Google -30 filter
There’s been a lot of chatter recently about a so-called “30 filter” or “-30 penalty”.
At it’s heart it sounds like an advanced feature of Google Sandboxing - ie, a website that can only rank low, not simply for it’s own keywords, but even domain name.
The interesting point about this filter/penalty is that it’s very specific [...]
What to do with a PR7 website?
So Peter was right - Platinax is now PageRank 7.
I’m surprised - firstly because there’s no special link building program in play to try and increase the site’s PR value, and secondly, because I don’t think the site has done anything particular to warrant a PR7.
A couple of years ago I would have been overjoyed [...]
Danny Sullivan - the man moves on
I reported Danny Sullivan leaving SearchEngineWatch on Platinax News when the story broke, and over the past couple of its it’s been enlightening to see the responses online.
The marketing industry that has developed around search engines is often a small and intimate one. Open and friendly to new faces, there are no real cliques and [...]
SEO predictions
A couple of years back in the Search Engine Watch forums I made various comments that Google was more interested in pushing to rate authority more highly and that we’d not only see this trend continue, but also that we’d see established websites abuse this.
And these things have come to pass.
So I’m going to [...]
Yahoo!s graphic indexing failure
I just checked up on the stats of one of my sites - CR - comparative-religion.com.
It’s the UK’s largest resource on world religions, run as an information website.
It’s not simply “white-hat”, but is also a key authority in it’s area - linked to by over 40 universities, plus a half-dozen UK government websites.
So why has [...]
Yahoo! - having serious problems?
Yahoo! seems to be having a lot of technical problems of late.
An update on July 21st has managed to downsize Yahoo! Search results and relevancy.
Frustrated with Google’s increasing irrelevancy, I moved to Yahoo! Search - not sure what the new update is supposed to have achieved, but in practical terms, it seems to have reduced [...]
Interesting link experiment
I posted an interesting link experiment at SEO Lab recently: When do duplicate links count?
I’ve suspected for some time that if Google sees two links for the same URL on the same page, it will only count one of the links.
What the experiment so far suggests is quite interesting:
1. When Google sees two links to [...]
SEO help on new blog
As a SEO, it’s all too easy to turn a general business blog into a “SEO blog + some other stuff”.
I’m constantly tempted to write SEO news and commentaries here, but try to hold off so as not to make it too specialised.
Anyway, I figure the best solution is to try and focus on general [...]
Google targeting of link networks
Jagger - revisited
The Jagger update in October 2005 was a major event - it had far reaching consequences that affected a lot of webmasters and SEO’s.
When the fall-out finally settled, it was observed that “authority” sites had better positioning, and that link exchanges appeared to be devalued.
I’m now coming to the speculative conclusion that what [...]
Google confirms Adsense adds to index
Shoemoney reports that Matt Cutts has confirmed that the AdSense Mediabot is now collecting content for the Big Daddy search index.
This was something I’d suggested was responsible for Google recently losing part of its index - but hopefully they are through with whatever glitch was causing that problem.
Either way, Platinax is recovering it’s own index [...]
Google loses its index
Seems like Google has lost a section of its index again, especially for newer pages.
I’ve been very busy launching a couple of new forums over the past couple of months, and I’ve seen Google come in and index some of the pages - then waited for the deep crawl to grab the rest of the [...]
Traffic for rankings
Threadwatch raises a discussion on Webmasterworld about Google possibly using traffic figures from the Google toolbar for ranking purposes.
It’s something I suggested would be inevitable last year.
The trouble is - following the traffic simply tells you where the well-trod places are.
And - much as though Google is loathe to see text links because it [...]
When spamming gets silly
Been a few blogspam runs against this site - had 73 the other day. The interesting thing is that a lot of it is gibberish built around links to bona-fide sites.
I guess the two options are:
1. It’s an attempt to see which blogs will publish blogspam spam, with results being tracked;
2. Script kiddies are doing [...]
The challenges of database work
I’m working with a set of content databases at the moment.
It’s been a stupidly laborious amount of work so far - uploading the databases has been a nightmare so far, with continual network connection time-outs.
Now that I’m setting up the sites online to work from the databases, I’m having to do a lot of [...]
Google supplemental screw up
So Peter sent me a somewhat frantic e-mail, after noticing the newer Google results have supplemental’ed his forums - and Platinax, too.
Apparently, 3 of the key UK business forums had been hit, so I posted about it.
Google results are pretty appalling in the Longtail - home of the supplemental index - at present.
While researching dropshipping [...]
SEO: Longtail is King
I need to write an involved article on link building, because in my opinion a lot of SME’s are completely failing to understand one of the biggest secrets of SEO - the Longtail.
Too often I’m approached by people who are looking for just one or two keywords to rank for - often very similar.
The problem [...]
Google caught by Ask Jeeves
Been out a couple of days - but here’s a fun couple of blog posts to get back into the swing…
Well known Google Engineer, spam fighter, and Public Relations manager to webmasters, Matt Cutts, was in town near where Ask have recently set up offices.
So he went over, took a peek, and snapped a [...]
BBC misunderstandings of SEO
The BBC report on the recent delisting of the German BMW site for keyword spamming.
And - ouch - do they make some major blunders in describing what happened.
Firstly, there’s the propagation of the PageRank myth:
Google has now reduced BMW’s page rank to zero, ensuring the company no longer appears at the top.
So it requires a [...]
Google: The Calm Before the Storm
The dynamicism of the internet is invigorating. It’s also frightening. It’s like a living sea of data.
The problem is founding a business model on the internet that doesn’t simply float - but one that remains afloat among the various tides and storm surges of technical progress.
For a company selling SEO services, this means surviving the [...]
