Archive for September, 2007

The Cool Aid is running thick, and the Google FUD Campaign is doing a great job at letting SEO’s and bloggers spread the paranoia.

In a post by Graphic Designer David Airey originally titled "Google Search Ranking Penalty" (title has since been changed to "Google Search Rank Drop: Advice Needed") David shows how his site has lost rankings for his name as well as some other phrases he once ranked high on. It’s obvious that something has gone wrong…..David consulted some other SEO’s and then guesses that the reason could be that he has sold a few link ads on his site, and that Google is spanking his rankings because he sold a few ad spots.

The story get’s Sphinn’d, hits front page, and the paranoia ensues….."Oh my God, Google’s Removing rankings from sites that sell link ads that pass juice" ….. Yea, and the sky is falling. sheesh!

and I’m sure Matt sat back like a cat with cheshire grin on watching this, and then after this was old sphinn news, the real truth comes out.

Around comment number 65, Danny Rotsaert comes in with:

…Surely, the 302 redirect from davidairey.com towards davidairey.co.uk (which was probably an attempt to address geo targetting issues) is also not doing you any good, David.
Has that one always been in place ?
Avoid 302 redirect for this ! You’re .co.uk site should 301 redirect towards the .com

and David comes back with:

Thanks very much, Danny.

As you can tell, I’m not very clued in on SEO, and it was my host provider who implemented the redirect on my .co.uk address.

and then later again David says:

Thanks everyone.

I’ve corrected the 302 (temporary) redirect I had, from my .co.uk to my .com address, changing it to a 301 (permanent).

I’d no idea that was the case, so thanks for pointing it out.

….but by now, Thousands of Bloggers have drunk the Cool Aid and are spreading Google’s FUD. I don’t blame David for crying wolf here….it was a prime linkbait cry and a great way to get people to find out really what happened. But I wonder how many ran with the idea of "sell a link and get banned in google".

In my experience the only thing I’ve ever seen from google, as far as effect of selling links, is that Google may block your site from passing Pagerank. Doesn’t hurt your site one bit, you’ll rank the way you always would….Google just don’t count your link love you give to other sites. (Pagerank Block beyond your site). The ironic thing is that if you’re wanting to sells links, go ahead. The person buying them will probably never know if that links passes link juice to your site in the eyes of google, and it isn’t going to hurt you.

In the Sphinn comments of that story I was conversing with Danny Sullivan who came back also with:

…I’m within you in that I’ve yet to see anything convincing me that Google is banning sites for paid links….

If Google were wacking rankings from sites that sell links, then all the weather PR9’s, and the Traffic Counters, hundreds of major newspapers, and major tech sites and tons of other huge above the radar sites that sell text links right in such obvious places would be seeing their rankings dropping like rocks….in fact if Google took it a step further and "penalized" all the sites that currently have a Pagerank block on them, you’d see a million sites and webmasters cry out in agony accross the web. It ain’t going to happen. I think there’d be some pretty big companies going after Google if it did happen (some of these companies that sell links on thier site also can afford to bring a lawsuit againt google, and then Google would have to go into legal aspects of a free market in advertising and fair competitive practices….I get a feeling that’s not going to happen in my lifetime.

It is in Google best interest to just try to identify a paid link and to not count it (PR Block). It’s really not that hard to put in a few filters to find the networks or even advertising areas of a website, and to block PR from passing from those pages. The hard part is identifying the paid ads that fall under the radar. One ad on a few pages of your website, in the content area, all different, probably isn’t going to get picked up in the radar. Joining a network or being mapped just increase your chance of having your pagerank blocked from passing to other sites….but again, it doesn’t effect your rankings.

That’s why I’m all about getting our own links from virgin sites that aren’t selling links in above the radar places nor from networks….I’d like my chances of a link to bring traffic and juice to be high.

Tell me you’re not drinking this Cool Aid, are you?

Feel free to Sphinn this.

It’s also worth noting the buyers side: Can Google Find and Spank you Paid Links?

Back in June I noted this Yahoo SERP Layout Test, and a few days ago I found these (see below) new Yahoo test SERPS layouts.

Of note in the first screenshot is #6…see the "Quick links"

In my second screenshot, I had clicked on the down arrow below the search box, which gives a dropdown.

I’m actually suprised that yahoo, google, and msn haven’t gone the way of Ask SERP’s yet.

Grab your popcorn! - Sugarrae found the face of evil, and then Doug get’s Bitchslapped.

Sugarrae has a wonderful post that was also Sphinn’d about a parenting blogger who was seeking to sell a review to Rae. In the email , the blogger wrote "Girl’s got to feed the family.". Rae (although she didn’t buy the blog review) made some interesting observations about that lady including:

…she built her site and she has the right to monetize and market it the way she chooses. But, it did give me a chuckle, because this, Matt, is exactly the type of link seller you cannot and will never be able to catch. This, is the elusive supposed “evil” you are so in search of.

This is a popular, trusted blogger who has a picture of her and her kids plastered all over her blog… this is an innocent face… this is your evil.

It’s a great read.

This post has a bonus with it too, ya gotta check out the comments. Doug Hail makes several appearances in the comments, spouting is stupidness, and getting a beating from SisterSledge, Graywolf, and getting smacked down again and again by Sugarrae (Doug, never mess with a woman who can pull rank, she’ll eat ya alive). Grab your popcorn!

Our backlink anchor text tool was semi-broke for a while there, but today we got the new bugs worked out. I also figured that so long as we were doing work on that tool that I might as well add some updates to the tool.

Here is what the new We Build Pages Backlink Text Analysis tool does:

You enter in your root url (not a subpage, but a homepage).

This tool finds about 1000 backlinks to your site.

This tool then finds the link text linking to your site from each of those pages, and gives you a report.
(This step takes ~15 minutes….I’d recommend minimizing that window, and returning later to view results).

When the above report is finished, it then generates 3 more reports for you:

The Anchor Text Summary Report
(shows how often phrases are used to link to your site)

The Ninja Choice Summary Report
(we use our secret method of removing links from the original report that are flagged as "possible worthless links" (scrapers, etc)
(This is what I’d use to analyze backlink text)

Then a Ninja Word Summary
(how often each individual word is used to link to your site).

We used this tool on a site we’re considering buying today and found some great areas that we could focus on with that site.

Hope you enjoy our backlink text report tool…..stay tuned for the 301 Finder Tool coming soon! (enter in a url and it will tell you what other sites are 301′d there, and how many backlinks those sites had, and how old the sites are…cool eh?)

I hope you like!
Cheers!

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Have you seen these other We Build Pages tools?
Top 10 Analyzer SEO Tool - compare you site against the top 10.
C Class backlink analyzer tool - check the c class IP of sites that link to you, and date those domains were registered.
The Top Competitor SEO Tool - See who you top online competitors are.

I was just at a website where I saw an ad that blended in so well, that it appeared to be a nav bar.

It was actually a banner that was the size of an adsense ad…but it did not state "Ads By Google".

Adsense has always included  the tag "Ads by Google" - (and Google says, you should clearly state it’s an ad).

But here, the "Ads by Google" was missing…so I didn’t think it was a Google ad.

Upon further inspection, when reviewing the page’s code, I found that is was an ad….in fact, it was actually an ad by Google.

After further research I found that it was a Google Pay Per Action ad.

So here is what Google says about Pay Per Action Ads.

Text links are hyperlinked brief text descriptions that take on the characteristics of a publisher’s page. Publishers can place them in line with other text to better blend the ad and promote your product. They can’t, however, alter the text of the link.

For example, you might see the following text link embedded in a publisher’s recommendatory text:

"Widgets are fun! I encourage all my friends to Buy a high-quality widget today."

(Note that mousing over the link displays "Ads by Google" to identify these as pay-per-action ads.)

Shorter links tend to perform better, because they allow the publisher use the link in more places on their site and in different context. The maximum length is 90 characters but less than 5 words is best. Even better, just use your brand name to offer maximum flexibility to the publisher.

There’s a few interesting points in here, I’ll touch on one.

It’s interesting that Google say it’s ok to not state it’s an ad on the page (unless you mouse over it) - (Google says "that mousing over the link displays "Ads by Google" to identify these as pay-per-action ads").

Also, FYI, I also don’t get the mouse over "Ads by Google" when viewing a live CPA ad, nor on this page where Google gives the example (mouse over "Buy a high-quality widget today"). I tried on one version of firefox, and IE6.0 and 7.0 and on 2 computers, and still no "Ads by Google" mouse over.

It also seems some of these recommendations contradict some of the recommended advertising techniques that Google tells SEO’s to do in their linking practices.

What do you think?

I know in the past I’ve talked about Forward Links - Because who you link to matters.

We’ve recently been working on tweeking some of our SEO Tools, and I thought I’d show you one addition we’ve added to Forward Link tool.  I came up with the idea to add another column that flags possible problem pages on other sites that you might be linking out to because it makes life easier when you’re reviewing a list of around 500 urls, to know which are the "possible bad ones".

So I came up with a few ideas to flag possible pages you might be linking to, that might be worth a closer look to see if you should continue to link there, or if you should remove that link. A few days ago my programmer added a 4th column to our Forward link tool that now flags possible "problem" pages that you might be linking out to.

Check out the Forward Link SEO Tool, a new improvement from the We Build Pages SEO Tools. It took 12 minutes and 31 seconds to complete a run of www.jimboykin.com through this tool…but it’s worth the wait….you get a nice little summary when it’s finished as well

The Forward Link tool looks at:

1. Who You Link To (what other sites your site links out to).

2. The Title tags of those pages on other sites that you link out to.

3. Shows if that site links back to you (is it Reciprocal?)

4. And now we’ve just added a new column called "Possible Problem Links"
(we flag ‘em, you check them and decide if you think it’s a "problem link")

Please don’t ask me how any of this works…it’s all Ninja Secrets

PS. I’ll be gone until Tuesday. Can everyone hold off on making any big news until I come back…I don’t want to miss anything

Cheers!