the -noblog option or blog tab: can it be done? Options

[Ruud]

I am pretty sure there is a big difference between sites that link to other sites and sites that are authorities

Great example.

Fora and blogs are often oustanding and authoritive sources of information because they're written by people who do or love the thing they write about - but even better; they know what they're talking about; they're an authority of some kind in that area.

Take bragadocchio's search for web standards css as an example. The blogs on the first SERP contain very valid, very authoritive information.

Likewise a search for css 3 column layout produced relevant blogs.

In both instances I know that these are referenced throughout the community. We know that they are authoritive. And they're not afraid to link out - not to other blogs or to bla-bla blogs but to relevant, on topic content.

Compare this search for microsoft projects with the results for the search microsoft projects blog. Same goes for "microsoft development" repeated with "blog".

If you want to read about Microsoft's [ongoing] projects you're better of reading the blogs....

So: it is not the fact that certain blogs link to other content (theme) it is the fact that they provide highly specialised, on topic information about certain searches. This makes them an authority, imo.

As to the number of blogs published/updated/read/abandoned... that is useless information they're after. It doesn't tell you anything about the relevance of that blog. One blog with one post about one very specific solution to IE's box model bug (CSS) is and remains more relevant than a daily updated multi-page blog about someone's daily wanderings on this planet.

If you scour the web you will find thousands of abandoned websites and website projects. An equally high number of well run websites that are read by "even less". That in no way means there are no good websites, that websites are not visited, read and referenced as a whole, etc.

Ruud

[rcjordan]

>it just expands the hub. I don't see how that will help a blog rank better.

It's not the blogs' rankings that's the problem, it's the use of their prolific link-making capabilities to falsely elevate their target as hubs.

Here blogdex admits/explains why you'll see porn sites rise through their rankings. A similar process works with Google's pagerank.
http://blogdex.net/news/

But, when the SE devalues the links generated by blogs (incoming as well as outgoing) it will have the effect of reducing a blog's individual position in the serps, too.

[rustybrick]

when the SE devalues the links generated by blogs

Will they?

[Ruud]

The only thing I see that can be done in regard to blog-style linking is filtering on "trackback". And from what I see in Google they must already have done that. No links lead to the trackback pages itself. Searching on trackback in the URL still produces relevant links about trackback itself with an occassional trackback link itself.

I really think that an optional meta tag to have your blog included in a special blog index is the only way SE's can pull out the bla-bla blogs from the main index. For the posters it would be good news because the chance of getting found on a search is so much more better when only searched within "blogs" than within the whole main index. A similar approach could be (should be) used for fora. Win-win. Very specific results for the searches - better chance of targetted traffic for the owner.

Ruud

[rcjordan]

Now for those that love a good conspiracy theory....

Google goes Atom


Changing Blogger's fingerprints? Nah! Well, maybe....

[wayne h]

I am always fascinated by the hostility that many static website owners (not all of course... ) have towards blogs.

The argument is often made that many blogs are abandoned. So are many websites.

I find a ton of old abandoned never updated (in the memory of anyone now living) websites in the SERPs. Is that hostility extended to them, and websites are suddenly to be excluded too because some were...gasp...abandoned?

One of the main problems is the lack of distinguishing of blogs that discuss a specific topic, often from an expert opinion, from the online diary. There is a huge difference between a blog that discusses what is happening at a company, and a diary that discusses the cheese sandwich eaten for lunch.

While both are referred to as "blogs", they are entirely different. I never discuss lunch on my blogs, and neither do many of the leading blogs in their topic areas. Maybe, I'll discuss my lunch some day, and become part of the evil. :evil:

Wayne Hurlbert

[rcjordan]

Feb 23 - Quote from a certain Google rep:

...over the last few weeks, Google has started deploying better technology that negates the effect of blog comment spamming. The changes haven't fully rolled out yet...

[Ruud]

Where blog comment spamming would refer to those sites that on purpose spam blogs to increase pagerank?

Ruud

[rcjordan]

>would refer to those sites that on purpose spam blogs to increase pagerank?


Yes. But search engines, google included, usually aren't too careful with the scalpel when they go in to remove a cancer. Collateral damage tends to be high.

[Everyman]

Whether or not Google should suppress blogs is an interesting question. If Google decides to do so, they'll probably use a sledgehammer. Instead, what they should try first is to solve the Google bomb problem, and then see what the situation looks like.

An easy fix for many bombs: Google should not use terms in external links to boost the rank of a page on those terms, unless those terms are on the page itself. This is a no-brainer. But it means another CPU cycle per link, which is why Google won't do it.

Google Watch has started what we hope will be The Last Google Bomb. We want to wake up certain out-of-touch executives that contrary to what Craig Silverstein has suggested, Google bombs are not cute and harmless.

You know what to do....

[Everyman]

Google Bomb progress report:

As far as I can tell, only one of my three "out-of-touch executives" links to Google's corporate executives page has kicked in. This is from the PR 7 scroogle.org page. Two more are in place on PR 6 pages that have yet to get counted.

Even with this one link, the Google Bomb "out-of-touch executives" is now forcing Google's page to show up in a search at position 21 out of about 53. It's still a very weak Google Bomb, because the quotation marks are required in the search box. But considering that Google's page is PR 10, that's at least evidence that the bomb will work in theory.

Now all I need is more co-conspirators to add links to their pages....

[Everyman]

Darn, I'm not doing all that well in Google. But in Yahoo, I'm already at number one for "out-of-touch executives" -- and this is true whether or not you use the quotation marks, and whether or not you use the hyphens.

It looks like Yahoo-bombing will be all the rage now, because it's so easy. Yahoo's only saving grace is that unlike Google, Yahoo isn't stupid enough to feature an "I'm feeling lucky" button.

[Everyman]

Success. Number one for "out-of-touch executives"

-- On Google it's number one ("I'm Feeling Lucky" honors)
-- On Yahoo it's number one
-- On MSN it's number one

[Everyman]

-- and number one on Alltheweb

Alltheweb just switched over to Yahoo results. Will AltaVista be next?
Are there no more mountains for my Google Bomb to climb?

[Grumpus]

Cool. This is the first time Cre8asite has been on the first page for a GoogleBomb, not to mention being a part of the planning that started the "out of touch executives" bomb. Thanks for the fun, Everyman.

G.

[Everyman]

Now number one in Google, Yahoo, MSN, Alltheweb, Altavista. This is even true without quotation marks or without hyphens.

It was interesting that the first week or two, this forum and my domains pushing this Google bomb were riding right below the actual Google execs.html page that I was targeting. That was the special boost for fresh pages that we're all so familiar with. Now these pages have dropped below the fold, where they belong in a search for "out of touch executives."

But the bomb itself is still firmly planted at number one, and I think it will stay there a good long time.

This entire experiment demonstrates that Google and Yahoo are ranking pages on the cheap. The word "touch" is not on Google's page, and it's not rocket science to figure this out. They don't want to invest the CPU cycles required to do a decent job of analyzing content on the page. Any additional CPU cycles, if they're done on-the-fly after the search terms are received from the searcher, means a slowdown in response time.

And any slowdown in response means you'd probably need 20,000 computers instead of 10,000 computers to recover the speed you lost. I'm beginning to believe that the massive spam we see in both Google and Yahoo is because they're more interested in their bottom line than in their search excellence. Whip out the SERPs, go for the 200 million searches per day, grab all the advertising revenue, cut corners wherever you can, and dazzle the media by claiming that your only interest is in excellence.

The media has swallowed it hook, line, and sinker. They think Google, in particular, is an example of corporate excellence and innovation. Bah, humbug.

[Black_Knight]

The word "executives" doesn't seem to appear on the page either, and yet we all know that's what it is about. Yet the only way the search engine can know is through applied semantics and through link-word analysis (or link reputation).

Most so-called Googlebombs are entirely pointless as anything but amusement to the initiated. Of all the Googlebombs that have hit the headlines, only a very few, such as "weapons of mass destruction" was a term anyone would be likely to search for in any instance except to see the Googlebomb effect they'd been told about.

I'd certainly never made an active search for 'out of touch executives' before, and predict that I never would have except for the other kind of PR effect - the publicity you managed to get for the term, and the curiosity to see it having heard of it.

The more worrying thing is when a search for "Google executives" or "Who runs Google" has a high-placed listing in the SERPs for a negative presentation. Yet that kind of situation has been happening for as long as there have been search engines.

Bowmac Internet had such an experience recently, where a search for their own company name brought up a thread in these forums where an apparently unhappy customer was letting rip about them. That's not a Googlebomb, but is something that can happen in any and all search engines, and happens every day.

In fact, it is so established that people set up entire domains just to attack companies. For examples see all the 'sucks' domains out there that try to do this all the time.
http://www.google.co.uk/search?sourceid=na...llinurl%3Asucks

[Ruud]

OK, maybe I'm being dense here but between where this thread has gone and where the copy <> links thread is at, are we saying that linking is the #2 factor and anchor text linking the #1?

If so, then semantics is an additional downfall for the PR models out there, right? I mean, this way the web really becomes a model of trust: if they say it is about XYZ, it has to be XYZ.

Thinking on, this would be THE ultimate black-hat SEO trick, right? You cannot start to penalize sites for certain anchor text links because this way via a thread like this we could bomb ANY company out of the #1 results.

So basically, and now I'm not asking questions but thinking out loud on the paths laid out, what we're talking about is that until either the speed/power or the money comes along to go through the *fresh* results this trick will work. It is easy to spot but no-one does it because we all want our fresh index to be there a.s.a.p.

Have any test been done with this with terms one would search for? As Black_Knight pointed out, many of these projects are pointless....

Ruud

[Everyman]

Bowmac Internet had such an experience recently, where a search for their own company name brought up a thread in these forums where an apparently unhappy customer was letting rip about them. That's not a Googlebomb, but is something that can happen in any and all search engines, and happens every day.

I could have done this with any term, and targeted any page -- whether it was a legitimate page that I wanted to describe adversely with my terms, or whether it was my own adverse page that I put up, that I wanted to rank highly for an information term such as "Google executives."

You can call one a Google bomb and not call the other a Google bomb -- I don't really care about how you chose to define "Google bomb." And yes, it certainly depends on how competitive the keywords are. "Google executives" would be harder than "out-of-touch executives" was. Instead of five domains I might need fifteen. And "Britney Spears" would be even harder -- I might need a hundred domains. We all know that the worse the competition, the harder it is. So what's your point?

My point in that search engines -- Google and Yahoo specifically -- are ranking on the cheap. Anchor text in links is a poor man's content analyzer that allows you to snapshot the content of a page with fewer CPU cycles. And furthermore, it's a "two-fer" -- two for the price of one. You get link popularity factored in at the same time as you construct a cheap mini-keyword dictionary of a page.

Cheap, cheap, cheap. For all the high-sounding, long-winded threads about Hilltop this, and topic-sensitive PageRank that, and CIRCA the other thing, what it amounts to is that Google and Yahoo are little better than the spammers who play them like a violin. Google/Yahoo and the spammers deserve each other.

[rcjordan]

>Instead of five domains I might need fifteen. And "Britney Spears" would be even harder -- I might need a hundred domains. We all know that the worse the competition, the harder it is.

Exactly. Automate the process and a few thousand legitimate, independently owned domains linking back with varied, yet tuned/themed backlinks are but a click away.