I just went to the Organic Listings Forum, where we asked questions and discussed techniques related to "organic" search engine listings. The session opened with an audience member asking the heated question: Is Google ranking up their search using paid listings?

This kicked the session into a heated debate, with a panel of experts providing answers:

Mike Grehan, author of Search Engine Marketing: The Essential Best Practice Guideike, said there is no relationship between paid and organic listings in Google, but that Google has built "a Chinese wall" between its sales and technology departments.

Meanwhile, Brett Tabke, editor, http://www.WebmasterWorld.com, said rankings come and go as algorithms change. "Don't put all your eggs in one basket," he warns.

Later, though, a fellow who works for a national corporation asked another question. His corporation has a corporate site and two main brand sites. For two years, they have been number one on Google but were recently dropped. They've done an extensive Adwords campaign, and their sales rep called Google.

Here's the interesting part. The Google tech representative said the company's brand sites were dropped because they were cross-linked to corporate sites, he thinks due to duplicate content -- to me, that's not satisfying.

In essence, Google didn't make the decisions based on the fact that they were clients. These cross-links between the brand and corp sites were bringing down the page rank of the brand sites. I'll be looking into this and trying to get more info as the session continues.

Meanwhile, the issue that's important here is that there is relationship between the sales and tech departments at Google.

Natural language. Moving on to what Brett believes to be new algorithm rankings - "natural language." Natural language allows us to analyze symantics, look at adjectives in page content and see if it's spam or not. It has been compared to Microsoft's new spam analyzer, and it's constantly improving. Brett believes Google is now using this new technology.

Another great question that was asked is: Are .govs and .edus ranked higher on Google?

Craig Silverstein, one of the original Google developers, says Google leans towards .edu and .gov sites, because it was developed by college students, and is therefore designed to surf college sites. That's something that is important to keep in mind regarding Google.

Stemming. Both Brett and Mike are big advocates of stemming. Mike says it's a good idea to use stemming, where you use multiple syntax relatd to the same keywords. For example, if your keyword is run, then runs, running, and runner should all be used in the same web copy. The idea comes from library search engine technology, and the same tech is involved in Google. Use it when you can, when it's relevant, and when it makes sense. Brett advises to use stemming in different sentences.

What's next for Google? The experts all have their theories, but one point i want to make here is that the following are just multiple theories; there is no confirmed consensus.

Mike believes that Google hasn't used page rank at all for a long time -- instead, he believes they're moving towards a keyword-dependent hit-based algorithm. This would take longer because it records what sites are getting hits, but according to Mike, it would be a more relevant algorithm.

Another great point. One audience member asked another great question: What do we do now? What direction do we go in?

Mike says to optimize your site, get back to the basics, and do what's best for your visitors. "If search engines didn't exist, would you go through all the trouble to optimize? That's how you should optimize your site. How do you make it most useful to your visitors?" Don't obsess over page rank, he says. Don't look at your toolbar -- it often doesn't effect user decisions.

My take on that? While there is some element of truth to what he says, I wouldn't recommend completely ignoring your toolbar. Sometimes, users do look at your toolbar before they buy from you.

Meanwhile, Brett warns not to allow Google to cache old information from your site -- ever. Competitors use that info, and also Google brands your site, your info, and your pages with their logo.

Three New Players According to Mike, three new players you need to concentrate on right now are Yahoo!, Inktomi, and MSN.

I, personally, get the sense that you shouldn't let too much ride on Google right now.

Who to link to? For a general linking policy, Brett warns that you should always, always be careful -- don't link to bad neighbors, check backlinks on the Google toolbar. Who is linking to them? Who are they linking to? He asks, "What is their neighborhood like?"

Anthony Muller, Director of Natural Search Operations, Range Online Media says it's wise to get into trusted feeds with Inktomi, as this directly feeds into the search engine, "so you're not going to have any Google nightmares"

Would google ever have trusted feeds? For the time being, no, Mike says, although if Google goes public, then we will see trusted feeds because share holders would expect them.

Speaking of which, Detlev Johnson, President of Technology, SuccessWorks Search Marketing Solutions Inc. says that this spring he believes Google will go public...

To sum it all up, it was a great session! The conference been a lot of fun so far, and there's been a lot of great comments and questions.

I'll talk to you soon...

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Riddle me this: How does one effectively play the search engine game when one (Google) appears to penalize for optimizing while the others (Inktomi, Alta Vista, etc.) require it for good placement? I don't think it's as simple as not "putting all your eggs in one basket."

Can you ask any SEO gurus for advice about this dilemma?

My sites have all been loaded with original content, over 100 pages on my http://www.DaytradersBulletin.com site, yet I've failed to get a good listing with any of the engines. Sure I can make a little change here and there, but isn't the point having a useful site? As Mike Grehan said, "get back to the basics, and do what's best for your visitors" which I'd argue is what I've done all along.

Now I'm frankly stumped. At least before I thought it was me, something I'd done wrong, or something I could correct. Hopefully you'll get some answers along with the nitfy, cool give-away stuff!

Wish I were there,
Kathryn

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Garrett, I brought this point up in recent Forum discussion of another search engine's proposal of ranking according to popularity, and while you're in touch with those at the conference, it may well be a good time to ask the question of those in the know. (Not to mention it'll give them something to think about for a while.)

"From a common sense standpoint... If the Search Engines, Google or whomever, are planning to rank pages according to popularity, how is a new site site ever going to become popular, to attain rank?" If it's a new site, obviously it has no traffic and thus its not popular. Without popularity, it won't be ranked in a position that it might see more traffic and gain in popularity. It will waste away, remaining endlessly at the bottom of the pile, because it's not popular upon its inception.

H-E-L-L-O People! This is a no win situation!

Looking at this scenario closely; there is thus no way to prevail without PAID ranking. The only way you're going to climb the ladder of popularity, without pre-existing popularity, is to buy it! Pay per click listings are your only hope of climbing the ladder, and obviously in that game, those with the deepest pockets, get to be most popular! (Sorta makes you wonder if maybe this isn't the plan to begin with, when you think about it, doesn't it?)

Is this truly a cure for the problems created by popularity ranking? Sure if you're a major corporation with a 6 figure avertising budget. If you're Ma & Pa's Country E-Commerce Business, or any of the thousands of new small businesses just starting up every year, you're $#!+ out of luck, because you can't afford to compete against the major corporations in a pay per click battle for popularity. You are destined to remain at the bottom of the pile for eternity. And, by human nature we simply aren't going to stand still for that.

What will then transpire is, the Search Engines that rank on this basis will become almost entirely corporate oriented, and the other search engines will gear more toward the less affluent business, information, and personal sites, keeping the corporate listings for the sake of that traffic on their engine too of course. And, when that happens the first Search Engine's popularity, ranking, and thus their ratings start slipping, because they don't offer the public a full service site. And, they trash that algorithm for the sake of one of the others that allows them more favorable rankings.

It's a no win situation for the Search Engines as well; a plan that cannot and will not survive! In order to remain popular you have to give the public what they want. Thus the "Popularity Plan", is not going to happen, as long as the public doesn't allow it to happen too.

Its time to tell the folks at Google and where ever else, that we aren't going to be sold on the idea of popularity ranking. If they move that way, we'll move to another Search Engine, it's that simple!

My opinion about this is that since most of the people who make decisions for the major search engines are not dumb, they have considered this.

A search engine that has nothing but major corporations, or just paid inclusion results does not make for a good results. They know this and won't let it happen, some might try it until they see that users are starting to migrate away from them.

Again, these people are not dumb. I think that hit popularity will only be one of the many things that the majors will use to place a site in the results. I imagine hit popularity having about as much impact as PageRank had during its pre-exploit days; just one piece of the puzzle. This will give quality, established sites an advantage over start-ups, but not one that can't be challenged.

This piece of the puzzle will only last as long as it takes for its exploits to become as rampant as PageRank's.

Again, this is PURE opinion, like was asked, perhaps Garret can find more information.

Incidently, I'm curious what the mood and tone is like there. After-hour parties? Dancing girls?

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I think it's very unlikely that Google is "penalizing" optimization. Now, when I say "optimization" I mean building well structured pages that clearly convey the subject matter, not stuffing keywords into every tag.

What Google is doing is rewarding other things in addition to what's on the page. Look at the pages that are ranking well for the search terms you covet. Look at the pages that are linking to them. That's where the answers lie.

I've seen no decline in traffic from Google (actually it's up a bit) - some search terms went away, but we show up on more searches now. The referrals before "Florida" were probably way off topic 20% of the time, now that's more like 5%.

So that's more traffic, better quality traffic, and I can assure you that every page is structurally optimized, with keywords in the title, headings, and body text. Where's the penalty?

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Long-time reader, first-time contributor.

First of all, whoever "Guest" is has a partial point. It does "cost" to get into search engines. However, the cost doesn't always have to be financial. The cost can be "paid" with time, effort, and goodwill (I'll come back to this a bit later).

There is no "quick fix" for getting a high rank in all search engines, nor should there be. If a company is really serious about its search engine positioning, it should start small and grow outward and upward, just as it would grow offline.

Consider this offline fictitious example:

John owns a consumer electronics store in Anytown, Ontario. John's largest competitor is Best Buy Electronics. Is John going to go after Best Buy Electronics and try to beat Best Buy at its own game by running national ad campaigns, buying hundreds of millions of dollars in products, and hiring thousands of employees? This scenario seems pretty unlikely, doesn't it?

John, like most small business owners, would likely focus on targetting his advertising to his community, perhaps also offering products of a nature that could only be found at his store and not at Best Buy, perhaps offering a unique customer reward program.

As the citizens of Anytown become aware of John's products and his customer service over the next 12-18 months, they in turn tell their friends and neighbours. Some of these friends happen to live in Anytown's neighbouring town, Nextdoorville.

Soon, John has a second store in Nextdoorville, and the citizens of Anytown and Nextdoorville begin seeking out (or searching) John's store for his products and services. Word of mouth continues to spread as time goes on.

In 5 years, John has a chains of stores throughout Ontario.

In 10 years, John has expanded to the Eastern Canadian provinces and Northeastern US states.

In 20 years, John has stores all across North America with plans to enter Europe. And so the story goes, all because John chose not to compete directly with Best Buy but to start small and grow.

Search engines are a form of advertising, whether people accept it as such or not. And like all other types advertising, most companies need to start small and then grow. People need to establish niches, which are ever-decreasing but still available, market to those niches, satisfy those clientele, and then grow from there as those clientele refer you (via hyperlink, which will increase your PageRank, or otherwise) from there.

As far as the argument goes about PageRank negatively affecting a smaller business, to a certain extent it does. However, in most cases a business can and should be able to overcome it by limiting the initial scope of its site to that which it can effectively service. Ma and Pa's Country E-Commerce Business (as someone referred to it) will not likely have taken care of the issues of international shipping, taxation, duties, tariffs, etc. and thus would likely only focus on a relatively small radius from its location of operation. The reason it can't rank up with the Amazons and the Buy.coms of the world initially is simply because it shouldn't.

So how can PageRank be increased without spending money? By spending time on it. Post on message boards such as this one as much as you can, making sure that your site is hyperlinked from the board in a sig. Help out other people. Get local business directory sites to list you. Write some articles on your industry (you're the expert, right?) It'll take time, but if you're serious about your business and not looking for a get-rich-quick answer that you think the search engines can and should provide you by default, then this shouldn't be that difficult a thing to accomplish.

As your reputation grows, so too will your site. Small sites can, and often do, crack into the search engines with relative ease and continue to get stronger as time goes on.

As far as Google's algorithm goes, they never once have made a statement that their algorithm is perfect, and it's going to be erratic from time to time. Personally, I'm willing to live with the mistakes that the Florida changes have brought about for a little while because they will get fixed, and these errors were brought about trying to improve the engine and make it more relevant. Sooner or later (and likely sooner), Google will get their act straightened out and it will be back to business as usual.

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I need to agree with Dan about the overall importance - even through all of this chaos - of just good site optimization and content.

Although the Google algorithim is not perfect, and there is no "ONE" answer to getting listed with them (or any other search engine), the basic message is still very clear - Have a good website! Have good content, a good linking structure, have good, browser and special needs compatible code, and find as many good linking partners as possible for your "neighborhood".

As many small and large tweaks as I have on the to-do list for my own site after reading so much great info on these boards, each of those tweaks still comes down to the same mission - do the site technically correct, and make it a place on the web where people want to visit.

Oh, and BTW, my site is a FAR CRY from being perfect in some of these respects, so believe me, I'll be the first one to say that I'm guilty of not following through on some of these details. However, it's all on the to-do list, so look for my website in your Top-10 near future! :)

-- Aaron

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Aaron M. Potts
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