Google, which has consistently preached that webmasters should focus on unique and compelling content, has apparently closed its directory. While branded with the Google name, and residing on a Google URL, this directory was simply scraped from DMOZ.

What is interesting is how the Panda algorithm update was supposed to nail scraper sites to the wall, Google’s scraped directory survived Panda quite well. It’s these mixed signals, and double standards, which sets a horrible example for webmasters that are truly working hard to offer their visitors value through unique and detailed content.

As any successful website owner will tell you, if you are not getting traffic from Google you are nothing. Sadly, this is true in many cases. And Google’s latest algorithm update, which are dubbed Farmer and Panda, there were obviously some winners and some losers. What has come to light is that many of the losers were mainly small mom and pop publishers which lack SEO skills and the budget to hire SEO professionals. You know the mom and pop type sites - the ones that typically have a limited amount of niche traffic but are heavily dependent on traffic to maintain their businesses. And there are some reports that already some smaller sites have closed their doors.

For those that have held top positions in Google, they understand that their largest competitor has become Google. Regardless of how popular ones site is, Google is creeping into the mix by competing for organic traffic in many niches. And folks, they are continuing to expand at an alarming rate. This is why I felt it important to discuss some of the problems even top SEO professionals are coping with.

As an example of what I am talking about, do a quick Google search for dishwasher. Only the top two organic listings are above the fold. Searchers are bombarded with Adwords ads, a related searches box and shopping results. While this is not new, I have witnessed the expansion of Google’s desire to expand their reach into a variety of products and niches. Why is Google doing this?

As with any website, it is only natural to provide users with as much information onsite as possible. What Google is doing is no different. They have been moving away from their search business model to a find business model. And Google is making every effort to monetize this traffic.

I think we’ve all had the problem before as webmasters. You know, you add a new page or create a new website and the Google Adsense ads are completely off topic and irrelevant. And we’ve heard the standard solutions to fix the problem, and in many cases they work as intended. The problem is this: What if highly relevant ads are not generating the profit, the CTR, and the interest of your visitors?

This is a current problem I am struggling with. The site in question is what many would consider an authority. It gets good traffic, has plenty of natural backlinks, great organic search positions, and of course a significant amount of traffic. The problem is that the people visiting the page are not interested in the ads that Google believes should be displayed. The ads I think should be displayed pay ten times as much and receive twice the CTR when they are displayed. The problem is displaying them permanently.

If you notice in my previous posts, PageRank has been a big issue lately.  The 9/26/2008 PR update had some major problems, some of which included pages only days old getting assigned PR.  It appears Google has responded to this outcry and has rolled back the PR to its previous state on 9/25/2008.

At first there was a lot of commotion about the 9/26/2008 PR update.  Many deserving Websites lost PR and new pages, not even a week old, gained PR.  After some thought, I wonder if the PR update we saw was Google’s internal PR being exported.  The evidence seems to point in that direction.

As I noted in my last post, the latest Google PR update on 9/26/2008 was quite abnormal.  Deserving sites that should have got PR actually lost PR.  Undeserving and/or sites not promoted gained PR.  The day after this PR update, and on Google’s birthday, Webmasters are lashing out at Google.  Some are even calling Google’s PR algorithm as being broken and badly neglected.

Here’s some highlights of the talk going on…

In this Digital Point post, a Website owner claims that he received a PR 3 on a page that he posted just yesterday.  He claims it is not even indexed in Google Search yet.

Also in the same thread, this post from another Webmaster claims he received a PR 2 from a blog post he made just days prior.

Well, here comes yet another Google PR update.  It seems that with each update I am left scratching my head how and why Google calculates PR.

I’m not going to name any URLs, but just visualize this.  Two PR 3 directories, which were created about the same time, each having a much different backlink profile.  I will take a look at these in more detail in this post.

The first PR 3 directory has a total of 905 backlinks reported by Yahoo Site Explorer.  Looking at these backlinks, I can see that none have any PR.  In fact, most of the links are from other directories.

In the forums, I see a lot of people posting how successful they are with Adsense, and soon to follow comes dozens of replies asking what the niche is.  The original poster normally never gives away their niche or only offers a very general idea.  The question is, if a profitable and low competition niche was dropped right in your lap could you monetize it?

I’ve been keeping an eye on a specific forum topic about a supposed high paying site that earns just under five figures per month in revenue.  What is interesting about this topic is that a lot of people criticized the poster for what they believe is impossible.  But on closer inspection, this very simple site might be earning a boatload of money.

Many in the Webmaster community have been complaining of reduced Google Adsense earnings since the beginning of the year.  It appears we may finally have some answers as to why earnings are down.

Data released on Monday by comScore reports that in January, surfers clicked on 7% fewer ads then the previous month.  Additionally, paid clicks were flat compared to the same period last year.

As most Adsense publishers know, late last year Google modified Adsense ads by making only the Title and URL of the ad clickable.  While reducing accidental clicks and improving value for the advertiser, this has resulted in lower income for Google and their publishers.

I always get a kick out of the Pagerank (PR) debate that occurs in the webmaster community.  This is one of those hot topics where about half the people say Pagerank means nothing while the other half believes it does.  I personally side with those that believe Pagerank is important.

It seems that most everyone refuses to look at Google’s own explanation of Pagerank.  A quote from this page notes:

PageRank reflects Google’s view of the importance of web pages by considering more than 500 million variables and 2 billion terms. Pages that Google believes are important pages receive a higher PageRank and are more likely to appear at the top of the search results.