Thursday, March 5, 2009
Unfair Google boosts SEO for big brand rankings
Claims have emerged that Google has been giving big brands a helping hand in their SEO efforts. The Google ranking algorithm apparently now includes branding in its ranking calculations.
The discussion started when Aaron Wall, one the industries most respected SEO proponents, released a lengthy blog post titled “Google’’s New Search Engine Rankings Place Heavy Emphasis on Branding“.
After taking his reader’s through a brief history of Google’s algorithm updates, Aaron goes on to highlight via some RankPulse charts, that big brands seem to have received a major ranking boost since Jan 09.
An unprecedented number of them breaking into the top 10 miraculously. Aaron describes the situation:
in some cases brands have 80% or 90% of the first page search results for some of the most valuable keywords. There are thousands of other such examples across all industries if you take the time to do the research, but the trend is clear - Google is promoting brands for big money core category keywords.
In his post, he refers to a presentation Eric Schmidt gave which might have been a hint into the future tweaks Google was planning for the algorithm.
The internet is fast becoming a “cesspool” where false information thrives. Brands are the solution, not the problem. Brands are how you sort out the cesspool. Brand affinity is clearly hard wired. It is so fundamental to human existence that it’’s not going away. It must have a genetic component.
It does beg the question: Does boosting brand rankings enhance the user experience or are Google just aligning themselves with the companies most likely to be valuable advertisers?
Do you need help to promote your own online brand in the face of grwoing competition? If so please contact Dr Search the Principal Consultant at the Search Clinic now.
The discussion started when Aaron Wall, one the industries most respected SEO proponents, released a lengthy blog post titled “Google’’s New Search Engine Rankings Place Heavy Emphasis on Branding“.
After taking his reader’s through a brief history of Google’s algorithm updates, Aaron goes on to highlight via some RankPulse charts, that big brands seem to have received a major ranking boost since Jan 09.
An unprecedented number of them breaking into the top 10 miraculously. Aaron describes the situation:
in some cases brands have 80% or 90% of the first page search results for some of the most valuable keywords. There are thousands of other such examples across all industries if you take the time to do the research, but the trend is clear - Google is promoting brands for big money core category keywords.
In his post, he refers to a presentation Eric Schmidt gave which might have been a hint into the future tweaks Google was planning for the algorithm.
The internet is fast becoming a “cesspool” where false information thrives. Brands are the solution, not the problem. Brands are how you sort out the cesspool. Brand affinity is clearly hard wired. It is so fundamental to human existence that it’’s not going away. It must have a genetic component.
It does beg the question: Does boosting brand rankings enhance the user experience or are Google just aligning themselves with the companies most likely to be valuable advertisers?
Do you need help to promote your own online brand in the face of grwoing competition? If so please contact Dr Search the Principal Consultant at the Search Clinic now.
Labels: Dr Search, Google, online marketing, Search Clinic, Search Marketing, SEO Services
# posted by Dr Search- Principal Consultant at the Search Clinic : Thursday, March 05, 2009
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Monday, March 2, 2009
Google Japan caught buying reviews
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This has to be one of the more bizarre SEO stories of the year. Google have penalised one of their own sites, Google Japan, after they were caught paying bloggers to write positive reviews about their services.
Google have taken the drastic move of dropping the PageRank of Google.co.jp from a 9 to a 5 after reports emerged, and Google expert Matt Cutts stated, "I expect that to remain for a while."
So how did this come about? Let's look at the story of Google Japan.
Firstly, it should be noted that Japan is one of the few countries where Google is not the dominant search engine. Yahoo! rules in Japan with 51.2% market share compared to around 39% for Google.
In order to compete with Yahoo!, Google have been releasing a number of Japan only services, including a recent widget for blogs that displays the top 10 hot keywords from Google Japan searches.
To let people know about this service, Google hired internet marketing company CyberBuzz to promote the keyword feature in a pay-per-post campaign. This effectively means Google was paying bloggers to write about and praise their new service - something that's strictly forbidden in their webmaster guidelines.
After this story was uncovered across various blogs, Google's Matt Cutts came in and confirmed that Google Japan would be penalized.
Google Japan have since offered an apology for the incident, which has been translated by Asiajin:
Google Japan is running several promotional activities to let people know more about our products.
It turns out that using blogs on the part of the promotional activities violates Google's search guidelines, so we have ended the promotion. We would like to apologize to the people concerned and to our users, and are making an effort to make our communications more transparent in order to prevent the recurrence of such an incident.
If there's been one positive for Google out of this, at least they will be seen as enforcing their rules fairly, even against themselves!
If you're looking for help with promoting your website - check out our range of affordable search engine marketing services.
This has to be one of the more bizarre SEO stories of the year. Google have penalised one of their own sites, Google Japan, after they were caught paying bloggers to write positive reviews about their services.
Google have taken the drastic move of dropping the PageRank of Google.co.jp from a 9 to a 5 after reports emerged, and Google expert Matt Cutts stated, "I expect that to remain for a while."
So how did this come about? Let's look at the story of Google Japan.
Firstly, it should be noted that Japan is one of the few countries where Google is not the dominant search engine. Yahoo! rules in Japan with 51.2% market share compared to around 39% for Google.
In order to compete with Yahoo!, Google have been releasing a number of Japan only services, including a recent widget for blogs that displays the top 10 hot keywords from Google Japan searches.
To let people know about this service, Google hired internet marketing company CyberBuzz to promote the keyword feature in a pay-per-post campaign. This effectively means Google was paying bloggers to write about and praise their new service - something that's strictly forbidden in their webmaster guidelines.
After this story was uncovered across various blogs, Google's Matt Cutts came in and confirmed that Google Japan would be penalized.
Google Japan have since offered an apology for the incident, which has been translated by Asiajin:
Google Japan is running several promotional activities to let people know more about our products.
It turns out that using blogs on the part of the promotional activities violates Google's search guidelines, so we have ended the promotion. We would like to apologize to the people concerned and to our users, and are making an effort to make our communications more transparent in order to prevent the recurrence of such an incident.
If there's been one positive for Google out of this, at least they will be seen as enforcing their rules fairly, even against themselves!
Labels: Search Clinic, Search Engine Optimisation, Search Marketing, SEO Services
# posted by Dr Search- Principal Consultant at the Search Clinic : Monday, March 02, 2009
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