News Source: http://seo-theory.com
Published: Jul 09, 2008 - 03:23 pm
Story Found By: richardbaxterseo 1306 Days ago
Category: SEO
16 Comments
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News Source: http://seo-theory.com
Published: Jul 09, 2008 - 03:23 pm
Story Found By: richardbaxterseo 1306 Days ago
Category: SEO
16 Comments
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Not sure it is worth all the effort, but nice job by Michael staying on task. Sure looks like second links anchor text had an impact, and that was the claim, so this is at least a better argument than so many other "SEO claims" articles. I always wonder, though... if these "seo claims" people make are just noise intended to elicit more tidy bits of info from the people who are working harder on the details. It’s so easy to say "here’s how it is, and if you think not, prove it" and then sit back and wait for someone else to teach you SEO.
Micheal’s experiment has fundamental flaws. Read this post (and the comments below the post) and you’ll see what I mean:http://www.seo-scientist.com/first-link-counted-rebunked.html
I sphunn this because this is the kind of conversation I want to see more of on Sphinn: test VS test, not baseless opinion VS baseless opinion."You have pages on your site that include every one of the tested keywords. They still come up for me in the SERPs, especially the page where you are linking to Matt’s SEO Documentation post. All of those pages are linking to your homepage. Your test is dirty."Those two pages have no impact on the validity of Michael’s test. A page containing the word [galore] linking to the home page with the anchor text [seo theory] does not make the home page more relevant for [seo theories galore].seo-theory/wordpress/ ranks for ["seo tests galore"] (first link) but not for ["seo theories galore"]. The page ranks for [seo-theories-galore] with an URL-only result - not exactly sure what that means.
I would have Sphunn it if the headline was a bit more objective...or if I thought that Michael’s test was more valid than Neyne’s.Perhaps the desphinn was a bit rough in hindsight, but I’m sticking to my guns.Either way, I agree that this is the kind of stuff I would love to see more of on Sphinn.
Those two pages have no impact on the validity of Michael’s test. A page containing the word [galore] linking to the home page with the anchor text [seo theory] does not make the home page more relevant for [seo theories galore].So the text on the page that is issuing the link does not affect the relevancy of the page that is getting the link ? Links that come from a page relevant for [blue widget] will have the same impact on your rankings for [blue widget] as will the links coming from a page relevant to [car parts] or [casino] ? Or in another words, the text on the linking page does not contribute towards the relevancy of the page that is getting the link ? Live and learn.BTW as I am seeing the SERPS now (both by using ?gl=US and through a US based proxy), Michael’s site is ranking for [seo-tests-galore] (his first anchor text) and is nowhere to be found for [seo-theories-galore] (his second anchor text). So the test that came to disprove a theory, ended up proving it. That is the ABC of a Popperian test for a scientific theory - a theory can be called scientific only if one is able to devise an experiment that will disprove the theory. If after that test the theory is valid, then it can be said that the theory has been proven through a scientific method until a test disproving the theory is devised.
@Halfdeck, the search results I’m seeing on those phrases are consistent with "theories" being the second link, and reputation not passing. Interestingly enough, "theories" was the second link.MM appears to have removed the links and posted his "result," without leaving it up for others to analyze the outcome.It’s quite possible that the internal workings @ Google are more complex than "first link always wins" but neither MM nor David Eaves has done a valid test.
the earlier test that I sphunn on this topic I had made mention in the comments that it didnt sound right that the second link following a nofollowed link was given no relevance. Glad to see this put to the test.
@DanThies - That’s actually an interesting point..."it’s quite possible that the internal workings @ Google are more complex than..."It might not be so black and white...hope to see more research on this topic (and hope to conduct some of my own in the near future)
If it is that simple, it’s likely something implemented by the crawling/indexing people to wring a little more efficiency out of indexing link text, not some sinister master plan by the search quality people to confuse SEOs.As I mentioned on a related Sphinn, with a lot of testing, we’ve seen some results that look like MM’s result, but the vast majority point to the first link as the only reliable behavior.It’s notable that even with MM’s "debunking" test, the *phrase* search behaves as "expected" under the first link wins scenario.This raises questions that aren’t answered because MM removed the links. I can’t blame him for that, Xenite is a real web site not an SEO testbed.It’s possible that the non-phrase match was due to text on the page, an RSS feed that fed the index, or other causes. I haven’t dug through to try to sort out what posts and text would have appeared on the page at the time, but others have said that these words all appeared in many places on the SEO theory blog.It’s also possible that there’s something special about the way phrase searches are handled vs. a "normal" search. The supplemental index stuff that was mentioned could be relevant, not because the pages are in the SI, but since anchor text is likely in a separate index, it’s possible that the text from the second link is stored in a different place (and/or format) than the text from the first link, and retrieved under different conditions.It’s just a shame that we can’t discuss this stuff without personal attacks flying. Disagreeing with certain people almost inevitably results in that sort of nonsense.
@Dan Thies - these are all excellent points. It is great when people don’t take what is written on other blogs as sacred and go out and test it themselves. It is a pity when people like MM are not capable of doing it without throwing in things like "you people are sooo doing the 2007 SEO" or things in that spirit. I am totally open for people debunking the findings of the experiments i conduct. Every time before I hit the "Submit" button, I have this vivid image of a room full of Google engineers, pissing themselves laughing from what I wrote. I fully take into account the possibility that what I am seeing is some local phenomenon, a product of the SI or the way I am conducting the searches or the setup of my experiment. After the last experiment, I got into numerous conversations with people that had remarks on the results or that have seen different things. Needless to say, none of them felt the need to write their words in a belittling way.To everyone else, both here and on all the other threads, it is advisable to drop the statements like "i don’t believe it is true", "it doesn’t sound right" etc. In logic, it is called argument from incredulity (or ignorance) and is considered one of the major logical flaws, often used by Creationists in their vendetta against evolution. It is not scientific and it is not logical. Some things can be proven logically but there needs to be some testing done so you can base your logic in facts, even if the testing is not done by you.
It’s interesting to see that several of the people that sphunn this article (despite the needless "Final word on Michael VanDeMar") desphunn Mvand’s response to it.If we’re going to debate the merits of the experiment that’s great but IMO the personal attack at the end devalues the post significantly and I’m dissappointed that the "Flame War" police (halfdeck prominently among them) have decided to overlook that issue.
there is obviously an issue of taking sides herelet’s just get back to SEO...
@neyne - good last comment there neyne - really glad to see such good debate coming up from everyone.
The scientific community dealth with this problem eons ago. The pseudo-scientific community continues to try and work around it, unsuccessfully IMHO. Basically, don’t make claims your observations don’t support. Report what you did, why you did it, and what you observed. In the end section, discuss why you think it might be meaningful, citing previously accepted evidence as much as possible, and including as little opionion as possible. Unfortunately, this makes for very dry reading (like most scientific journals), because what we actually do with any particular investgation is very little. The overall process of advancing is consequently very slow (as ohers build upon your work), but at least there is no room for personal attacks and finger-pointing. If instead, you want to take small observations and make big claims, you open yourself to reactions of equal inflamation. That’s ok, but maybe best to just ignore the reactions as Galileo must have, instead of again reacting to the reactions. If you were right in yur claims, your grandchildren’s SEO friends will probably give you post-mortum credit, right?Michael addressed a claim that second link anchor text had no impact. It clearly had some impact, as tested, within the constraints of the test, which were not too different in magnitude from the constraints on te first test. That’s all he did and all you should take away from it. But it was enough to debunk a claim that "secon dlink has no effect". Dan above notes there is clearly more to it than this... exactly. If you really want to be an experimentalist, then instead of arguing about personal styles, take that little bit of knowledge in the first study, that little bit of knowledge from the second study, and work on a third study. Be sure to report back on Sphinn, and ignore the opinions because they don’t add value to the test (although they can certianly aid you in devising a test strategy). Best of luck.
Desphunn due to misleading title. Martinez’ data is not fully conclusive. It appears flawed.
The test is no better, than Michael VanDeMars (even more flawed, actually), but claims otherwise. Misleading.