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A friend asked me today - "Have you read about the Zebra Update?"
Frankly all I knew about the over hyped concept of "zebra update" is that people screaming their lungs out about a new penalty system that google may roll out to punish people spamming the social media signals to influence google SERPs.
I told her I will wait till the update actually rolls out. I will let the Experts form their opinion first. I will then see which opinion matches my analysis or shatters my analysis and then decide to follow that to prevent any social media spamming I might be doing.
She shared a link from webmarketinggroup.co.uk which I feel is a stupid marketing ploy by this company to scare business owners engaging is social media into buying seo service. They claim their sources within google inform them ......
Zebra is going to town on social...
*Too many retweets with keywords included around a link
*Facebook updates with too many shares from people not in your industry
*Any Google+ shares as this will look spammy (Google+ is a graveyard right, so any activity looks suspicious?!)
*Owning a Pinterest page - brands only use these for SEO benefit no?
All the above is pure bull****. Unfortunately this refined bull**** ranks #1 for the search phrase "Google Zebra Update" which my friend perhaps searched to find out about the zebra update.
I know the experts here dont care much about this yet. But I am building this post with a hope that at least it will guide some naive people in the right direction than making silly assumption based on nonsense mentioned above.
If the Zebra Update ever comes out it will be based on the following principles. Please add your own thoughts which you think would probably be used by Zebra to trample Social Media spammers.
1. Trust
Social media is about people and NOT about bots tweeting, +1ing, Liking your links. Like the trust factor we talk about on website Google will look for trust in those profiles that share your social media activity. It is freaking easy to tell apart a real social media profile and a fake one. So like junk links, fake social medial signals that you generate in bulk will be banished. If you are hiring those oDesk and Fiverr chaps to build 1000 authentic facebook likes from America you will be in for a rough ride.
2. Geographic Filters
Exactly in the same way how we look for links from British sites to push the rank of a website on google.co.uk, Google will seek to validate the location of the users who share your stories or activities.
If you are among those who run a local business in Lexington, MA, USA and have 10,000 twitter followers from Philipines, India, Pakistan, Bangladesh, Ukraine, etc etc you are in for a rough ride.
3. Freak Spikes in Activity
Natural recommendations like links or social activities do not normally spike in very short intervals like spam does. So freak spikes in re-tweets, follower count, FB likes, +1s etc will be easily detected. Try asking some spammer to share your story in irregular intervals ranging between 10-30 minutes and place 1000 such shares/likes/tweets on a post. I bet there would be none. (if you find one do let me know though )
4. Viral nature and Behavioural pattern matches
If at all a post is gaining popularity, it spreads in a viral nature. Ideally this is how a naturally viral post and a fake viral post will look like.
Last edited by NewDelhiSEO; Feb 11th, 2013 at 02:39 PM.
Whatever they name it, it won't change the fact that google has an increasing harder time battling spam, and they efforts have greatly diminished the quality of organic search.
Whatever they name it, it won't change the fact that google has an increasing harder time battling spam, and they efforts have greatly diminished the quality of organic search.
Or they have greatest diminished your manipulation effectiveness and you are quite pissy about that.
Whatever they name it, it won't change the fact that google has an increasing harder time battling spam, and they efforts have greatly diminished the quality of organic search.
Is it really about battling spam ?? If I was google I would say that publically too, in an effort to dispell the notion that google might just be trying to manipulate the serps to increase ppc campaigns... doh ! - like, what else do they and the shareholders care about ... really ?
However i do agree the serps are a mess, heavy weightings towards big companies and corporations with big ppc budgets and Likes now top the charts, and various sites and directories like yelp etc can return several results in the top 10. The little guy or small business is now tipped off the table. I've been in this industry for 15 years now and until penguin/panda i always the saw the internet as a great leveller, the little guy could compete with the big guy. Dont see that any more.
I do see swathes of outrage, upset and disgust over what has happened in the last 12 months with repeated calls for people to abandon google. I cant see that happening yet, but then again people left yahoo to go to google, left IE to go to firefox and left myspace to go to FB. It could happen - maybe. IMO google is now beyond a search engine and really wants to be a paid directory, and its other services and data gathering along with such control over certain businesses futures, is just too much power in one companys hands.
Google should have its wings clipped and people should vote with their feet. Googles agenda is clear as long as you dont believe them :-)
The only conclusion that I think is about all the Google updates that he wants the businesses to more focus on PPC campaigns so that Google can earn more.
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Originally Posted by fathom
