O Really Google? First Panda Now Penguins

O Really Google? First there was Panda Update

O Really Google? Then there was Penguin Update

O Really Google? You have started naming all your major updates after cuts and cuddly animals …

O Really Google? You start naming you updates after all black and white animals … is the Skunk Update next?

O Really Google? Do you think the animal kingdom is not upset with you. Now you have given them such a bad image.

O Really Google? Next time you find yourself in a Bamboo forest in Japan dont be surprised a Panda tries to maul you!

O Really Google? Next time you find yourself on a nice Anartic Cruise to see the penguins … don’t be surprised they the dont show up.

O REEEEEEEEEEEEEAAAAAAALLLLLLLLLYYYYYYYYY GOOGLE?!

Under The Hood Of Google’s Algorithm

Patent reading sucks, but someone has to do it. Reading Bill’s latest post inspired me to revisit reading the latest update to Google Algorithm patent regarding rankings and quality deserved freshness. Yea its full of law jargon and what not, but it was extremely entertaining. Below is my breakdown / thoughts of certain sections of the patent when it comes to SEO.

Disclaimer: All observations are theoretical, so dont take me too serious.

Summary (For all you lazy people out there that don’t want to read all of this awesome post):

• If your website falls under the possibility of quality deserved freshness rankings then update your site all the damn time with good content. Make sense more updates more relevance.
• A B L - Always Build Links. That is why it is extremely important to maintain your link building efforts even if you are ranking number one.
• Don’t change your anchor text once your link is built as “a good link may go unchanged when a document gets updated”. This also hints that building or inserting links into content after they have already been indexed might not be effective.
• Fresh or new links are authoritative.
• Patience is key to SEO because the one thing you can not control is time. When you or clients want rankings over night tell them you can’t cause building links too quickly can penalize your efforts. “A typical, “legitimate” document attracts back links slowly.”
• Links from old / stale web pages loose all authority. Possible solution build links to them or push them socially all the time.
• 301 redirecting old domains to your site will not work now unless they are on the same semantic topic.
• The more traffic regardless of source to a webpage can increase your rankings?! This is a bit scary and reopens the myth of paid search influencing rankings. I doubt this is a large part of the algorithm, but something to consider.
• This is a bit odd, but I read this as Google does not mind ranking websites that offer quality advertisements with good CTR to authoritative sites. I wonder how Adsense is effective in this model?
• Time on site and SERP CTR are a factor!
• I always thought this was bullshit, but length of domain registration can positively effect rankings. I am sure Godaddy is loving this factor. Time to register all my domains for 10 years!
• Don’t change your registration or DNS information all the time. Keep it consistent.
• Once again don’t be too aggressive as fast rankings maybe flagged as spam. Slow and steady people. (I have fun explaining that to your client).
• This sounds like the Google Sandbox but enhanced. Webpages even if they deserve to rank high may only be able to gain x amount of spots of x amount of days. This is scary. Once again, time (the one factor we can not control as an SEO) comes into play.
• Google gives out hall passes or the OK for authoritative domains not be penalized when it comes to large spikes of links. Sounds like the Vince Update or the Big Brand Bailout to me. So, if you are big brand link away cause nothing can hurt you unless the New York Times does a story about your purchased links (cough) JCPenny’s.
• I had to pick up my jaw from the floor after reading this. Old school browser book marks can increase your authority?! Time to start hiring people off of Mechincal Turk to bookmark my website. Hell i might even bring back the old school html code on my website “Bookmark My Website!” hahaha
• This sounds like Google’s answer to over optimized anchor text problems. Basically you only get x amount of anchor text credit effectiveness over a period of time. Reminds me a movie quote SEOed “Choose your anchor text links wisely!”

Details:

Patent: [0052] UF and UA may be used in other ways to influence the score assigned to a document. For example, the rate of change in a current time period can be compared to the rate of change in another (e.g., previous) time period to determine whether there is an acceleration or deceleration trend. Documents for which there is an increase in the rate of change might be scored higher than those documents for which there is a steady rate of change, even if that rate of change is relatively high. The amount of change may also be a factor in this scoring. For example, documents for which there is an increase in the rate of change when that amount of change is greater than some threshold might be scored higher than those documents for which there is a steady rate of change or an amount of change is less than the threshold.

Me:If your website falls under the possibility of quality deserved freshness rankings then update your site all the damn time with good content. Make sense more updates more relevance.

Patent: [0067] Using the time-varying behavior of links to (and/or from) a document, search engine 125 may score the document accordingly. For example, a downward trend in the number or rate of new links (e.g., based on a comparison of the number or rate of new links in a recent time period versus an older time period) over time could signal to search engine 125 that a document is stale, in which case search engine 125 may decrease the document’s score. Conversely, an upward trend may signal a “fresh” document (e.g., a document whose content is fresh–recently created or updated) that might be considered more relevant, depending on the particular situation and implementation.

[0068] By analyzing the change in the number or rate of increase/decrease of back links to a document (or page) over time, search engine 125 may derive a valuable signal of how fresh the document is. For example, if such analysis is reflected by a curve that is dropping off, this may signal that the document may be stale (e.g., no longer updated, diminished in importance, superceded by another document, etc.).

Me: A B L - Always Build Links. That is why it is extremely important to maintain your link building efforts even if you are ranking number one.

Patent: [0071] According to another implementation, the analysis may depend on weights assigned to the links. In this case, each link may be weighted by a function that increases with the freshness of the link. The freshness of a link may be determined by the date of appearance/change of the link, the date of appearance/change of anchor text associated with the link, date of appearance/change of the document containing the link. The date of appearance/change of the document containing a link may be a better indicator of the freshness of the link based on the theory that a good link may go unchanged when a document gets updated if it is still relevant and good. In order to not update every link’s freshness from a minor edit of a tiny unrelated part of a document, each updated document may be tested for significant changes (e.g., changes to a large portion of the document or changes to many different portions of the document) and a link’s freshness may be updated (or not updated) accordingly.

Me: Don’t change your anchor text once your link is built as “a good link may go unchanged when a document gets updated”. This also hints that building or inserting links into content after they have already been indexed might not be effective.

Patent: [0072]Links may be weighted in other ways. For example, links may be weighted based on how much the documents containing the links are trusted (e.g., government documents can be given high trust). Links may also, or alternatively, be weighted based on how authoritative the documents containing the links are (e.g., authoritative documents may be determined in a manner similar to that described in U.S. Pat. No. 6,285,999). Links may also, or alternatively, be weighted based on the freshness of the documents containing the links using some other features to establish freshness (e.g., a document that is updated frequently (e.g., the Yahoo home page) suddenly drops a link to a document).

Me: Fresh or new links are authoritative.

Patent: [0075] The dates that links appear can also be used to detect “spam,” where owners of documents or their colleagues create links to their own document for the purpose of boosting the score assigned by a search engine. A typical, “legitimate” document attracts back links slowly. A large spike in the quantity of back links may signal a topical phenomenon (e.g., the CDC web site may develop many links quickly after an outbreak, such as SARS), or signal attempts to spam a search engine (to obtain a higher ranking and, thus, better placement in search results) by exchanging links, purchasing links, or gaining links from documents without editorial discretion on making links. Examples of documents that give links without editorial discretion include guest books, referrer logs, and “free for all” pages that let anyone add a link to a document.

Me: Patience is key to SEO because the one thing you can not control is time. When you or clients want rankings over night tell them you can’t cause building links too quickly can penalize your efforts. “A typical, “legitimate” document attracts back links slowly.”

Patent: [0076] According to a further implementation, the analysis may depend on the date that links disappear. The disappearance of many links can mean that the document to which these links point is stale (e.g., no longer being updated or has been superseded by another document). For example, search engine 125 may monitor the date at which one or more links to a document disappear, the number of links that disappear in a given window of time, or some other time-varying decrease in the number of links (or links/updates to the documents containing such links) to a document to identify documents that may be considered stale. Once a document has been determined to be stale, the links contained in that document may be discounted or ignored by search engine 125 when determining scores for documents pointed to by the links.

Me: Links from old / stale web pages loose all authority. Possible solution build links to them or push them socially all the time.

Patent: [0080] Alternatively, if the content of a document changes such that it differs significantly from the anchor text associated with its back links, then the domain associated with the document may have changed significantly (completely) from a previous incarnation. This may occur when a domain expires and a different party purchases the domain. Because anchor text is often considered to be part of the document to which its associated link points, the domain may show up in search results for queries that are no longer on topic. This is an undesirable result.

Me: 301 redirecting old domains to your site will not work now unless they are on the same semantic topic.

Patent: [0084] According to an implementation consistent with the principles of the invention, information relating to traffic associated with a document over time may be used to generate (or alter) a score associated with the document. For example, search engine 125 may monitor the time-varying characteristics of traffic to, or other “use” of, a document by one or more users. A large reduction in traffic may indicate that a document may be stale (e.g., no longer be updated or may be superseded by another document).

Me: The more traffic regardless of source to a webpage can increase your rankings?! This is a bit scary and reopens the myth of paid search influencing rankings. I doubt this is a large part of the algorithm, but something to consider.

Patent: [0086] Additionally, or alternatively, search engine 125 may monitor time-varying characteristics relating to “advertising traffic” for a particular document. For example, search engine 125 may monitor one or a combination of the following factors: (1) the extent to and rate at which advertisements are presented or updated by a given document over time; (2) the quality of the advertisers (e.g., a document whose advertisements refer/link to documents known to search engine 125 over time to have relatively high traffic and trust, such as amazon.com, may be given relatively more weight than those documents whose advertisements refer to low traffic/untrustworthy documents, such as a pornographic site); and (3) the extent to which the advertisements generate user traffic to the documents to which they relate (e.g., their click-through rate). Search engine 125 may use these time-varying characteristics relating to advertising traffic to score the document.

Me: This is a bit odd, but I read this as Google does not mind ranking websites that offer quality advertisements with good CTR to authoritative sites. I wonder how Adsense is effective in this model?

Patent: [0088] According to an implementation consistent with the principles of the invention, information corresponding to individual or aggregate user behavior relating to a document over time may be used to generate (or alter) a score associated with the document. For example, search engine 125 may monitor the number of times that a document is selected from a set of search results and/or the amount of time one or more users spend accessing the document. Search engine 125 may then score the document based, at least in part, on this information.

Me: Time on site and SERP CTR are a factor!

Patent: [0093] Certain signals may be used to distinguish between illegitimate and legitimate domains. For example, domains can be renewed up to a period of 10 years. Valuable (legitimate) domains are often paid for several years in advance, while doorway (illegitimate) domains rarely are used for more than a year. Therefore, the date when a domain expires in the future can be used as a factor in predicting the legitimacy of a domain and, thus, the documents associated therewith.

Me: I always thought this was bullshit, but length of domain registration can positively effect rankings. I am sure Godaddy is loving this factor. Time to register all my domains for 10 years!

Patent: [0094] Also, or alternatively, the domain name server (DNS) record for a domain may be monitored to predict whether a domain is legitimate. The DNS record contains details of who registered the domain, administrative and technical addresses, and the addresses of name servers (i.e., servers that resolve the domain name into an IP address). By analyzing this data over time for a domain, illegitimate domains may be identified. For instance, search engine 125 may monitor whether physically correct address information exists over a period of time, whether contact information for the domain changes relatively often, whether there is a relatively high number of changes between different name servers and hosting companies, etc. In one implementation, a list of known-bad contact information, name servers, and/or IP addresses may be identified, stored, and used in predicting the legitimacy of a domain and, thus, the documents associated therewith.

Me: Don’t change your registration or DNS information all the time. Keep it consistent.

Patent: [0097] According to an implementation consistent with the principles of the invention, information relating to prior rankings of a document may be used to generate (or alter) a score associated with the document. For example, search engine 125 may monitor the time-varying ranking of a document in response to search queries provided to search engine 125. Search engine 125 may determine that a document that jumps in rankings across many queries might be a topical document or it could signal an attempt to spam search engine 125.

Me: Once again don’t be too aggressive as fast rankings maybe flagged as spam. Slow and steady people. (I have fun explaining that to your client).

Patent: [0102] In addition, or alternatively, search engine 125 may monitor the ranks of documents over time to detect sudden spikes in the ranks of the documents. A spike may indicate either a topical phenomenon (e.g., a hot topic) or an attempt to spam search engine 125 by, for example, trading or purchasing links. Search engine 125 may take measures to prevent spam attempts by, for example, employing hysteresis to allow a rank to grow at a certain rate. In another implementation, the rank for a given document may be allowed a certain maximum threshold of growth over a predefined window of time. As a further measure to differentiate a document related to a topical phenomenon from a spam document, search engine 125 may consider mentions of the document in news articles, discussion groups, etc. on the theory that spam documents will not be mentioned, for example, in the news. Any or a combination of these techniques may be used to curtail spamming attempts.

Me: This sounds like the Google Sandbox but enhanced. Webpages even if they deserve to rank high mayonly be able to gain x amount of spots of x amount of days. This is scary. Once again, time (the one factor we can not control as an SEO) comes into play.

Patent: [0103] It may be possible for search engine 125 to make exceptions for documents that are determined to be authoritative in some respect, such as government documents, web directories (e.g., Yahoo), and documents that have shown a relatively steady and high rank over time. For example, if an unusual spike in the number or rate of increase of links to an authoritative document occurs, then search engine 125 may consider such a document not to be spam and, thus, allow a relatively high or even no threshold for (growth of) its rank (over time).

Me: Google gives out hall passes or the OK for authoritative domains not be penalized when it comes to large spikes of links. Sounds like the Vince Update or the Big Brand Bailout to me. So, if you are big brand link away cause nothing can hurt you unless the New York Times does a story about your purchased links (cough) JCPenny’s.

Patent: [0106] According to an implementation consistent with the principles of the invention, user maintained or generated data may be used to generate (or alter) a score associated with a document. For example, search engine 125 may monitor data maintained or generated by a user, such as “bookmarks,” “favorites,” or other types of data that may provide some indication of documents favored by, or of interest to, the user. Search engine 125 may obtain this data either directly (e.g., via a browser assistant) or indirectly (e.g., via a browser). Search engine 125 may then analyze over time a number of bookmarks/favorites to which a document is associated to determine the importance of the document.

Me: I had to pick up my jaw from the floor after reading this. Old school browser book marks can increase your authority?! Time to start hiring people off of Mechincal Turk to bookmark my website. Hell i might even bring back the old school html code on my website “Bookmark My Website!” hahaha

Patent: [0111] One reason for such spikiness may be the addition of a large number of identical anchors from many documents. Another possibility may be the addition of deliberately different anchors from a lot of documents. Search engine 125 may monitor the anchors and factor them into scoring a document to which their associated links point. For example, search engine 125 may cap the impact of suspect anchors on the score of the associated document. Alternatively, search engine 125 may use a continuous scale for the likelihood of synthetic generation and derive a multiplicative factor to scale the score for the document.

Me: This sounds like Google’s answer to over optimized anchor text problems. Basically you only get x amount of anchor text credit effectiveness over a period of time. Reminds me a movie quote SEOed “Choose your anchor text links wisely!”

Google Mobile Bot Now Indexing Smart Phone Content - Im Confused!

Google just announced that Google Mobile Bot will start crawling and indexing smartphone content.

With the number of smartphone users rapidly rising, we’re seeing more and more websites providing content specifically designed to be browsed on smartphones. Today we are happy to announce that Googlebot-Mobile now crawls with a smartphone user-agent in addition to its previous feature phone user-agents. This is to increase our coverage of smartphone content and to provide a better search experience for smartphone users.

From an SEO perspective I am confused.

Before you would block your smartphone website because you did not want to create duplicate content. Does this change now?

My Questions

• 1. Will smartphone pages be considered part of the index?
• 2. Will I need to start building links to my smartphone content so I can get it to rank?
• 3. Will there be some sort of authority transfer of site that are ranking that gets pushed to smartphone url?

So many question and once again Google ignores to explain the impact of SEO. Damn you Google.

I will update this post as soon as I figure this crap out.