Calendar
Network
Feeds
seobook
As more hypertargeted publishing channels arise and we read more self reinforcing information how do we get beyond the walls of our own comfort zones and biases?
Search engines rank whatever is linked to the most (at least to some degree) but they don't have a subjective way to find the best information. This can lead to result diversity, but heavily skewed diversity with lots of issues at the edges but a limited amount of information in the middle.
How does search overcome the dual polarizing effects of self reinforcing media consumption bias and the biased caused by link = vote?
I think that is the best strategy for hyper-niche travel sites...pick a tiny niche. Have seen it work dozens of time, and have seen hundreds of sites fail from going too broad.
I am thinking of adding an option for grabbing 10 results per page too. 100 will show different results for many queries, but still get a good general idea of about where you are.
>Aaron always makes really cool tools, but this one didn't work for me. Wasn't even close in actual SERP positions. Before you ask, yes, I check across a hole bunchload of dataservers, and from different locations (I've got a server in Dallas and another one in LA). So it's funny that it didn't pan out, yet.
It clusters 100 results per page to minimize scraping on Google. That clustering can cause a shift in ranking compared to only seeing 10 results per SERP.
Also worth noting that search personalization settings can alter your rankings.
@DarkMatter
I think people who do not already know each other web presume things to be spam if they seem commercial in nature. I voted for you so now you are back up to even. :)
>They are no more spam than a blog, a MySpace page, or a Twitter feed.
Or, perhaps, a scraped and recompiled one. I would not put money against some software being smarter than some of the people working at Mahalo.
>But to call Mahalo spam is, I think, disingenuous.
You better ask Google to rewrite their spam guidelines then.
>it does provide an independent view of which is the best
I am not so sure. If all it is doing is recycling what is elsewhere then there is no independent reviews or analysis...this is precisely why Google hates thin affiliate sites. And for that page that classification is fitting, according to Google.
>It's not Google that's saying this
Obviously you have not read Google's spam guidelines in their review documents.
Sure people can steal. They do that offline too. Just because something was ONCE freely available does not mean that you relinquish copyright.
>I think he should stick to SEO and leave AdSense to people that know what in the hell they're talking about.
Each month AdSense pays my sites more than the average person make in a year with a full time job. According to a publisher who would be in the know (his company is probably one of the top 20 ad publishers in the world), 2005 was Google's peak year for payout percentage, and they have been clawing back at keeping more of the payout since then (other than a few blundering deals like the MySpace deal).
Across multiple verticals that I advertise in and publish in click price has been about the same while my pay from clicks has dropped ~ 30% in the past 4 months.
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. :)
>>but when the editorial integrity dwells upon National Enquirer levels of grandeur and mythology, are we doing ourselves any favours?
We get people in your situation, who already know everything, write off truth as lies, and are not open to learning new ideas, unfortunately.
After tracking the rankings of a site daily for 3 years and never seeing it rank #6 for a core phrase for a period of time greater than 3 days for a couple years and then seeing it for weeks straight that tells me something is up.
Then searching for ~ 50 related phrases where the site was #1 to #3 for ALL go to #6 (including derivatives of the domain name itself when added to this other keyword), AND seeing many other trusted people discuss similar symptoms takes the situation from hearsay to conclusion.
But after Google burned one of my domains that was mentioned on an SEO blog I would be stupid to keep putting out more of them again and again unless I wanted to risk them getting burned too.
And why should I put myself at that much risk to prove stuff to people who claim I am writing at the National Enquirer level? I will just keep launching new sites and keep learning while they think everything beyond their scope of experience is garbage. Over a couple years time that will lead to a nice competitive advantage for me. :)
>How would you test the benefit of a spammy hyphened domain name compared to a brand domain that doesn't contain keywords? (a REAL difference in overall long-term performance)
I did not say anything about spammy or hyphens. But if you buy mykeywords.com, in the current Google algorithm it will typically rank for "my keywords" much easier than another new domain name that is not mykeywords.com. I have tested it too many times to pretend otherwise is true.
I have tested it by ranking new domains quickly. And I have tested it too many times to believe otherwise. You could also test it by using 301 redirects and tracking before and after rankings.
>I would have commented on SEOBook except the "log in" put me off.
Hey I thought we were cooler than that. To be fair though, imagine being on the receiving end of 12 to 50 manual comment spams a day. Wouldn't you eventually want to reclaim that hour of every day?
>You have to view Aaron's perspective as one who wrote a book about SEO. He collated what was published, and created a reference book. At the time, he was not very advanced in SEO. Now that he has some chops, maybe what he finds now is not up to his standards?
I did not understand all the business aspects of search when I created the first version of my book. I was still somewhat wet behind the ears in fully appreciating the value of search due to my newness to the field of marketing. And the first version was obviously nowhere near as good as my current understanding of the marketplace, but I was ranking in the top 5 in Google for search engine marketing before I wrote that book, so I knew more than most of the search engine marketing firms that chose to target that term.
BTW I just got a haircut and shaved my chops. :)
Those duplicate title tag and duplicate meta description tag features look remarkably similar to my Website Health Check tool that Google recently blocked.
At least they now offer those features, but a thank you / credit / attribution link would have been nice.
Hi Andy
Being banned and having them block your tool are two different things.
I was trying to sound spammy when I wrote that testimonial, but that extension rocks.
I should have used unearths in there somewhere ...and something about making millions ;)
Still a good concept to understand if you want to understand link equity beyond PageRank. I say read that paper and the one about local reranking based on interconnectivity and you are ahead of 99% of the market.
Story: Search Life Meets Real Life -- Tell Me Your Thoughts!