Hearing such news on a day when the Penguin algorithm update has been confirmed is a small taste of justice by those that have seen their ranks drop out of Google’s SERPS. Many of these people, which own small businesses, have been complaining for a week or more that they no longer have any search engine visibility in Google. These same people also allege that corporate interests were delivered in the Penguin algorithm which pushed small businesses aside. (more…)

First, you might want to read Google’s post titled “Another Step to Reward High Quality Sites.” Judging by the comments on their blog post, Google is not dishing out rewards. Instead, Google is destroying many legitimate businesses that rely on search traffic for their sole existence. Obviously, many webmasters are upset. (more…)

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. (more…)

What is troubling in this latest Google algorithm update is its apparent lack of algorithmic signals. Many of the smaller websites that lost their ranks actually provide more detailed information then the larger publishers. So why the change?

In an effort to combat spam, all search engines need to tweak their algorithms. But this latest update by Google was what is considered a major update. The update, according to Google, impacted nearly 12% of their search results. And since this algorithm update has a focus on onpage factors, the opportunity for a few high quality backlinks to correct the problem are limited. In fact, Google’s algorithm may disregard backlink signals for onpage factors. While nobody knows this yet, time will tell how to best cope with the sudden drop in ranks.

Also, it has come to light that some publishers have been “whitelisted” so that this latest algorithm update will not impact them. And as one would guess, it’s not the small mom and pop publishers that are the ones being whitelisted. Their voice is just too soft in a world where large online publishers use their financial resources to speak loudly and spread their words through press releases, video, social media and other online distribution channels.

It is my opinion that once you must start whitelisting websites, which have been impacted by an algorithm update, the algorithm is severely flawed. For if its signals can not pick up on true quality content, then it should be deactivated until it is revised to remove the need for whitelisting.

Those that would like to read more about how Google has shifted billions of dollars from small operations to the large publishers may view this post at CNN Money. While some bad apples have certainly been cut to the core with this algorithm update, I do take issue with CNN generalizing the shift occurring from “losers” to “winners.” Many of the “losers” that CNN is referring to are small family run businesses that have been devastated with major losses in traffic.

Additionally, more data regarding this transfer of traffic from small publishers to large publishers is available at Search Engine Watch. Detailed graphics are posted which display the decimation of small publishers and the amount of traffic picked up by large brands.

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. (more…)

Let’s be realistic. Business.com had a lot of dead listings in its directory. For quite some time the neglect became ever more apparent. This is the main reason why I refused to list sites there. Those dead listings are a drag on the domain authority or at least the pages where the listings are at. And the dead listings were all over.
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Such news is also putting the fear of God in some legitimate commenters as well. Determining what is spam and what is not is a purely subjective opinion best left to blog owners and not an algorithm or a Google Webspam employee that may not like your comment.

For too long blog comment spam has been a problem. This blog also gets spammed to death daily, which is why I am tough on comments. If they are legit I will approve them. If the comments are on the borderline, I may just delete them. Flat out spam comments are reported to Akismet.

If you want to read more about Google’s new policy regarding blog comment spam, you can read it here.

As a blog owner myself, part of me sides with Google on this. But ultimately a website is the responsibility of its owner. If the blog has been spammed to death, it would be far more appropriate to devalue all the links on such blogs to 0 instead of throwing out penalties for blog comment spams.

When you think about it, Google is pushing the small webmasters into a corner when it comes to link building. We all know Google’s stand on how to rank well - build a multi-million dollar website that can crush Twitter and you will rank well when tens of thousands of people link to you. In the real world, that does not happen too often. And in many niches outside of the webmaster niche, it is difficult for new businesses to improve their ranks. Blog commenting is yet another concern for what are typically many small mom and pop websites.

Regardless of our opinions, Google has spoken. The comment spamming must stop, so Google says. When commenting on blogs, make sure your comments will not be flagged as spam. The last thing anyone needs is to be labeled a blog comment spammer in Google’s eyes and hit with a penalty!

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.

For this issue, let me explain what I did try. Keep in mind I am trying to walk a tight rope here. I want Google to display the ads I want while still preserving my superior search engine positions. This is not an easy thing to do, trust me.

First, I of course applied the proper weight to the content I want Adsense to read in order to determine which ads to display. I enclosed the paragraphs with the comments below.

<!–– google_ad_section_start ––>
This is where content references to the ads I want displayed are.
<!–– google_ad_section_end ––>

Ok, this did not work. So I added some additional keyword rich content. Still no luck, but my search positions remained unchanged which was great. Then I decided to use my ability to ignore the content which was causing the too relevant ads to display. I used the code below.

<!–– google_ad_section_start(weight=ignore) ––>
This is where the content is I want ignored.
<!–– google_ad_section_end ––>

Unfortunately I still had no luck. Keep in mind that I am trying to preserve my search positions while still displaying Adsense advertisements that my users want. So I can’t change the page title, META Description, or a good portion of the other text which Adsense weighs too heavily in determining which ads to display.

In cases like mine, I truly believe there is a fundamental flaw in how Google determines which types of ads to display. Even if I can get appropriate Adsense ads to temporarily display, my CTR goes up and so does revenue. Unfortunately Google reverts back to the same ads that my users do not want to see. This brings into question the fact that Adsense advertisements that are too relevant actually may be counterproductive.

At this point I am faced with contacting the Adsense Team directly. Hopefully a human review of past data, from a Google employee, will support my claim that displaying relevant Adsense ads should be tweaked in this case. In the end, all parties would be happy including the advertisers, Google, my visitors, and of course myself.

If anyone has encountered this problem and would like to chime in with their opinions please do. If/when Adsense contacts me about the relevancy display issue, I will be sure to post back.

Let’s face it, Google is a master at analyzing data. From Google analytics to their own algorithm, Google does a pretty darn good job at crunching the number and detailing data. And part of their technology is devoted to identifying paid links. How does Google do it? Of course that is open to debate, but let me share some of my opinions and you make your own call.

I’ve seen it dozens of times in forums, a PR 5 or PR 6 for sale. Most of the time the seller says something like “only ten links will be sold.” This is your first clue that they are worthless links and you should avoid buying them. Why? Google can easily compare cached pages. You know, the history of the page so to speak. For years that page may have sat there with few outbound links on it then all of a sudden ten outbound links magically appear. This sends up a red flag and those links are simply devalued in most cases. Those that bought the links essentially paid for a link for some PR juice but in return get nothing.

Link placement is always a factor. Think of a page in sections when you look at it. You generally have a header, left side bar, right sidebar, the footer, and the body (where the content is). Outbound links in the footer tend to carry little value, especially if many are added all at once. The most valuable area of the page is obviously the body, where the real content is.

I could go into more details regarding paid links and placement, but that is beyond the scope of this post. My main goal is to educate the readers here and to save them money. If you are buying links from webmaster forums, consider the impact of 5, 10, or even 20 links appearing all at once. After a little thought, come to your own conclusion.

In the end it is the natural links that provide the best SEO benefit. This is why Matt Cutts specifically addresses this over and over. And to be quite honest, Google is very good at discarding paid links. Those with a paid link budget can actually gain greater SEO benefits by instead using that money to add the features and content that will make their site stand out from the rest.

There are a good number of people complaining about this algorithm update.  Apparently some sites have lost their ranks to more noteworthy brands.  This certainly could be the reason why so many webmasters think big name companies are getting preference in the serps over their more relevant websites.

To put some water on this fire, Matt Cutts has publicly acknowledged that a change was recently made to Google’s algorithm.  According to Matt, this is not a major update but one of the 300-400 minor updates they make yearly.  Matt also noted that the change would probably not even be noticed by the majority of webmasters.

If you browse the top webmaster forums, you will notice there are a fair number of people complaining that their ranks have simply disappeared.  This is especially true for their homepages.

Matt Cutts spoke on a video regarding this subject.  You can view this video below.