Calendar
Network
Feeds
- 62
- Sphinn It!
Went Hot: December 7, 2007 - 7:12 am
Posted By: rustybrick 156 days ago
Topic Type: News Story (Jump to http://www.seroundtable.com)
Category: Google SEO
This is huge!
23 Comments
Went Hot: December 7, 2007 - 7:12 am
Posted By: rustybrick 156 days ago
Topic Type: News Story (Jump to http://www.seroundtable.com)
Category: Google SEO
This is huge!
23 Comments
Top 10 Most Sphunn
In What's New
- Sphinn is a Dysfunctional Social Ne... (21)
- Confessions and Reflections of a Fo... (18)
- Live Twittering A Conference? Try L... (18)
- What Google Knows About Spam (16)
- Need to hire SEM help? Where to fin... (15)
- Comcast + Twitter = Perfect Feedbac... (15)
- Five Tools Everyone Working Online ... (14)
- What is Online Reputation Managemen... (12)
- What Every Good Marketer Knows (12)
- SEO for Blogs: If You Build It, Wil... (11)
Latest Comments
- It doesn't really offer any great insights, but it's always good to see Mat…
- Very good tips!…
- The cartoons narrating the present scenario. …
- So what is the reason behind it? Anyone knows? hey, I am eager to know, if …
- lol, you're right Rishil, this IS hilarious :)…
- Unfortunately the "Sphinn Live" data is frequently used to make judge…
- Bill, I don't know if I accept your statement that the average search marke…
- He said before in interviews, but he should preach it for a while for most …
- - read more -
Save the date for:
• SMX Madrid (in Spanish, May 20-21)
• SMX Advanced - Seattle, WA (June 3-4) Register today! Early bird rate expires May 9!
• SMX Local & Mobile - San Francisco, CA (July 24-25) (July 24-25) Pre-agenda rate expires May 2. Get the lowest rate by registering now.
• SMX East - NYC - (Oct. 6-8)
• SMX London - November 4 & 5, 2008
Comments
I added more scenarios of how this will impact both navigation and product type searches (maybe even a search for google at google.com) at http://searchengineland.com/071207-090257.php
Another example of how Google deliverw what they think is relevant, rather than what the searcher may think is relevant.
Sitelinks helps with that Barry W.
So no more ebay spam?
This is a huge announcment with both positive and negative effects depending on what hat you are wearing that day. I am so very interested to figure out how they plan to treat subdomain blogs etc.
I am curious whether google will be treating subdomains like folders in every aspect. Will subdomains benefit from the overall link profile of the main domain, or will links from the main domain continue to be seen as a single link from an external site?
Probably one of the biggest anti-spam filters in mainstream view we've seen from Google for some time - if implemented.
I've got to admit, I think the initial suspicion is that this will be a very positive development - intentional subdomaining for traffic and SERPs manipulation has been a weakness in Google's algo so far, and has long needed tightening up for users.
Looking forward to seeing it in action. :)
Thanks for the extra scenarios you added.
Personally, as someone who buy lots from the web, I would love to see Google Implementing this. from the User experience point of view its better. why would i want to see 3 pages for the Apple website? i know how to navigate inside the site itself + most companies now have their own internal search facilitiy. actually, even better, this will push site owners to pay more attention to internal navigation, accessability and usability. Not much is being done around that ;).
Site owners who are confident of their products and services shouldn't worry about losing 2 links out of three.Why? well, if they are playing fair and square and truly offering a good service, their loyalists will come there way no matter what. This bring us back to the essence of fair trading - where site owners are trading on equal grounds. It also means, the world of PPC will have more power than ever. Site owners will pay more and MORE to be in spot or two :)
G! let the fun begin...
/happydance
I have been watching one of our competitors dominate the SERPs with spammy subdomains for a long, long time. I have been tempted to mimic their strategy, but advice from other SEOs convinced me to resist the urge. So glad I did.
There is a great post about this and how it will effect the entire SERP landscape, http://sphinn.com/story/17725. I is pretty interesting that this post has the idea that Google will simply move to using more instances of Site Links to balance this out and that this move is just the beginning of the movement to this type SERP change!
Kind of makes a lot of sense, especiall from a UI point of view. I love site links, being able to click straight into a site right where you want to go instead of having to hit the homepage first is great!
This isn't a correct characterization of what Google is looking at doing. What I was trying to say is that in some circumstances, Google may move closer to treating subdomains as we do with subdirectories. I'll talk about this more at some point after I get back from PubCon.
I'm happy about them limiting the results to two for one main domain, it keeps sites like ebay and about from dominating some things, which is better for diversity of the search results.
But I am also concerned as well with the implications from treating the subdomain the same as the main domain when it comes to people you link to. For example, linking to a quality blog on blogspot normally is fine since it's a subdomain and stands on its own reputation. HOWEVER there are also thousands of spam loaded crap subdomains on blogspot as well. (maybe blogspot is a bad example as they are part of the Google collective, but it holds true as well for similar smaller sites, shared hosting enviroments, etc) Will blogspots own reputation now be harmed based on all the bad subdomains? Or are they still insulated from that? Can I get in trouble for linking to a qood blog, because it's now in a bad neighborhood due to the spammy subdomains on the main domain?
If this is just a filter of the final results then that's one thing, but if it's a change of how they are connecting domains and subdomains then that's a whole other issue that will have some big ramifications. Using blogspot as the continuing example, there are thousands of them that are breaking the webmaster guidelines, will blogspot have to be removed from the index because of that?
Hi Matt, what about the announcement today over at the Google blog, http://googleblog.blogspot.com/2007/12/twice-sitelinks.html, that they are moving towards SERPs that will contain more site links. Many had already specualted this upon hearing of your announcement from PubCon this morning, http://sphinn.com/story/17725.
It just makes a ton of sense to treat the subdomains as subdirectories in the SERPs but to also move toward using Site Links more. So a listing for Google would have all of the current Google product subdomains in their Site Links instead of taking up all of the top positions on the SERP.
I love Site Links because it really helps the user go directly to where they want to, in essence it turns the user into a search engine too. I have been following these stories all day and so far the response has been overwhelmingly good to these moves by Google. And that seems hard to come by these days since it seems no matter what Google does some people trash it, and the fact that hardly anyone is trashing this means that it is good!
Matt pulled me over in the pub this afternoon and made some clarifications - and indeed, I did not have this exactly right. Matt said that Google will make it HARDER to get that 3rd result in a given search, and then increasingly harder for every result after that. But it will not be the exact same treatment that subdirectories get.
Michael McDonald from WebProNews did a video interview with Matt right after our conversation, and I understand that gets into more detail on this topic. So the clarification will be there for us all as soon as the video is published.
My apology for not getting all the details straight before posting.
I'm thinking the new regional association tool in Webmaster Tools has prompted this. Otherwise there is nothing stopping spammers from creating multiple sub-domains for each region and submitting them all.
I remember one of my competitors deploying 3-4 subdomains per product, with a database of over 10,000 products. Not only did they rank #1 for thousands of their target key terms, but in some cases, they also dominated the first 10-20 pages of results for each keyword preventing any other domain from getting any search traffic for those terms.
Link to WebProNews PubCon videos (waiting for the one with Matt clarifying subdomain changes):
http://videos.webpronews.com/tag/pubcon
+10 for tedster's clarification. :)
Matt,
"I'll talk about this more at some point after I get back from PubCon."
We are waiting for you to tell us more... hopefully soon, not "at some point" :-)
It should be interesting to see the effect this has on reputation management, specifically as it affects places like Wal-Mart. My guess is that we'll see people looking to achieve the same effect by using multiple domains rather than subdomains. Should make it tougher as one site's power/authority won't pass to it's subdomains, but the right interlinking should let you achieve the same effect.
Where it will be more interesting is in competing for product SERPs and non-brand keywords, which in any case should not really need subdomains for you to dominate. I could see big box retailers breaking out different lines, with different branding and price points (with only a slightly changed product) - change the cosmetics and keep the core. Any ecommerce SEOs care to weigh in?
By the way, the Google Blog link is broken; here it is, unbroken:
http://googleblog.blogspot.com/2007/12/twice-sitelinks.html
JohnWeb I read your comment with great sympathy. I too worry about good subdomain blogs being tarnished by their spam-ridden siblings.
However, if there is an upside to a negative view on a subdomain of the nature you reference, then it would be the incentive to move on to a "custom" domain.
I say, give blogspot and wordpress.com to the spammers, and hope to see the quality info take some authority.
Matt, thanks for trying to explain this change:
http://www.mattcutts.com/blog/subdomains-and-subdirectories/
But for it is still not very clear. I did get that it was a very "subtle" change but still I did not get the mechanism.
annie7, imagine that you have a query with 7-8 results from one domain. Sometimes that's a good thing (e.g. if the domain is the world-expert on that topic, or if you specifically searched for that domain), but often those 7-8 results are a bit more than you wanted. This change makes it more likely that you'll see (say) 2-4 results from a domain, but not 7-8. That improves search results diversity for users.