Google and Fast (AllTheWeb):

I've noticed that once a website is 'Googled' optimized, the site also score high in AlltheWeb, so no double work or contradicting parameter changes. -- [Webmasterworld] [Elwyn Jenkins: googlology]

If a new website project was placed before you, and it was your decision whether or not to launch the site before it had been properly optimized for the search engines, what would your decision be? Would you launch the site, or would you wait? [Search Engine Guide]

Here are a few thoughts about where SEO is heading in the new year. Some may be wishful thinking, and some may take more than one year to happen, but these are the trends I'm currently seeing. [Search Engine Guide]

Differentiation Can Be Brutal in the Web Search Business [Search Engine Guide] "Search engine positioning" is no easy feat - even if you *are* a search engine, it seems. So how are the engines positioning *themselves*? As usual, Andrew Goodman hits the mark with his research and commentary. J:L

Targeted Search Engine Traffic Is More Important Than Ever -By John Alexander - January 19, 2003

[Search Engine Guide]

 

Weblogs have proven it, and it has been demonstrated on many good websites that content is King. We are reminded again how this works:

One of the most important aspects of ranking for Google and other search engines is good content. Google wants their search engine users to find what they are looking for, a successful search experience for their users. The keywords included in your site are important; after all, those are the terms your potential visitors are searching for. Now not only do you have your catalog pages and ordering information, but you also have a more in-depth treatment of the topics you have addressed in your articles, book reviews, and other materials. More keywords in more places means you have a better chance of matching a potential visitor's search.

So how can you "rise above" the other online gardening bookstores out there in the search engine listings? Link popularity can be the next important piece that allows you to differentiate yourself from the rest of the pack. All other things being equal, search engines that pay attention to link popularity will list your site higher in their results if you have more links coming back from other sites which have a focus related to yours. In other words, if your gardening bookstore has a number of backlinks pointing to it from the websites of gardening clubs, nurseries, and so forth, your site will be seen as more authoritative. The more authoritative a website looks to Google through link popularity, the higher that site will rank. After all, if all these other gardening- related sites point to your site, they are demonstrating that you have something important to say. That is another reason why it is important to have your material published on other websites.

Conclusion

Maintaining good content is a stepping-stone for your visitors to delve in deeper to your website. Taking the time to build your content and provide for your audience will pay off in good search engine ranking and returning visitors.

-- [Search Engine Guide]

[Elwyn Jenkins: googlology]

Google managers not happy with Search Engine Optimizers. This is the feeling I have sensed all along, that SEOs are not really needed. They form a barrier between Google and the websites. I am not surprised by this reactions listed here in this article:

Search engine optimisers have always had a tenuous relationship with search engines. This year a Wired article featuring Sergey Brin, Google's "conscience and head policymaker", claimed "the way Brin sees it, the optimizers are co-opting Google's bond of trust with its users. He regards optimizers the way a mother grizzly might regard a hunter jabbing at her cub with a stick". However, Brin is probably not unhappy with those SEO's/SEM's who have reportedly poured large sums of cash into the Google coffers via AdWords and other paid placement programs.

-- [Search Engine Blog]

[Elwyn Jenkins: googlology]

Search Engine Optimizer Attitude of Google Management. The way I see it is that SEOs are not really working on the right stuff, and in fact they do themselves out of a job if they do their stuff properly. It is not about building links, doorway pages and all that stuff, it is about building good solid knowledge filled sites that attract attention of people. If you have the right stuff, choose a gap in the keyword market, you get good results.

The anti-Google might also be more amenable to the growing business of "optimization," the altering of Web sites so that they rank higher in search engine results. For a fee, there's help for a Dallas plumber who's unhappy that his site is on the 17th page of results when someone types "Dallas plumber" into Google. An optimizer will tweak the site in such a way that boosts it to, say, the 3rd page of results.

To pull this off with Google, an optimizer needs to understand how the company's search mechanism works. Google uses 100 or so closely guarded algorithms to determine its search results. The best known of the lot is called PageRank, which allocates relevancy to a page according to the number and importance of pages linked to it, the number and importance of pages linked to each of those pages, and so on. One ploy is to create "link farms," in which an optimizer gets clients to link to one another, racking up relevancy points. In general, optimizers make a living by guessing what Google regards as important. The way Brin sees it, the optimizers are co-opting Google's bond of trust with its users. He regards optimizers the way a mother grizzly might regard a hunter jabbing at her cub with a stick.

Every month, when Google updates its index and its mix of algorithms, it rakes a disruptive claw across the optimizers' systems. In the industry, the monthly shuffle is known as the Google Dance, and Brin doesn't mind letting on that if Google ends up dancing all over the optimizers, so much the better. "When we change and improve our technology, things get shuffled around," Brin says, "and sometimes it has a disproportionate effect on optimization sites."

Consider the case of Bob Massa, a former solid oak dining room furniture salesman who lives in Oklahoma City and runs SearchKing, an optimization company he started in 1997. Last summer, Massa received a rare gift from Google in the form of the Google Toolbar, a software program that lets users perform searches without going to Google.com. More important for Massa, the Toolbar shows the approximate PageRank, on a scale of one to ten, of whatever page a user is visiting. It was the first time since Brin and Page were in grad school that they'd shared so much technical information. After years of watching Google's every move like an Etruscan high priest trying to augur divine intent from cloud formations, Massa had a piece of the goods. On August 9, Massa started selling optimization based on PageRank.

After the Google Dance of September 20, most of Massa's customers suddenly found themselves in a heap at the very bottom of Google's 3 billion site index. It seems that the improvements Google had made included a severe downgrade of sites with links to SearchKing. Massa's customers, needless to say, were very, very unhappy. "Everyone thinks I'm the biggest idiot in the world for making Google mad," Massa said in October.

He filed suit a few weeks later, charging that Google downgraded his customers' scores in a deliberate attempt to put him out of business. The suit asks for an injunction forcing Google to restore the scores to pre-Dance levels, and seeks $75,000 in damages. "It's a classic good versus evil thing," says Massa, turning Brin's framework back on Google itself. "I knew they wouldn't like it. I didn't think they'd go so far as to wipe out all these little people."

The day Massa's suit was filed, the reaction from the Slashdot crowd and most other forums was predictably vociferous, with posters stumbling over themselves to craft metaphors painting Massa as a criminal suing his victim. But gradually, a surprising number of people, while careful not to look as though they were defending Massa, began tagging the search engine as a Google-opoly. It's hard to sympathize with a David as parasitic as Massa, but Slashdotters tend to be uneasy with Goliaths of any stripe, especially when their methods are kept secret.

And the real problem with Massa is that he's simply the termite Brin is able to see. There are thousands more behind the wall, invisibly boring away at the very structure of Google's house. "It's easy to become overly obsessed with those kinds of things," Brin admits.

It would make things a lot easier for Brin if the world's webmasters would just act as though his site didn't matter, but that's not human nature. There's no way around it - as long as Google remains the search engine of choice, the arms race between Google coders and the hordes of optimizers will go on.

-- [Wired]

[Elwyn Jenkins: googlology]