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    Link Pruning

    October 2012: The only constant in Organic Search is change

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    October 2012 was another busy month for Google. The search giant started the month by announcing 65 changes they made during August and September. Google also pushed out a new Penguin Update (v3) on October 5 – these Penguin updates penalize the overuse of keywords both on a website, and through links. We have had a few clients with really bad – and sometimes profane links. They may consider Google’s new disavow links tool, just released. But we recommend caution with the tool right now: Some SEOs are speculating Google may see this as a confession! Information also came out early in the month about Google penalizing domains that were more “keyword rich” than authoritative. This Google update (called EMD, or Exact Match Domain) is hitting domains like cheap-flights-from-denver.com. They would have been favored in the past for searches like “cheap flights from denver”, but no longer. Authoritative sites were not hit though: ski.com still ranks #1 for “ski”. Google also had an update to it’s penalty for “Top Heavy” sites – those with too many ads at the tops of the page. Highlights of Google’s 65 recent changes include: 1. Changes to titles and snippets. Google is ever more treating the robots.txt directives, title and meta description tags as “suggestions” from webmasters. Sometimes this can be helpful – such as when titles have “comments on” or other generic phrases. Other times, Google’s choices may directly conflict with choices the webmaster has made. 2. Google is using more like terms, and expanding their autocomplete suggestions. A search for “telecom provider” returns results where the term “carrier” is bolded as well as “provider”. Google is sure getting smarter, and it’s a good time to diversify keywords! The Google webmaster guidelines were also updated this month, and reflect their move away from counting low quality directory as well as low quality bookmarking sites. There wasn’t much news for Bing this last month, but a recent report from antivirus vendor Sophos found that Bing search results contained more than twice as many malware-infected pages as Google’s search results(which is still at a hefty 30%).

    The month in Search

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    There haven’t been any Penguin updates this last month, but Google Panda 3.9.1 happened on August 20, 2012. We didn’t see any impact to most client rankings. Penguin v1.2 update is still expected to happen any day now, and (Google Spokesperson) Matt Cutts says to expect a bumpy ride. The early revisions of Panda were wild and somewhat “wooly”. Is page 1 top 7 now?! Around mid-month, Google started showing only 7 results, and from fewer sites, for a good chunk of queries(Estimated: 18%). Page 1 now means “top 7” for many searches. The percentage of users clicking through from positions 8-10 has been negligible in most studies, but this is a major change in how results are displayed and another clear departure from the 10 blue links of yesteryear. Change is the rule Rankings are more volatile than ever. One SEO shared: “Something like 80% of the Top 10 SERPs we measure change every night, to some degree.” On August 10, Google posted 86 changes they made in June and July. Many were small, but those of interest to us involve the boosting of “trusted sites” (usually means large brands) as well as changes to sitelinks. The new clustering and boosting of trusted sites is often creating monopolies for larger brands. Google used to only show 2-3 links maximum from the same website. Now it is possible for larger brands to dominate the top 7 or 8 results. “Transition Rank” Patent Application Google has a new patent application regarding “transition rank.” It’s aimed at punishing Black Hat SEO techniques through random ranking changes: “Some of the techniques used by rank-modifying spammers include keyword stuffing, invisible text, tiny text, page redirects, META tags stuffing, and link-based manipulation.” Many SEOs are speculating this has been part of the algorithm for some time.

    Changes last month in the world of Organic Search

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    There weren’t any Penguin updates this last month either, but Google Panda 3.9 happened on July 24, 2012. We didn’t see any impact to client rankings. But Google Panda updates should be a constant reminder: Have you added to your site lately? Have you added something of real value to your visitors, something that will interest them, and something they will “Like” (or plus one!) Penguin v1.2 update is expected to happen any day now. With Google Penguin, websites are more vulnerable to competitors practicing “Negative SEO” than ever before. Since Google Penguin Update actually penalizes websites for links that may have not been created by them, or for them, it is a change for the SEO industry. Some SEO companies are offering “link pruning” services, but it is quite time consuming. Webmasters on these bad websites are bordering on extortion: Asking for compensation to remove links. Bing, for it’s part, has created a tool to disavow bad links. Google claims to be working on a similar feature in Google Webmaster Tools, but no news yet on when it will be ready. Some expect the tool’s release to coincide wih the next Penguin update. Google sent out 20,000 “unnatural link” warnings last month, but then created some confusion by telling webmasters to ignore them. Google’s Matt Cutts explains: “Fundamentally, it means we’re distrusting some links to your site. We often take this action when we see a site that is mostly good but might be might have some spammy or artificial links pointing to it.” The link building techniques he identified are: 1. “widgetbait” This is where sites distribute a badge or other graphic with a link back to their website. Some web stats sites send these out, and Google has noticed. 2. “paid links” Google wants to be the only site selling links, I think. Or maybe they just want to make sure that advertising related links do not help rankings. 3. “blog spam” Blog entries and comments that are spammy detract from the web. 4. “guestbook spam” Guestbook / forum postings that have nothing to do with the conversation are certainly annoying, and Google does not want to encourage them with it’s algorithm. 5. “excessive article directory submissions” We do not submit to article sites. Many SEO firms have been submitted “spun” articles that resemble gibberish. Google does not see this as a good thing for the web, and also is seeking diversity of link types. 6. “excessive link exchanges” Google knows webmasters are likely to exchange links where it makes sense, but do not want to see this on a mass scale. 7. “other types of linkspam” There are always going to be new types of linkspam. Every time there is a new type of website! Google+ Google is also rewarding sites using their Google+ social network. If you haven’t created a profile and/or switched over your Google Local/Maps profile, this is a good time to get it rolling. Need help? Let us know: We’ll steer you to the right partner or help you ourselves.

    July 2012 Changes in the World of Search Marketing

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    There weren’t any Penguin updates this month, but a couple of Panda updates to “refresh”. Google makes these updates and claims 1% of queries are affected. It sounds small, but is actually billions of queries. Google has in the past used a team of Quality Raters to examine certain search engine results pages, and has expanded that concept to regular web users. There are recent sightings of Google popups asking about the quality of the results. This could be tied into Google+, and could become a powerful social search feature over time. Google Penguin is perhaps a greater threat than Google Panda lately, and a Google Penguin Update v1.2 is likely coming soon. While Google Panda targets thin and low value content, Google Penguin targeted content and links that have been over-optimized. Google Penguin seems to penalize: Over optimization, where keywords are used too much on a page or site. “Spammy links”, like comments on blogs/forums that don’t seem relevant. Anchortext of links that is too homogenous. Links from spam/malware/bad neighborhood sites Footer links In order to Penguin-proof future Google rankings, we are recommending diversifying links in these areas: Diversity in anchor text Branded anchor text Diversity in the kinds of links acquired. Balance low and high PageRank links. Mix in some image links and nofollow links too. Google just last week said they do not look at how many nofollow links a site though. We have seen nofollow links as well as 302 redirects showing up in webmaster tools lately. So there may be changes in the works as to how Google deals with these. Since Google Penguin Update actually penalizes websites for links that may have not been created by them, for them, or for their best interests – the “Negative SEO” industry is getting quite a boost. Some SEO companies are also offering “link pruning” services, where they take the time consuming task of contacting websites to ask them to STOP linking – with varying results. Bing, for it’s part, has created a tool to disavow bad links. Google is said to be working on a similar feature in Google Webmaster Tools.