I've been working for a now ex-client for the past few months, and their business was Search Engine Optimization. Some of their ideas were good, but some were just the party line, and reeked of much "disinformation". Why they are now ex-clients is a bizarre story I don't know the ending to, but during the development of the site, doing everything they said was wrong, bad, and would get the site delisted, I managed to increase revenue 400% and site traffic 200%, and incoming traffic was getting more and more targteted, and higher-dollar value.
Now, it wasn't really all that bad, because I was just working within Links, and doing what I've been doing for years, and what makes good sense with DIRECTORY programs, and sites. They are different than other sites.
In the middle of all this, we weathered the storm of getting DMOZ-CLONE directories de-listed? Did you see that? Google was going to target all the DMOZ sites, and delist them.
Google also released *ALOT* of other information (disinformation?) right before the SEO Conference that was happening.
We all run directory sites. Some of us are using links as a full CMS, but most of us have links to external sites as either the primary or secondary goal.
Many of the sites were seeded by DMOZ, because it's available.
How many people using Glinks and developing a real site got their sites delisted????
Several of my DMOZ import sites WENT UP in rankings, after that whole "delisting" experience.
Why? Perhaps targeting? Perhaps it was something deeper.
I wrote a *LOT* of things about google in the past few months, and I need to go through and sort through them, rather than rewrite them all. I will post them here, since I feel this is an important topic, and some real, common sense needs to prevail.
The bottom line, and the *ONLY* thing "GOOGLE" has ever said, is to write/build sites for HUMANS, not search engines. I was actually kicked out of a SEO forum for agreeing with the Google person who stated that, and disagreeing with the SEO-scammers who were belittling her "trite" comments.
But, my sites keep going UP in rankings, theirs get delisted. Hmmmmmm.
What's the point here?
The most brilliant minds are working in the bowels of the code rooms at Google. (Actually, they are probably sitting on their sun deck, in a bath robe, drinking tequilla, and typing on a laptop through dark sunglasses and 9 levels of wireless encryption, but you get the point).
The Google spiders, parsers, lexical analyers and semantic processors are *TRYING* to be more human (AI), *NOT* more robot like. That means, they are going to be more and more "keen" to clues of an SEO site, such as all the "rules" the SEO people like to play.
They are also going to pay more attention to page formatting, CSS placements, and not simply view the sites the way Linx did. That is too easy to get the wrong idea about a page, and for scammers to place content off screen. Ever wonder why it takes so long to get listed in their directory? Maybe it's not "sandboxing" but the amount of parsing, processing, lexical and semantic checking, and such that has to go into a website before it does get listed?
*BUT*, since the above programs *are* still robots, and not human, wouldn't it be easier to be able to pick out all the "optimzed" and potential "scam" sites, easily? Sure! Let people *THINK* that the optimizations get them higher rankings, when really those optimizations are really _RED_FLAGS_ for the spiders and parsers to do some really heavy MUNCHING to see if there is content on those pages or not!
In short, Google, with a little disinformation, has developed an entire industry spending huge amounts of time and money picking out the potential "problem" and "scam" sites for them by putting all those nice little red flags a robot can pick out easily :)
Interesting concept, huh? As a programmer, it makes perfect sense to me :)
Why else would Google, an incredibly private company for all it's presence, make patent filings and press releases BEFORE AN SEO CONVENTION -- except to provide more disinformation and get the people off the real topics and concentrating on all the "what ifs" ??? Makes sense! You *don't* have to file patents, unless you are going public, and the google spiders are _private_. You may see their foot prints, or their webs, but you don't see them, or their code -- OR WHAT THEY ARE DOING WITH THE DATA!! There is no reason to make any filings for semantic, lexical, or other processing unless you want to provide a lot of disinformation, *or* you are going to go public with it for marketing, eg: adwords.
Google absolves themselves right off the bat by having their main speaker, again, remind everyone to "build sites for humans" then they sit back and watch -- laughing as everyone IGNORES that and concentrates on all the "what ifs." How many speakers CHANGED their well thought out, and planned, speaches to try to encompass the "new" [dis]information???
Now *THAT* is a corporate coup!
Build for HUMANS. Avoid "problems" or things that can confuse a spider, but stay away from most optimization tricks or techniques unless you have a _real_ content site, and are willing to be looked at 90 ways from Sunday on each pass of the spider. You might get past one or even two updates, but you will be caught, and cut off eventually. The climb back is much, much harder than the original rise.
Comments welcome.. More Later.
Now, it wasn't really all that bad, because I was just working within Links, and doing what I've been doing for years, and what makes good sense with DIRECTORY programs, and sites. They are different than other sites.
In the middle of all this, we weathered the storm of getting DMOZ-CLONE directories de-listed? Did you see that? Google was going to target all the DMOZ sites, and delist them.
Google also released *ALOT* of other information (disinformation?) right before the SEO Conference that was happening.
We all run directory sites. Some of us are using links as a full CMS, but most of us have links to external sites as either the primary or secondary goal.
Many of the sites were seeded by DMOZ, because it's available.
How many people using Glinks and developing a real site got their sites delisted????
Several of my DMOZ import sites WENT UP in rankings, after that whole "delisting" experience.
Why? Perhaps targeting? Perhaps it was something deeper.
I wrote a *LOT* of things about google in the past few months, and I need to go through and sort through them, rather than rewrite them all. I will post them here, since I feel this is an important topic, and some real, common sense needs to prevail.
The bottom line, and the *ONLY* thing "GOOGLE" has ever said, is to write/build sites for HUMANS, not search engines. I was actually kicked out of a SEO forum for agreeing with the Google person who stated that, and disagreeing with the SEO-scammers who were belittling her "trite" comments.
But, my sites keep going UP in rankings, theirs get delisted. Hmmmmmm.
What's the point here?
The most brilliant minds are working in the bowels of the code rooms at Google. (Actually, they are probably sitting on their sun deck, in a bath robe, drinking tequilla, and typing on a laptop through dark sunglasses and 9 levels of wireless encryption, but you get the point).
The Google spiders, parsers, lexical analyers and semantic processors are *TRYING* to be more human (AI), *NOT* more robot like. That means, they are going to be more and more "keen" to clues of an SEO site, such as all the "rules" the SEO people like to play.
They are also going to pay more attention to page formatting, CSS placements, and not simply view the sites the way Linx did. That is too easy to get the wrong idea about a page, and for scammers to place content off screen. Ever wonder why it takes so long to get listed in their directory? Maybe it's not "sandboxing" but the amount of parsing, processing, lexical and semantic checking, and such that has to go into a website before it does get listed?
*BUT*, since the above programs *are* still robots, and not human, wouldn't it be easier to be able to pick out all the "optimzed" and potential "scam" sites, easily? Sure! Let people *THINK* that the optimizations get them higher rankings, when really those optimizations are really _RED_FLAGS_ for the spiders and parsers to do some really heavy MUNCHING to see if there is content on those pages or not!
In short, Google, with a little disinformation, has developed an entire industry spending huge amounts of time and money picking out the potential "problem" and "scam" sites for them by putting all those nice little red flags a robot can pick out easily :)
Interesting concept, huh? As a programmer, it makes perfect sense to me :)
Why else would Google, an incredibly private company for all it's presence, make patent filings and press releases BEFORE AN SEO CONVENTION -- except to provide more disinformation and get the people off the real topics and concentrating on all the "what ifs" ??? Makes sense! You *don't* have to file patents, unless you are going public, and the google spiders are _private_. You may see their foot prints, or their webs, but you don't see them, or their code -- OR WHAT THEY ARE DOING WITH THE DATA!! There is no reason to make any filings for semantic, lexical, or other processing unless you want to provide a lot of disinformation, *or* you are going to go public with it for marketing, eg: adwords.
Google absolves themselves right off the bat by having their main speaker, again, remind everyone to "build sites for humans" then they sit back and watch -- laughing as everyone IGNORES that and concentrates on all the "what ifs." How many speakers CHANGED their well thought out, and planned, speaches to try to encompass the "new" [dis]information???
Now *THAT* is a corporate coup!
Build for HUMANS. Avoid "problems" or things that can confuse a spider, but stay away from most optimization tricks or techniques unless you have a _real_ content site, and are willing to be looked at 90 ways from Sunday on each pass of the spider. You might get past one or even two updates, but you will be caught, and cut off eventually. The climb back is much, much harder than the original rise.
Comments welcome.. More Later.
