Calendar
Network
Feeds
- 44
- Sphinn It!
Went Hot: January 29, 2008 - 7:58 am
Posted By: jeffquipp 108 days ago
Topic Type: News Story (Jump to http://sebastians-pamphlets.com)
Category: Google SEO
Excellent scoop Sebastian!
14 Comments
Went Hot: January 29, 2008 - 7:58 am
Posted By: jeffquipp 108 days ago
Topic Type: News Story (Jump to http://sebastians-pamphlets.com)
Category: Google SEO
Excellent scoop Sebastian!
14 Comments
Top 10 Most Sphunn
In What's New
- SEO Bullshit Bingo (20)
- Relevance and Appeal (20)
- Why www.arsecommerce Is A Bad URL (18)
- Google: “All your index are belong ... (18)
- Search Engine Watch Forums Names Ch... (18)
- A Letter of Apology to my Wrists (17)
- The Social Media Trip (17)
- How You Can Use WordPress Functions... (16)
- Search Marketing Trends - What's up... (16)
- Community: The Human Element of SEO... (15)
Latest Comments
- incrediblehelp: partying with BUSH? not likely. ;-)…
- Some interesting thoughts - anyway, here in germany the social media thing …
- DarkMatter - that's interesting that merely changing the title tag allows i…
- nice! where is "hand job?" :p…
- Nice writeup, but what I think it would even be cooler and more useful to t…
- @
- Linkbait is the Paris Hilton approach to online marketing. Your site beco…
- I must admit, Eric, that I have trained my spam filter so that by now most …
- - read more -
Save the date for:
• SMX Madrid (in Spanish, May 20-21)
• SMX Advanced - Seattle, WA (June 3-4) Register today!
• SMX Local & Mobile - San Francisco, CA (July 24-25) See the agenda, and register now!
• SMX East - NYC - (Oct. 6-8)
• SMX London - November 4 & 5, 2008
Comments
Thanks for sphinning the good news, Jeff. :)
Related literature:
http://www.seroundtable.com/archives/016107.html
http://sphinn.com/story/24687#c29022
Awesome find Sebastian. I guess everything is not always as it seems, but there usually is merit to observations of odd search results.
Yep, many of such observations and their discussions on forums resulted in accepted theories, or revealed facts that were confirmed by the engines later on. If only those threads weren't titled "penalty" before anybody knows what actually happens.
Crosslinking related position #6 stories:
http://sphinn.com/story/24687 (SEL coverage)
http://sphinn.com/story/24626 (Aaron Wall gets rid of his #6 positioning)
http://sphinn.com/story/25142 (#6 exists, but perhaps there's no penalty)
http://sphinn.com/story/25695 (It's a software glitch, Google rolls out the bug fix)
In fact I sphunn it for two reasons:
- Sebastian's generous sharing spirit.
- Jeff's power in finding good stuff and detecting SEO-Babies :-)
Thanks Harith ... hey, and don't forget my ability to predict Pat's losses. Though ... don't think its gonna happen this year :)
Sebastian ... maybe anytime someone finds this type of anomoly, they should just refer to it as an anomoly. Though, I suppose it gets much more attention when people dispute whether or not its a penalty huh?
You're right. but from where I come from I feel way more comfortable talking about anomalies. As far as Google is involved, the indispensable attention is somewhat guaranteed. ;)
Its no bug...
The position 6 is really where google is going to start organic listings in the within the next two years thanks to universal search.
1) Google Images
2) Google Base
3) Google Video
4) Google Knol
5) Google News
6) Regular Listings...
@ streko: Google doesn't make much money from organic results....the future is inevitable. BTW, wasn't it Sebastian who gave Aaron Wall shit because this filter was not real?
as said once again. All your base are belong to google...
http://img70.imageshack.us/img70/9749/allyourgoogleab7.jpg
Marty, I didn't "give Aaron Wall shit because the filter was not real". What I said is that I doubt that this is a filter or penalty. It just made no sense to me. A penalty for what? A filter to achive what? The "what" was still missing. We saw a symptom (mysterious #6 positioning for pages that should rank better across the board) without a somewhat plausible diagnosis. I didn't doubt that Aaron, Jim, Danny and all the others indeed spotted unreal #6 positions, I've checked a fair amount of those myself. Now we know that the #6 beast is a bug, or an unintended side effect. Without Matt's announcement many would still think of it as a filter or penalty. Deciding that an anomaly is a penalty or filter whilst still analyzing it leads to biased and therefore wrong assumptions. That's what I've criticized. I hope that Aaron isn't pissed because of my somewhat sarcastic post and my comments here at Sphinn. I've just used his post (inspired by his title bait) where he explained what he did to sail around the #6-bug as a hook to criticize the methods applied by a huge part of the community.
People come from different perspectives, and Aaron Wall obviously approached this as an SEO researcher who sells advice and has a large audience for "how to" -- he considered over optimization as a potential factor and starting adjusting. That's what he's supposed to do, right?
And Sebastian is correct that some things take time to understand.... good pamphlets are not written in one day.
And others are correct suggesting that an "anomoly" is no different than a rule or penalty because Google is a black box to webmasters... we only have access to input and output so everything we see is a result of Google's bahavior, intended or not.
Depending on your perspective.
If you want to optimize today for profits, you act and re-act. If you want to understand for the long haul, you study and poke and prod and ask questions again and again. And if you work for clients, I suppose you have to backup your actions with plausible explanations such as an input-output model and references to "experts" whose trust profiles match your client's tastes.
Good job all around, methinks.
My site that got hit had issues that were IMHO suboptimal, so I decided to clean up while it was hosed...when it came back I stated that I did not have a large test set but that is what I did. More as a guideline for comparing notes than as a conclusive proof of any sort.
I choose to have few clients because my own sites build nice equity and passive revs, but my site that got hit was actually a client website and I couldn't justify not fixing the issues I saw on his site. His site has come a long way, but unfortunately it still has a long way to go still to be best of class. I try to push the production of content but if I do all the writing across hundreds of pages there is not great ROI in that unless I own the site and get all the revs. :)
At least it wasn't an actual penalty, never was, just like I said it wasn't ;)
Score:
1 - Common Sense
0 - Penalty Theories
BTW, let's get the new conspiracy started and I want dibs on calling it the ROLLBACK PENALTY(tm) which is what everyone will call this change which now pushes down everyone that got a boost from the previous -6 thingy.