GOOGLE may change the SEO game drastically
 

this was part of another thread, but I thought it was important enough to start a new thread, as changes in google's algorithm can have a huge impact on so many people's business here:


damn, so seo might turn into more of a "who can get a network of people together to abuse the system" or hours of proxies for niche keywords.... and for really competitive keywords like "PORN" the top serps will obviously and through surfer popularity votes be the sites that give away the most and best free (stolen) content :2 cents:

Interesting that they just bought Digg and the article says "Digg style voting" on search results. Pretty soon we will see job postings for people that can Google-Digg your search results millions of times.

i said all this over a month ago...

users input is going to play a major role in se's rankings...

with that and the use of bounce rates, I think the affiliate business is in for some major troubles in the future... or at the very least, some major changes

but couldnt the owners of the stolen get it removed from the google results?

i can foresee competitors voting you down. :disgust

guess they could, depends how google handles that....

youtube as a whole ranks very well in the search engines, even though a ton of the content on youtube is "stolen"

(but they will take it down if you notify them for each instance, kind of like the way the stolen content forums get away with it nowadays with dmca, they will take down content if they are served with the dmca info, but take one down and put 10 new ones up it just goes on and on)

Google 2.0

Seriously, where user-submitted voting will determine your listings.
I can't wait for it to come out and even looking more forward to seeing how fast abuse will come with the change.
WG

I don't get it. Democracy doesn't work for politics, why would it work for SERPs?

yeah, digg became a joke in no time, I'm not looking forward to it... never had the stomach for the whole 'network with a 100 of your third world buddies' to abuse the digg system kind of thing :2 cents:

I'm definitely looking forward to it, if they manage to get it right.

My mainstream sites all use user-friendly, high quality content. So, the less splogs competing with me for rankings, the better :)

a volunteer army of google "editors" like wikipedia's "editors" will do nothing but gives thumbs up and thumbs down all day log.

Better start adding forums to all your sites :)

i doubt they'd bail on their algorithms altogether in exchange for this

i'm sure they will just tweak their algorithms to take the data into consideration so that it can't be totally abused

it will be interesting for mainstream, right now the goal is to get the users and hope they click on ads in a hurry, with a digg type system the goal will be to get and keep the surfers

wonder how it will monetize though, I know my mainstream sites that have the best user loyalty and bookmark/type-in retention are some of the worst as far as monetisation... users that love your site and stay and keep coming back never click on ads :2 cents:

i am buying bot nets and zombies.

you are correct.... :thumbsup

people are far easier to manipulate than algorithms.

:2 cents:

time to short google.
yahoo was the #1 search engine
until they changed their biz plan
to focus on paid inclusion.

i remember chatting with yahoo's
vp of biz dev a few years ago at
a mainstream seo conference.

she said focusing on paid inclusion
will keep them on top of the SE's for
generations to come lol

she's probably unemployed now.

why change shit if yur on top??

I am wondering if we saw a tweak in the algorithm in the last week or so in regard to bounce rates already... I just noticed that a site of mine that I (stupidly) have in google analytics has lost half of it's google traffic this week (that had been steady for nearly a year now), and it coincidentally also has a really high bounce rate.

Other seo factors for the site have actually improved in the last month, so it really disturbs me to see this site go downhill so drastically.... and it makes me wonder if this is just a start by Google of a big push for "content" (in the way that they measure it no matter how flawed) over everything else we traditionally think of in seo?

that is true - seeing the shit results of the latest upstart engines makes google's results look golden - warts and all.

but then again you have to keep the legions of phd's employed there doing something.

already happening with toolbar, analytics info. etc.

yahoo tried this last year and what seems like have given up on such an idea

Ebay purchased StumbleUpon.com right? They should try a search engine. Google's too important and needs some serious competition. I think it'll take a lot more than great search results to do it.

There are already so many ways to destroy your competition in the SERPS, this one just begs to be exploited as it's the most direct way possible. I don't see any way Google can control it.

I don't see how it's "social voting" if it's a per-user thing. Where does it say - besides the article - that the results may be applied to the basic algorithm in the future?

I remember one of the search engines experimented with clickthrough ratios to help rank results, but that was quickly exploited. MSN? Ask? One that wasn't Google, anyway. :D

One question is, if you have a site that's going to appear in the SERPs of users who are savvy enough to be able to choose to block them, does that blackban stay indefinitely? This could hurt established sites in the long run. On the flipside, spammers will just register new domains so that they appear in the SERPs again.

I'm selling a digg-based cheat system. For sale to first 5 people.

This is an interesting approach...

http://www.50matches.com/

Only includes results from URLs listed at social networking sites

we have been working towards this for some time

can not wait to abuse the fuck out of this.

lol. (8 chars)

Go google!

Uh, did anyone notice the article is nearly 9 months old?

the article may be old, but the implementation of the concepts by google are still in the earliest of stages and consideration, or not even implemented yet :2 cents:

I wanted to see how many people would icq me haha.

Voting is already active for months at googles. i'm very happy with it :1orglaugh

WHAT A FUCKING JOKE. That's pure suicide for google. Definitely not to be considered. The way your site gets votes on Google is fine just the way it's been. Nothing needs to change especially not to a leftist digg system.

without having any proof I think that Google takes user behaviour into account even now, about a year ago all I had to do was to have a nice blog + add shitload of links = good position

the sites that I started recently seem to bahave a bit diiferently, I have the feeling that the sites that the users love more (spend more time on the site etc) rank better

may be it's just paranoia ;)

This is an outright TERRIBLE idea. That just opens the floodgates for EASY abuse of the SERPS. It will be all of 2 days before you see "Get 2000 Google Votes for $29.99" type shit postd on every webmaster forum on the net. Positions will get raped hard. Piracy forums, tubes, and stolen content sites will reign supreme. Negative vibes all over that idea...

i need botnets

most of yas better hope that they dont make this a permanent thing, there go splogs out the window :)

I don't see how this could possibly work, but then again they do have probably 500 eggheads working on it.

this will make blackhat and SEO sabotage so common

Yep it will all be about funding

than seo experts will no longer bee needed...
than you'll pay guys to click/vote your page...

It was Direct Hit. And yes, I find it highly likely that digg style voting will be used for personalized results rather than an integration into the overall algorithm.

When you are logged into your Google account, they will use YOUR input from voting sites up or down to learn the types of sites that YOU like so that can deliver results tailored to your personal preferences. The toolbar data though is definitely in play in a big way.

Why would you think that?

The affiliate business is to get traffic, and send it to sponsors. Maybe the way some get traffic will change, but that does not mean there is trouble in the affiliate business.

It will get rid of the idiots that don't really know how to play the game, that's all.

I pray death to all blog comment spammers on this one. :thumbsup

Yes, read about this.

So black hat seo will require two progs:

1. Automated voting

2. Automated flagging

Google will never be more easy to manipulate for those inclined to do so.

In a sense, not much has changed. A backlink to your site is, effectively, a vote. The votes will just be more in the open and easier to manipulate.

Fun fun fun.