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For example in a typical blog, the same text can be found via direkt link, latest articles, categories... How does one make that go away - and should it be done?
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They've admitted that there's al algorithm then also sites can be manually 'reviewed'... layman's terms... yeah they made exceptions and got called out hardcore with this last panda release on it and at least they 'claim' that they're working on fixing it. search google for panda site slap. you'll see lists of all the big ones that went down...
Matt Cutts has already confirmed that there won't be any manual changes. http://followmattcutts.com/2011/05/25/matt-cutts-confirms-no...
That link answers one of my question about Eric's article, which is why TravBuddy took the steps they did take.
This is a great write up though, it's good to see that others are trying the same things as we are.
What still confuses me is the duplicate content issue. Doesn't it make sense to make some information reachable in different ways? For example in a typical blog, the same text can be found via direkt link, latest articles, categories... How does one make that go away - and should it be done?
http://googlewebmastercentral.blogspot.com/2009/02/specify-y...
Because of the lucrative nature of affiliate payments and commissions in the travel industry, one of the biggest sources of what Google considered bad content was sites linking to hotels. Look at this page: [ http://www.travbuddy.com/hotels ]. All those links to "Hawaii Hotels" and "New York Hotels" look exactly like an old-school linkfarm. Ask yourself this: if you're Google, and somebody is typing in "Hawaii Hotels…
Hi Joel - Thanks for the feedback, that's really helpful and you do make a lot of valid points, especially about travel affiliates. We definitely aren't trying to rank for "Hawaii Hotels". Those links are intended as a sitemap to help people find our review pages, many of which I believe we do have valuable, original content. As a concrete example following the Hawaii theme, we used to rank pretty well when someone s…
This is wrong in several levels. First, Google starts to dictate what is acceptable or not in their index, using tools like webmaster central and all the "semantic web" talk -- Why should I care?
Second, it creates the incentives and the opportunity for bad guys to do well. If you need to do all this overhaul of a web site, the only people willing to do the work will be the very same ones that created content farms in the first place. After all, they are the ones that make big buckets from Google, not the after hours hobbyist that maintains a single web site.
I think this is all nonsense. Google's work should be to separate good content from bad content. Now, they are inverting the relationship and saying that web masters should be responsible to handle that information to them. This is wrong in several levels. First, Google starts to dictate what is acceptable or not in their index, using tools like webmaster central and all the "semantic web" talk -- Why should I care?…
You shouldn't. Nobody is forcing you to try and appear better in google's results.
I think this is all nonsense. Google's work should be to separate good content from bad content. Now, they are inverting the relationship and saying that web masters should be responsible to handle that information to them. This is wrong in several levels. First, Google starts to dictate what is acceptable or not in their index, using tools like webmaster central and all the "semantic web" talk -- Why should I care?…
By becoming defacto ruler of the internet, Google has put themselves in a position of outrageous power and responsibility. They are fighting a vicious war with spammers and content farms and the rest of the web is caught in the crossfire.
Personally, I agree with you that Google should not be telling people how to run their sites. They should never have said a word about how their algorithm works, or even what it's named, when it's updated, etc. They should tell people "just make great web sites, searching them is our problem".
hi, the funny thing is: all big travel sites lost http://trends.google.com/websites?q=tripadvisor.com%2C+exped... i did not hear from a single big travel site that won in the so called google panda update. and to be honest, i understand it the spammiest verticals are not only PPP (pills, porn, poker), it's PPPIT (pills, porn, poker, insurances, travel). i worked in poker, i worked in travel, i did insurances and yeah…
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Hi Joel - Thanks for the feedback, that's really helpful and you do make a lot of valid points, especially about travel affiliates. We definitely aren't trying to rank for "Hawaii Hotels". Those links are intended as a sitemap to help people find our review pages, many of which I believe we do have valuable, original content. As a concrete example following the Hawaii theme, we used to rank pretty well when someone s…
Outside of Panda, in terms of your goals for your business: do you really want to be in the business of arbitraging existing travel brands like Hale Koa Hotel and charging them (Hale Koa Hotel) money for customers who already knew of them? That strikes me as not a great place to be in life, for a lot of reasons. For one: what does Google need you for in that scenario? (Answer: nothing after they debut Google Travel a…
We've been focused on hotels in this specific example, but the same argument could be applied to any travel destination. If you're planning a trip somewhere, would you only want to get information from the official tourist bureau and the hotels themselves, or would it also be beneficial to see candid reviews, blogs, and photos, and interact directly with other travelers who have been to the same place? I would argue that the value provided by that information is worth a lot more than 2%.
The average traveler researches 2-5 sites before booking. and a large % of them are motivated by a desire to read reviews (http://www.phocuswright.com/library/fyi/427). Clearly there is some value provided there, and if we can provide relevant and unique information that leads to a sale, or profit off the sharing of such information through unobtrusive advertisements, then I don't see any problem with that.
And if we can provide more useful information than our competition (many of those sites listed above have almost no original information at all), then I also see no problem with ranking higher in the search results.
That's not to say we are 100% there yet for every destination, but I believe we do have a ton of valuable information, and our goal is to get to 100%.