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What to expect in SEO in the coming months [video]

mattcutts.com

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Re: What to expect in SEO in the coming months [video]

#31

Post by Uchikoma »

austenallred wrote: post #26
necubi wrote: post #24

Earlier quoted context omitted.

While I appreciate you sharing this, I'm shocked that you would do it from your real account. Don't you feel any shame for your actions?

Eh, a little bit. I'm not in the black-hat world anymore, and I'm pretty sick of people pretending like they're magicians or rocket scientists because they can rank something. Google has a system, you beat the system, that's it. In my mind it's really difficult to differentiate between what most people call "white-hat" SEO and what I used to do ("black-hat"). White hat SEO (which is basically posting links in forums,…

Amen.

Re: What to expect in SEO in the coming months [video]

#32

Post by nulluk »

OGinparadise wrote: post #25
nulluk wrote: post #16

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I can't deny negative SEO is a worry and yes whilst Google opened up the doors for it they also recognised it and have started providing ways to hopefully protect yourself. (Disavowing links etc) If your in a competitive market where you have to worry about negative SEO so much so that it is making an impact on your SERPs then I'm sure the web spam team would be more than interested in hearing from you

You are naive, even if disavow works, Google runs this update every six months are so. Do you realize what a traffic drop does to a business with payroll to meet?

Yes probably I am, because we are talking millions of sites and statisticly your going to get anomolies. Then again if your business model is based primarily on your SERPs then you have a bad business model and should be doing everything you can to mitigate that risk.

It's one of the risks you take which should of been identified if your a competent business owner that wants to survive.

Re: What to expect in SEO in the coming months [video]

#33

Post by brokentone »

programminggeek wrote: post #27

I think the biggest problem that Google can't fix is that they treat links as a voting mechanism, and that voting mechanism has value. So, there is a big economic incentive to "buy votes" by buying links. As long as there is a financial incentive to ranking well in google and that the mechanism to rank better is to get links, people with money will buy links in the same way they buy influence in the media, politics,…

There will always be something to buy (Yelp: http://www.buyyelpreview.com/ YouTube: http://www.ytview.com/, via a quick Google search). Overall it links are a very successful metric (the pagerank algorithm changed the search game), but it's more about the sophistication of the engine to detect and demote abuses.

Re: What to expect in SEO in the coming months [video]

#34

Post by OGinparadise »

wyck wrote: post #30
OGinparadise wrote: post #23

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Google knows about this and supposedly fixed that. But clustering reduces choices, increasing ad clicks and forcing companies to advertise (because they are not receiving that traffic.) (Downvote if you will but I doubt Google's intentions these days and their earnings are through the roof, even as PPC goes down.)

Google's value will always be search > PPC. Clustering reduces the diversity of the internet in general and this is a much larger negative for Google imo.

and this is a much larger negative for Google imo.

Eventually. Doesn't mean that Google isn't doing it believing they're controlling the negative effects or doing it "just a bit" this time and a bit more that quarter.

Diversity on Google is largely gone on transactional search, big brands rule both the ads and organic search. This is responsible, IMO, for Google at almost $900/share but will eventually ruin Google. They got too greedy and people will eventually bypass them and go directly to the brands Google promoted for short term cash.

Re: What to expect in SEO in the coming months [video]

#35

Post by OGinparadise »

nulluk wrote: post #32
OGinparadise wrote: post #25

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You are naive, even if disavow works, Google runs this update every six months are so. Do you realize what a traffic drop does to a business with payroll to meet?

Yes probably I am, because we are talking millions of sites and statisticly your going to get anomolies. Then again if your business model is based primarily on your SERPs then you have a bad business model and should be doing everything you can to mitigate that risk. It's one of the risks you take which should of been identified if your a competent business owner that wants to survive.

Your post has nothing to do with the previous message or point, you're just switching arguments. Most e-commerce businesses cannot scale /downscale every 50% + or - organic search traffic changes.

Re: What to expect in SEO in the coming months [video]

#36

Post by jcampbell1 »

programminggeek wrote: post #27

I think the biggest problem that Google can't fix is that they treat links as a voting mechanism, and that voting mechanism has value. So, there is a big economic incentive to "buy votes" by buying links. As long as there is a financial incentive to ranking well in google and that the mechanism to rank better is to get links, people with money will buy links in the same way they buy influence in the media, politics,…

Google punishes people that buy links, just like our government punishes people that buy votes. That sets up an incentive to not do it. I would say, this problem is not in the "can't fix" category.

Just like in real politics, Google must tread carefully. You can't arrest the president because someone bought votes on his behalf, just like Google can't nuke a site because it has purchased links.

Re: What to expect in SEO in the coming months [video]

#37

Post by austenallred »

programminggeek wrote: post #27

I think the biggest problem that Google can't fix is that they treat links as a voting mechanism, and that voting mechanism has value. So, there is a big economic incentive to "buy votes" by buying links. As long as there is a financial incentive to ranking well in google and that the mechanism to rank better is to get links, people with money will buy links in the same way they buy influence in the media, politics,…

If Google wants to fight against SEO (of whatever color of hat), it needs to somehow separate the links of people that are trying to manipulate Google and the links of people that are just trying to use the Internet.

The closer a spammer's actions appear to that of a normal person, the harder it is to find and devalue those links.

Google's updates have been in the recent past are saying (Panda, Penguin), "Well, spammers generally tend do to this, let's make that bad now."

Re: What to expect in SEO in the coming months [video]

#38

Post by jessaustin »

DanBC wrote: post #18
theseanstewart wrote: post #14

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is my biggest problem with Penguin. No website controls who links to them. Google should do a better job at discounting/ignoring spammy links, rather than penalize a website with spammy links. It's essentially the same thing, though one is easier to come back from.

> No website controls who links to them This is clearly nonsense when some webmasters were buying thousands of links.

OK, but we can probably say, "many websites have not prevented unsavory inbound links". How can these sites be helped? Do they need to "referer-bomb" (e.g. how some photo sites that didn't favor image embedding used to serve goatse to unrecognized referers) these links to a "don't count this link" document? Could Google propose a standard semantics for such a document?

Re: What to expect in SEO in the coming months [video]

#39

Post by distantparts »

AznHisoka wrote: post #10
nulluk wrote: post #7

If matt says it's more substantial than penguin 1.0 then its going to have a big ripple effect, the last penguin update effected more than 10%+ of SERPS. If your worried about this update then you haven't being doing "SEO" right.

There was a lot of collateral damage done to innocent sites during both Panda and Penguin. I think there's good reason for everybody who relies on Google traffic to worry a bit.

My main site was part of the collateral damage from Panda, so I'm pleased to hear Matt say that they're still tweaking Panda to help sites that are still being affected.

My site is pretty much all user generated content (car reviews), and Panda seems to struggle with differentiating such sites from content farms, unless they're part of a larger, established brand.

Almost two years of attempting to fix the problem by improving quality and layouts, reducing ads etc had no effect. Then I raised my case on Google's own forums, resulting in a lot of attention, and a few weeks later I saw a massive improvement (I know, correlation is not causation). Unfortunately I seem to have been hit again last week, by something that looks suspiciously like Panda (though I'm not 100% sure).

I've mostly moved on (now working on an iOS app), but it did appear from the outside that Google was comfortable with the impact of Panda, and it's good to know that they're still focussed on improving it.

Re: What to expect in SEO in the coming months [video]

#40

Post by marchra »

austenallred wrote: post #26
necubi wrote: post #24

Earlier quoted context omitted.

While I appreciate you sharing this, I'm shocked that you would do it from your real account. Don't you feel any shame for your actions?

Eh, a little bit. I'm not in the black-hat world anymore, and I'm pretty sick of people pretending like they're magicians or rocket scientists because they can rank something. Google has a system, you beat the system, that's it. In my mind it's really difficult to differentiate between what most people call "white-hat" SEO and what I used to do ("black-hat"). White hat SEO (which is basically posting links in forums,…

Outstanding differentiation between manual blog post circlejerking and automation. They're really one and the same. Isn't Google Plus pretty much only used by SEOs?
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