google

Google VS Bing: Round 1

2 Comments
January 22  |  Link Building  |   Ryan Clark

There has been a lot of complaining from webmasters around the world about Google’s quality in the search results, so I thought we could take a different scenarios and see for ourselves. I for one complain daily about Google, but mostly to the staff here and they’re getting pretty sick of it. We’ll take a look at different types of keywords and compare results to see what kind of useful information we’re getting back, especially for product reviews. I recently needed some information on a legit product for a personal reason, and I can say with Google I didn’t even come close to getting what I wanted.

Example 1) Buy Cialis on Google

We all know Xrumer backlink spamming is more rampant than ever, an the buy Cialis keyword is a perfect example of how Google can’t do anything about it.

Example 1) Buy Cialis on Bing

As you can see here there isn’t much difference in regards to hacked and spam sites ranking for this keyword on Bing. So it seems the same backlink schemes work here although there is an online pharmacy ranking number one this time, and not a .edu.

Regardless of the results, people will still get their dick pills. This kind of link spamming has been ruining all search engines slowly but surely, but all is not lost. In the next VS we’ll look at a few product review results and show that those are actually much cleaner these days. I’ve even noticed a huge positive clean up within Google for certain product review searches I’ve been monitoring, so stay tuned!

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Google Is Testing Two New Meta Tags For Content Syndication

7 Comments
November 18  |  News  |   Ryan Clark

It’s about bloody time Google! A lot of people this past year have seen their own content get outranked by other, highly authoritative syndication sites which has been causing a brouhaha. There are also a lot of mashup sites in the mix which are pretty much entirely syndicated content which I feel is fine as long as the source is credited, and now that won’t be a problem. This is going to be a major relief to a lot of content owners out there, lets hope it works out properly so these meta tags stick around. I’m going to be playing with them on our site, as well get some of our clients to look into implementation so I can bring back some stats and more details.

  • syndication-source indicates the preferred URL for a syndicated article. If two versions of an article are exactly the same, or only very slightly modified, we’re asking publishers to use syndication-source to point us to the one they would like Google News to use. For example, if Publisher X syndicates stories to Publisher Y, both should put the following metatag on those articles:
    <meta name="syndication-source" content="http://www.publisherX.com/wire_story_1.html">
  • original-source indicates the URL of the first article to report on a story. We encourage publishers to use this metatag to give credit to the source that broke the story. We recognize that this can sometimes be tough to determine. But the intent of this tag is to reward hard work and journalistic enterprise. For example, to credit the publication that broke a story you could use a metatag like this:
    <meta name="original-source" content="http://www.example.com/burglary_at_watergate.html">

I’m really pleased that they’ve introduced these two because even my own content is getting out ranked by aggregator sites. I get a lot of my posts picked up by Top SEO News, which I’m grateful for, but as you can see they’re outranking my own post which pisses me off. Again, this is Google’s problem, not the folks who run the site. The post I’m talking about was my recent Knowem.com review, which you can see below is getting sauced in the SERPs….booooo!

Take note that Google states, “Although these meta tags are already in use by our systems, you may not notice their impact right away”, so I’m not sure how long before I can tell any difference. I guess the only course of action for webmasters at the moment is to just keep watching the SERPs and take note of any new behavior.

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Google Is Testing Two New Meta Tags For Content Syndication

Comments Off on Google Is Testing Two New Meta Tags For Content Syndication
November 18  |  News  |   Ryan Clark

It’s about bloody time Google! A lot of people this past year have seen their own content get outranked by other, highly authoritative syndication sites which has been causing a brouhaha. There are also a lot of mashup sites in the mix which are pretty much entirely syndicated content which I feel is fine as long as the source is credited, and now that won’t be a problem. This is going to be a major relief to a lot of content owners out there, lets hope it works out properly so these meta tags stick around. I’m going to be playing with them on our site, as well get some of our clients to look into implementation so I can bring back some stats and more details.

  • syndication-source indicates the preferred URL for a syndicated article. If two versions of an article are exactly the same, or only very slightly modified, we’re asking publishers to use syndication-source to point us to the one they would like Google News to use. For example, if Publisher X syndicates stories to Publisher Y, both should put the following metatag on those articles:
    <meta name="syndication-source" content="http://www.publisherX.com/wire_story_1.html">
  • original-source indicates the URL of the first article to report on a story. We encourage publishers to use this metatag to give credit to the source that broke the story. We recognize that this can sometimes be tough to determine. But the intent of this tag is to reward hard work and journalistic enterprise. For example, to credit the publication that broke a story you could use a metatag like this:
    <meta name="original-source" content="http://www.example.com/burglary_at_watergate.html">

I’m really pleased that they’ve introduced these two because even my own content is getting out ranked by aggregator sites. I get a lot of my posts picked up by Top SEO News, which I’m grateful for, but as you can see they’re outranking my own post which pisses me off. Again, this is Google’s problem, not the folks who run the site. The post I’m talking about was my recent Knowem.com review, which you can see below is getting sauced in the SERPs….booooo!

Take note that Google states, “Although these meta tags are already in use by our systems, you may not notice their impact right away”, so I’m not sure how long before I can tell any difference. I guess the only course of action for webmasters at the moment is to just keep watching the SERPs and take note of any new behavior.

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Google’s Getting Scared Of Bing?

1 Comments
September 25  |  News  |   Ryan Clark

In a recent interview I caught on Business Insider with Google’s Eric Schmidt talking about what he see’s as the Biggest threat to Google’s market share. With the partnership Bing has setup with Facebook, I’d be worried too. Top that all off with the recent Mayday updates and I see a wounded Google who finally may have someone to fight with…and that’s a good thing! I really don’t like having my eggs, or my clients, all in one basket so look forward to garnering more traffic from the Bing/Facebook side, especially those who got “raped” last May.

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Google’s Realtime Search Results

2 Comments
August 27  |  News  |   Ryan Clark

If you haven’t heard, Google has dropped its realtime results page for you to play with. This should set off alarm bells about real time marketing if they haven’t been going off. While it currently shows mostly Twitter updates, I have seen the odd Facebook updates which makes we wonder what else is going to start showing up in here. I imagine this Google feature will lead to all sorts of fun and free statistics and trend updates for us to use in our marketing efforts. From a user perspective, I really like how you can use geographic specifications to find updates near you and local news. I urge you to get familiar with the features and keep your eye out for what’s new on Google Realtime Search.

 

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Google Offices Raided In South Korea

2 Comments
August 17  |  News  |   Ryan Clark

Unlike here in North America where we let Google get away with snooping on our citizens, South Korea took more affirmative action the other day. With concerns over privacy, South Korean Police raided Google’s offices in Seoul mainly on the suspicion of unauthorized collection and storage of data on unspecified Internet users from Wi-Fi networks. While this is going to get a lot of press, can you imagine the viral link campaign Google is getting out of it…as if they need it though.

 

 

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Googles Search Results For Apples

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August 11  |  News  |   Ryan Clark

I’m just half way done my morning latte, reading through the Google section of Webmaster World and quickly came across this gem. You’ve seen me on Twitter, forums and here discussing the recent changes that Google has mixed into its search results, but this just adds more fuel to the fire. From the picture below, is it any surprise to you that there are so many Apple Computer links showing up for this term. Obviously these results will vary depending on where you live, but just take this in as a little lesson. I’m not on the “Google’s losing” bandwagon just yet, take a look at why the results are showing up like this, and how you can take advantage.

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Google SERPs Results Still Causing Havoc For Some

8 Comments
August 6  |  Link Building  |   Ryan Clark

Whether or not your website had a positive effect after the Mayday update, you have no doubt noticed the difference in the search results Google has been rolling out. While they stated it would help clean up the listings, not many people are actually seeing a positive difference. I’ve actually seen more grey/blackhat sites gaining ground, and the paid links are still ranking people like it was the only thing that worked. If you’re an avid reader of Webmaster World, you will have most likely noticed the horror stories of people losing almost all of their business. The original thread about the Mayday update is also a great 14 page read…it may scare you a little though.  I always highly recommend the a Google search for the keyword term ‘buy cialis‘ to bring up a spamtastic research time.

So as you can see, blackhat link spamming still works like a bloody charm. While sites with years and years of creating high quality content, and doing it by the “book” have been slammed in more than a few cases. For my holy grail keyword, link building, I’ve been going at it for years without building specific links and I’m almost reaching the top 10. A quick look at the top 10 shows only a couple of legit companies who’ve earned the rank, and the rest have ranked by link spamming in the lowest quality form possible….wtf Google? Lovely to see a site mostly talking about selling links ranking very high, makes you wonder.

If you folks have any positive and or horror stories over the past few months lets hear them! The more discussion the better off other webmasters will be.

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