SEO Myths part II

This is a follow up to my previous 2 posts (SEO myths unveiled & Dirty SEO: a possible explanation for the AjaxWrite success) and again is based on a single case analysis.

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.

Source

So it is obvious that Google has a REAL problem with double standards

2006
04/18
CATEGORY
General
3 comments

  1. If I would be part of the Google marketing team I would like to see the new Calendar application in the search results ASAP.
    I am not sure whether this is moral or not as it is difficult to ask a company *not* to promote their own products/services using their own controlled media. Maybe others have stronger opinions about this…

    Regards,
    Razvan

  2. Completly agree with you. But than pls spare me the crap with no manual intervention in natural results. In order to pull the calendar to that position, someone went down (in fact 2 as they score on 2 different positions right now).

    OIs not about moral because is private company and has the right to do whatever it wants, is about double standards here

  3. For me, manual intervention means that Google accepts $$$ cash from a company in order to list them in the “natural” search results as if they deserved to be there. People will be fooled into thinking that this site really has relevant information when in fact the site paid to be there. This kind of “manual intervention” is the most dangerous and, if it is happening, it will completely delete that search engine from my list.

    Google is guaranteeing that the above manual intervention never happens.

    But manual intervention do happens, and sometimes it is desirable. I remember that sometime ago you raised the issue of a very determined spammer that monopolized the search results for the Romanian words “chirii garsoniere”. When I saw your article I immediately informed Google about it. You will still see the spam results in some places (those with Delta Dunarii) but otherwise the results are *much* clean.

    Currently, I can think to 2 types of manual intervention:

    1. Anti-spam.
    2. Google wants to promote their own products/services.

    Well, I can live with that.

    Regards,
    Razvan

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