes

Not comparing sites with sites. Comparing sites with averages. And I also mentioned that that the age of pages is just one of the factors.

See, in one market the average age may be 10 days, while in the other it´s 3 years. The dynamic algorithms take this into account. So you can't say: Oh .gov sites never change therefor age is not a factor.

For example, if your content is old, but still obtains fresh links every month (which is likely for .gov sites for example) then that means the content of the pages is still up to date.

You can't look at a single factor, try to find a place where it seems to be less relevant and then say it´s not correct. If you do that, you can "proof" that every factor is irrelevant. You can for example show queries where some results don't have the keywords in the title.

[ctabuk]

Tom You do need to do a few things
Summary Results for Mortgage Network, Mortgage Support Network, Intermediary Network, Mortgage Broker Network

Site Title: Mortgage Network, Mortgage Support Network, Intermediary Network, Mortgage Broker NetworkSite URL: http://www.mortgagesupport.net/Date: July 17, 2007, 8:17 amOverall Rating: 8.5/10DetailsRatingSummaryLink Check8/10Broken links: 2HTML Check9/10HTML Errors: 0, warnings: 6Load Time Check7/10Load Time: 21.63 secondsMeta Tag Check10/10Meta Tag Warnings: 0Spell Check9/10Possible Misspellings: 8Keyword Check8/10Total words: 147Sponsor Free Web Site Monitoring - Make sure your web site is available 24/7. Link Popularity
GoogleHotBotAllTheWebAltaVistaLycosMSNAOLLink Popularity42069700

Also, and not wishing to put a dampner on what you are trying to achieve -but Whole of Market will inevitably affect networks. And if the 'No Commission' on Life Products brigade have their way - then you would have to go Whole of Market to compete on fee charging regulations.

[mjtaylor]

Originally Posted by kneelsit

I might mention that we came on the net back in 1997 - even this could be a factor.

Greg Designer
Ergonomic, computer chair - Kneelsit - the chair for life!

The age of a domain and its links are very much a factor.

MJ

[ctabuk]

Originally Posted by Peter (IMC)

Not comparing sites with sites. Comparing sites with averages. And I also mentioned that that the age of pages is just one of the factors.

See, in one market the average age may be 10 days, while in the other it´s 3 years. The dynamic algorithms take this into account. So you can't say: Oh .gov sites never change therefor age is not a factor.

For example, if your content is old, but still obtains fresh links every month (which is likely for .gov sites for example) then that means the content of the pages is still up to date.

You can't look at a single factor, try to find a place where it seems to be less relevant and then say it´s not correct. If you do that, you can "proof" that every factor is irrelevant. You can for example show queries where some results don't have the keywords in the title.

I'm going to have to agree to disagree - one - if the site was 10 days old or even six months - it's highly unlikely to be ranking for any other search term other than a 'unique' search term. Agreed on some .gov's - but they are not their on either links nor direct content they are there because you have to register a .gov website and get written approval before posting the site - so even there are 600 gov sites all after the same search term - then only one thing will decide positioning and that is linkage. Age would not be a factor as all the different sites would have gone on line within a month or two of each other.

Those fresh links you speak of would not be page links - highly doubtful for a site to pick up a link via natural selection to any page other than the home page. Your turn Peter!!

[Peter (IMC)]

highly doubtful for a site to pick up a link via natural selection to any page other than the home page.

Come on, content can be much more than just a text that you wrote just to get high rankings.

so even there are 600 gov sites all after the same search term - then only one thing will decide positioning and that is linkage.

Site age is just 1 factor. If, like in your very unnatural example, 600 .gov sites would be created at the same time, and be after the same keywords, the following will happen:

* At first, the sites are ranked purely on on-page and on-site factors.
* Then the first external links appear and these are taken into account.
* PageRank is calculated and added to the equations
* Over time, some sites will change more than others, these changes are all recorded and age factors are calculated and constantly updated
* Age factors like, average age of pages, of links, of link texts, etc. will all be recorded and their respective age factors are calculated and constantly updated.
* Over time the positions of the 600 sites will change.
* You will find that the highest ranking sites are indeed the ones that are average on all factors will have the highest rankings.
* There are exceptions to the rules of course. Google also monitors things like seasonal changes and if you do all the sudden have a peak in the number of backlinks, that doesn't neccessarily mean you'll lose your rankings because of having too young backlinks. If a site all the sudden gets a ton of links from news sites for example, then that is a natural occurance, and should not be considered a bad thing.

Age would not be a factor as all the different sites would have gone on line within a month or two of each other.

I'm not sure in how many other ways I can explain this, but one last try. Age is a relative thing and many age factors are not related to when the site was build. It is natural that backlinks come and disapear. They don't last for ever. So even if your site is 10 years old, the average age of your backlinks can be 18 months. The same applies to your pages. Your domain may have been created in 1996, but the average age of your pages could be just 1 year. Depends on how often you create new pages. Maybe 2 years ago you did a site re-design, or worse, you did SEO and changed all the URL's,.

[Peter (IMC)]

I see stagnant old sites which seldom change, right in between news-based sites which are changing & evolving daily. I understand the average page age element is one consideration amoung many, but find it hard to give the theory much weight when I look at the SERPs!!! I'll definately be tweaking the frequency of updates though - thanks Peter!

I'll use a simple example to describe the behaviour of the SERP's.

When the sun shines, does that mean you can put your shorts on and lay down in the garden to enjoy some sunshine? When the sun shines it gets warmer, right? But then again, when it is winter and freezing, the sun also shines and it also does get warmer, but I wouldn't advise to go outside in just shorts in that situation. If you look at 1 factor, you can't predict the weather. If you look at the weather you can not understand the influence of the sun by just looking in what weather types the sun shines.

When it rains, the sun can shine too (rainbows appear)
When it is freezing, the sun can shine too
When it is very windy, the sun can shine too
When there is no sun shine, it doesn't necessarilly mean it is night

The same with the SERP's. Don't look at the behaviour of the SERP's to understand the influence of 1 factor.

Various factors together determine the results. In some situations 1 single factor can have a huge effect on the end result, but don't think that that automatically means it will have a huge effect in all situations.

You focus on 1 factor, you'll forget about all the other factors.

Imagine 5 factors for which you can do a level of work between 1 and 10. Suppose you focus on just one. The result will be:

10*1*1*1*1 = 10

Suppose you do just a level 2 for each:

2*2*2*2*2 = 32

Suppose you do the average (5) for each:

5*5*5*5*5 = 3125

[tom.holt]

Really appreciate your response Peter & you rightly guessed a simple explaination was the one I needed! I like your last "powers" example & will endeavour to keep an eye on as many aspects as possible.

I guess what sometimes seems frustrating is the lack of "controlled conditions" as I seem to remember my science teacher going on about. Many of my assumptions & plans for site build & SEO efforts were originally based around looking at what successful (SEO wise) competitors were doing. I wanted to make certain we were doing the same things better & I have been a little frustrated with the lack of results.

What would be interesting is to construct two near-identical sites and to alter one at a time to better gauge successful SEO efforts. Something tells me that even if it were possible to create two similar sites, Google would not work in a scientific manner anyway!!! The seeming random nature of the rankings seems to be one of the most pondered topics within WPW.....

Thanks again for helping me out - great to get so much light cast over this - Tom

[swirt]

Originally Posted by Peter (IMC)

Google measures the average age of your pages. When you start adding pages on a daily basis this will change the average age of your pages. The average age of your pages is compared to the average age of pages in your market (ie. keyword(s)). Google decides for each market what the upper limit and lower limit is for the average age of your pages. when you´re outside these limits, you don't rank at all. (google roller coaster effect).

When you started adding pages to your site, the average started dropping. Now, you can imagine that 1 new page on 50 existing pages doesn't have much effect on the average age. But after 50 days of adding 1 page per day, the average age has gone down a lot. Result may be you get higher rankings because you were within the limits. Another 50 days later the average age of your pages may have gone down so much your pages are now way too young.

Hi Peter, Have you got a source or compelling evidence for this "age averaging factor" you mention here? There are just too many cases I can imagine where such a factor would go against the results google is trying to achieve. Too many new pages is not an indication of spam and neither are too few. Age of a domain (and continuity of ownership of the domain) is something that plays a role in establishing credibility, but what you are describing would not.

[Peter (IMC)]

United States Patent Application: 0050071741
(edited link, the one I published before was actually pointing at the wrong page)

that would be the difficult answer,.. and you'd have to read all of it, analise it and then understand it.

But to make your life a bit easier: » Information Retrieval Based on Historical Data - SEO-WORKS Blog
It's an article I wrote a long time ago. I think if I would write it again I'd change some things, but the basics are all there. I see the historical data algorithms at work all the time and it explains a lot of SERP behaviour. So it is my opinion that Google does use the historical data a lot and it goes a lot further than the age of a domain.

Too many new pages is not an indication of spam and neither are too few.

The only conclusion I can get from that sentence is that you believe that losing rankings (or not getting them) is the result of spam. Completely wrong. I didn't say too many pages is bad... nor did I say that just a couple of pages is bad. You have to put it all in perspective. In one market 10 new pages per day is not enough (news sites for example) while in another market 1 new page per month is more than enough.

That is the beauty of Google algorithms. They don't compare to a certain standard of what they consider the best page. They base what´s best on what they find and measure on the internet. If a market changes over time and becomes more active online, it will effect the standard for that market. And the algorithms measure this and apply their rules accordingly.

[weslinda]

Okay...so to spin this a little, what if I add new content, but don't update my XML sitemap to reflect that? Will that reduce my exposure within Google and the other major engines?

[kgun]

Originally Posted by Peter (IMC)

Various factors together determine the results. In some situations 1 single factor can have a huge effect on the end result, but don't think that that automatically means it will have a huge effect in all situations.

Great posts Peter.

It is like the temperature. It is not difficult to measure the temperature, but it is very difficult to measure the effect of the different factors, aside from the season of the year.

But this summer we have experienced 12 degrees centigrades some days, the same as some days last winter.

The temerature in a geopoint, is the outcome of a very high dimensional system.

[Peter (IMC)]

Originally Posted by weslinda

Okay...so to spin this a little, what if I add new content, but don't update my XML sitemap to reflect that? Will that reduce my exposure within Google and the other major engines?

If there are 10% more clouds, does that change your decision to spend the day at the beach?

[swirt]

Originally Posted by Peter (IMC)

United States Patent Application: 0050071741
(edited link, the one I published before was actually pointing at the wrong page)

that would be the difficult answer,.. and you'd have to read all of it, analise it and then understand it.

Thanks. I've read that and it does describe some of what you said before, but it also includes a lot of other details about historical data that you didn't blame for tom.holts original predicament. Some of which I've seen evidence of it being at play, others I haven't. Just because something is in the patent doesn't mean it is in play, or that it's weighting isn't set extremely low.

Originally Posted by Peter (IMC)

The only conclusion I can get from that sentence is that you believe that losing rankings (or not getting them) is the result of spam. Completely wrong. I didn't say too many pages is bad... nor did I say that just a couple of pages is bad.

It could have been phrased from the opposite end of the spectrum then, but the results are still the same. If I said "Too many new pages is not an indication of high quality and authoritative information and neither are too few. " The problem would be that it makes assumptions that in themselves carry no indication of quality. It is equally as likely that this avg age factor hinted at in the patent is used to stir the pot an make sure some new sites are returned and some rock solid sages are returned too.

I think suggesting that too many pages added too quickly are what caused his site's drop when there are lots of other factors that are more likely is stretching it. In my niche I often start with an existing 4-6 page site that is not doing well for a variety of reasons and has been idle for years (in terms of page growth), and then I double, triple or quadruple the size of the site very rapidly and then it sits idle for long periods of time after that. From these dramatic changes (dramatic because the sites are small) there is no indication that the sudden growth is a detriment. Sudden changes in topic or link sources are likely to have more impact than sudden changes in growth rates.

[princejohn]

I think google has kicked away sandbox (at least for a while). a curious thing i noticed about my blogspot blog (Ramblifications) gets indexed in google so fast. In a matter of 10 minutes as my latest experience. (it got full four months for my first post to appear in SERP.

Google might be trying some new algorithms to give freshness a chance.

However, the rules of PageRank Remains. In your case, try to get as many high PR backlinks as possible. The backup of high quality links plus the freshness factor puts you firmly on SERP no 1

[ctabuk]

Originally Posted by Peter (IMC)

Come on, content can be much more than just a text that you wrote just to get high rankings.

Site age is just 1 factor. If, like in your very unnatural example, 600 .gov sites would be created at the same time, and be after the same keywords, the following will happen:

* At first, the sites are ranked purely on on-page and on-site factors.
* Then the first external links appear and these are taken into account.
* PageRank is calculated and added to the equations
* Over time, some sites will change more than others, these changes are all recorded and age factors are calculated and constantly updated
* Age factors like, average age of pages, of links, of link texts, etc. will all be recorded and their respective age factors are calculated and constantly updated.
* Over time the positions of the 600 sites will change.
* You will find that the highest ranking sites are indeed the ones that are average on all factors will have the highest rankings.
* There are exceptions to the rules of course. Google also monitors things like seasonal changes and if you do all the sudden have a peak in the number of backlinks, that doesn't neccessarily mean you'll lose your rankings because of having too young backlinks. If a site all the sudden gets a ton of links from news sites for example, then that is a natural occurance, and should not be considered a bad thing.


I'm not sure in how many other ways I can explain this, but one last try. Age is a relative thing and many age factors are not related to when the site was build. It is natural that backlinks come and disapear. They don't last for ever. So even if your site is 10 years old, the average age of your backlinks can be 18 months. The same applies to your pages. Your domain may have been created in 1996, but the average age of your pages could be just 1 year. Depends on how often you create new pages. Maybe 2 years ago you did a site re-design, or worse, you did SEO and changed all the URL's,.

Peter I hate to drag out a topic - but .gov's is 'my bag'


This site is Top on Google for one of my search terms - it has been top for 7 years - yet it has 2 viewable links - Now surely in 7 years one would have thought that this page would have attracted it's own linkage. That's all I'm saying!

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All 'Supplemental' Wow - I thought we had that topic pinned down!

The Home page has all the links and the age.

So by using the .gov scenario it throws both doubt on your conclusions.

What Google in particular will do is look at the size of the home page - that has something more akin to 'trustrank'.

I do see your point about the age of a link, which is why I use news alert feeds - maybe .govs are not the norm, but in my Industry they are - so I am constantly trying to pick peoples brains on how to 'outsmart' them - and you have a good brain.

My opinion is that if a 'natural link' is picked up by the website in general it is most likely to be aimed at the home page and not the 'landing page' of the search term.

[ctabuk]

Now the Home page Website of the UK government : Directgov has a visable 2.5 million Google links.

I trust you see my reasoning.

[Peter (IMC)]

What you copied in to the post doesn't look like a SERP to me. I can't make heads or tales out of it. What keyword phrase did you search for?

It is indeed the case that home pages get most of the backlinks. That´s logical. But your homepage links to your internal pages. That´s why your internal links are so important.

Internal links also have age and are factored in as well. I've seen painful examples where changing the anchor texts in the menu resulted in a complete drop in Google. Changing them back to the old anchor texts was all that was necessary to get all the positions back.

Competing with .gov sites may be difficult. Obviously most of them have tons of links. That UK government site for example:

Results 1 - 10 of about 548,000 linking to Website of the UK government : Directgov

Links from the home page are powerful and so the internal pages have many advantages of the links they receive from inside the website.

Internal links are often underappreciated.

I'm pretty sure that Google does not have special rules for .gov sites. But .gov sites do have different properties than normal comercial sites. These different properties do have their advantages.

[ctabuk]

Register a .gov.uk domain name for town councils, parish councils and community councils (Cyngor Cymuned)

Explains the reasons.

Internal links - yes I agree -they are crucial to any site - so I think that we may have strayed a little off topic (my fault -hands up) so I have created a thread in this section entitled 'a challenge' - SEO vs SEM perhaps - could be fun. We can carry on there

[mjtaylor]

Originally Posted by swirt

I think suggesting that too many pages added too quickly are what caused his site's drop when there are lots of other factors that are more likely is stretching it. In my niche I often start with an existing 4-6 page site that is not doing well for a variety of reasons and has been idle for years (in terms of page growth), and then I double, triple or quadruple the size of the site very rapidly and then it sits idle for long periods of time after that. From these dramatic changes (dramatic because the sites are small) there is no indication that the sudden growth is a detriment. Sudden changes in topic or link sources are likely to have more impact than sudden changes in growth rates.

I would have to agree that adding too many new pages too quickly is not likely the problem. I have done the SEO on several redesigns in the past couple of years where a site with fewer than 10 pages more than tripled or quadrupled with the launch of the new site - and in each of those cases the sites immediately performed better and continued on that path without ongoing content addition at the same rate.

There were other factors, of course, that contribute to their continued rise in the SERPS besides the addition of content - primarily incoming links were obtained.

I think it is more likely the quality of the content ... or the structure of the way its added, perhaps ... I would be inclined to make the news section a blog ... very SE friendly ...
and I would work on getting links to all pages on the site.

Cheers, MJ

[Peter (IMC)]

It is dangerous to assume that something that did or didn't happen in one situation, automatically applies in all situations.

When adding so many new pages, there are more factors that change. All those new pages require links, so that also played a part in the equation. Average link age went down a lot as well.

[swirt]

Originally Posted by Peter (IMC)

It is dangerous to assume that something that did or didn't happen in one situation, automatically applies in all situations.

This is why I wanted more information on how you were so sure that your assumption was the reason for tom.holt's loss of position.

[Peter (IMC)]

I'm not sure what that adds to this discussion. My first post was much more than just a description of a single cause. It said much more about focusing on a single factor is likely to become a problem.