In short the previous posts were about the fascinating quick positioning of Ajax Write in Google’s top 10 for the word Ajax due to massive linking from the blogosphere. Today, after 15 days of glory that site is flushed to the position 170 (Thanks Razvan for the data).
Possible explanations for this fall:
Spam filter. It’s usually considered that quick burst of links in a short period of time toward one site is associated with artificial link and might lead to desqualifing that site in the SERPS.
A smart processing engine that places sites popular in the blogosphere for a short time in high SERPs (I am inclined toward this explanation)
Manual removal - Google denies such a thing as a general policy unless we are talking about flagrant spamming
Sandbox - due to my experience in the past years I still consider that as a myth
OK. NOW things will get interesting because we are talking about a Google owned service: Google Calendar In only 5 days the site ranks as #5 for the word calendar with a competition of 2,420,000,000 results (in the Ajax Write’s case the number was only 146,000,000 results)
Anyone willing to start the bets? I think this result is going to stay there and there is no single argument in Google materials for webmasters that a site can behave like that in SERPs
EDIT:
As some didn’t got it why I find this to be absurd check this out:
Sites’ positions in our search results are determined automatically based on a number of factors, which are explained in more detail at http://www.google.com/technology/index.html. We don’t manually assign keywords to sites, nor do we manipulate the ranking of any site in our search results.
More than one year after Yahoo launched Y!Q Search, Google launches version 2.0 (like in web 2.0) and calls it Google Related Links. Of course a beta product and worse than the original ideea. Probably another brilliant project from the 20% series.
Most likely is based on the same set of Common Words that are shown in Google Sitemaps in site analysis section or on the Adsense indexing engine. Probably in the near future one of the killer features that will be added will be to allow webmasters to target through html tags only partial content of a page (feature that was from the beginning in Y!Q search).
This would have been a good April Fools joke but unfortunately is real.
As most of the WP users already know there is a feature in WP that makes comment moderation easier by not holding in que comments from people that you have already marked as not spam. Some smart ass spammer thought that combining spamming with a litlle of social engineering will make his life easier:
With the increase of awareness of webmasters in the value of a link (usually the overinflated value), is getting harder and harder to find valuable external links and especially one way.
One easy solution for that is the use of social bookmarking sites. Opinions vary on this matter but if is not going to harm you why not use it.
Social bookmarking websites have the following qualities:
Provide a one way link to your website
They place your link in themed paged (based on the tags you use)
Increase your visibility
To help take advantage of this there are 2 approaches:
Passive: In your pages (on regular websites) or on your blog posts, place tools that help your visitors bookmark it on their favorite social bookmarking service. Most of the webmasters go this way but they usually place only 1-3 bookmarking links missing a great part of the advantage. Barry from SEO Roundtable recommends another approach by using a single bookmarking link from Socializer. This one currently covers 20 social bookmarking sites.
Active: You can wait for your visitors to bookmark you or you can step forward by being proactive and do it yourself. This will increase your chances for traffic. To facilitate this I recommend Only Wire that allows simultaneous bookmarking in 17 social bookmarking websites. If you want a complete job you can check a more detailed list of social bookmarking sites.
Conclusion:
To gather the best results using the passive/active approach seems the optimum solution. If you want to stay in the white/gray area of SEO use carefully the active approach. On some of the SB sites any tentative of spamming will end in a termination of the account or a permanent ban on your IP.
March 26th 2006
Let’s say that there is a new buzzword in town and is going to stay here for a while. Of course anybody will want to proove themselves as an expert on it and to score for that buzzword in Google and the rest of the search engines. What to do?
The hard way. Start working, train your employees in the new field get some good products out get reviews all the drill. It takes work, it takes people, it takes time and it takes MONEY. Most go this way but very few see the light at the end of the tunnel.
Or the easy way. Make a super basic product with a slight resemblance to the buzzword, put the buzzword in the product name, announce yourself as the biggest competitor of the bad boy in town and than use your PR channels and the blogosphere to let the world know who you are. What do you need? A small team with basic skills, very few money for a server that can take a combined effect of Digg+Slashdot, and an email account to let the people know who you are.
But why take the easy way? Because when you have won the PR and the SEO game everybody will start throwing money at you and perhaps if you don’t plan for a quick retirement you will have enough funding to do the hard way too.
In big lines this is what the guys at Ajax Write did this week. Full coverage on
After you get that coverage all the trolls from the blogosphere will be at your feet copyingquoting the masters and pointing to your lame product website.
Ok. So? It’s a dirty game anyway why should anyone care?
Well, because when in a few weeks when that website will be on top10 for the word “ajax” don’t tell me anymore bed time stories about search engines relevance and quality of results. Unless you have a strong AI engine behind you can’t tell what the relevance of a page/website is. Is all a game that can be reversed engineered and can be tricked by anyone with an IQ slightly above average and enough motivation to do it.
Is the same game that you see in the real world. Is not what you do or what you know. Is who you know that matters and visibility. That’s why people that appear on TV seem smarter than the audience, that’s why the people with an IQ way below average but who know the right people get elected presidents.
But this is the current game and can be changed only from inside by playing it. BUT don’t tell me about quality anymore.
I’ll dedicate this South Park episode to the guys at Google and Yahoo.
Google because of the Analytics, Measuremap,Page creator and the never ending closed betas and Yahoo because of the Yahoo! Go Desktop.
Google added a few days ago a new feature to their Analytics service. The feature called Site Overlay is available in Google Analytics->Dashboards->View->Site Overlay and is described in their own words as:
Google Analytics displays your website pages superimposed with click and conversion data for each link. Site Overlay doesn’t require any downloads, and allows you to easily see which links lead to conversions, just by browsing your site.
A service (Crazy Egg) offering a similar feature was presented on TechCrunch but is still in private beta and the GUI is lees usable than the Google Analytics.
Data offered by those 2 services are not new on traffic analysis packages but the method of presenting them is more valuable
Just woke up and found in my email the best news this year. MeasureMap got bought by Google. Thew news is already on the main tech blogs but I haven’t seen the email nowhere so here you have it.
Congratulations guys. I think that I haven’t been happier before on an aquisition. You REALLY deserved this:
I want to share some important news with our earliest users of Measure Map.
Since its inception, my colleagues and I have seen tremendous potential for Measure Map to influence how people blog, and how they understand participation on the Web. We have always expected it to be big, and as such, our desire was to give Measure Map its start and then send it out into the world to grow and evolve into a strong, meaningful application.
Through the dedication of a fantastic team, along with your tremendous support in the form of feedback, feature requests, and overwhelmingly positive comments, have built a product that is fundamentally different from every other analytics application available today. We’re both grateful and proud.
So I said there was news, and here it is: I’m writing you to announce that Measure Map has been acquired by Google, effective today. For the near term, you will see no difference in its operations. In the not so distant future, you can expect great things from this acquisition. We couldn’t be happier to find such an ideal home for Measure Map, and are thrilled at the possibilities.
While this is a milestone for all of us at Adaptive Path, this sale does not affect how we operate, nor will it alter the structure of the Adaptive Path organization. Adaptive Path is still here, stronger than ever, and it will be for a long time to come. Above all, we remain
committed to the principle that superior user experience inspires innovation and creates business advantage.
Thank you again for your input, your time, and your support of Measure Map. Should you have any questions or comments about any of this, please do not hesitate to contact me.
For more information, please see our post on the Google Blog:
Here I'll share my knowledge, discovery and experience related to my hobby and work. Most articles on this site are related to blog design, short reviews, tips and make money online. More
In only 5 days the site ranks as #5 for the word calendar with a competition of 2,420,000,000 results (in the Ajax Write’s case the number was only 146,000,000 results)
