Google Ranking Philosophy

Today, Google posted (finally) the first in what was promised (two months ago) to be a regular series of posts intended to open up more about aspects of internal operations. The original post was laden with disclaimers to the effect that certain truths could not be revealed due to the nature of their business. Since then, I've been waiting (not alone, I'm sure) to see just how much Google would be willing to share.

Lisa Barone Gets It Right

I'm a bit late on this one. A wonderful family vacation took me away for about 10 days, but I'm back now and, for once, I agree with Lisa Barone.

Lisa's post covering the SMX Advanced : Give It Up Session appropriately took aim at the panel of "experts" who dished out deceptive tactics in the name of SEO. Comic relief is provided by Marty Weintraub who condones taking advantage of link-exchange partners who don't understand NOFOLLOW, and then tries to cover his tracks by saying he's "negotiating the multi-value of a link exchange" in the post comments. Oh, he then blames it on Google by saying they made the rules, not him. I'll point out the obvious here and say that just because somebody else makes the rules doesn't give you license to break them. Let's also remember that the original "rule" (i.e. intent) for NOFOLLOW was to combat blog comment / forum spam, not to decieve link-partners.

Lisa called Marty a jerk but hid it behind a strike-through. I won't. Marty seems like a bit of a jerk to me, too.

Doug Heil swoops in (sorry, Doug, couldn't resist given the mask and cape comments) and attempts to defend the good name of SEO. I, for one, appreciate Doug's straight shooting when it comes to dealing these expert panels.

Anyway, nice work Lisa.

The Future of SEO

Last week's entertainment included a post and follow-up by ShoeMoney in which he prophesied the demise of SEO as we currently know it. As posts of this type will, it raised the ire of the SEO community at large, including this ridiculous, and thankfully brief, commentary by Sage Lewis. Let's put aside Mr. Lewis's apparent reading disability (he stumbles over quite a bit of his script - perhaps a retake was in order) and focus on this statement he makes:

SEO is all about optimizing for the visitor. You make the visitor experience great and you will be paid off in your search engine ranking results.

Unfortunately, this is mostly incorrect. Here's why:

Back-Links - SEOs spend vast amounts of time generating inbound links. Inbound back-links have zero capability to make the experience better for the site visitor.

The Algorithm - You can hardly read a semi-intellectual post about SEO without mention of "The Algo." Frankly, the search engine algorithms don't care about the visitor experience. They count keywords, look for on-page markup, and use other factors gleaned from the scraped page in an attempt to determine if said page is relevant to a particular search term. Here are some examples of how the algorithm really doesn't take the user experience into account and at times can be directly counter to a good user experience -

• Rewriting the URLs of a dynamic site so they look static does nothing for the user experience.
• Modifying site copy so that it's more keyword rich has no direct benefit for the user. In fact, any site that brings it's own voice and style to content creation often has to make editorial sacrifices in order to achieve a highly optimized piece of content. This directly results in a degradation of the user experience.
• Meta Description / Keyword / Title tags have little impact on the user experience.

Mr. Lewis might bring up the concept of good site architecture, and how a highly silo-ized site benefits both SEO and the site visitor. I'll agree on this point, but let's also remember that information architecture has been around much longer than SEO. Making a site intuitively navigable has been best practice in site creation for many hears and has nothing specific to do with SEO, other than the fact that the search algorithms need intra-site links to find content.

It's a bit presumptuous for Mr. Lewis, and the SEO community, to co-opt good site design in the name of search engine optimization. It's as if with one fell swoop they've made sites findable and been what site designers and IAs have been looking for all their lives.

The final irony here is, of course, that SearchEngineGuide has dedicated time to ShoeMoney's post. Here's what Mr. Lewis has to say -

... our industry falls for this every single time when somebody criticizes it, comes out and bashes it, and it comes out and links right back to the person. Which I find funny....This ShoeMoney character is not worth our time.

Of course, Mr. Lewis's post is free publicity for ShoeMoney. Now that's funny.

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Spammers, All

How many Friends do you have?

Not on Twitter or Digg or anywhere like that. I mean Friends with a capital F - real ones. Now, compare that number to how many social media "friends" you have. My guess is that, if you practice SEO for a living, your online friends out number your real world friends by at least one order of magnitude.

A couple of days ago, rebecca over at SEOMoz complained that Digg Shout-Blocked her. When she attempted to send a shout to her entire fan base, she was first asked to narrow down her list of friends before selecting which ones would receive the message. She didn't like this and points to her Digg usage stats as evidence that she's not a spammer and thus Digg should allow her to do what she pleases. She has 568 friends and says:

I mean, all I do is befriend people who become fans of me. The whole point on having friends on Digg is so that you can share stories with each other, and the Shout feature allows you to share stories with a large number of friends vs. having to contact them all one-by-one. Why then would Digg penalize me for having too many friends? Did I hit some mysterious "max number," like once you get to 500, it's too many?

Blindly befriending everybody who becomes a fan of you on a site like Digg is evidence enough that you're not using the site to truly find like minded internet jockeys. And, blindly sending shouts to hundreds of your friends is not "the whole point of having friends on Digg."

As professionals, we should be honest with ourselves. Sending a story to 500 mostly anonymous people on a social bookmarking site is spam. You're doing it with the hopes of garnering votes, most of which will come from folks who never even read the story.

So, the next time you're having an identity crisis, count your friends both real and online. The bigger the multiple of online friends to real, the bigger spammer you are.

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Jason Calacanis Does It Again

Once again, Jason Calacanis has enraged the SEO Community.

His keynote address at SMX Social Media, as reported by Lisa Barone, contained the following statement:

"SEO is a wasted industry. You're wasting your time fighting off ranking problems instead of creating great content. You're just spinning your wheels hoping the Google gods won't kick you out. It's a bad way to live your life. Using a human service is a better way to go about it."

It didn't take long for the blood to start boiling. It got picked up on Sphinn pretty quickly, with follow-up posts and Sphinn rants not far behind. Wow, is this industry sensitive or what? Here are some thoughts:

Make a Point, Please
If you read though all the posts and comments and replies, you'll find that the most thought out retort anybody has so far is that All Conferences Should Heretofore Ban Jason Calacanis from Speaking, Forever (and Ever). What's notably missing is a coherent argument against  Jason's position. To do this, you'd have to demonstrate that the skills and practices used by SEOs today have a long term value proposition to both clients and search engines alike. You'd have to further predict, convincingly, how search technology will evolve (or won't) and what the future for SEO is in the context of that evolution.

Jason's point is simple, and I agree with it, that current day SEO is largely an act of attempting to influence the (flawed) link-based page rank (and thus relevancy) algorithms in an attempt to achieve higher search engine rankings. As the link-based algorithms go the way of the do-do bird, the basics of SEO will be left behind and these basics will likely not require an entire independent industry to support them. I've had this argument myself with an SEO or two, and have yet to hear a compelling counter position.

Stop Being Suckers
Is it not evidently clear why Jason Calacanis makes statements like these in public forums? Despite their loathsome contempt for Mr. Calacanis, the SEO industry has just created a ton of press for him, his keynote address, and his current endeavor (Mahalo). The best part about all this is watching Jason reply to Sphinn comments, basically egging on the community, and they fall for it every time.  Jane Copland put it best when, on Sphinn, she said:

"There were two or three things he said that were either unfortunately worded or deliberately baity. No one's really paying much attention to anything else he said, but the grand total of about 100 words have made him the story of SMX Social Media. Calacanis wins."

Right now, the SEO Community looks like the rats that Jason the Pied Piper is leading around as he chooses - all for his own amusement and benefit.

Calacanis Wins.

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SEO Standards

There have been quite a few posts bouncing around the blogs about whether the SEO Industry needs standards. Arguments against standards seem to outnumber supporters, and those on the opposing side levy warnings of everything from reduced creativity and experimentation to bureaucracy laden government agencies whose inefficiencies will cripple the industry. SEOMoz posted a nice recap of recent writings on the subject and, as usual, threw in their own $0.02.

Many of the points made in favor of standards cite a need to protect clients from unethical, or simply unskilled, SEO service providers. Michael Martinez over at SEO-Theory even goes so far as to predict an increase in SEO Brokers and the need for these middle men to have a yard stick by which to measure the services they recommend or re-sell. The most compelling argument, however, for standards came from Lisa Barone. Within her post the most salient point is this:

"...search engine optimization is a form of advertising. It’s not a matter of should it be regulated, advertising MUST be regulated."

The need to protect clients from service providers simply doesn't warrant a set of industry standards. The fact is that the world economy is fueled by hundreds, if not thousands, of service provider types. If clients are not doing their homework and are incapable of properly evaluating service providers, then they run the risk paying too much, or getting cheated, at every turn - not just with SEO. The party at risk in this scenario, and why regulations (note I didn't say "standards," more about the difference a bit later in this post) are needed, is the consumer.

The primary benefit to a regulated advertising industry is to protect the consumer against false claims, not to protect Big Brand Co. from Sneaky Ad Firm LLC because they might not deliver a quality product. In the end, market forces (or lawsuits) will weed out those service providers that cannot effectively serve their clients. That's the way a market economy works. The consumer, however, has little recourse when they waste hours of their time clicking on search results that have nothing to do with what they're looking for. Sure, some of that will be incidental as the issue of relevancy gets worked out, but the door cannot be left open for wholesale manipulation of search results simply to drive traffic. That is an offense against the consumer and until SEO practices are covered by the same type of regulations we see in the advertising industry, these offenses will continue.

Finally, I want to be clear that I'm making a distinction between SEO Standards and SEO Regulations. Much of the coverage of this debate has referred to SEO Standards from the operational or certification standpoint. That is, standards being viewed as a means of determining if an SEO is capable and/or ethical in the service they provide. While we may see certifications gain popularity over time, I don't believe that the basics of SEO are complicated enough to warrant a certification standard. The only value a certification could have would be to validate competency and could not address the issue of ethical business practice. Again, as with any service provider, the purchasing client needs to understand enough about what their buying before finalizing the deal. Market forces will flush out the dregs.

Regulations would differ from operational standards in that, as with most regulated industries, they would exist as a means to shield the public from deceptive tactics. As an example, consider the FAA. As a regulating body overseeing the airline industry, their main concern is the safety of the flying public. Basically, the FAA exists to keep planes from crashing not to protect American Airlines bottom line from a shady parts manufacturer. Naturally, this type of regulation maintains service levels by enabling much stricter penalties in the case of a violation. The offending company is not just providing bad service to the client, they're impacting the public at large.

While SEO isn't a matter of life-and-death, neither is corporate advertising and the SEO industry needs to follow suit.

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G

I'm sorry, but I simply can't do it any longer. If I read another post where somebody refers to Google as 'G,' I may expire on the spot. So I'm making a formal request that you stop. All of you. And while you're at it, please stop using the following as well:

• Algo
• SERP
• Link Love
• Link Juice
• Mozzer

Listen, the SEO Industry doesn't need it's own vernacular to legitimize itself. It feels like an attempt to create a sense of establishment but it simply comes off as juvenile.

Again, I apologize in advance.

The Expanding Web

Michael Martinez over at SEO-Theory.com recently posted a thoughtful article which considers the rate of expansion of the web and questions whether search engine technology has maintained pace.

What’s refreshing about this post is where it differs from the typical SEO blog entry. So often, folks in the SEO industry start a blog in an attempt to create and nurture a personal brand. The unfortunate reality, though, is that there’s only so much SEO content to go around. Much of what gets written in the pursuit of SEO Identity is either rehashed SEO basics or a variation on The Ultimate List theme. None of this is very interesting and in the long run is counter productive to the desired goal.

I figure Mr. Martinez is after the same with his blog. However, his posts at least make me think and offer a critical perspective on the search industry. In his latest, there are a few points I agree with and a few I question.

Content Inclusion
In examining the completeness of a search engine’s index, Mr. Martinez states that in order to deal with limited capacity Google has implemented a “Web Apartheid.” That is, not all sites get indexed and Google determines which of the fortunate (relatively) few make it in.

In Google’s defense it should be noted that a huge number of spam sites have been dropped out of Google’s index, but when all is said and done Web spam is a legitimate part of the World Wide Web because neither Google nor any other search engine has the authority to determine what is and is not part of the Web.

This argument falls apart a bit when you consider that all search engines attempt to provide the searcher with “relevant” results. Whether you agree with how the engine determines relevancy or not, this implies a qualitative process. If we allow Google to determine which sites are relevant for a given query, we must also allow them to determine which sites are not relevant to any queries and thus be excluded.

Link Building
As a result of this Apartheid, Mr. Martinez states:

For the search optimization community, then, the primary challenge today is the same as it was ten years ago: we have to ensure that our protected content is included in as many search indexes as possible… The more inbound links a page has, the more likely the page will be crawled and indexed. Simply having a page crawled and indexed is the SEO’s first priority. Getting the page to rank is the SEO’s second priority.

The implication here is that significant link building is required in order to get your content indexed. With the exception of truly large sites (millions of pages), my experience has shown that getting content indexed is fairly straight forward. I’ve managed a number of content driven sites, all of which had new pages indexed immediately without any external inbound links. This includes new sites that were created and all it took was the submission of a sitemap to get pages indexed. Again, for significantly large sites I would expect the engines to take their time and index slowly as you prove your worth. I would be interested to hear an account of, say, your average blog owner who must go out and procure new inbound links before new posts get indexed.

Link Counting
I haven’t found too many instances of people who get paid to perform search engine optimization for their clients openly criticizing the link based page rank algorithm. I suppose it’s a case of not wanting to bite the hand that feeds, but Mr. Martinez bucks the trend and comes out against link counting – and on this point we agree completely. Mr. Martinez introduces the issue as

… gross error of judgment that has yet to be acknowledged by Google.

He further provides excellent background on the history of link based page rank.

Larry Page and Sergey Brin tested their PageRank hypothesis on the Stanford University Web site, where pages were not embedded with links designed to assist with crawling or commercial promotional links. Just because they were able to show that Stanford’s probable most important pages were better linked than other pages did not mean their model was relevant to the real World Wide Web. Google’s founders and investors failed to reconcile the wrong assumptions with reality.

This is evidence that the SEO industry is operating from a faulty premise. Mr. Martinez reiterates his point that aggressive link building was originally an attempt simply to get pages indexed and thus:

The valuative [sic] citation model that Page and Brin believed existed in fact never existed at all, except possibly on academic and government Web sites.

And finally:

The World Wide Web cannot be accurately valued through its linking structure because the linking structure was never designed to be a valuation process.

Excellent points, all well made. Not only is the link based model built upon an unsound foundation, the structure of our relevancy ecosystem is weakened each day as SEOs everywhere continue to try to use this flaw to influence natural search rankings for their clients.

There’s much more to Mr. Martinez’ post and I recommend you read it in its entirety. Unlike much of the line-towing that goes on in the SEO industry, this entry is notable for its thoughtfulness and consideration of how the status quo simply isn’t sufficient. The search optimization industry clearly needs to evolve and it won’t unless its practitioners ask the hard questions – both of themselves and the search engines.

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Mahalo

I was impressed by the Jason Calacanis keynote at SES NY today. Mr. Calacanis is a serial entreprenuer, current CEO of Mahalo, and has been the center of a fair amount of SEO controversy.

What impressed me most about Mr. Calacanis was his conviction that search needs to evolve and, specifically, algorithmic search is not the right answer for every query. This thinking is the rationale behind Mahalo - a human assisted search engine. Every result page on Mahalo is created by a person, and every request for site inclusion is reviewed by a person. By using people to determine site relevancy for a given search term, Mahalo and Mr. Calacanis have given us a true measure of relevancy and effectively taken away the lion's share of what the average SEO bills her clients for.

Mr. Calacanis also commented that he believed SEOs today are too focused on the near-term win as opposed to a longer term strategy of building value. In defense of SEOs everywhere, they're only partially to blame for this. The link-based page rank algorithms promote a culture of deception. It's either too tempting to try to game the system or there's no choice becuase all your competitors are doing it. How can Mr. White Hat win when all those shades of grey exist and his clients are being promised hundreds (or thousands) of inbound links?

Perhaps this is why te SEO industry has been so defensive when it comes to remarks Mr. Calacanis has made in the past. If SEOs were secure in their craft, why would they care what anybody says? The writing is on the wall and the SEO industry sees the changes that are coming. Universal search, hand edited page rank, human assisted search engines, and even social media threaten to alter the fabric of SEO, and the situation has more than a few people scared.   

Rather than claiming every blog post which questions the current SEO industry is "SEO Hate," it would be better to embrace the fact that search, and thus SEO, are immature industries. Spurred on by advances in technology, the search industry will continue to evolve at a rapid pace and what we consider SEO today will be vastly different just a few years from now - and those that continue to focus on the short term will be left behind rather quickly. 

Universal Search

At SES NY today, the 1:30pm session was focused on Universal Search. The speakers for the discussion were:

• John Battelle, Founder/Chairman/CEO, Federated Media
• James Lamberti, Senior Vice President, Search and Media, comScore, Inc
• Lyndsay Menzies, Managing Director, Big Mouth Media
• Jack Menzel, PM for Universal Search, Google

For those not familiar with the term, Universal Search refers to a blended search results page where Google combines listings from its video, image, local, news (etc.) engines with those it gathers from spidering web pages.

The onstage conversation was the livliest and most engaging I've seen at SES so far. Mr. Battelle was persistent in his attack insistance that the continuing trend toward Universal Search was slowly turning Google (and other search engines) into the destination, rather than the road map. Recently released comScore data supported this theory, showing a 3% lower click-thru rate when Universal Search results are displayed to the searcher.

On the surface, this may seem ideal from a user experience perspective. Getting the searcher to the data they're seeking as quickly as possible is what it's all about, right? And that was the position taken by Mr. Menzel. The situation gets muddy with the realization that Google is also, slowly, becomming a media company. In many Universal Search results, you will find Google Finance for stock quotes and Google Video (YouTube) for funny clips of Chuch Norris. Mr. Battelle pointedly asked Mr. Menzel if Google favored their media properties when presenting Univeral Search results. Naturally, the Google stance is to always show the most relevant results. Of course, "relevancy" is determined by Google's algorithm, which relies on many, many data points of which Google is likely to have the best data for their own properties, so you do the math.

For the thoughtful SEO crowd in the audience, the question is this - What happens when Google becomes the destination? Even if the issue of Google showing more of it's own content on the results pages is put aside, where does it leave the average search marketer if the searcher never leaves the results page? In this scenario, the monetization and ROI of SEO goes right out the window as the user never makes it to the content owner's site.

It's an uncomfortable situation to be in. The entirety of the web allows Google to spider their content with no real guidelines on exactly how much of it can be displayed within a Google property. Would it be going too far for Google to allow a video from Break.com to be played direclty from the search results page? The inclination is to say yes, but wouldn't that also be a better user experience? 

On stage today, Mr. Menzel said several times that Google wanted nothing more than to deliver the searched for information to the user as quickly as possible. Following this line of thinking to its logical conclusion, Google starts to look more and more like a destination. And if that's the case, then we're witnessing the beginnings of a game changer for the SEO world.

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