Sparks of Controversy. There was a substantial amount of controversy in the WebProWorld forums regarding what Marissa Mayer, the Director of Consumer Web Products at Google, told me at the Search Engine Strategies Conference in Chicago last week. She said, “If you dropped in rankings, go back and look at who you linked to and who’s linking to you. If any of these people are using spam techniques, they're the reason your site no longer appears on Google.”

The subject of controversy here, as you can probably guess, is whether Google really is penalizing websites based on what sites are linking to them – a factor that is often beyond the control of website owners. This is a concern because if Google uses this method to determine a site's rank then your competitors could easily sabotage your site's ranking by linking to you from spam sites.

Due to the brevity of our interview (I was literally walking Marissa to her taxi) I didn’t have a chance to ask her to clarify her statement. That's why I called Danny today.

Danny says… Danny Sullivan is editor of http://SearchEngineWatch.com and also organized and moderated the Search Engine Strategies Conference. I asked his opinion on Marissa’s comment regarding what readers should do if their sites drop significantly on Google.

“I saw that headline summary in SearchEngineGuide, if I remember correctly, and I noticed that it freaked some people out,” Danny replied. “I remember [Marissa] saying that because it sounded really significant, but I took Marissa’s comment slightly different. I think what she probably meant was not that who’s linking to you can hurt you – the reason why is because it’s very easy for you to hurt your competitors. That’s why it’s a terrible thing to use for relevancy. What I do think happened is [Google is] looking at links in a different fashion. If you’ve been in a neighborhood that’s been helping you previously, [it] might not be helping you now.”

Danny says that doesn’t necessarily mean Google is penalizing you for inbound links. It just means that those links aren’t counting as much towards your Google ranking.

Is Google getting smarter? Don’t be surprised if you notice Google getting smarter about links. “In the past, every single link was counted for something,” Danny says. “Perhaps now Google’s still looking at the links but not counting them as much. They’re perhaps not giving you as much credit as they used to.”

Won’t You Be My Google Neighbor? Danny believes Marissa’s comment was misinterpreted, and he thinks there’s another question at hand here. “I guess it comes back to: does the community have more of an influence now than in the past? I suppose so. On one hand, yes, but on the other hand, Google may simply be redefining how it determines a community and what that community is worth. [Google] has always looked at who’s linking to you… I think it’s still doing that, but it’s using a different scoring method…”

So was it all just a misunderstanding? Danny thinks so. “I honestly don’t think she’s lying,” he says, noting that Marissa is a very credible representative of Google. “Marissa is a wonderful resource. She’s really, really good, but she doesn’t deal with the webmaster side as much.”

Danny believes that Marissa knows what she’s talking about but perhaps she didn’t choose her words correctly.

What did she mean, then?

“I think what she probably meant was that who links to you counts, and yes, that’s always been the case, but who links to you doesn’t count as much as it did in the past.”

Who Gets Penalized? Is the penalty completely out of the question? Probably not. “If Google were penalizing sites for getting links, then that is a significant repercussion,” Danny says. “I have no doubt that in some cases [Google] might penalize, but the criteria would be really high.” Danny could understand a site getting penalized “if you’re running fifty websites that have no reason to exist other than linking to themselves or if [Google] sees other stuff that makes them think, ‘These links are odd! Not only should we not count these links, but we should do something to this website, period!’”

”It’s too easy to make mistakes.” But as far as the everyday link exchange, that’s innocent enough in his eyes. When it comes to link exchanges, “it’s too easy to make mistakes,” Danny says. And he believes the people who run Google understand that. After all, they are only human!

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Garrett French
Editor, WebProNews.com
http://www.WebProNews.com

Loosely translated without the bullshit, does that mean 10 good links are better than 10,000 mediocre to bad links.

Or to speak as we all know, if the site linking to you has the same or similar content that is relevant to your site it will count higher than a site that has no relation or now as Mariss has hinted it just does not count.????

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Keimos - Always learning something new each day
www.keimos.co.uk , www.keimos.net , www.selfpacedit.co.uk

"Who Gets Penalized? Is the penalty completely out of the question? Probably not. "If Google were penalizing sites for getting links, then that is a significant repercussion," Danny says. "I have no doubt that in some cases [Google] might penalize, but the criteria would be really high." Danny could understand a site getting penalized "if you're running fifty websites that have no reason to exist other than linking to themselves or if [Google] sees other stuff that makes them think, "These links are odd! Not only should we not count these links, but we should do something to this website, period!'"

We have never used link farms. I can show more than one example of link farms. We totally agree that SEO companies using shady practices in the past should be penalized!

What is "higher criteria" than a site having more than 1000 different URLs linking in, all with the same HTML designed site? Does "High Criteria" go beyond that to protect against competitor malfeasance? - It must! - But WHAT and HOW? Should unknowing SEO clients be penalized too? - These are serious questions that just don't seem to be getting answered!

Ken
Ken

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Mountain Eagle Marketing
Contemporary Art News
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The recent press attention to the Bush campaign site on a search for miserable failure was an example of the problem with Google. If these sorts of pranks are launched at private sector entities, there's no limit to the mischief that can be made.

Google needs to do more human intervention to prevent losing its value and even potentially incurring liability. This will be an expensive proposition, but otherwise mindless link counting will kill the goose that laid the golden egg.

The only Google clicks we ever get, we pay for, and that is what Google wants. If you own a company and Google sends somebody to your website, they want to be paid for it. Everybody else gets paid in one way or another when a person leaves their website for another website through a link, so why should Google be any different.

I think the days of Google sending free visitors to company websites are over.

Our strategy is to link to as many places as possible and just budget Google into the monthly advertising expense. That way it never matters how they feel about your site, they will list it because that is what you pay them to do.

I can say that reliance on DMOZ is playing too much importance at Google.

I think there is crookedness all through that directory.

I was booted out earlier this year after being in there for 4 years. No reason, no contact, tried resubmitting, no response and no reasons given. Only after finding someone with contacts there did I find out that I had too many affiliate links. No more then I had 4 years ago. Another reason was the content was presented was on many other websites.

I have so much good original content and I can honestly say that most of the other sites that followed stole from my site. This information was not public and I only learned it because I wrote software interfaces to the subject matter.

So others are allowed to stay with the same type of info and affiliate links as well.

DMOZ sucks and so does Google for playing along with their crookedness.

I would like to get those guys to do some marketing for me. If they could do that for a dozen strategic terms I would be a very happy camper...

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This is a test of linking power of signatures.
PPC Engine List

Applied a few times as an editor and not gotten in? You seem a little bitter.
DMOZ may have a few self-promoting editors, but by and large they do a good unpaid job. They help create a directory that is relevant and should be part of any truely committed search engines results.

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This is a test of linking power of signatures.
PPC Engine List

I would like to believe that Google is only penalizing the blunt obvious sites... and SERP changes we've seen are the result of weight loss of some of our backlinks.

As for DMOZ... sometimes their editors have that "I am the guardian of the universe." sort of attitude, but that's good - at least we know they are doing a fanatically good job ;-)

(read: Isaac Asimov's Foundation and you'll see what I mean...hehe)

"relevant" defined how? and as the number of uncatalogued websites increasingly overwhelms the number actually included in the directory, does the relevance increase or decrease?

I admit it's been a while since I read Foundation, but my observation has been that "fanatically" and "good" rarely belong in the same sentence, except where it's intended as an oxymoron.

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Psychology Mental Health & Self-Help Forum
Online Counseling & Therapy | Mental Health Directory

Hi tnugent,

I read where you said Google needs some humans looking at the web sites.

But then you read where everyone is upset with DMOZ because of the people that are looking at the websites.

How would you make it work?

What would keep the editors honest?

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Custom Website Design | Search Engine Optimization | Web Design Templates

And, perhaps more importantly, where will you find enough editors, honest or not?

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Psychology Mental Health & Self-Help Forum
Online Counseling & Therapy | Mental Health Directory

Ted?!!???

I actually saw you in concert once! What the hell happened to you after "Rock and Roll Hoochie Koo"?

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Online Counseling & Therapy | Mental Health Directory

Minstrel wrote:

tnugent wrote:
something about a goose...

I rcvd a spam email from a supposed SEO company today. Here is the body of the letter: (All I can reveal):

We provide personalized/customized written consultation services, featuring a full analysis or your website in regards to its technical synergy with GOOGLE™!

All technicians responsible to draft written consultations belong to the editing team of “The GOOGLE™ Ranking Report” and are fully trained and highly skilled to review your site accordingly.


Have your GOOGLE™ Rankings dropped lately?
Are you sure that your website currently respects GOOGLE's latest rules and regulations?


Have one of our specialized technicians analyze the profile of your site accordingly.


Whether you are in charge of optimizing your site or currently using the services of a search engine placement company, our consultation serices will enhance your ability to cross-check the profile of your website in order to improve your results with GOOGLE™ search engine.

Our consultation services are now on sale, from $145 down to $95
(offer valid if your order is placed on / before the 31th of December, 2003).


I GUESS SOMEONE LEAKED THE NEW GOOGLE ALOGRITHMS TO THEM EXCLUSIVELY! - WHAT DO YOU THINK?

I think the vultures are....flying?

Ken

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Mountain Eagle Marketing
Contemporary Art News
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