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March 30 2004
Google changes, latest update
- do you have the right content, are you long-term enough
to want Google?
If you want to know exactly what is going on right now with
Google, you may want to read this artical.
The search engine market is a forever changing industry,
and it is evolving just as fast as the Internet itself has.
The whole Industry is twisting and changing like never before
and the facts could suggest we are seeing another new shake
up. The changes seen in Novembers Google index, have created
many casulaties in the rankings, and firms have been asking
the question - what is Google doing. We look at the brief
history, the technology drivers and bring you up to date on
our findings.
The newest change we see on Google is the new 'simple look'
on the search engine results. Find our more by clicking here
History
The growth we have seen in the Internet has not been by accident,
companies have been investing in Internet technology for a
long time. Up until now we have been witnessing the Internet
evelotion process.
The early technologies we used was based around centralised
computing systems such as mainframes, these huge boxes were
at the hart of computing not so long ago. Now we have seen
distributed architecture, switched LANS/WANS, TCP/IP as mechanisms
for expanding networks and transporting data. Routing protocols
spurted the growth for Cisco, and protocols were modified.
OSPF and EIGRP were developed that offered wider geographical
reaching networks than before, technologies such as ATM were
developed and fast speed layer 2 networks were available to
everyone all over the world. Layer 2 and Layer 3 networks
have all been optimised, QOS has been introduced and technologies
such as MPLS has linked this up all over the world. When we
look at a higher layer of the Internet i.e. past the OSI Model
we see a new bread of optimisation unfolding. This new layer
of architecture is where SEO sits, it basically is the linking
of network, website and user to the search engine robots.
The tasks needed in this area have been slowly getting more
complicated, now with the latest changes in Google it has
formed yet another layer of complexity. Now to get a better
prespective on this lets go back to global networks:
With high speed switching technology, data can transverse
the globe at wirespeed rates to any destination with such
infrustructure deployed. We now have an arrangement of technology
we can use for our own benefit. These are Java, MPLS, ADSL/Broadband,
compression techniques, media streaming techiques, 3G and
so on. The Potential of the Internet is now becoming clear
and companies are now paying attention to the realities.
The Expansion Of Google's Search Engine
Just as the Internt grows so does Google, at the hart of
google is the robot or software platform that has been developed
by Google. This thing actually runs on around 15,000 normal
PCs clustered together in groups all over the world.
The robot scans the Internet (around 3.4 to 4 billion sites)
and trys to organise this mass of information it has into
some sort of viewable system via it's search engine. At the
hart of the robot is something called pagerank. This is a
measure of link satuation, the growth of your site, content,
and other factors. Google have tried to make their search
engine the best resource for information but keyword spammers
have been manipulating the system to produce low quality commercial
sites. Now Google are moving to an IPO, and Google want to
be floating it's company it needs to look at the commercial
side of the business but also keep its reputation as the worlds
best search engines. Google will grow up into another .Com
giant just like Cisco.
Google's search engine listings are not manually produced,
they are produced automatically by way of calculating the
many varables inside the pagerank technology. The single atrributes
that change the behaviour of this thing have been modified,
and while Google never go public with this information we
have tried to put the puzzle together and ask the question
what has changed?
What's with the changed in Google? The research
we done found the following experiences:
A large authority site is up across the board. Subpages for
competitive phrases are way up (previously some of them languished
for lack of PR). The site has a hierarchical linking structure.
Where the phrases dropped, though, and the terms were in
the dictionary, there were no expert inbounds... true of new
e-commerce sites in particular
On other sites, with the title, heading, text, nav link optimization,
with phrases not in the dictionary, rankings are holding absolutely
solid
Our old, breadwinner sites generally serve cloaked low quality
content to googlebot. By low quality content, I mean keyword
rich gibberash-like, phrases and snippits not expected to
be very comprehensible to humans. This content was frequently
generated by starting out with our client content and "summarizing"
it - that is editing it to remove "noise" words
and raise the concentration of target keywords for the market.
Other times, we just free association composed keyword rich
quasi-gibberish content for these sites.
These sites have been high performers for us in the past
on Google. We made a lot of money with this technique. They
all got hit pretty hard with Florida and their traffic from
google search is way down. Which we have pretty much expected.
About half a year ago, we decided that these techniques could
not be long term stable. We began producing a new set of sites
with high quality content, good user interface design and
a long term stable focus. We hired writers and editors to
compose interesting, compelling human oriented content with
a strong voice on topics defined by our market and promotion
requirements. Traffic to these new sites from Google search
is way up and is continuing to rise. We have not pushed very
close to the seo edge with these sites.
First, the florida-relevant differences
between our "old" and "new" sites supports
the over-optimization filter and penalty hypothesis: Our old
sites might be considered "over-optimized" and our
new sites are not. The pages for the old sites each focus
on a target keyword that is always in the title, description,
h1 tag and repeated in the body of the page. The pages for
the new sites are more varied and less focused. 2. Our old
sites do not usually contain good english sentences. If google
is applying any kind of semantical analysis, these pages might
be flagged.
In one cluster of sites that I have, 4 out of 5 sites are
downgraded and one is as it is. The search term is the same.
Thus the theory of specific terms is not holding up (and the
term of this cluster is a top 50 search term).
What Other Facters?
800lb gorilla sites with high pr's were untouched even for
competitive words, PR7 or higher were not effected.
It is common knowledge in the SE community that a document
produced by Krishna Bharat speaks on a search ranking technology.
Kirshna now works for Google so we think it gives us an insight
into what we can expect in the future, if it is not already
here today.
Here
is the link
More
of Krishna Bharat's work
Conclusion
The new changes are a good thing in the long-run as it builds
up authoritive domains, in these so called domains are keyword
link parameters that are measured on varios layers to find
out it's keyword saturation. It offers a highly sophisticated
way of calculating a suitable site.
It does add extra layers of complexity to search engine optimisation
work, so the cost of SEO will likely increase.
So it looks as though plenty of content and good quality
links are what counts!, but most importantly good links to
and from directories and sites that compiment your service
and build your identity - The question you need to ask yourself
is are you long-term for Google?
PPC campaigns can cost millions pounds a year for large
firms, developing a search engine optimisation program is
a long term objective and is not a short process, however
ppc is a way to stabalise your position.
We offer free consultation regarding feasibility for any
search engine promotion, please send us an email with your
domain or call our office.
You can on the other hand search the Internet or view our
website for more information.
Google
Facts
Linking
schemes do not increase a given site's PageRank.
Web Site Ranking Explained,
Web
Site Submission, Search
Engine Optimisation Basics,
Internet
Advertising, Google Search Engine Optimisation
Guidlines,
Flash
Intros, Website
Templates
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