By launching this tool, I think Google admits that their algorithm is flawed and it requires manual assistance.
But again, Google is clever and they get this assistance for free from some people who have nothing better to do than monitor their back links all the time.
This link spam hunting is becoming ridiculous. Now many webmasters keep doing whois on domains and sending emails or completing contact forms asking their links to be removed.
Why not use this time and energy to improve the quality of the site?
Showing posts with label seo. Show all posts
Showing posts with label seo. Show all posts
Tuesday, March 19, 2013
Friday, November 23, 2007
live.com/msn.com refferal spam
I keep getting some traffic from live/msn with referrals such as: cars, house, etc. on pages which have nothing to do with such keywords. This is very strange, I have no idea who started this and what are the benefits.
Friday, November 09, 2007
phplinkdirectory "top hits" cheating
After analyzing the apache logs of my phplinkdirectory, I found some weird requests. After digging more into the problem, it seems like people click their own links or use automated software to do so, so in case you sort your directory listings by the number of visits/clicks they will get top positions in their category and also a top permanent spot in the "top hits" section. Basically they play with cl.php and use their id. And they do this from different IP addresses using proxies.
Saturday, November 03, 2007
Announce your directory
Do you have a new web directory? You want people to know about it as soon as possible?
You should list it in the following forums:
# Iwebtool - Your Directory
# Vilesilencer - Directory Promotion & List Suggestions
# PhpLinkDirectory - Advertising and Exchanges
# IndexScript - Web Directory Announcements
# Best General Directory Forum - Directory Annoucements
# Talk Directories - Solicitations & Announcements
# Directories Forum - Advertise
# WebMaster Talk - Submit to My Directory
# WebMaster Desk - Directory Announcements
# Kahuki Forums - Directory Announcements
# V 7 N - Directory Announcements & Promotions
# Directory Owners - Directory Review
You should list it in the following forums:
# Iwebtool - Your Directory
# Vilesilencer - Directory Promotion & List Suggestions
# PhpLinkDirectory - Advertising and Exchanges
# IndexScript - Web Directory Announcements
# Best General Directory Forum - Directory Annoucements
# Talk Directories - Solicitations & Announcements
# Directories Forum - Advertise
# WebMaster Talk - Submit to My Directory
# WebMaster Desk - Directory Announcements
# Kahuki Forums - Directory Announcements
# V 7 N - Directory Announcements & Promotions
# Directory Owners - Directory Review
Thursday, October 18, 2007
Why Yahoo outranks Google in Alexa top traffic sites?
Is Yahoo really having more traffic than Google? NO! But according to alexa.com top 100, yes.
First of all, keep in mind that alexa uses the toolbar to make the rankings so it may not be very accurate considering that the toolbar is not spread equally on all types of Internet users.
Then, take a look at yahoo.co.uk and at google.co.uk and note that yahoo.co.uk will redirect you to uk.yahoo.com. So while uk.yahoo.com is seen by alexa the same as yahoo.com because it's a subdomain, the google.co.uk is seen as a totally different site. The same with .de, .fr, etc. So for Yahoo, Alexa adds all the traffic from regional sites while for google it doesn't. Then think about mail.yahoo.com and gmail. Again, for yahoo it all goes in the same domain while for google not.
The same with 360.yahoo.com and blogger.com or video.yahoo.com and youtube.com. So as long as Alexa will keep counting every subdomain as being the same with the master domain, it will be very hard for google.com to outrank yahoo.com since google has it's traffic spread all over other domains.
First of all, keep in mind that alexa uses the toolbar to make the rankings so it may not be very accurate considering that the toolbar is not spread equally on all types of Internet users.
Then, take a look at yahoo.co.uk and at google.co.uk and note that yahoo.co.uk will redirect you to uk.yahoo.com. So while uk.yahoo.com is seen by alexa the same as yahoo.com because it's a subdomain, the google.co.uk is seen as a totally different site. The same with .de, .fr, etc. So for Yahoo, Alexa adds all the traffic from regional sites while for google it doesn't. Then think about mail.yahoo.com and gmail. Again, for yahoo it all goes in the same domain while for google not.
The same with 360.yahoo.com and blogger.com or video.yahoo.com and youtube.com. So as long as Alexa will keep counting every subdomain as being the same with the master domain, it will be very hard for google.com to outrank yahoo.com since google has it's traffic spread all over other domains.
Thursday, October 04, 2007
Will Google ever update PageRank again?
Definitely. But why these delays? It used to update every three months or so. As most webmasters noticed, when Pagerank updates, there is no big change in SERPs, so they assumed that Google updates the pageranks much often and they make the changes public every couple of months. It's called pagerank export.
But this time the delay is bigger than ever. This probably happens because too many webmasters started to manipulate the Pagerank by getting paid and reciprocal links. While reciprocal are easy to detect, the problem is with paid links. Paid links are not easy to detect manually and it is even harder to do this automatically. So while Google tests various algorithms for this, they probably decided to delay the pagerank export. This has a quite high impact, because many webmasters started to panic, they invested in links and cannot see the results in Pagerank or some SEO companies have contracts with customers where they promised higher pageranks.
There are many rumors that Google will change the PR to something else. But I disagree. I think it's either google exports the Pagerank in the next couple of weeks and they also come with a good detection system for paid links or they will just stop to make the pagerank public hoping to discourage link buyers and sellers.
A good explanation about how Pagerank works can be found here: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/PageRank.
But this time the delay is bigger than ever. This probably happens because too many webmasters started to manipulate the Pagerank by getting paid and reciprocal links. While reciprocal are easy to detect, the problem is with paid links. Paid links are not easy to detect manually and it is even harder to do this automatically. So while Google tests various algorithms for this, they probably decided to delay the pagerank export. This has a quite high impact, because many webmasters started to panic, they invested in links and cannot see the results in Pagerank or some SEO companies have contracts with customers where they promised higher pageranks.
There are many rumors that Google will change the PR to something else. But I disagree. I think it's either google exports the Pagerank in the next couple of weeks and they also come with a good detection system for paid links or they will just stop to make the pagerank public hoping to discourage link buyers and sellers.
A good explanation about how Pagerank works can be found here: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/PageRank.
Friday, September 28, 2007
Why did so many web directories get penalized?
A month ago, directories like Alive, Aviva, Bigweblinks were considered in the top of web directories hierarchy. Now they don't even appear for their own domain searches. But they are still in google's index, so they were just penalized and not blacklisted.
I had a feeling this would happen, because on every webmaster web page around the Internet you could see either Alive or Aviva directory listed in the sponsored section. They were too aggressive in getting backlinks.
Many months before the penalization,I noticed they had so many backlinks, they should have been PR8, but they were only PR6. Have been PR7 for a short while then dropped to PR6 although the number in backlinks was highly increasing.
I've seen the owners on this directories on some forums and they seem nice guys, but I am somehow gladly because this penalization happened, it's like the price they had to pay for the abusive way of getting backlinks. But I strongly hope that Google did this automatically and it has nothing to do with human reviews, otherwise it would be totally unfair.
Webmaster forums are filled with opinions about these penalizations and about how alive and aviva and the other directories will regain shortly their rankings. But in my opinion I think they have been banned because of one or more of the following causes:
1) Interlinking schemes (sitewide links between some directories)
2) Duplicate content (submissions titles and descriptions)
3) Mass paid backlinks
And if they fix the problem, they may return but it will take probably some months.
For the rest of directory owners, it's bad because people lose trust in web directories because of these incidents.
I had a feeling this would happen, because on every webmaster web page around the Internet you could see either Alive or Aviva directory listed in the sponsored section. They were too aggressive in getting backlinks.
Many months before the penalization,I noticed they had so many backlinks, they should have been PR8, but they were only PR6. Have been PR7 for a short while then dropped to PR6 although the number in backlinks was highly increasing.
I've seen the owners on this directories on some forums and they seem nice guys, but I am somehow gladly because this penalization happened, it's like the price they had to pay for the abusive way of getting backlinks. But I strongly hope that Google did this automatically and it has nothing to do with human reviews, otherwise it would be totally unfair.
Webmaster forums are filled with opinions about these penalizations and about how alive and aviva and the other directories will regain shortly their rankings. But in my opinion I think they have been banned because of one or more of the following causes:
1) Interlinking schemes (sitewide links between some directories)
2) Duplicate content (submissions titles and descriptions)
3) Mass paid backlinks
And if they fix the problem, they may return but it will take probably some months.
For the rest of directory owners, it's bad because people lose trust in web directories because of these incidents.
Monday, September 10, 2007
6 reasons why pagerank(PR) matters
1) I think it's one of the reasons why Google is so accurate. While other
search engines were counting on the meta tags and eventually the number
of the links, Google started to show that quality of the backlinks is
what matters. So pagerank is important!
2) The higher your pagerank is, the deeper indexed you get.
3) PR is still used in SERPs, but it's not the most important factor
like it used to be some years ago.
4) It can give some kind of weight and authority to your site, because
not anyone can get a site to be PR6 and above.
5) You can use PR to compare your site with other sites.
6) The higher your pagerank is, the more subpages you can have indexed
search engines were counting on the meta tags and eventually the number
of the links, Google started to show that quality of the backlinks is
what matters. So pagerank is important!
2) The higher your pagerank is, the deeper indexed you get.
3) PR is still used in SERPs, but it's not the most important factor
like it used to be some years ago.
4) It can give some kind of weight and authority to your site, because
not anyone can get a site to be PR6 and above.
5) You can use PR to compare your site with other sites.
6) The higher your pagerank is, the more subpages you can have indexed
Thursday, September 06, 2007
The end of social bookmarking near?
Lately, while browsing some webmasters forums I saw many threads with offers such as: "paying $1 per digg", "get 50 diggs for 20 cents each", "3000 delicious submissions", "100 stumble for $5", etc. It is clear that people started to mass manipulate the social bookmarking. Some even run bots on the services with poor captcha systems while others have services to sell captcha to string conversion where you can make your own automatic bookmarking scripts using proxies and then sending the captcha image to the service for conversion to a string(if they do the captcha recognition automatically or manually is not important from the buyer's side of view).
As long as traffic=money, it seems like people will always try to abuse the way of getting the traffic by using unethical but sometimes very creative methods.
As long as traffic=money, it seems like people will always try to abuse the way of getting the traffic by using unethical but sometimes very creative methods.
Sunday, June 18, 2006
The Moldavian Blackhat
First of all people should stop blaming Google, they are not perfect but still the best on removing spam sites.
If MSN and Yahoo have much fewer indexed pages from this guy's domains, it is only because their bots are lazier and their index space lower.
Some of his sites are already banned from Google, some not, of course you would probably expect G to act faster, but I think they want the banning process to be automatically to avoid further spam. If they ban manually, tomorrow 10 others will spam again.
Here is a quick explanation on how he did this whole madness:
1) He registered a couple of domains (t1ps2see.com, eiqz2q.org, etc)
2) He used some lame automatic page generator to make thousands of meaningless pages.
3) He setup his web server(probably mod_rewrite rules) and DNS to work with anysubdomain.domain.com, we can see this on a random query:
$ host worihqweoirhwqer.t1ps2see.com
worihqweoirhwqer.t1ps2see.com has address 70.87.73.35
4) A little programming on the site for interlinking pages and probably for querying some mysql databases where he stored the generated pages.
5) He setup some kind of cloaking, using body onLoad="document.f.submit()" and also giving a page to googlebot and another to visitor, creating confusion. He even denied page caching, but seems like he missed msn where cached pages still appear.
6) He used a couple of trusted(or ex-trusted) PR5 sites like
www.intermedia.md, www.chat.md, www.faces.md, etc. to get backlinks
Although we no longer see them now, in a cached page of these sites there are entries like:
a href="http://2333.water.eiqz2q.org"
img src=http://images.faces.md/images/0.gif border=0
a href="http://1272.manager.eiqz2q.org"
img src=http://images.faces.md/images/0.gif border=0
a href="http://307.pizza.eiqz2q.org"
img src=http://images.faces.md/images/0.gif border=0
7) He waited a few days for his pages to get indexed
Have you noticed anything spectacular? No! Any webmaster with a few programming knowledge can do this... but it will be totally unethical.
And you should also notice the BAD parts in this: he has nothing stable, he will get banned sooner or later and will have to start over and he had to sacrifice those PR5 sites: faces.md, welena.com, intermedia.md, etc. Another bad part for him is that he attracted too much the attention of webmasters, many forums talk about this now and sending abuse reports to Google.
Some of the white hats maybe now wants to try this? I don't know if it's illegal or not, probably not but you should "Know well what leads you forward and what holds you back".
If MSN and Yahoo have much fewer indexed pages from this guy's domains, it is only because their bots are lazier and their index space lower.
Some of his sites are already banned from Google, some not, of course you would probably expect G to act faster, but I think they want the banning process to be automatically to avoid further spam. If they ban manually, tomorrow 10 others will spam again.
Here is a quick explanation on how he did this whole madness:
1) He registered a couple of domains (t1ps2see.com, eiqz2q.org, etc)
2) He used some lame automatic page generator to make thousands of meaningless pages.
3) He setup his web server(probably mod_rewrite rules) and DNS to work with anysubdomain.domain.com, we can see this on a random query:
$ host worihqweoirhwqer.t1ps2see.com
worihqweoirhwqer.t1ps2see.com has address 70.87.73.35
4) A little programming on the site for interlinking pages and probably for querying some mysql databases where he stored the generated pages.
5) He setup some kind of cloaking, using body onLoad="document.f.submit()" and also giving a page to googlebot and another to visitor, creating confusion. He even denied page caching, but seems like he missed msn where cached pages still appear.
6) He used a couple of trusted(or ex-trusted) PR5 sites like
www.intermedia.md, www.chat.md, www.faces.md, etc. to get backlinks
Although we no longer see them now, in a cached page of these sites there are entries like:
a href="http://2333.water.eiqz2q.org"
img src=http://images.faces.md/images/0.gif border=0
a href="http://1272.manager.eiqz2q.org"
img src=http://images.faces.md/images/0.gif border=0
a href="http://307.pizza.eiqz2q.org"
img src=http://images.faces.md/images/0.gif border=0
7) He waited a few days for his pages to get indexed
Have you noticed anything spectacular? No! Any webmaster with a few programming knowledge can do this... but it will be totally unethical.
And you should also notice the BAD parts in this: he has nothing stable, he will get banned sooner or later and will have to start over and he had to sacrifice those PR5 sites: faces.md, welena.com, intermedia.md, etc. Another bad part for him is that he attracted too much the attention of webmasters, many forums talk about this now and sending abuse reports to Google.
Some of the white hats maybe now wants to try this? I don't know if it's illegal or not, probably not but you should "Know well what leads you forward and what holds you back".
black hats and massive indexed pages
It seems that a guy who owns domains t1ps2see.com, eiqz2q.org, etc managed to index in google a huge amount of webpages.
Results 1 - 10 of about 1,250,000,000 from t1ps2see.com
Pretty impressive, however the number is not real since google is doing some kind of estimations for site:domain queries, estimations which are not accurate at all.
Nothing new until now, since we know blackhats existed and will exist until google and other search engines would become perfect, but it's amazing how webmasters are so interested in this subject, threads like http://forums.digitalpoint.com/showthread.php?t=97090 are so visited.
I also have to mention that he runs adsense on some of his domains, so this is making a very bad image for Google, letting the impression that highest part of adsense income for google comes from black hats.
Results 1 - 10 of about 1,250,000,000 from t1ps2see.com
Pretty impressive, however the number is not real since google is doing some kind of estimations for site:domain queries, estimations which are not accurate at all.
Nothing new until now, since we know blackhats existed and will exist until google and other search engines would become perfect, but it's amazing how webmasters are so interested in this subject, threads like http://forums.digitalpoint.com/showthread.php?t=97090 are so visited.
I also have to mention that he runs adsense on some of his domains, so this is making a very bad image for Google, letting the impression that highest part of adsense income for google comes from black hats.
Saturday, June 03, 2006
Automatic and reciprocal link exchange, good or bad?
In the last years, many sites and directories started to offer automatic link exchange programs. Some ask for money while others ask for reciprocal linking. It is pretty clear that such programs and the sites involved don't have a shiny future because Google didn't introduced the backlinking system for being abused.
I tested some of these programs: www.linkmachine.net, www.monsterlinkswap.com, www.gotlinks.com, etc. The result? Getting 100 backlinks from these programs is worse than getting 1 single backlink from a PR4+ site "not flagged". By "not flagged" I mean a site which is not involved in automatic/reciprocal link exchange programs. I believe that search engines and I mean specially Google, identify the sites involved in these programs and flag them somehow. They don't get banned(at least not all of them) but their backlinks get ignored and their outgoing links too. Let's take for example gotlinks.com. They claim to have about 10,000 sites in their network. Each of them backlinks to gotlinks.com. By now, they should be about PageRank8, considering they are also promoting their service by many other ways. But they are only PR6 and I have a feeling that they gained this Page Rank only from directories, forums and blogs where people talk about the program. The 10,000+ sites involved are flagged and they don't pass Pagerank.
So if you are looking for a long term result for your site, don't involve in these "easy to gain backlinks" programs. Remember that the most effective way of getting back links is to make a site actually useful, then people will backlink to it without any incentive.
I tested some of these programs: www.linkmachine.net, www.monsterlinkswap.com, www.gotlinks.com, etc. The result? Getting 100 backlinks from these programs is worse than getting 1 single backlink from a PR4+ site "not flagged". By "not flagged" I mean a site which is not involved in automatic/reciprocal link exchange programs. I believe that search engines and I mean specially Google, identify the sites involved in these programs and flag them somehow. They don't get banned(at least not all of them) but their backlinks get ignored and their outgoing links too. Let's take for example gotlinks.com. They claim to have about 10,000 sites in their network. Each of them backlinks to gotlinks.com. By now, they should be about PageRank8, considering they are also promoting their service by many other ways. But they are only PR6 and I have a feeling that they gained this Page Rank only from directories, forums and blogs where people talk about the program. The 10,000+ sites involved are flagged and they don't pass Pagerank.
So if you are looking for a long term result for your site, don't involve in these "easy to gain backlinks" programs. Remember that the most effective way of getting back links is to make a site actually useful, then people will backlink to it without any incentive.
Friday, June 02, 2006
Penalized or blacklisted by Google?
It is easy to check if a site is blacklisted. If it is older than 3 months, you can simply check the PR, and if it is 0, then either site owner is one of the worst webmaster or the site is black listed. Another method is to search if google has indexed any pages from the site doing a site:www.domain.com search.
About penalization it is much harder. A site can be penalized, but it can still have a good PR and it is still indexed. It just don't show good on SERP. And this does not mean it is not on top for an important keyword. It means it is on the bottom of the list even when you do a very particular search.
Blacklisting can happen on cloaking, hidden text, blog spam.
Penalization usually occurs when you are involved in link schemes, link exchange, duplicate content, stuff keywords, affiliate links.
About penalization it is much harder. A site can be penalized, but it can still have a good PR and it is still indexed. It just don't show good on SERP. And this does not mean it is not on top for an important keyword. It means it is on the bottom of the list even when you do a very particular search.
Blacklisting can happen on cloaking, hidden text, blog spam.
Penalization usually occurs when you are involved in link schemes, link exchange, duplicate content, stuff keywords, affiliate links.
Some new and some old things about Google and SEO
Is SEO(Search Engine Optimizing) good?
Depends. If you join a webmaster forum, you may notice that some members there, have 30 or more sites about various topics(ringtones, mortages, pharmacy). Those sites contain no good content except some stolen/poor text and affiliate links. Such sites are definitely not good for internet for the simple reason that one person cannot maintain and keep up to date so many sites, so they are just junk, therefore one of the google's goal is to eliminate junk from their search results.
But if you already have a site, and you do SEO just to make it more friendly for spiders, so more people will be able to find your site, then SEO is good. So you should do SEO for your existing sites and not make new sites just to do SEO.
How does google sort search results?
Some say they use pigeons, others say they do it by PR(the famous green bar). But the correct answer is: all internet users that search using google, contribute to the results ranking. How is this possible? Simple, some use google toolbar, others simply help by clicking or not on a search result.
Of course, in order to get into google's attention, a site first needs a few backlinks and some good original content. Then google allows the users to transparently make the ranking.
Let's consider the next scenario with a user with google toolbar: He searches "free ringtones" and gets to a page(let's name it "site A") where there are ringtones but they are not free. He will close the page and continue the search. At some point he will find a "site B" who has indeed free ringtones so he will spend more time on it to search whatever he needs. He could also bookmark the page, or he will memorize the address. Later he will return to the page or even tell to a friend about it. Google will see that he either type-in the address or used it from bookmarks, so he will consider that site B is good to be on top for "free ringtones", google will also penalize site A. The idea is: the more type-ins/bookmarks a website has and the more time a users spend browsing it, the useful it is, so it should have a high rank. Google easily track user's behaviour if they have Google Toolbar installed. Even if they don't have it, on Javascript enabled browsers, Google can see which sites you click from SERPs.
So how can I get on top of the results?
Make a website thinking to your potential users and what they want to see. Make it SEO friendly but don't exaggerate with this, always put your visitors first. Use ethical promoting methods.
How about PR? Why aren't pages sorted strictly by PR anymore?
Because at some point, many webmasters were using unethical methods to get backlinks, such as link farms, blog spam, aquisition of existing websites with high PR, only for linking purposes (this was bad for the Internet because those sites were no longer developed, they were just abused).
The PR sort was also a little unfair for new sites, which had no change to get on top without getting tons of backlinks. With the new algo, if a site turn out to be useful and used(clicked+browsed), it can get on top positions.
What is sandbox ?
The sandbox applies to new websites, and is a kind of pending status. Google simply says: "Hey you are new, stay down and let the elders first, keep the good work and at some point you'll get into their club too".
This way google can first watch over the new sites to see how often are they updated, how they and where they get their backlinks from. If they get the backlinks at a high rate, they are probably spammers so they will never be ranked good. If their backlinks are up only for a short period, then they probably are buying links or again spam so at some point owners remove the spam or their paid links expire, so the site will be again penalized. Of course google watches to old websites too for such actions, but the elders are always considered more trusted for the simple reason that doorways and unethical sites don't live long.
What is google blacklist or exclusion ?
A site can be manually or automatically excluded from SERPs if it is found to be completely useless for the internet comunity. Such sites usually use spam to get backlinks, they have no content quality but some duplicate or stuffed keywords, and they are full of affiliate links or redirects.
Why META keywords and description are no longer important?
Because they are not seen directly by users, therefore in many cases they were unrelated to the page or outdated. A normal webmaster updates page title and content and often forgets about keywords or description. Meanwhile other webmasters obsessed by SEO, were giving much more attention to META optimization than to content itself. From the user side, the first kind of websites with outdated/missing/unrelated META was usually more useful. So google simply decided to almost ignore META keywords or description.
Is W3C Validation important for SEO?
No, take a look to www.yahoo.com, www.google.com and www.msn.com and you will see that all of them fail the validation tests with several errors. So if they dont care about their own pages, I doubt they care about others'.
Want more? Check http://www-db.stanford.edu/~backrub/google.html
Depends. If you join a webmaster forum, you may notice that some members there, have 30 or more sites about various topics(ringtones, mortages, pharmacy). Those sites contain no good content except some stolen/poor text and affiliate links. Such sites are definitely not good for internet for the simple reason that one person cannot maintain and keep up to date so many sites, so they are just junk, therefore one of the google's goal is to eliminate junk from their search results.
But if you already have a site, and you do SEO just to make it more friendly for spiders, so more people will be able to find your site, then SEO is good. So you should do SEO for your existing sites and not make new sites just to do SEO.
How does google sort search results?
Some say they use pigeons, others say they do it by PR(the famous green bar). But the correct answer is: all internet users that search using google, contribute to the results ranking. How is this possible? Simple, some use google toolbar, others simply help by clicking or not on a search result.
Of course, in order to get into google's attention, a site first needs a few backlinks and some good original content. Then google allows the users to transparently make the ranking.
Let's consider the next scenario with a user with google toolbar: He searches "free ringtones" and gets to a page(let's name it "site A") where there are ringtones but they are not free. He will close the page and continue the search. At some point he will find a "site B" who has indeed free ringtones so he will spend more time on it to search whatever he needs. He could also bookmark the page, or he will memorize the address. Later he will return to the page or even tell to a friend about it. Google will see that he either type-in the address or used it from bookmarks, so he will consider that site B is good to be on top for "free ringtones", google will also penalize site A. The idea is: the more type-ins/bookmarks a website has and the more time a users spend browsing it, the useful it is, so it should have a high rank. Google easily track user's behaviour if they have Google Toolbar installed. Even if they don't have it, on Javascript enabled browsers, Google can see which sites you click from SERPs.
So how can I get on top of the results?
Make a website thinking to your potential users and what they want to see. Make it SEO friendly but don't exaggerate with this, always put your visitors first. Use ethical promoting methods.
How about PR? Why aren't pages sorted strictly by PR anymore?
Because at some point, many webmasters were using unethical methods to get backlinks, such as link farms, blog spam, aquisition of existing websites with high PR, only for linking purposes (this was bad for the Internet because those sites were no longer developed, they were just abused).
The PR sort was also a little unfair for new sites, which had no change to get on top without getting tons of backlinks. With the new algo, if a site turn out to be useful and used(clicked+browsed), it can get on top positions.
What is sandbox ?
The sandbox applies to new websites, and is a kind of pending status. Google simply says: "Hey you are new, stay down and let the elders first, keep the good work and at some point you'll get into their club too".
This way google can first watch over the new sites to see how often are they updated, how they and where they get their backlinks from. If they get the backlinks at a high rate, they are probably spammers so they will never be ranked good. If their backlinks are up only for a short period, then they probably are buying links or again spam so at some point owners remove the spam or their paid links expire, so the site will be again penalized. Of course google watches to old websites too for such actions, but the elders are always considered more trusted for the simple reason that doorways and unethical sites don't live long.
What is google blacklist or exclusion ?
A site can be manually or automatically excluded from SERPs if it is found to be completely useless for the internet comunity. Such sites usually use spam to get backlinks, they have no content quality but some duplicate or stuffed keywords, and they are full of affiliate links or redirects.
Why META keywords and description are no longer important?
Because they are not seen directly by users, therefore in many cases they were unrelated to the page or outdated. A normal webmaster updates page title and content and often forgets about keywords or description. Meanwhile other webmasters obsessed by SEO, were giving much more attention to META optimization than to content itself. From the user side, the first kind of websites with outdated/missing/unrelated META was usually more useful. So google simply decided to almost ignore META keywords or description.
Is W3C Validation important for SEO?
No, take a look to www.yahoo.com, www.google.com and www.msn.com and you will see that all of them fail the validation tests with several errors. So if they dont care about their own pages, I doubt they care about others'.
Want more? Check http://www-db.stanford.edu/~backrub/google.html
Wednesday, March 15, 2006
Checking if a site is banned/blacklisted from Google
If some site violates Google TOS, it is very possible it will get banned. The most common reasons are: hidden text, link spam, link farm. If your site does not apear in Google, there is a simple way to check if it is simply not indexed yet, or if it has been blacklisted.
Go to www.google.com and type the site name in the search bar (let's take testdomain123.biz for example).
If you get an answer like this:
Sorry, no information is available for the URL testdomain123.biz
If the URL is valid, try visiting that web page by clicking on the following link: testdomain123.biz
Find web pages from the site testdomain123.biz
Find web pages that contain the term "testdomain123.biz"
Then your site is not banned.
BUT
If you get an answer like this:
Sorry, no information is available for the URL testdomain123.biz
Find web pages from the site testdomain123.biz
Find web pages that contain the term "testdomain123.biz"
Then your site is blacklisted.
Note the line If the URL is valid, try visiting that web page by clicking on the following link: which is the difference between two cases.
Go to www.google.com and type the site name in the search bar (let's take testdomain123.biz for example).
If you get an answer like this:
Sorry, no information is available for the URL testdomain123.biz
If the URL is valid, try visiting that web page by clicking on the following link: testdomain123.biz
Find web pages from the site testdomain123.biz
Find web pages that contain the term "testdomain123.biz"
Then your site is not banned.
BUT
If you get an answer like this:
Sorry, no information is available for the URL testdomain123.biz
Find web pages from the site testdomain123.biz
Find web pages that contain the term "testdomain123.biz"
Then your site is blacklisted.
Note the line If the URL is valid, try visiting that web page by clicking on the following link: which is the difference between two cases.
Wednesday, February 08, 2006
White Hat vs Black Hat SEO
By definition a blackhat is someone who uses hidden text techniques or cloacking in order to create doorways and rank better. A doorway is a page with stuffed keywords without any meaning for a human reader, but valued by certain search engines.
But how about those who create web pages on domains like
"buy-cheap-medicine-health-now.com" and put some copy pasted content from other pages. They create 30 such sites and start submitting them to directories and doing link exchanges. They pretend to be white hat, but are they trully? They have no idea about the subjects in their sites and they don't bring any new content for the Internet. They create those pages with the only purpose of having traffic in order to monetize it. So I consider this last category black hats too.
A true whitehat never creates new pages and domains about subjects he don't have any idea about. He only promotes his existing sites with unique and useful content, not just affiliate links and google adsense on them.
But how about those who create web pages on domains like
"buy-cheap-medicine-health-now.com" and put some copy pasted content from other pages. They create 30 such sites and start submitting them to directories and doing link exchanges. They pretend to be white hat, but are they trully? They have no idea about the subjects in their sites and they don't bring any new content for the Internet. They create those pages with the only purpose of having traffic in order to monetize it. So I consider this last category black hats too.
A true whitehat never creates new pages and domains about subjects he don't have any idea about. He only promotes his existing sites with unique and useful content, not just affiliate links and google adsense on them.
Tuesday, January 31, 2006
Toolbar Pagerank Update Delays
Three months passed and still no PR update. However, in the last 2 weeks, there are changes on the future pagerank, which was very static before. Maybe Google do the PR updates more rarely now because they want to let new sites with PR0 longer. Or they hope webmasters involved in linking spam will eventually give up if they see no results in PR.
Or they just hope link selling/buying will stop if the period of PR update grows.
One thing is sure, we see changes in future PR since about 2 weeks now, so the PR should update within one month. At least this is my prediction. I constantly watched these future PRs, which are actually not very accurate, but they were not updating for a long period until two weeks ago.
Many are talking that pagerank is no longer important. Statistically probably it is still very important since only a few percent of webmasters are doing search engine optimization. Excepting the webmasters which are really obsessed by the Page Rank and every day they submit to directories and do link exchanges to increase the "green", for the rest of the sites, which should be 90% or more, PR is still very relevant.
Basically a search engine should look first for content, then for site popularity, which is how many backlinks the site has, how many visitors, etc.
Since PR is so public and popular now, Google definitely has some other rank, which they keep secretly. Some are talking about a trust rank(how old is your site, how clean, etc).
So now the SERPs are sorted by these 3 factors:
1) content
2) trust rank
3) page rank
Why I think content is first? If you dont have a page about "wild animals" you will not appear on any "wild animals" search.
Trust rank? If your domain is new or you are involved in link schemes or you hide content, do redirections then it is most likely your trust is low so you go down in PR
And about PR, there are rare cases where a page without any backlink appear on SERP, however even if it does, it will never be on top for a competitive keyword.
The key to a succesful website considering the three factors?
1) Build quality content useful for your visitors
2) Don't involve in link exchanges and respect http://www.google.com/webmasters/guidelines.html
3) Get some backlinks, but do it naturally and only from quality related websites
Or they just hope link selling/buying will stop if the period of PR update grows.
One thing is sure, we see changes in future PR since about 2 weeks now, so the PR should update within one month. At least this is my prediction. I constantly watched these future PRs, which are actually not very accurate, but they were not updating for a long period until two weeks ago.
Many are talking that pagerank is no longer important. Statistically probably it is still very important since only a few percent of webmasters are doing search engine optimization. Excepting the webmasters which are really obsessed by the Page Rank and every day they submit to directories and do link exchanges to increase the "green", for the rest of the sites, which should be 90% or more, PR is still very relevant.
Basically a search engine should look first for content, then for site popularity, which is how many backlinks the site has, how many visitors, etc.
Since PR is so public and popular now, Google definitely has some other rank, which they keep secretly. Some are talking about a trust rank(how old is your site, how clean, etc).
So now the SERPs are sorted by these 3 factors:
1) content
2) trust rank
3) page rank
Why I think content is first? If you dont have a page about "wild animals" you will not appear on any "wild animals" search.
Trust rank? If your domain is new or you are involved in link schemes or you hide content, do redirections then it is most likely your trust is low so you go down in PR
And about PR, there are rare cases where a page without any backlink appear on SERP, however even if it does, it will never be on top for a competitive keyword.
The key to a succesful website considering the three factors?
1) Build quality content useful for your visitors
2) Don't involve in link exchanges and respect http://www.google.com/webmasters/guidelines.html
3) Get some backlinks, but do it naturally and only from quality related websites
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