[FairfieldLife] Re: Question for Rick Archer
--- In FairfieldLife@yahoogroups.com, shempmcgurk shempmcg...@... wrote: --- In FairfieldLife@yahoogroups.com, Rick Archer rick@ wrote: From: FairfieldLife@yahoogroups.com [mailto:fairfieldl...@yahoogroups.com] On Behalf Of shempmcgurk Sent: Sunday, December 14, 2008 12:11 PM To: FairfieldLife@yahoogroups.com Subject: [FairfieldLife] Question for Rick Archer 2) the next SEVEN results, however, are all commercial sites that are trying to sell you term insurance; sites such as statefarm.com, term4sale.com, quickquote.com, etc. It's only until we get to the 9th entry (the moneyalert.com website) is there another information article about term insurance that is not trying to sell me something. Question: are those seven results I refer to above coming up at or near the top of the results because those companies are paying Google to favor them? In other words, not only would I as, say, a life insurance company who is interested in selling term insurance pay google for a sponsored ad to the right or in the shaded yellow area but I could also pay them to prioritize my site as a result that would come out at the beginning of the list as the seven I point out above? Is this what I am seeing? No one is paying Google to be listed in the free or organic results. Some have wondered whether Google might favor sites that also buy advertizing, but that correlation has never been proven. The sites which come up highest in the free listings do so because Google's algorithm detects that those sites are most closely related to the search term. That relationship is determined by both on-page criteria - the site content and the way in which site pages have been optimized for various keywords - and off-site criteria, namely, link popularity. The latter is especially influenced by keyword-rich links from respected, well-established sites. There's nothing wrong with commercial sites ranking well in the organic listings, since very often, they offer what people are looking for. Thanks to both Richard M. and Rick for their answers. I understand it a lot better as a result. Although I'm not 100% convinced that Google isn't doing something with the organic listings. There always seems to be a set of specific sites that come up on the first page and they all seem commercial or ones that Google knows you want to see first (e.g. Wikipedia and/or imdb.com) and then ones that are totally useless but transparently commercial such as linkedin.com and manta.com. These two sites always seem to come up when I'm looking up someone's name but they are useless sites -- at least to me -- and I can't imagine anyone else using them. And that's why I assume that Google is being paid to list these kinds of companies first. It's a pain because I always have to waste my time on the first page and then get to the next one. Another thing I've noticed: it used to be that when I did a search on my own name on Google that about half of the results were Google groups postings. And then all of a sudden -- about 2 years ago -- that was cleaned up overnight. So they definitely were playing with the algorithm. I was just about to reply No really Shemp - you SHOULD be 100% convinced that Google isn't doing something with the organic listings when a bit of synchronicity kicked in and I got a link to this article today: http://www.theregister.co.uk/2008/12/12/googlewashing_revisited/ Google this week admitted that its staff will pick and choose what appears in its search results. It's a historic statement - and nobody has yet grasped its significance. It IS a huge seismic shift really. If true, (big if maybe) this is as big a shock to us geeks as is the collapse of the banks. Both represent the end of hubris: On the hand that the days of borrowing and boom will never end, and on the other that the computer wizards of Google can achieve near perfect search given a big enough server farm and a clever algorithm. If I can operate Google, I can find anything... Google, combined with Wi-Fi, is a little bit like God. God is wireless, God is everywhere and God sees and knows everything. Throughout history, people connected to God without wires. Now, for many questions in the world, you ask Google, and increasingly, you can do it without wires, too. (NYT 2003) It may not be widely publicised - but behind the scenes Google has been waging a vicious and bloody war against Black Hat SEO. This term refers to those very clever and inventive Search Engine Optimizer experts who are forever trying to trick Google so as to get their sites to appear high in the organic listings. (Rick of course is White hat SEO!). They are to search engines what spammers are to email. If it's indeed true that Google are planning to plug the weaknesses in the algorithm with human review, then this suggests that
RE: [FairfieldLife] Re: Question for Rick Archer
From: FairfieldLife@yahoogroups.com [mailto:fairfieldl...@yahoogroups.com] On Behalf Of Richard M Sent: Monday, December 15, 2008 4:45 AM To: FairfieldLife@yahoogroups.com Subject: [FairfieldLife] Re: Question for Rick Archer It may not be widely publicised - but behind the scenes Google has been waging a vicious and bloody war against Black Hat SEO. This term refers to those very clever and inventive Search Engine Optimizer experts who are forever trying to trick Google so as to get their sites to appear high in the organic listings. (Rick of course is White hat SEO!). They are to search engines what spammers are to email. If it's indeed true that Google are planning to plug the weaknesses in the algorithm with human review, then this suggests that Google could be raising the white flag and giving in, overwhelmed by the bad guys. A great shame. (But then the evidence for this in the article seems a bit weak?) My understanding is that Google's very smart and well-paid Ph.D.'s are always doing searches, seeing what comes up, and then tweaking the algorithm if those results don't effectively fulfill the search queries. But there are so many web sites and so many search terms that they can't possibly manually manipulate a significant percentage of search results. Of course, if they can fairly block a black hat technique, that may sweep many sites off the SERPS (search engine results pages) in one fell swoop. And they have done this many times over the years. That's why it's good to stick with white hat techniques. Go for long-term results, unless you're working with a throw-away domain.
[FairfieldLife] Re: Question for Rick Archer
--- In FairfieldLife@yahoogroups.com, Richard M compost...@... wrote: It's all going tits up isn't it? The banks, then the car industry, and now Google? Interesting times! Big brother and the New World Order. What a pair.
Re: [FairfieldLife] Re: Question for Rick Archer
On Mon, Dec 15, 2008 at 4:44 AM, Richard M compost...@yahoo.co.uk wrote: It IS a huge seismic shift really. If true, (big if maybe) this is as big a shock to us geeks as is the collapse of the banks. Both represent the end of hubris: On the hand that the days of borrowing and boom will never end, and on the other that the computer wizards of Google can achieve near perfect search given a big enough server farm and a clever algorithm. To try to give perspective to those who think of Google as just a software company, let's try to put the scale of Google's server farms into perspective. Google's server farms in the US use more electricity than all of the TVs in the US.
[FairfieldLife] Re: Question for Rick Archer
--- In FairfieldLife@yahoogroups.com, shempmcgurk shempmcg...@... wrote: Rick, I ask the following questions because I understand you are in the search engine result-optimizer business (sorry if I am using an incorrect term to describe what your business is called, but you get the idea). When I do a Google search the results that come up seems to me to be listed in specific orders. For example, if I do a search on term insurance (see: http://tinyurl.com/6e98km ) we get the sponsored links on the right side as well as the sponsored links at the top on the left in the yellow shaded areas. Okay, I understand that; Google has to make money through the ads, which are the sponsored links. And they have two places where they put them on the results page. Great. But look at what comes in the regular results under the yellow shaded sponsored links: 1) the first entry appears legit: a Wikipedia entry for term insurance. Great, everyone loves Wiki and their entry is very clear and informative. 2) the next SEVEN results, however, are all commercial sites that are trying to sell you term insurance; sites such as statefarm.com, term4sale.com, quickquote.com, etc. It's only until we get to the 9th entry (the moneyalert.com website) is there another information article about term insurance that is not trying to sell me something. Question: are those seven results I refer to above coming up at or near the top of the results because those companies are paying Google to favor them? No, that's not the case. No one can pay for those links. They are known as organic listings - and although Google's algorithm for this is secret, the ranking is a function of (a) information content in the site's web pages and (b) an evaluation of the links on other sites pointing to those pages (think of them as votes for those pages. However it is the quality of those links as much as the quantity of links that counts). Unfortunately computers, even when powered by Google, are rather stupid. So organic listings are often iffy. But the brilliance of Google is that a purely robotic procedure is nevertheless able to have a pretty good stab at estimating page relevance in a way which we all find incredibly useful. In other words, not only would I as, say, a life insurance company who is interested in selling term insurance pay google for a sponsored ad to the right or in the shaded yellow area but I could also pay them to prioritize my site as a result that would come out at the beginning of the list as the seven I point out above? Is this what I am seeing? If this is so, isn't this just another form of advertising through Google? Wwhat does Google call this type of advertising and how much does it cost? Are there other ways that Google makes money on advertising? I thank you in advance for your attention to these questions...
[FairfieldLife] Re: Question for Rick Archer
--- In FairfieldLife@yahoogroups.com, Rick Archer r...@... wrote: From: FairfieldLife@yahoogroups.com [mailto:fairfieldl...@yahoogroups.com] On Behalf Of shempmcgurk Sent: Sunday, December 14, 2008 12:11 PM To: FairfieldLife@yahoogroups.com Subject: [FairfieldLife] Question for Rick Archer 2) the next SEVEN results, however, are all commercial sites that are trying to sell you term insurance; sites such as statefarm.com, term4sale.com, quickquote.com, etc. It's only until we get to the 9th entry (the moneyalert.com website) is there another information article about term insurance that is not trying to sell me something. Question: are those seven results I refer to above coming up at or near the top of the results because those companies are paying Google to favor them? In other words, not only would I as, say, a life insurance company who is interested in selling term insurance pay google for a sponsored ad to the right or in the shaded yellow area but I could also pay them to prioritize my site as a result that would come out at the beginning of the list as the seven I point out above? Is this what I am seeing? No one is paying Google to be listed in the free or organic results. Some have wondered whether Google might favor sites that also buy advertizing, but that correlation has never been proven. The sites which come up highest in the free listings do so because Google's algorithm detects that those sites are most closely related to the search term. That relationship is determined by both on-page criteria - the site content and the way in which site pages have been optimized for various keywords - and off-site criteria, namely, link popularity. The latter is especially influenced by keyword-rich links from respected, well-established sites. There's nothing wrong with commercial sites ranking well in the organic listings, since very often, they offer what people are looking for. Thanks to both Richard M. and Rick for their answers. I understand it a lot better as a result. Although I'm not 100% convinced that Google isn't doing something with the organic listings. There always seems to be a set of specific sites that come up on the first page and they all seem commercial or ones that Google knows you want to see first (e.g. Wikipedia and/or imdb.com) and then ones that are totally useless but transparently commercial such as linkedin.com and manta.com. These two sites always seem to come up when I'm looking up someone's name but they are useless sites -- at least to me -- and I can't imagine anyone else using them. And that's why I assume that Google is being paid to list these kinds of companies first. It's a pain because I always have to waste my time on the first page and then get to the next one. Another thing I've noticed: it used to be that when I did a search on my own name on Google that about half of the results were Google groups postings. And then all of a sudden -- about 2 years ago -- that was cleaned up overnight. So they definitely were playing with the algorithm.
