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mdvaden
Joined: Mar 07, 2004
# Posts: 119
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Posted: 05/05/2007 04:16 am
Finally came to a conclusion this week.
Wrote an article called "The Tower of Google" about its gimmick, and failure of a PageRank System.
For 3 years, I've held top search results for my trade. And I've watched about 50 comparable websites within my industry's facets.
Almost every site improved in quality and content. And almost all of those sites, and mine, retained the relatively same good search engine results.
In the meantime, the Google PR's danced up and down like a Yo Yo, with the sites remaining steady and advancing.
A few months ago, I reduced PageRank, at best, to a single tool in a toolbox. As I condensed my experience of the past few years into a single page tonight, I demoted PageRank to a piece of trash in a trash can.
One indicator alone, was that some of my best paying Adsense pages - very high display - have a PageRank of "1" or don't even have any PR.
I discovered that the design of my site, and and the text selection and arrangement, was 95% responsible for slight gains and losses in position.
In fact, I've seen my site and others become lowered in PageRank, and at the same time, boost up.
Some of you may have concluded this, although maybe not stated quite as definitively and rock solid - a 100% condemnation of Google's gimmick.
If you care to see my schpeel - my site is in profile. You'd have to insert
tower_of_google after the slash and before .shtml of any page on my site, as its not linked in there yet. I plan to tuck it into my links page this week.
I can't believe I didn't firmly say what I'd suspected sooner.
Ever heard the term "sunesis" before? It's a Greek word associated with understanding and has been used to refer to where rivers flow together. With thoughts, its like rivers of understanding flowing together. Each river in the world differs in mineral content. When they flow together, it takes a bit of distance for the waters to fully mingle and blend into one blend.
Thoughts are like that too.
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dolke
Joined: Jun 27, 2006
# Posts: 4
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Posted: 05/09/2007 01:06 pm
Beautiful.
My story is similar to yours Mdvaden.
I used to run a site that was in direct competition with the sites that had God knows how many SEO`s people, tons of money and so on.
I took it as challenge and I won the game.
My field was tourism and I was hooked to all those Google dances, moving up and down on search pages, etc.
What you say is true. At least in my eyes and in my case.
My site was PR2 and I was beating guys with PR6 and 7, heheh.
Madness. How I loved all of it. I used to think of myself as one of few hundred guys on this unfortunate planet who had some inkling on how Google runs and operates. I was younger and more arrogant. Now, I am relaxed and older.
PR is just a fancy set of clothing, nothing more.
Anyhow, it has been a real pleasure reading your article and visiting your site.
Take care.
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mdvaden
Joined: Mar 07, 2004
# Posts: 119
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Posted: 07/15/2007 09:59 pm
Thanks for replying.
I was going to delete that topic and my two other pages on website stuff, to stick with landcape advice on my advice page, but decided to stuff it into my links page to archive it. Its hard to give-up a page after working on it.
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langardmicro
Joined: Mar 12, 2007
# Posts: 76
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Posted: 07/16/2007 12:16 pm
I liked your article. It's succinct and it mirrors my own experience over the years. I trashed PageRank a few years ago and have ignored it ever since.
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SportsGuy
Staff
Joined: Aug 30, 2002
# Posts: 3597
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Posted: 07/17/2007 05:30 am
Page Rank has been, at most, a trend for most folks over the last couple of years. Nothing to hang your hat on, basically.
Time was when it really meant soemthing, but as time moves forward, refinements enter the process and things change ever so slightly.
Today, most folks still view PR as a rock solid hand-hold on the cliff of rankings.
Everyone needs to get past this.
PR is simply - as Google tells us - their interpretation of the value of a page. It's an output from an equation, nothing more.
The true value is in quality inbound links. Always has been, always will be - THIS is what allows an apparently challenged PR 2 site to compete with, and outrank, a PR 7 site.
It's not that the PR 7 is actually better, it's simply that they have reached a higher output form the equation base don any number of factors. This doesn't, by any stretch, mean it's a BETTER site for the searcher...
I'm always happy when I see folks break out of the "PR is King" mold.
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excell
Staff
Joined: Mar 19, 2001
# Posts: 14504
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Posted: 07/17/2007 11:38 am
{excell provides a convenient hat stand for the maths guys to hang their hats on}
Long live basic communication as a role model 
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Curious_Mark
Joined: Dec 02, 2001
# Posts: 2142
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Posted: 07/17/2007 07:43 pm
I would have to agree with the sentiments expressed in this thread. Content is king, PR is a distraction at best and it always was. I have a client web site that aside from regular content updates, has changed very little in almost five years. It has never dipped in performance and rocks in several relevant search rankings. Why?
The site has good content and enjoys some monthly updates. Content is what is indexed by engines and used by people who are the seemingly forgotten factor in many SEO efforts. Create content, forget everything else, content is what matters.
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Curt
Joined: Eons Ago
# Posts: 3718
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Posted: 02/03/2008 06:10 am
mdvaden, I could not get to that page you speak of about the “The Tower of Google”. If you would provide a local url reference, perhaps we can find it.
Example: /some.url/tower.of.google.html
That way we can simply add your domain in your profile to get to the right URL.
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Quadrille
Joined: Nov 15, 2000
# Posts: 1064
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Posted: 02/03/2008 06:31 am
I couldn't find your article - but from your post, I suggest it's about three years too late.
Google introduced Page Rank to try and get an objective measure of quality into the serps, based on 'links as votes'.
I believe their intentions were good - and to this day, I've seen no-one suggest otherwise.
However, Google seriously underestimated the level of spam that would follow, and seriously overestimated GPR's ability to still be useful.
Eventually, the penny dropped. Various measures were introduced to try and save GPR; including hitting link exchanges hard, nofollow, hiding real GPR from view (and many others).
Nothing really worked. So the latest, and most successful action has been to devalue GPR, by making the algo much, much, much less dependent on it. From being central, GPR is now "one of 200 factors".
From that history - and your parallel story, I'd draw two major conclusions.
1. Don't obsess about GPR - it really doesn't matter - and 'real' GPR is concealed, anyway.
2. Don't obsess about Google. Content is King; Links are Queen. Build a good solid site with good solid links, and let Google do its day job. You'll be amazed. 95% plus of good seo is simply 'being aware' of SE guidelines as you build your site, and not doing anything stupid.
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animated3d
Joined: Dec 22, 2005
# Posts: 379
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Posted: 02/03/2008 06:55 am
with a PR3 and 4 you can beat any high competition sites they can be a PR 6,7,8...etc
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Hampstead
Joined: Feb 20, 2001
# Posts: 2007
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Posted: 02/03/2008 09:43 am
Sorry, I didn't read the article, but I get the gist of it from your post.
Here's my input:
Google realised that they had made a mistake by allowing us, the great unwashed, to see a graphic example of part of their algorithm in the tool bar. This started a frenzy of PR chasing and a whole new form of spam was started. Namely link exchanges and link buying.
Google still use PR in the algo, but they will never let us know what the PR really is. Much in the same way that they have been misreporting inbound links for two or three years.
Google have refined PR and now oversample the results using a 2 stage filter usually called LR (Local Rank).
The advice from this forum for quite some time now has been not to place too high a relevance on PR and links.
That is good advice and I echo it.
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g1smd
Staff
Joined: Jul 28, 2002
# Posts: 10292
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Posted: 02/03/2008 09:59 am
The failure was in treating all links as equal in the beginning. That was a major blunder to not include much about "intent" or reputation into the mix.
Later they woke up and started using a lot of historical data to see more patterns that would help identify many of the worst link spammers more easily.
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nhd4me
Joined: Oct 14, 2007
# Posts: 43
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Posted: 02/03/2008 08:36 pm
Hi All ... I agree with most of you about the PR however as of this morning I have thrown up my arms over frustration with ther SE's. I am in a slightly rare situation of having jumped ship from one competitor (who held #1 place in SERP's) for many years, to one of the competitors who have struggled this time.
For the last 6 months I have applied my experience to the new site along the same lines (white hat stuff only) as I have done in the past with the old (although in the past the old site used a fair bit of Black hat with great success). I believe that the new site is now more user friendly, more relevant and certainly better SEO'd.
What frustrates me is during this time I have been monitoring SERP results and other competitors very closely, in fact too much so, but have found alot of black hat techniques, including copying of hundreds of pages of each others sites, massive internal linking, paid links creating hundreds of inbounds from directory type sites, site maps that include all images rather than webpages and even one which has registered www.googlecarhire.com and placed a re-direct to their own site. Despite all of this, many of these sites still continue to return higher in the SERP's ... my frustration is that despite these all 'breaking the rules' in some way or another, the search engines have failed to recognise and deal with these approprietly.
Once again it appears as the 'bad guy' wins in the short term ... a term in which they are generating better SERP's and obviously better traffic = $$$.
Has anyone else had similar experiences? Is there something blatantly obvious that I have missed here? I know you will probably say "hang in there and keep doing the right thing" however it really sucks (sorry, couldn't think of a better phrase without using nasty talk) that the SE's seem to have failed me, and I presume others, thus far.
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Curt
Joined: Eons Ago
# Posts: 3718
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Posted: 02/04/2008 10:00 pm
Quadrille said:
From being central, GPR is now "one of 200 factors".
How do you know there are 200 ranking factors within the google algorithm?
Also, if there are that many, can you point me to the list of factors?
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Quadrille
Joined: Nov 15, 2000
# Posts: 1064
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Posted: 02/05/2008 05:38 am
Nobody knows for 100% sure that there are about 200 factors.
We do know that Google says there are - whereas they used to say about 150.
Certainly the consensus among SEO forums is that 200 is about right.
I cannot point to a list of the 200, but there are many lists out there with 100+,and I recall reading a page which published the views of many 'famous' seos on, I think, well over 100 factors - and they were 'scored' too. It's probably a little out of date - but I'll bet someone here has kept the URL?
We don't know them all, as Google - wisely - does not publish such matters.
But any regular reader of forums could quickly list 100+. Many, of course, very minor indeed (such as b/strong, folder names), while others matter much more (TITLE, H1 etc) and yet more probably fall somewhere in between (ALT text, filenames).
I could probably name 50 without looking up anything at all - and I'm sure if we tried, we could produce a list of 150-175 in this thread without too much effort.
Personally, I believe that it's much better NOT to get tied up in a multitude of factors which will pull you in different directions; much better to go for the cohesive whole
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g1smd
Staff
Joined: Jul 28, 2002
# Posts: 10292
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Posted: 02/05/2008 05:41 am
I think it might have been SEOmoz that printed the "ranking factors" list a few years ago, and I believe they updated it again about a year ago.
I don't agree with all of the opinions in that list, but it is a good start. It gives you a good guidance on very many of the things you need to think about when designing and optimising a site.
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Curt
Joined: Eons Ago
# Posts: 3718
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Posted: 02/05/2008 10:57 pm
Obviously nobody could rank perfectly on all 175—200 factors.
g1smd, thanks for the heads up. Perhaps it provides some limited insight. I've generally thought that google is getting much of their data about the quality of various sites via the google toolbar by watching people's surfing habits.
That's the kind of data we will not be able to figure out and why it's hard to determine what works and what does not. If the surfing habits are indeed being computed, then top quality content is of utmost importance so that the google toolbar registers your pages as worthy.
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