 |
 |
Don't
just talk the talk. Share & spread the Spam Word.  |
|
| |
 |
 |
| Victimized
by Search engines? Let's unite and REPORT HERE. |
|
| |
 |
 |
| Comment on the Blogs to Unveil Search Engine's Spam. |
|
| |
 |
 |
| Get
in to discover the predicted future of search engine's spam. |
|
|
|
Chronology of Events/Updates of Google
Boston Update - 2003 - Feb-Mar
Boston update came around the month of Feb-Mar, '03, which saw
many links updated and indexed by the google server, PR and backward
links got updated.
Cassandra Update- 2003 - Apr.
The update was all about the algo which was favoring pages that
were much higher in keyword weight.
Dominic Update- 2003 - May
This update was kind of a premature update. Nothing concrete was
deduced from it.
Esmeralda Update- 2003 - June
All about
--freshbot in now freshdeepbot
--back link count got more accurate
The main change in data started 2003-06-15 with lots of new stuff
being poured into -fi, spread to one extra datacenter per day each
day, and ended with -in being the last to get the new data on 2003-06-22.
This data was collected in the last 10 days of May, and from at
least part of June.
Brandy Update- 2004 - Feb
The 'Brandy' update incorporated some pre-'Florida' results (another
major update that occurred at the end of 2003), mixed with numerous
new factors. Google stores its index on a number of data centers
around the world. Since 'Florida', some of the old data centers
were taken offline, and pundits believe that Google has kept the
old SERPs (Search Engine Results Pages) in a preserved state for
the last few months.
Features
Increase in Index Size
Google's spider, Googlebot, had a busy few weeks -- at the time
of the update, Google announced that it had massively increased
the size of its index.
This move was probably made to ensure Google made headlines at
the same time as Yahoo! (for example, in this report in the BBC
News, Feb 18th 2004). However, in order to increase the index size,
Google may have had to re-include some of the pre-Florida results
that had previously been dropped.
Latent Semantic Indexing (LSI)
This is a very significant new technology that Google has always
been interested in, and the incorporation of LSI has been on the
cards for some time. If you are an insomniac, then Yu et al.'s paper
is quite helpful in explaining the concept, but, in short, LSI is
about using close semantic matches to put your page into the correct
topical context.
It's all about synonyms. LSI may see Google effectively remove
all instances of the search keyword when analyzing your page, in
favor of a close analysis of other words. For example, consider
the search term 'travel insurance'. LSI-based algorithms will look
for words and links that pertain to related topics, such as skiing,
holidays, medical, backpacking, and airports.
Links and Anchor Text
Links have always been the essence of Google, but the engine is
steadily altering its focus. The importance of Page Rank (PR), Google's
unique ranking system, is being steadily downgraded in favour of
the nature, quality, and quantity of inbound and outbound link anchor
text. If PR is downgraded, and the wording of inbound links is boosted,
this may explain, to a large degree, the position in which many
sites currently find themselves.
For example, most people will link to a site's homepage. In the
past, due to internal linking structures, PR was spread and other
pages benefited. Now, it is more important for Webmasters to attract
links that point directly to the relevant pages of their sites using
anchor text that's relevant to the specific pages.
Furthermore, Google seems to be using outbound links to determine
how useful and authoritative a site is. For example, directories
that are doing well are those that direct link to the sites, rather
than use dynamic URLs.
Neighborhoods
Now, more than ever, has the question of who's linking to your site
become critical. Links must be from related topic sites (the higher
the PR the better); those links are seen to define your 'neighborhood'.
If we again consider the example of travel insurance, big insurance
companies might buy links on holiday-related sites in order to boost
their ranking. These businesses will actively invest in gaining
targeted inbound links from a broad mix of sites. Consequently,
their neighborhoods appear tightly focused to Google.
Downgrading of Traditional Tag-Based Optimization
Clever use of the title, h1, h2, bold, and italics tags, and CSS,
is no longer as important to a site's ranking as it once was. It
is very interesting to listen to Sergey (co-founder of Google) talk
about this, because he's the one usually quoted about the ways in
which people manipulate his index.
Florida Update - 2003 - Nov
November 16th 2003- Google commenced an update (the Florida
update) which had a catastrophic effect for a very large
number of websites and, in the process, turned search
engine optimization on its head. It is usual to give alphabetical
names to Google's updates in the same way that names are given to
hurricanes, and this one became known as "Florida".
Precisely say a vast number of pages, many of which had ranked at or near the top of the results for a very long time, simply disappeared from the results altogether. Also, the quality (relevancy) of the results for a great many searches was reduced. In the place of Google's usual relevant results, we are now finding pages listed that are off-topic, or their on-topic connections are very tenuous to say the least.
Theories behind Florida
The various search engine related communities on the web went into overdrive to try and figure what changes Google had made to cause such disastrous effects.
- SEO filter (search engine optimization filter)
One of the main theories that was put forward and that, at the time of writing, is still believed by many or most people, is that Google had implemented an 'seo filter'. The idea is that, when a search query is made, Google gets a set of pages that match the query and then applies the seo filter to each of them. Any pages that are found to exceed the threshold of 'allowable' seo are dropped from the results. That's a brief summary of the theory.
At first I liked this idea because it makes perfect sense for a search engine to do it. But I saw pages that were still ranked in the top 10, and that were very well optimized for the search terms that they were ranked for. If a seo filter was being applied, they wouldn't have been listed at all. Also, many pages that are not SEOed in any way were dropped from the rankings.
People realized that this seo filter was being applied to some search terms but not to others, so they decided that Google is maintaining a list of search terms to apply the filter to. I never liked that idea because it doesn't make a great deal of sense to me. If a seo filter can be applied to some searches on-the-fly, it can apply to all searches on-the-fly.
Another idea that has taken hold is that Google have implemented Local Rank. Local Rank is a method of modifying the rankings based on the interconnectivity between the pages that have been selected to be ranked. I.e. pages in the selected set, which are linked to from other pages in the selected set, are ranked more highly. (Google took out a patent on Local Rank earlier this year). But this idea cannot be right. A brief study of Local Rank shows that the technique does not drop pages from the results, as the Florida algorithm does. It merely rearranges them.
It was noticed that many search results were biased towards information pages, and commercial pages were either dropped or moved down the rankings. From this sprang the theory that Google is maintaining a list of "money-words", and modifying the rankings of searches that are done for those words, so that informative pages are displayed at and near the top, rather than commercial ones.
Google sells advertising, and the ads are placed on the search results pages. Every time a person clicks on one of the ads, Google gets paid by the advertiser. In some markets, the cost per click is very expensive, and the idea of dropping commercial pages from the results, or lowering their rankings, when a money-word is searched on is to force commercial sites into advertising, thereby putting up the cost of each click and allowing Google to make a lot more money.
- Comment on the above theories
All of the above theories are based on the idea that, when a search query is received, Google compiles a set of results and then modifies them in one way or another before presenting them as the search results. All of the above theories are based on the premise that Google modifies the result set. I am convinced that all the above theories are wrong, as we will see.
Finally, there is a theory that has nothing to do with how the result set is compiled. Google has implemented stemming, which means that, in a search query, Google matches words of the same word-stem; e.g. drink is the stem of drink, drinks, drinking, drinker and drinkers. So far, this is not a theory - it's a fact, because Google say it on their website. The theory is that, stemming accounts for all the Florida effects. Like the other theories, I will show why this one cannot be right.
Allegra Update
It was started in February 2005. The Allegra update borrows its name from the popular Allergy medication for allergy sufferers. It is said that Allegra could be the remedy to the "Sandbox Effect" that tens of thousands of Web sites experienced in 2004.
Some rumors include an emphasis on GeoLocation with regards to sites and this would fit into the Local tab being moved to the Google homepage but right now it's just speculation.
Some sites released from the sandbox, but many remain.
Austin Update- 2004 - Jan
Austin started in Jan 2004; Google re-measured the value of incoming links, the former backbone of the PageRank formula.
How Austin works - it was an extension of Florida, which was an expert-based system of ranking pages. An expert-system can only apply to a specific set of words - so Austin was almost certainly an extension of that set.
"Hence keywords particularly affected by Florida will be barely touched, but keywords that escaped Florida were getting hit."
Search Results
Many sites that were not beaten down by the Florida update have been dropped during this update. Some of the common sites which have dropped are
- those who relied heavily on "on the page" SEO
- those who exchanged links with off topic sites to rank well
- location specific sites
Please note that the update is still occurring and many changes were occurring long after the Florida update was done. Right now it appears that the current winners from this update are
- Amazon
- large shopping sites
- directories
- deep inner pages within sites which may have a strong site rank
What is Google Trying to do?
Essentially Google wants the most relevant (not the most optimized) sites at the top of the search results.
2005 - May - Bourbon Update
On May 20, 2005, Google put in one of their bigger updates. This one's nicknamed "Bourbon," if only because the Google engineers must have been drinking a lot of it prior to pushing the big red button.
Theoretically, though, none of that page jacking crap should matter to me. Recently, I went to great pains to do the proper thing on my own site and issue 301 Permanent Redirects from the old /content/jotsheet/* URLs to the new /jotsheet/* URLs. This is totally different than a 302. A 302 redirect is the server telling the browser that the location change is temporary, the equivalent of putting a sign up in the window saying "Out to lunch." A 302 redirect is a sign that tells you the store's shut down and moved to a new location. If I'm somehow being penalized for a local 301, as is hinted but not confirmed in an old thread at cre8asite, Google needs to hire a few more QA resources.
Jagger Update
Jagger was a different type of algorithm update by Google. Its infamous predecessors, Florida and Hilltop update were generally limited shifts in the values Google assigned domains based on content and links. After the immediate punch of previous updates, the search engine results pages (SERPs) would generally return to a stable and predictable state. SERPS generated by Jagger are expected to constantly update themselves with a greater degree of flux and change.
Jagger Update was introduced to solve three main reasons.
- To deal with manipulative link-network schemes, sites generated
with scraped content and other forms of SE-Spam.
- To allow and account for the inclusion a greater number of spiderable documents and file types.
- To allow and account for new methods of site acquisition beyond the use of the spider Googlebot.
Jagger update made its first public appearance in late September but had its greatest impact in early October. At that point of time, hundreds of thousands of sites that enjoyed previously strong rankings were suddenly struck and sent to the relative oblivion found beyond the second page of results.
Most of the websites lost position at that time due to participation in what Google obviously considers inappropriate linking techniques.
The issue google faced was some webmasters misunderstood what links are for and how Google uses them to rank documents. For few unknown reason, many site administrators participated in wholesale link mongering, bulking up on as many inbound links as possible without consideration of the most important factor (in Google’s estimation), the relevance of inbound links.
The second and third reason for updating the algorithm at that time was the allowance for indexing documents or information received through alternative sources such as Google Base, Froogle, and blogs and other social networking tools. Google’s stated that the ultimate aim is to grow include reference to the entire world’s information. That information is being expressed in multiple places using several unique file formats, some of which are difficult to weigh against others.
The third reason for the algo update comes from the expansion of Google itself. Google became much larger than it was when the Bourbon update was introduced in the early summer. Audio and video content is spiderable and searchable. Google’s comparison shopping tool Froogle was started to integrate itself in with Google Local, just as Google Local and Google Maps are beginning to merge.
Big Daddy
Google's algorithm update dubbed "Big Daddy" in the month of February 2006 was the final stage of Google's major update dubbed "Jagger" which started in the summer of 2005 to better evaluate website content.
Big Daddy was a very major update in line with the Austin and Florida updates of past and the major areas of website evaluation for relevancy to users seems to have occurred in the following five points:
Redirects
Whenever you change a page's location on your site, you must put in place a 301 redirect to tell Google where the page went. You should never make the same content available in two separate locations, and it is preferable to not simply drop one page while adding another page. Google trusts sites that show consistency in their index, and by using a 301 redirect, you show Google a level of consistency that they can trust.
Reciprocal Links
Anyone who follows Google knows that they have, time and time again, stated that they do not like link exchanges or purchased links. It represents a way of falsely increasing your search engine rankings by manipulating your inbound link count. They have been combating link exchanges for some time, and slowly they seem to be making progress in weeding out link exchanges. The best links are those which are editorially chosen.
Canonicalization
When Google visits your website; it try to find the home page. However, there are many different modes for accessing most homepages. Few examples:
http://mydomain.com
http://www.mydomain.com
http://www.mydomain.com/index.html
https://www.mydomain.com (a secure URL)
https://mydomain.com etc
Duplicate Content
Duplicity of content is the quick way to get into Google's supplemental results, or even worse, an outright ban. From past, search spammers have made it quite difficult on webmasters by copying content en masse in an attempt to get as many pages in Google as possible. Because of this, duplicate content has become public enemy #1 to Google.
|
