Google fact or fiction or just propaganda?

since we’re stepping out of the realms of fact and into the great beyond of wild theories … I feel qualified to take part.

I’ve got to agree that I think that much of googles suppoosed technological whizziness does not appear obvious to me when I see their search results.

It may be a complicated algoriythm … but it’s often wrong .. and quite frankly MSN and Yahoo seem to give better targetted results.

(However, 70% of traffic seems to go through Google – so you’ve gotta try and do the google dance …)

I’ve got about 50 keywords that different pages on my site target – each page has it’s own – even within my own site it’s own ideal audience and terms.

I’m amazed at how often google (incorrectly) thinks that another page on the site would be better – mainly becuase the second page simply links to the first page ??!

Basically google seems to think 3 things …

1) Is the site out of the “sandbox” ?
2) Does the page have the term on the page text, in the heading, and in the URL.
3) Does the site have other pages that also rank well for this term ?

If the answer is YES to all three then I seem to have an easy ride into the top 50 pages for most search terms with 1m to 10m results.

---

It hardly seems rocket science to me.
:laugh:

Wager2WinUK, you are most definitally on to something here. I for one agree that Google’s algorithm is not as intelligent and advanced as the SEO community seems to think. If one pays attention to any one industry (or one set of keywords) you can see that Google is tricked over-and-over again, rewarding the wrong sites and making it harder for sites that should or might be ranked higher.

Many of us here haven’t paid for “professional” SEO firms to assist us, but at my full-time job we did just this and hired a well known firm to help us. Over $2k a month for 2 years was our contract, in which they promised top ten on Google. I can assure you that these firms have no more inside knowledge than what we already know. In this case the free knowledge availabe on these forums and other sites are just as valuable as the information the “professionals” have.

In the end? Google and the crooks win. There is just one difference with the faulty sites that Google had listed in the top 100, and the ones it has still listed two years later….. The difference is that within those two years, the IRS has been able to catch up with these firms and shut them down. The company I work for, is still above 300 in google (in top 30 yahoo/msn).

And yes their websites were full of blackhat. We were told that once Google’s robots reindex the sites, they will be penalized and maybe blacklisted from the search. Yeh, they’ve been there for 2 years without budging. Some of them not even changing the content….I could go on with whats wrong with the picture.

So, if the mess that is the IRS, is beating Google in determining which companies are faulty and blackhat, one has to wonder WHAT Google is an expert in….

Remember, these aren’t just competitors beating out their competition, these are scam companies that the IRS SHUTS DOWN! Their internet presence and rewards from almighty Google, screw people over who are already looking for help.

I am a little confused by your post.

Who is getting shut down by the IRS, the blackhatters?

I would think that most honest companies who top google also pay their taxes perfectly and treat their customers well.

The problem with hiring SEO people is that not all are even honest and some will use techniques that can hurt you in the long run, such as using cloaked pages to drive traffic to your site etc.

Google policies are very simple common sense and are basically just dictated by visitor experience.

1. make sure your page loads fast
2. make sure each page has one consistent topic
3. make sure your internal navigation is complete and easy to follow
4. make sure your page grows “naturally”

If you build your site according to these very basic principles, and keep making it a better experience for visitors, google will move you up the ranks slowly but surely and when you arrive on top, you will be good and stable.

Any short cuts result in instablity of your positions.

You can of course adjust to this by having many sites etc. There is room for a variety of business models. That is all black hat is, another business model.

Personally, I like stablity. I don’t care to spend my time messing with google SERPS. I prefer generating content and creating something I am proud of.

If it is any indication, my stats for my e-commerce site indicate that the most visitors came from MSN then Google, (then Traffic Swarm actually) and finally Yahoo. So can one conclude that the MSN algorithm returns results that are more accurate for a give keyword? Perhaps the Google algorithm is smarter than Yahoo’s but not smarter than MSN.

The e-commerce site was always appearing near the top in both Google and Yahoo for a couple years for a given keyword. However, when I started using Google Adwords it stopped appearing near the top of the results, not so when I tried Yahoo/Overture sponsored search, it was still listed near the top, aside from the benefit of running on the network partners, does it make sense to pay to advertise a site that already appears near the top of the search results anyway?

So I dumped the Yahoo/Overture sponsored search when my inital deposit was exausted. So does this mean that the Google algorithm is smarter?

This has nothing to so with the e-commerce site but another test is when I search on the keyword phrase video slot tips or video slot machine tips in Yahoo, Google and MSN. In Yahoo 6 out of the first 10 results are for a site that redirects to the same site. So does Yahoo consider a sites’ content when returning results?

Although it’s been a long time since I last checked, my slot tips site always came up at or near the top for those keyword/phrases in Yahoo, until this hacker did this little redirect trick.

Can someone try those phrases in Yahoo and see if they get the same results and post or let me know? (you should see several pages titled Video Slot Machine Tips)

It would be greatly appreciated.

Dominique the so called “sand box” can be beaten, it is all about who links to your new domain. (Hint: Get a google ‘trusted’ site to link to your new domain and avoid ROS links from any domain.)

It is a fact that google’s algorithms can not detect all the methods used by SEOs, but then neither can the average person without ‘special’ tools. Just looking at a site (even its source) is not going to tell you if a site is cloaking or redirecting at the DNS.

Wager2wager said: “Without going into all the other sites I’ve found which basically do everything google has us believe are BIG no no’s which will lead to being penalized or even dropped, a high % of sites I’ve found in these top listing are doing exactly this!”

It sounds to me like you have been hanging out in SEO forums way too much. Read the google guidelines yourself here http://www.google.com/support/webmasters/bin/topic.py?topic=8521
There is no propaganda or misinformation from google, all that comes from the search engine hangers on, guys like Danny Sullivan, Doug Heil and a few others, that act like they are independent, but really get a LARGE percentage of their income directly from google and from people that are confused about search marketing. These guys like to spread misinformation to confuse and beguile the search newbees (Where are all those confused and beguiled search newbees going to get their HIGHLY PRICED SEO advice and help from??? Well from the guys that confused and beguiled them in the first place…)
Can anyone tell I do not have a high opinion of most so called professional SEOs or SEO forums?

If you have found a site or sites that are breaking google’s Guidelines, turn them in to google’s shame report, if they are in fact breaking google’s rules they will be removed from the index. Sometimes it takes a few months for a bad site to get removed, but if they are in fact breaking googles guidelines they will be removed sooner or later. But you have to remember that what you see as search engine SPAM, google may not see that way.

You see Google has a problem:
99.9% of all Webmasters define Search Engine Spam as any site that ranks above their site…

I remember a well known engineer from google told me in the fall of 2002 that out of 10,000 reports of ‘SPAM’ sites in google’s SERP only 32 sites were removed from the index after all 10,000 had been gone thru by humans. In other words, only 32 sites out of the 10,000 that were reported were actually breaking any of google’s guidelines. The problem has only gotten much worse since then.

Dominique gave the best SEO advice I have seen in long while. The only thing I would add to what she said is, Build your site so you can be proud of it and build it for the user, not for yourself.

lots0,

Here is the results for Yahoo

Video Slot Machine Tips
1/ xxxhttp://www.kirillivano.l1h.net/video/slot-machine-tips.html

Video Slot Machine Tips
2/ xxxhttp://www.lindyingland.tripod.com/video/slot-machine-tips.html

3/ xxxhttp://www.slot-tips.users.50megs.com

4/ xxxhttp://www.crossbond.t35.com/video/slot-machine-tips.html

5/ xxxhttp://www.completionviewpoints.blogspot.com

Sorry for the confusion on my post Dominique. I’ll try again!

You can assume that companies that have a black hat web-presence would be more likely to run their offline business with the same unethical manor right? Assuming that, as a competitor that prides itself in an honest business practice on and offline, you want these violators to be accountable for their actions.

For instance, an affiliate who is known for content scraping is expected to be taken care of by the affiliate managers that pay them. We at CAP want action taken against those that hurt us.

To the same effect, if Google does not punish these black hat webpage’s, and feels that only 32 out of 10,000 complaints are valid issues (from lots0s’ post), how can you place trust in method used to evaluate these sites?

My post mentions the IRS because I was referring to my own experience with a non-profit industry that has many unethical members. These companies have spent years in the top ranks of Google, and only lost place after complaints to the IRS. My point being, that the IRS is known for it’s hugely chaotic and incompetent structure, and still weeds out the bad guys faster than the almighty Google.

Sorry if this makes little sense or sounds like a bitch – rather it’s just my take and personal experience on this subject matter and does not mean the whole system is flawed, but maybe misunderstood and a certain amount of confusion as lots0 states.

Wager2winUK –

lots0,

Here is the results for Yahoo

We were talking about google… yahoo is a completely different search engine with completely different algos that generate the SERP. If we would have been talking about the yahoo search engine my statements would have been quite different.
Do you have any examples from googles SERP?

JOE_DEEDS –

if Google does not punish these black hat webpage’s, and feels that only 32 out of 10,000 complaints are valid issues (from lots0s’ post), how can you place trust in method used to evaluate these sites?

I think your missing my and googles point.

What you and some others call “black hat” is not really against googles guidelines, that is the point.

google’s job is not to police the web for non-payment of taxes or to do any type of law enforcement or censorship on the www, google’s job is to index websites and rank them for search queries… end of story.

(However, I have argued in the past that google is responsible for any damage caused by sites in its SERP, but I got shot down in flames…)

A site that link spams or redirects in a sneaky way or tries to manipulate the search results is not the same as a site that may or may not be involved in some type of scam to ripoff peoples money, personal information or involved in some other illegal activities. These are vastly different problems that require different solutions. google can deal with the link spammers but the scammers and law breakers are a different matter altogether and are not really googles problem they are a law enforcement problem.

lots0,

I know google is totally different. So for me to talk about oranges & lemon in the same thread is strange, especially in this context.

The comparison to Yahoo was posted in reply to slotplayer, I was tired, must have got the nicks confused… ” title=”” class=”bbcode_smiley” />

Don’t wish to sound rude, but that was a bit of a sarcastic comment and something I don’t think was warranted lots0.

Maybe I’m gauging my opinions from the wrong webmaster boards of our industry, but, I don’t see too many people fitting the model of your statement.

If anything the google issues are a BIG thing. Especially as 99.9% of complaints are from webmasters in our industry about 888, scrapers, redirects and other dubious practices. If in your book this is bitchin, I’d suggest that your check which boards your deriving your opinions from cause they certainly don’t sound like the reputable ones like CAP for instance.