SEO UPDATES

Google recently made a stink on the Internet when it devalued some well-known websites of their high PageRank. The reasoning? Well, from most accounts people believe it has to do with selling paid links. Google recommends those who sell paid links to use the No-follow tag. That way the link doesn’t count in the eyes of Google, therefore no ‘link juice’ is passed along.

Google has been promising a crackdown on websites that sell links and apparently have made good on that promise. Many quality websites have taken a hit, which has some questioning just how reliable PageRank is of true web authority.

Eatonweb, a blog directory, announced earlier this month that it will be eliminating PageRank as a factor when it comes to assigning value to blogs. While it isn’t surprising that some webmasters are disillusioned with PageRank, when companies begin to take notice of the flaws in PageRank you know something is wrong with the system.

It will be interesting to see if other ranking websites follow suit and if Google will have any response to their decisions.

It has been almost 3 months since the last Google dance, the name given to when Google reconfigures PageRanks. The Google dance happens every three months and there is already speculation from the exact date of the dance to reports of fluttering PageRanks.

For about a week, webmasters will notice a possible change in their PageRank. It may fall to no PR(PageRank) or jump suddenly only to fall back down again. When this happens, this is usually the most obvious sign that Google is updating the PageRanks. Some people are already reporting an influx in their PageRank while others are saying the July 21st will be the PR update.

While Google hasn’t released an exact date, what we do know is that last update was in April, so it is time for another PR update. Google will visit each site and evaluate it. Each link is a “vote” for a website. How much weight that vote counts varies on the PR of the website. A link from a high PR website is weighted more than a link from a PR 0.

Since the update hasn’t happened yet, there is still time to work on securing backlinks to your website before the Google dance.  Take part in link exchanges, write compelling content, or leave comments on blogs are all ways to get links. Get busy, because we may not know the day of the dance begins but we do know that one is coming very soon.

If you have a website, should you be obsessed with search engine optimization (seo)? Well, it depends. I do feel that all websites should be as optimized as you can get them but their is no reason to have a meltdown over it.

Google changes how it ranks every few months and many hold their breath wondering what will happen to how they rank in the search engines depending on the phrase they use. Some can see their business and amount of visitors daily lower significantly after such an update to Google’s system.

The thing about that is, if your only way of getting customer’s or just visitors to your website is through search engines, then depending on what your site or blog is about, your going to lose in the long run. Things change, you can’t expect to put all your eggs in one basket. If you are not a business and only make money on the side of your site then considering doing link trades.

Trading links helps you with your ranking plus gets you knew visitors who wouldn’t have been searching for your site. Also there are lots of places online in which you can get advertising on individual websites at no great cost.

As you can see the PR update has begun, This I think was the longest wait for PageRank update. Jagger, Big Daddy … all was confusing the webmasters from last few months. Even Matt Cutts did not mention anything about it on his blog. I noticed updates on few datacenters … 216.239.53.104 , 66.102.7.99, 66.102.7.147, 66.102.7.105 … This ofcourse will be a great news for the webmasters.
I have collected a few tools to check pagerank in various ways, various data centers. Please do note that different tools listed use different datacenters so the result may vary and I suggest you check once in google toolbar . It is normal that it shows different pagerank in different datacenters, In the past it’s usually lasted a few days and then they all gave out the same PR.

PageRank Check
http://www.sr-ultimate.com/pagerank
http://www.seologs.com/pr-check/pagerank-dc.html
http://www.seochat.com/seo-tools/pagerank-lookup/
Various Datacanter Check
http://www.inlock.com/
http://www.mcdar.net/Q-Check/datatool.asp
http://www.iwebtool.com/pagerank_checker

Sorry there haven’t been too many updates around here lately… If you’d like to try your hand at blogging on Search Engine / SEO news, we’d love to have ya join us here on the Niner Niner network and SEO Updates.

You can signup to write for Niner Niner over on the Signup Page, beta password is: niner

Now, onto some AdSense news from a few days ago (in case ya misted it!):

JenSense broke the story of Google’s own AdSense page being hijacked in the SERPS of Google.

This is just silly. Someone thinks they can hijacks a Google page get away with it? LOL. Not.

Jen sez:

When you decide to hijack a site in the Google serps, it makes sense to do one that will benefit you in some way, while not raising yourself too high on the search engine’s radar. So, it obviously makes perfect sense to go and hijack the Google AdSense site

This is the best though. Kevin at All-In-One-Business.com replies back in the comments:

I want to thank JenSense and others for posting this thread.

Thanks for the comment Air Charter. I just got off the phone with two different tech writers explaining why I would have a meta redirect on my site.

It isn’t an attempt to profit from either Google’s page rank or some cloaked affiliate link.

I am no hijacker. In fact, I’m not sure how I could in any way benefit from this link.

The simple fact is this: I write and syndicate articles all over the web. I used to put into those articles direct links to sites I was talking about.

A couple years ago I had a problem when I had written and syndicated several articles about GoTo.com when they changed their name to Overture. There were dozens of websites to notify and ask them to update the links in my articles.

So I decided to begin using meta refresh redirects rather than listing the URL’s directly. I can then keep the links current in all the articles I write.

Hopefully Google will look at this and decide to make some changes so this won’t occur. It’s hard to believe I got a number 1 listing without trying.

Can anyone these days ever just admit when they’ve f’d up and come clean? Feh.

… unless you have the legal budget to back it up.

Google Blogoscoped reported how SEO Inc. dropped out of Google’s rankings for virtually every SEO-related term, including their company name.

SEO Inc. fired back with a cease & desist notice.

Some people / companies will never learn.

After sending the cease & desist, Boing Boing eventually picked up the story.

A tiny little weblog post on a not-so-widely-read blog suddenly gets BoingBoing’d after getting the lawyers involved, and probably tens of thousands, if not hundreds of thousands of Boing Boing readers now have a negative impression of SEO Inc.

Great article over on the ClickZ network that talks about Google’s new patent filing:

Google reveals in the filing its ranking algorithm is organized to thwart overly aggressive marketers. It confirms something search marketers have long suspected: Google watches how fast new links to a site appear as a way to detect and penalize search engine spam. If too many new links appear in too short a timeframe, the site may be penalized, or even banned, by Google.

According to the filing, Google also watches how many new links with identical anchor text emerge. This is another clue links may be suspect or mass-manufactured. Additionally, Google monitors the rate at which links disappear to identify the degree of relevance and sort out spam. If Google does these things, you should assume other engines do something very similar.

If you were to switch to an affiliate platform that caused all your affiliates to link directly to your site overnight, all using the same anchor text, red flags would very likely be raised with Google and other search engines. Your site might be banned or, at the very least, experience a sudden decline in rankings. Either scenario costs a lot of money and take months to repair.

Read more here