Toolbar >> Center of Conspiracy Theory??

[randfish]

This post is pure speculation and I have no evidence of this. I do know that GGs engineers are very smart and wily...

If you were a GG engineer and you were concerned that people in the SEO industry were fooling around with your well orchestrated system of ordering results, what would you do?

Take steps to counter that threat.

I would think that pure algorithm complexity is not enough. Eventually, every shift you make would be caught by the community, and while it might take months to be recognized and introduced, with the industry growing so quickly thanks to the money that can be made off of top rankings, you're in a lose-lose situation in the long-run.

So, to counter the threat, you produce a tool that watches SEOers for you - the GG toolbar. It tracks what websites everyone visits, how long they stay, etc. You know that SEOs use this toolbar, especially because you've included pagerank into it. Other factors can help you flag and identify SEOers too - multiple searches for the same term all the time, constant visits to a site and the sites that link to it, etc.

So, you could (I'm not saying they do - it's too conspiratorial for me) flag SEOers and flag their 'Primary Sites' - the sites they search for a lot and make requests about a lot, etc. They could then discount the value of any links that are built on pages that those SEOers visit... mkaing our job a little tough.

What do you all think? Don't worry I know I'm crazy

[randfish]

No takers, huh? Figures... Conspiracies were all the rage back in the X-Files years but now it's just a bunch of straight laced narcs 'round here. ;-)

[Peter (IMC)]

hmm,.. if that would be true then my sites should be doing really bad,.. shouldn't they?






They´re doing great!

[EGOL]

google has data from lots of other sources too... toolbar, adsense, adwords, api checking, backlink sources.... SEOs hand all of this info over to them.

I don't think that google is using this info to penalize SEOs. Think about this. If someone is working really hard to get a site up then that site would have to offer something of value or it would not be worth the SEO's time.

IMO, google is starting to count links and onpage SEO elements less and placing increasing importance on unique and non repetitious content. That is why you see all of the giant travel sites with duplicate textblocks and repetitious pages dropping from view.

[randfish]

EGOL - I think that's a good point, but would a GG engineer think the same way that you do? If GG wants completely unbiased results, wouldn't they try to restrict the value of manually built or SEO influenced links and give greater value to organically built links that had no SEO influence?

Don't worry, I still think my theory is bat-sh**-crazy.

[edixon]

On one hand, it would be good for google to screw w/ SEOers, they are ruining the credibility of their date. On the other hand, google has single handedly created satalite markets, that although they do not control directly, they are responsible for. (I do realize seo was around before google)

Google killing off SEOs would be suicide, as they need all the users they can get, by any means necessisary. If they can boost 10million searches a day, that looks good for their stock, dosnt matter if 1 million are fake.

[randfish]

I don't know about that edixon. GG may slightly appreciate the extra 1mil searches, but they would probably rather have greater relevance. The more people have success using GG, the better the company will do in both the long and short run. If anything starts to interfere with that relevance, people will start to try Yahoo, MSN, etc. - GG's worst nightmare.

[shahid]

Link is the core of google algorithm whether for PR or allinanchor. They can not take a U turn and go back to the onpage factors of pre-google era where any page can be optimized in an few hours and is ready for competition( manipulation in their terms). Links( specially when needed in 100s or 1000s) require time and money. They can use sandbox, ignore or discount irrelevent links, give more weightage to themed links or use any different scale to rate links but they can not put links out of their algo.

[EGOL]

This thread is a bit old but since it has been bumped up I will add a two more cents...

IMO we are right now in a time where it is still possible to get good rankings on most terms by getting a few links in trade or purchasing them. However, as the web grows a few sites will become dominant because they have mastered the ability of getting massive numbers of links for free. These are the content rich sites that libraries, universities and hobby sites link to.

The owners of these sites don't have to fool anyone and they don't have to do anything shady. They get top rankings on their merits. They have thousands of inbound links - strong ones - from hundreds and hundreds of different domains scattered all around the world.

When I see people posting that they are spending thousands a month on backlinks I am wondering if they would have better success spending that same amount on people who will write content, build tools and create informative graphics.

As the web grows and the content sites gain momentum it will start to take enormous expenditures of money to beat them by purchasing links. The amount of links needed will go up up up and that will be monthly expense but the content sites only spend one time for their linkage then own it forever.

The expense line and the investment line will cross at some point.

[EGOL]

Two more cents.....

Someday, google will rank a site mainly, if not entirely, by its content. You can bull**** people with links but content is the only measure of true value.

[earlpearl]

I don't think the idea has any merit. But what do I know. Its late Saturday and I'm finishing a long week of work. But productive.

First google has changed the importance of the tool bar and the relevance of its backlinks command. Neither have the relevance they had earlier. That clearly screwed with SEO's heads. They introduced Florida...scr**ed with SEO's heads. They have all sorts of data to measure traffic importance, etc. The number of SEO's working on sites is so miniscule to the number of searches.

I'm interested in EGOL's comments. I truly don't look into many sites and types of sites that he referenced. Sites with wide and enormous and valuable content that draw links from authority areas (libraries, universities, etc.) and tons of those links. I can't comment with any knowledge in that world.

I saw somewhere, I believe quoting a ggle engineer, that their algo has about 150 components. Just tinker with a few elements and the SERPs can change dramatically, as evidentally travel sites did. Add an element or two and the SERPs will change again. Who needs to jerk around with the toolbar; its already less relevant than it was.

I do believe this is all subject to continuing change and its relevant to monitor this, stay in touch and try and stay a step ahead through common experience. After all is said and done, true search relevance, forgetting google profits, is based on content. Backlinks are theoretically just a measure of the popularity of content. As SEO manipulate backlink info and its clear that content loses its importance, just change the algo's to emphasize another way to measure the importance of a site.

Who needs a conspiracy?

Dave

[EGOL]

Here are a couple of those sites...

webmd.com
webelements.com
nytimes.com

And one of our members, BadAstro, runs badastronomy.com

[earlpearl]

Thanks EGOL. I need to broaden my horizons.