Rose Water

(Ryan’s Note: Was it really neccessary to add that Rose Water link in here? They all get nofollowed anyway)

It “could” be that it got a penalty for too many links,

OR….

as everybody knows, Google uses multiple data centers, and each time you search you could be hitting a different data center.

Since the site in question was really new, it could have been that it didn’t propogate to all the data centers yet… so it was there, then due to a data refresh or something… searchers hit a different data center that didn’t yet know about the site, then boom a few days later as data updated througout all the servers… boom it was back again and ranking well.

I’d really like for Matt Cutts to chime in and issue a statment on whether or not there’s anything a competitor can do to harm your ranking….

as I still haven’t seen any evidence to make me believe that factors 100% outside of a site owner’s control can penalize him. (the key word here being penalize, as many seos tend to confuse “lack of reward” with “penalty”)

http://www.seobook.com/archives/001550.shtml

i cant say for certain, but it is my ‘hope’ that Google sticks with what i belive was the mindset of not ever negatively affecting your rank based on what occurs outside of your domain.

i have read that bowling works, but i havent seen it first hand and ‘hope’ that google only Negatively hits you for your own dumb mistakes on your site.

I’ve never had a dip in my rankings throughout any of the results changes. I’ve only ever moved up. That’s taking into account about 20 different sites I run, in all different categories.

Of course, I’ve never been one to run out and replace all my b tags with strong tags when Matt Cutts mentions that Google may slightly prefer one over the other.

(note: Google doesn’t prefer one over the other, but at one time, years ago, there was a common belief that they did. I don’t remember which one seo’s thought was better)

Oh it definitely is the most sound strategy I’ve heard of in terms of building a website: building a good site and the search engine rankings will take care of themselves.

You’ve got it right, in my opinion, in terms of a good long-term strategy.. SEO people seem to be caught up in a never ending loop of working to get results, sometimes they get them sometimes they don’t, then something changes in the search engine – and it’s time to start over.

I suppose it’s one way to ensure job security..

But people trying to manipulate search engines in the long term will just end up banging their heads on the walls.. like you said, just build a good site… As for poor Joe, he’s in for a life of banging his head against the wall.. in a never ending loop..

I actually turned down an SEO job interview request from a company down south (who wanted to move me to a bigger state, AND a bigger paycheck) because their goals were misguided.

Their job requirements listed things like “achieve top 5 rankings for 3-4 terms per website.” To me, that didn’t make sense. Ranking #1 is useless unless it drives targetted traffic to one’s website.

From their email, it seemed like they were so caught up in trying to be at the top of Google that they forgot why they wanted to be there in the first place.

Example: I’m #1 in Google right now for “fuck me hard mother fucker” But it’s not making me any money, nor is it driving any targetted visitors to my website. But hey, I’m #1!!

The whole point of SEO is to increase traffic. The best way to do this is to build something that visitors actually want. Sadly, many SEOs lose sight of this goal and focus on insignificant things.

It reminds me of a forum I was reading last night in which the person debated whether or not having ASP.NET headers in the top of your code affected your Google ranking.

I wish more SEOs would focus on what matters, and stop stressing out over little things that really aren’t significant.

That was one of the points of this article – to say “hey.. if you’re actually building a useful site, you shouldn’t worry about these things”

If you’re reading this, shoot me an email (ryan at noslang dot com). I’d like to invite you to participate in a little experiment I’m dreaming up.

anyway..

I’ve heard of all these filters before, many times. I stay up on all the latest SEO news, and I still do a lot of regular SEO on the 4 or 5 other sites I run. (although lately my SEO plan consists of nothing more than build something useful and people will come. It’s working, top 5 for all my desired terms.)

It’s not that I’m doubting your knowledge (the advice you give for dealing with each filter…if taken on it’s own, is still all good advice)

The problem is, I don’t believe that many of these filters exist. I believe they’re myths. I think that some people experienced ranking decreases, and assumed there must be a filter at play.

Like I said I have a programming and engineering background, I try my best to think like a Google employee. To me, it doesn’t seem like any of these filters I mention are robust or scalable (Google’s design principles) They don’t make sense to me from a programmer point of view.

A lot of them seem like they could have other, more probable causes.

let’s look at the 30 spot filter. Sure, Google could have dropped them 30 spots… but, it’s more likely that they changed things so that thin affiliates no longer get as much love. (all of the sites I’ve seen claiming 30 spot penalties are by Google’s defintion thin affiliates)

They all only claim one keyword that dropped 30 spots.. which to me doesn’t make much sense. Wouldn’t it apply more across the board?

It seems more likely that they just gave more weight to sites that aren’t thin affiliates, and ranked them higher. The difference here is that no penalty was given to the fallen site, but it just didn’t score as high as the sites that moved above it. I believe that’s the system at work.

I believe that many SEOs are very quick to claim “penalty” when in fact, their site just isn’t scoring as high as other sites. Things that a site doesn’t rank well for aren’t a penalty… they’re just missed opportunties.

I read both the original article and dotCult’s commentary on it I have to say that Joe’s approach to Google and SEO is underdeveloped in the same sense that a child’s mind is.

Google’s algorithms are so complex that it is obvious to me Joe that you could not understand or make use of them even if Google disclosed them to the public.

As long as Google keeps its algorithms a secret, there will be time-wasters passing off their SEO techniques as servicable because they can never be proven or disproven.

I fear, Joe, that you are one of those people. And Ryan, you used to be.. but to your credit atleast you’ve moved on to something (apparently) more lucrative and undoubtedly more productive. Get a different job, Joe.

– Jeff