How are blogs identified? Options

[whitemark]

I've been curious about this for some time now ... how can Google (or Yahoo or MSN search) identify that a site is/has a blog?

[Black_Knight]

I don't think it needs to. All it needs to recognize is that a site (or part thereof) updates often, is topically or temporally interesting, and contains meaningful links. Whether that is technically a blog, or something else being used in a blog-like manner really doesn't matter to Google (or the others).

[bwelford]

I believe that the search engine robots and algorithms would treat a posting on a blog in exactly the same way as a web page or mini-web page. So that is the beauty of blogs from a search engine visibility point of view. They usually have keyword-appropriate text and pick up lots of back links through the whole trackback system. Even comments may be helpful to spiders in identifying related concept blog entries, although this whole 'no follow' attribute for comments may mean that such links don't get weighted in the Google algorithm.

However that's not the end of the story. A blog also has a 'parallel' content-indexing system in its RSS or Atom newsfeed. This also is being catalogued and indexed in a whole raft of aggregators and databases. Quite how this figures into the search engine algorithm process is unclear to most of us and possibly to the search engines themselves. That's why the Act Jeeves acquisition of Bloglines raises so many interesting question marks. :?

[Allergic]

Usually the clean code and specially the archive system of blog help a lot to get good ranking. Also, as you mention, the RSS will/should be a good factor. The topic centric approach of some blog is also helpful.

My photo blog, where I usually put only a few words to describe my picture, is often in the top 10 in Google !

[whitemark]

I don't think it needs to. All it needs to recognize is that a site (or part thereof) updates often, is topically or temporally interesting, and contains meaningful links ...

That's a very interesting view, especially since its a departure from the more popular perspective that a blog based site is more favored than 'ordinary' sites by search engines.

I've been confused about this for some time now because technically a blog is more advanced - as Barry and Allergic mentioned it has a 'parallel content system', feeds, and also an update notification system through pinging. These are/could be a real boon for search engine crawlers as they not only tell when a site has been updated (through pings) but also what page has been updated (through feeds). So perhaps its not blogs per se that are automatically search engine friendly but the technology used to create and maintain them.

Is that a fair assumption?

[Black_Knight]

I'd say that was a very fair assumption.

I'd add one proviso to that (don't I always) which is that it is not even the technology that helps, but the effects thereof. If you were to attain the illusion of all the same benefits with just hard graft and hand-coding, I think you'd see all the same benefits.

[mugshot]

Blogs being favored more by search engines sounds like a myth as real as the lochness monster. But that's just me. When blogs got suddenly popularized over the last year (maybe more), I noticed that the search engines suddenly picked up blog after blog. Then it occured to me! Search engines have always loved fresh content, updated pages, and the likes. With blogs emerging from every corner of the world, search engines were't prepared to handle the amount of freshly updated content. At that time, all the engines' algorithm was designed to detect fresh content, hence the theory of why blogs were loved by search engines :-) All this in addition to the fact that blogs were created to be se-friendly...I guess.

Sounds far fetched? It's just my theory!! :twisted:

[whitemark]

Sounds far fetched? It's just my theory!!

No, it doesn't sound far fetched at all. A lot of what you said makes sense (well, atleast to me :). Like both you and Ammon said, blogs are preffered by search engines not because they are blogs but because they offer regularly updated topical content.

It would be interesting to compare the ranking of a similar 'ordinary' website with a blog on the search engines.

[send2paul]

Hmmmm.... an interesting topic.

I posted this: http://www.cre8asiteforums.com/forums/inde...showtopic=21964 recently, which was all about how I'd created a separate webpage from my weblog, used lots of SEO techniques learnt here (!), and having reasonable success in Google.

Back in November I posted this: http://www.cre8asiteforums.com/forums/inde...showtopic=18433, which was all about how I got my weblog to the top of Yahoo on particularly notorius keywords

The difference betwen the two, is that one is my moving weblog, and the other is a static webpage. The same SEO techniques have been used in both, (perhaps a little more concentrated on the static page) - but the results are the same - at the moment.

The point is that I have links to places all over the world on the static webpage, but I doubt any of them link back to me. The position of the static webpage is solely based on it's SEO and it's content. If I had a blog whose content changed - but remained on the same subject, then, I guess, there would be a fairly good chance that it's position in Google may well stay "up there" - as long as the blog had good SEO in the first place.

Can a good Google position be obtained, (and maintained), with good, and updated SEO alone - and not be worried too much about links & back links?

[whitemark]

Can a good Google position be obtained, (and maintained), with good, and updated SEO alone - and not be worried too much about links & back links?

I doubt it. Google is a hypertextual search engine and regardless of how much it has updated its algorithm, for competitive terms it might be extremely difficult to rank based on onsite seo alone.

For medium competetive terms, I am noticing that recently Google seems to cycle between (perhaps) similarly ranking sites in its SERPS, between updates. I'll know for sure after this recent update settles down.

What I am truly interested in knowing is whether a blog page without many links, ranks higher than a similiar 'ordinary' webpage with a higher amount of links, BUT only for a short period of time (something akin to the Google News algorithm being used on blogs - after all most news sites are technically similiar to blogs).

[Black_Knight]

Tim Meyer (from Yahoo!) made the definitive statement when he said of certain keyword markets that just doing 'white-hat' stuff like good keyword-rich copywriting and spider-friendly design was "like taking a sword to a gunfight".

[send2paul]

So - I guess what you're saying Ammon is that backlinks matter, and that SEO alone won't keep a page/site up in the rankings?


I'd still be interested to know what people think about my remarks and results on the differences between SEO on a weblog, and SEO on a static, (single subject) webpage.

And as whitemark said:

What I am truly interested in knowing is whether a blog page without many links, ranks higher than a similiar 'ordinary' webpage with a higher amount of links, BUT only for a short period of time (something akin to the Google News algorithm being used on blogs - after all most news sites are technically similiar to blogs).

[bwelford]

Being a bear with a very small brain, I stick with the simplest explanation possible until it stops working. There was this guy called Occam who said it wasn't a bad way of working.

I view each posting on a blog as equivalent to a web page. If you have a query on Google where such a posting comes up, you'll find that the link is only to the posting and the cached version is only of that posting. You'll often find that there is at least one back link to the posting from the full blog itself and sometimes others (where you had created a trackback).

Where a blog really makes out is in the back links area. If you have interesting content, then people may subscribe to your blog in say Bloglines. They often then publish their Blogroll (list of subscriptions) on their blog. That's the long list of other blogs usually down the right hand side. If your blog is on that list then that's a back link. It may not show in the list that Google shows for a 'link:' search, since it may not have too much PageRank associated with it, but it's still adding to the total back link weight.

I believe this back link network is what gives blogs their SEO advantage, particularly with Google.

[Black_Knight]

Not just backlinks, Paul. The whole thing of our holistic approach to website success around here is that everything matters, and one can't build anything stable that exists in only one or two dimensions.

Know what a top search position is worth to you? Nothing if it fails to generate a good click-through ratio. So the Title and Description or snippet can't just be about gaining high rankings.

Keyword research is part maths and part psychology, but it is the basis of all SEO/SEM, and is surprisingly often not nearly complete enough. Many firms only do the maths part, and forget or ignore the psychology part.

The on-page optimization is of course not just about SEO either, and has to be a balanced 'optimal' point between gaining visibility and converting those who arrive from that ncreased visibility. The website must work well for visitors or the entire point of doing any SEO is lost. That should be self-evident, but every day I find sites where the conversion rates are atrocious because they sacrificed human appeal for rankings too much.

Other less thought of aspects of SEO design include page sizes and server response times, both of which are things spiders can measure, and either of which can speak of how suited the page may be to the average user.

The 'timeliness' of a page can also be measured in several ways, not least by when it last changed, but also by noting when 'bursts' of new backlinks appear of course.

Backlinks themselves could be the topic of a book of course, so I'll not attempt too much detail here. However, certainly the ability of a search engine to determine "similar or related sites" and the ability to look at backlinks, and being able to compare the two is something to think hard about (and to remember that the things there can cut both ways).

How many of the sites found in the same directory categories as your site link to yours? How many of those sites does yours link to? These are vital considerations for determining the hubs and authorities within a category of sites...

<added>
Put it this way, what do blogs and directories have in common?

They both tend to be 'hubs', linking out to many other related sites. They also both rank well in Google in recent times. Join the dots there.
</added>

[send2paul]

Barry - I remember you mentioning this Blogroll before as a place for backlinks which may not be seen by the Google link:. I used to have a Blogroll on my blog a year or so ago - but I took it off because it didn't look good! I think I may go and revisit

The whole thing of our holistic approach to website success around here is that everything matters

Yes - I agree on that one Ammon. I've been to other places and seen the cut n' thrust approach to SEO and website placement, which, quite frankly, seemed almost barbaric. However, when it came to e-commerce, and websites whose sole purpose was to generate revenue from advertising, affliliate campaigns, pay-per-click etc it seemed that the means justified the ends - whatever it took to get that click, was all that mattered. So, as I was talking mainly in terms of "hat white" SEO, I believe some of these revenue-ran sites were dealing in some "black hat" SEO - whatever that maybe!

How many of the sites found in the same directory categories as your site link to yours? How many of those sites does yours link to? These are vital considerations for determining the hubs and authorities within a category of sites...

That is something I never thought about either..... but certainly will check up on with my test SEO webpage on laser eye surgery. Admittedly that page is also carrying some money earning Google Ads, so I have tried to combine the two areas of correct SEO for the page content and topic, but also to consider adverts appearing - and not just because the page content is all on one topic. For example, people are arriving there from all over the world, so I've incorporated some international laser eye surgery links as well.

Yes - it's all interesting....er....stuff

[bwelford]

That mention of "black hat" SEO triggers a recent thought I was having. I believe using a phrase like SEO (Search Engine Optimization) to cover all shades of hats has proved to be a big yawn with interminable threads discussing what shade of gray some practice was. It's almost like those jesuitical arguments about how many angels you can stand on the head of a pin or whatever. In another place there's even been quite a discussion on Ethical SEO. I'm not sure but I believe that can only be done with a priest in attendance.

My mind went off in a different direction. (My wife would say that's typical. ) Why not reserve SEO for the good variety and seek another term for the clearly "black hat" activities?

My first thought was SEM, that's Search Engine Manipulation. Oops, that acronym has already been used. You really want an acronym that comes easily off the tongue. Unfortunately SEX might be confused with other things. Mmm. Hey, I think I've got it. What about SED. That stands for Search Engine Deception.

So if you agree, just give it a bit of a whirl in a few blogs and perhaps we'll clear up this whole mess in no time at all.

[send2paul]

Barry - the whole multi-coloured hat chat about SEO always seemed like a mystery to me as well - but I read it here first!?

Basically - as far as I can see it - if the SEO which you do enables the website to achieve it's desired results, (whatever that may be) - AND AS LONG AS IT'S NOT ILLEGAL (!) - is good SEO.

And there you mention it - SED - Search Engine Deception. Is it really deception to be able to understand how a search engine works, (to a degree), and then construct your website to take the best advantage of that particular search engine's searching habits?

Again - AS LONG AS IT'S NOT ILLEGAL - in the terms of those e-commerce hang-outs I've been frequenting recently in my online world - "Anything goes, right?"