Can Penguins Fly?

[deepsand]

What are the effects of Penguin on link-builders? Apparently:

1. Too much anchor-text optimisation will be discounted. If all of your inbound links have the anchor text, "real estate new york", then some of the link-juice will be discounted as unnatural.

2. Out-of-context links will be discounted. If you post on an SEO forum, but your sig-link says, "limo services chicago", then much of the link-juice will be discounted as unnatural.

Noting that none of this affects PageRank, and recognizing that a Domain's Link Profile has always been presumed to be dependent on said qualitative factors, particularly the latter item, just what here is new?

Is it the case that Google has until now merely paid lip service to such?

[C0ldf1re]

... Is it the case that Google has until now merely paid lip service to such?

Google have always said that they dislike unnatural links. I think (note the word "think"!) that they have now refined semantic algorithms to give force to their dislikes.

[SteveGerencser]

Nothing semantic about it at all. It's about anchor text and focus. If you have 10,000 links and 9,900 of them are all the same three anchor text, that will get you in trouble.

[C0ldf1re]

Nothing semantic about it at all. It's about anchor text and focus. If you have 10,000 links and 9,900 of them are all the same three anchor text, that will get you in trouble.

When I said semantic, Steve, I meant it as applying to out-of-context links. Like I'm wondering if links for "landscape design" on an SEO forum will be 100% discounted as far as link-juice goes.

[deepsand]

When I said semantic, Steve, I meant it as applying to out-of-context links. Like I'm wondering if links for "landscape design" on an SEO forum will be 100% discounted as far as link-juice goes.

Still old hat.

Are we to believe that it's taken Google over a decade to figure out that, for example, WPW has nothing to do with landscaping?

[claybutler]

Still old hat.

Are we to believe that it's taken Google over a decade to figure out that, for example, WPW has nothing to do with landscaping?

Hah. They still haven't figured it out and never will. That would be pure artificial intelligence. I could very well start talking about the best landscaping companies in any forum and we could go back and forth about that and have a very detailed and informative conversation about landscaping.

There's no way Google will ever be able to tell what is a real conversation and what is all staged for the SEs.

If all landscaping information was discarded from WPW because Google determined that we are only allowed to discuss web stuff, then a landscaping forum would likewise have all non landscaping discussions discarded from it's index. This tit-for-tat battle would deform the SERPs and unleash a chain of events that would dwarf the weirdness of the Penguin update. The best they can ever hope for is to chip around the edges and pick off the low hanging fruit. It's much better for quality results to error on the side of false negatives (this page is Ok, when it's actually spam) than to have too many false positives (this page is spam when it's actually of high quality). The simple reason being is that anyone who's gaming the system for SERPs is probably at least offering content that is on topic. So a little bit of on topic junk is not that noticeable in the overall picture especially since most people don't know the difference between columns of adwords and columns of information.

One time I had a job as a file clerk in the billing department of a hospital. My job was to find files for the next day plus find missing files. After a week they couldn't believe I could find all these files that had been missing for months. This wasn't a lot of files. Just one small room of shelves with perhaps 10k "alphabetized" manila folders. I could find them because I was a human. A robot would take untold hours of programming and processing power to do the same thing half as well.

For all it's weaknesses Google is doing a freakishly good job considering the task it's trying to tackle but it is light years from they type of AI that is required to truly understand content and how it all relates.

[deepsand]

Hah. They still haven't figured it out and never will.

Precisely my point. Penguin is merely yet one more attempt at performing a particular neurosurgical operation using a different carving knife.

Each and every major change to Google's SERP algo. is a tacit admission of its failure to deliver on its grandiose promise of quality results.

[claybutler]

Precisely my point. Penguin is merely yet one more attempt at performing a particular neurosurgical operation using a different carving knife.

Each and every major change to Google's SERP algo. is a tacit admission of its failure to deliver on its grandiose promise of quality results.

Oh, I agree 100%. I guess I didn't quite read your comment correctly.

[deepsand]

Rather than state my conclusion, I chose to instead frame questions that I had hoped would lead others to reach it on their own.

[claybutler]

Rather than state my conclusion, I chose to instead frame questions that I had hoped would lead others to reach it on their own.

I guess it worked