Matt Cutts: "Only the links Google trusts count."

who cares if there is a 100 billion pages that turn up for a search. no one looks for those phrases and why no site / seo bothers targeting and building links for them.

that is why you rank with no backlinks. (well you have a couple).

matt cutts talks shit when not behind closed doors, and spreads disinformation like a master. I wouldn't exactly say do the opposite of what he says, but more like pay no attention to what he puts out there.

You rank for the reasons stated, the number of results returned doesn't mean people are competing for that phrase, so it's 'easier' (please note the easier, not 'easy') to get there for that particular phrase.

I'm not knocking you for it, far from it, you still need to put the work in, but seriously, ignore matt cutts. Do your own testing, and go with what works for you.

What service do you use to estimate search numbers?

Unless you buy in to the conspiracy kook crap, I don't think disinformation should be considered as an effective strategy because there are no benefits to doing so.

Regarding the colleges, I think that Harvard, Yale, and Princeton (along with non-Ivy League Stanford) are pretty much in their own league. Same with MIT. After that I think you have to factor in specific programs.

Here are some University Of Texas national rankings.

#9 in Computer Engineering
#6 in Overall Business Undergrad
#1 in Accounting
#9 in Entrepreneurship
#6 in Finance
#6 in Management
#4 in MIS

http://colleges.usnews.rankingsandre...kings/business
http://colleges.usnews.rankingsandre...gs/engineering

Th undergraduate advertising program, which is what I did, is also widely regarded to be the best in the country.

http://advertising.utexas.edu/about

I'd take any of the above Texas degrees over pretty much any degree from a lesser Ivy League school like Brown. Big public schools get slammed in the overall rankings because they usually have a large # of students in less competitive liberal arts programs with poor student/teacher ratios and the fact that state imposed mandatory admissions laws generally lead to a high dropout rate. I think the short list of top tier public schools would include Texas, Michigan, Illinois, Berkeley, and UNC. I don't know what the high ranking programs are at any of them aside from Texas, but along with non-Ivy League private schools like NYU, University Of Chicago, Duke, Northwestern, and a few others, I think certain programs at each could be seen as the equivalent or better than a general liberal arts degree at Brown. Easily.

Wouldn't effectiveness of a strategy be considered a benefit?

Living in California may bias me, but I think that a number of the UC schools are excellent state schools as well.

My father taught at the law school at UNC for a while and I hope he gave his students an excellent education in his areas of expertise. But that doesn't make it an Ivy League or Ivy League equivalent school. Obviously, Matt Cutts is at the top of his field, but I don't see how the designer brand name on his university education is significant or means that he would never post disinformation, no matter how much it would assist his goals.

Youre kidding aint you? Buying links, trading links, building free sites to get links... all is a nono in googles eyes and all of it helps to get better serps. Massive links is the most important SEO factor - if you say its not, youre are clueless I am afraid.

Absolutely, butin this case, spreading disinformation is an ineffective strategy.

Liberal arts majors at Brown reap the benefits of their school being in the same athletic conference as Harvard, Princeton, and Yale (and that's all the Ivy League really is - an athletic conference), so someone who obtains a PHD from a highly regarded program at a top tier public school, can reap the benefits of people acknowledging that their having received an education that it is at or above the level of education received by a Brown liberal arts major.

Given that people in this thread are discussing gaming the system, how can you not see the benefit of giving the public inaccurate information on how to game the system?

If you are trying to say that people with PhDs who work at Google are probably awesome at what they do, I agree. Why do you have such a hard-on for Brown? I've personally met more UNC grads than Brown grads, so the sampling is not even, but, truthfully, everyone I ever met who went to Brown was extremely sharp and I can't say the same for all UNC folks. But, again, like I said, that doesn't mean that a school like UNC doesn't graduate some fine students. It does mean that the school name alone is not all that indicative.

Wouldn't most people expect that someone with a PhD has a more advanced level of education than someone with a BA? Regardless of where they got it. Practically a tautology.

to put it simple: to rank well google says just make great content and people will naturally link to you, and you will then rank.

the reality is much different and they are aware of it.

try and make it to the first ten pages of "porn" by just doing what google says.

seo's use "disinformation" when referring to matt cutts in a playful half-serious way. this is all very basic stuff btw. if you have no idea what people are talking about, best not just to comment sometimes.

lol. I guess it does seem like I'm singling out Brown so feel free to switch it out with Dartmouth or Cornell. And I'm not comparing a PhD to a BS, I'm just saying that certain undergrad degrees at UNC (such as quant) and other top tier public universities and/or non-Ivy League private institutions can rightfully be considered as 'Ivy League caliber'. A variance in the admissions criteria for different programs at large public universities can be cited as a reason for more 'less sharp' alumni. Make sense ? Total tangent, but whatever.

The drawbacks to spreading misinformation outweigh the benefits of spreading misinformation.

If it were to ever be proven that Google was intentionally deceiving the public, not only would the immediate financial hit to shareholders likely be of an amount equal to or greater than the presumed increased ad revenue that comes with deceiving the public, but it would hang like a dark cloud over the company for years and open the door to competitors. For a variety of reasons, we've seen some pretty big and formerly successful companies fail or over the past 15 years. Lehman, Arthur Anderson, Enron, and WorldCom to name a few. Dotcoms like Netscape and AOL have taken big hits. NWS sold Myspace for less than one tenth of the purchase price. Life at the top is tenuous so why would they put themselves at added risk when they are already at the top?

Because SEO is constantly evolving there's a good chance that what holds true today won't hold true tomorrow, so why bother lying ?

Lastly, doing the opposite of what Matt Cutts says isn't exactly a groundbreaking, previously unknown strategy. It's a strategy that's just as common as doing what he says so telling the truth is just as effective in misleading the public.

This thread hurts my brain...There's some clueless peeps in here

u OK?

let me translate. In bound links from sites that have no inbound links are not trust worthy. Links from sites that are using scraped duplicated content are not trust worthy.

It was pretty clear that the panda not only penalizes sites with duplicate content but also down graded the quality of inbound links from sites with duplicated content.

Not a conspiracy theory. Seems more like common sense?