Beanstalk's SEO News Blog

As of this morning we were starting to see Caffeine results off at least one Google Datacenter. Last week we reported that we'd let you know as soon as we started seeing Caffeine results and where that location is. Interestingly - it is out of a location that contains one of our servers - Seattle. The IP is 74.125.67.100.

Now the interesting thing is that on SE Roundtable they're reporting (and confirmed by users there) that the IP is 66.102.7.18.

The results appear in-and-out right now and to make things more confusing - they may be moving as a client of ours can confirm seeing different (Caffeine-like results) out of Florida (no confirmed IP though).

We'll be sure to keep you posted as we find out more.

Good luck and may the SERPs be with you.

And Google Breadcrumbs:

Another big story came out of Google yesterday (but just hit my radar earlier today) and that is the announcement by Google that they are testing showing site breadcrumbs in place of URLs below the description in the SERPs. They illustration they used was:

Their belief is that this provides more information to the searcher when compared with the traditional results:
These results aren't displaying in my location so I can't test them (this isn't worth quite the same effort as tracking down Caffeine servers) but on the surface - I like the breadcrumb results and I do think that once the average searcher figures out how to read them to determine the results that most closely match their search intent.

In short - it's not revolutionary but it is interesting and I hope it works out.

Update - I have since found a server where I can see the breadcrumbs. If you'd like to see them for yourself yo can visit http://74.125.67.100/search?hl=en&gl=us&q=spidersapien+reviews&btnG=Search&aq=f&oq=.

Labels: Caffeine, google update

For those of you not yet aware, Google has been testing a new algo/infrastructure nicknamed Caffeine. Until a few days ago the general public had a location to go to to watch and monitor how their sites would fare on the Caffeine system. That location has been pulled and it's been announced that the new system is tested, working, and will be rolled out - though not until after the holidays.

While the fine folks at Google have tested Caffeine, they obviously don't want to be subjected to the same kind of backlash they received in the Florida update of 2003 when sites and pages were dropped from the index and spam ruled the results right through the holiday season.

In a few days time they will roll out Caffeine on a single datacenter and pull data and stats from a small percentage of the general public. The full launch will occur sometime in early 2010. When we have the location of the datacenter we'll be sure to let you know. :)

Labels: Caffeine, google update

Ah, the blessed Google updating - we hate to love it and vice versa. We ran our rankings again for our clients as we've seen a lot of movement lately and the latest round of results appears (for the first time in a while) to widen the gap between the Caffeine results and the live Google.com results. For some - this is a moment of joy and for others, panic. For all - it is temporary (and by temporary I mean more than even a standard update is).

This widening gap is (in my humble opinion) a sign that either the Caffeine results have been deemed to be less relevant than the live results and will be abandoned (in which case we're going to see updating based on a new algorithm here-to-for unseen) OR more likely - the fine folks at Google weren't happy with the portions they were testing and will resume implementing portions of the Caffeine results in the next few days.

Either way - if you saw your results improve - don't go counting your chickens and if you saw drops - don't panic (and yes - I know that's easier said than done). When in doubt - refer back to a previous article I wrote, "What To Do When Your Site Drops". We all deal with it from time-to-time and it provides some solid advice on how we here at Beanstalk deal with it - even when it's our corporate site.

Labels: google update, seo article

As expected, this are fluctuations occurring in Google's results with different rankings coming in depending on the datacenter hit. it appears that they are testing out some additions to the algorithm based on Caffeine results. things should settle down by Monday or Tuesday is all goes as it generally historically does.

Hang on to your hats and hope the update treats you well. :)

For those of you not yet away - you can view your results on Google's Caffeine server at http://www2.sandbox.google.com/.

Labels: google update

Some of you out there may have heard about Google's major algorithm update called Caffeine, which can currently be tested here (they have already revised it a few times, so don't be alarmed if it is down for a few hours at some point with a maintenance message). This algorithm update is mainly related to how Google indexes websites, but as we have seen here at Beanstalk it has given even better results to most of our clients. For instance we have a client on Page 3 for the phrase Shade Sails (still mid promotion), but on the sandbox he is in the top 10. Another client on the 7th page for California Health Insurance are on the 1st page on the Sandbox. And lastly one of the largest campaigns we are running for the phrase Web Hosting shows only a variance of 1 position (lower on Caffeine).

From what I can see not only has the indexing changed but so has the value of higher numbers of links. We are being out ranked by a company called Rankpay for the phrase SEO Service almost purely by paid links (Sample Paid Link), and links from their clients websites (Rankpay uses the anchor text SEO Service and SEO Services) whereas we rank #1 on the current Google search algorithm. Reviewing the major phrases we rank for (SEO Service, SEO Services, and SEO Consulting), there is no more than a one position difference in our rankings. Needless to say in the long run paid links will get you penalized from the rankings, so we aren't going to change our tactics.

Below is a video produced by Michael McDonald from WebProNews and Matt Cutts (one of the top Google engineers) discussing the Caffeine update and its affects on rankings.

Labels: Caffeine, google update, paid links, rankings, search algorithm

It appears that things are settling down over at Google. I can't get into all the details right now as I haven't had a ton of time to analyze everything due in no small part to the fact that I'm on vacation in beautiful Whistler, BC (big thanks to Bryan from Whistler Retreats. As always - the Whistler accommodations are awesome my friend. :)

be sure to check back early next week after we've had some time to analyze the events and also monitor to see if there are any aftershocks. :)

Labels: google update

Well - there's a lot going on in the SEO world and as such, there's a lot going on at Beanstalk. Over the past 2 days we've published 3 articles. I won't get into the details of them all here - you can read them on our site. I'll just summarize them so you know which might interest you:

Google Update - Beanstalk's Jonathan and Kyle have spent the past few days ransacking the web for information, comments and posts about the current shakeup at Google and then have gone further to going back into the records and rankings of a number of clients to illustrate what we're seeing as well. A good starting point for those of you wondering what the heck's going on.

When To Do When Your Site Drops - An article written by yours truly on, well, what to do when yoru site drops in the rankings (see the article above for what inspired this one). It's broken down into 5 steps.

SEO For Ajax - Daryl Quenet writes about SEO for Ajax and Web 2.0

I hope you enjoy reading them as much as we geeks have enjoyed researching and writing them. :)

Labels: ajax, daryl quenet, dave davies, google update, jonathan anthony, kyle krenbrink, web 2.0

Has your website been swallowed by the Google SERPs? You may have noticed your page's rank (as opposed to PageRank) jumping up and down like a yo-yo without reason?

There are a number of confusing theories as to the how and why. We here at Beanstalk are playing "Sherlock" trying to make sense of all this. Look for an article tomorrow regarding this SERP dance that has been making a buzz.

Kyle.

Labels: google update, seo article

For those of you who haven't noticed - there's an update going on over at Google. It's lasted about a week and I first reported it back on Tuesday.

What appears to be happening is that they're trying to react to some aspect of backlinks but unfortunately the house of cards is teetering and cr@p results are climbing to the top for many search queries. I liken it to pulling a loose thread on a sweater only to find that that threat was holding together the entire cuff.

Basically - it appears that a small adjustment in the algorithm has created undesired affects elsewhere. Let's use an example of how this happens though admittedly - I don't know or even have a good guess yet on what they changed in this case - this is JUST AN EXAMPLE. I am NOT suggesting that this is the change or even the logic behind the change, In fact, I can guarantee it's not.

OK - now that that's out of the way - let's say for example that Google wanted to decrease the value of reciprocal links and in doing so setup an internal filter that checked for links to domains and from domains and where there was a positive match that the domains each linked to the other - that in such a case the value of those links would be zeroed out. This seems like a logical way to negate recip links HOWEVER if a Harvard professor find a thesis document posted on the MIT website valuable and links to it and an MIT student in their blog finds a research paper on the Harvard site to be relevant to their subject - should these links be negated and if we devalue both the Harvard and MIT websites - will the results for queries relevant to these studies be better?

This is just an example but a clear one as to how efferts to address one area can have undesired affects in others and of course - at this stage in their evolution they've got far more subtle aspects to their algorithm and so very many of them that a tweek in one area can have totally unpredictable affects on other areas.

At the end of the day however the results are worse than they were previously and thus, a change will come. I will put myself out there and predict further updates this evening or tomorrow (Friday) that will likely last through the weekend as Google works to address whatever issue they were originally working on but reducing and/or eliminating the undesired results in the form of lackluster sites improving in the rankings.

I will be monitoring and blogging about this update as it unfolds.

I should also note that I don't get an email from Matt Cutts letting me know when these updates happen (no really - it's true). My guesstimates are based on past patterns and thus - I may be off by a bit but Google tends to follow a similar pattern about 70 to 80 percent of the time.

Enjoy the ride and have a great long weekend !!!

Labels: google update

Just wanting to put out a general head's up that there appears to be some massive fluctuations going on in the Google SERPs and from what I can see - at least some form of the algorithm is garbage producing, to say the least, entirely lackluster results.

As we all know - this happens from time-to-time and I can't blame them, they have so many updates that sometimes it's just not going to work out. So - before madly ransacking your results and tearing apart your site based on the current results (never a good idea anyways) just wait a couple days. We'll let you know here also when it appears to be stabilizing.

Also - don't download the new Firefox update just yet. A lot of the extensions aren't working on the new version yet. And sorry to Daryl here for having to be the guinea pig. :)

Labels: firefox, google update

I've heard from several clients today who had their page ranks change both for the better, and worse (my own hardware website went from a PR5 to a PR4). However it seems that a re-occurring bug where Google drops the page rank of internal pages that deserve to be ranked has snuck into this update. After most page rank updates I usually check out one of the previous employers websites to see how their page rank distribution is. Currently of all their pages the homepage, and two of the categories pages have page rank the rest of their website reports as being unranked so not even a PR0. Hopefully we will see a corrective page rank update in the next few weeks.

Labels: google update, pagerank

I've had to call a few clients to proactively talk them off a ledge and I thought that perhaps I'd do well to post some recent going's on at Google up on the blog for everyone. There is an update underway over at chez Google. There appear to be at least 3 sets of data going around and a simple Refresh can provide different results for the same search depending on the datacenter you happen to hit.

In general the differences appear to be minor however I have seen a few cases where a site that is in the top 10 on one isn't in the top 30 on another.

This updates seems to be a little more major that we've seen in a while. I haven't had time to analyze what's going on yet and honestly - I'll probably wait until later in the weekend when things start to stabilize before I look into it too much (why try to study a moving target when you can wait for it to rest?) If there's anything interesting to note after the update has settled you can be sure I'll be writing about it here.

I wish you all luck through this update (unless of course you run an SEO company ;)

Labels: google update

There's been a lot of shuffling around in the SERPs on Google over the past few days as many of you have undoubtedly noticed. I got my first wind of it 2 days ago from a client who dropped from #4 for his primary phrase to #5 (then to #6 - then back up to #5). Others have witnessed larger moves and this update seems to coincide with a recalculation of PageRank (visible) for many sites.

The Beanstalk site felt the affect starting yesterday when I first noticed that we dropped from our #1 spot for "seo services" to #2. Of course as an SEO I just had to spend a large part of the evening trying to get to the bottom of it and unfortunately I did. On the down side, I don't like the update (and not just because of where we ended up) but in large part due to what I found. The page that took over the #1 spot was www.bitwiselogic.com/website-optimization-services.aspx (I'm sure you can appreciate that I'm not going to hyperlink that URL. ;)

We've always tried to follow the best practices of link building using ethical methods. It's generally slower but it kept us in the #1 spot for well over a year. So what had changed?

When I looked into the keyword densities I found that the BitWise site had abnormally low densities for the targeted keywords (hovering at around 1%). So we know it isn't keyword density. Their internal linking was good, I'd go for higher densities but this revealed that what it was coming down to was links. So where are their links coming from? (I asked myself in hopes of some great revelation of a new and superior link acquisition tactic)

A counter. Ugh.

BitWise had managed to get a counter that linked back to them put on thousands of sites. No anchor text - just an image link with an alt tag, likely (though not necessarily) established through either building blogspot templates that included the counter or "sponsoring" one.

And so I have to say to my friends at Google, there was once a time when we would jockey for #1 with WeBuildPages. Jim Boykin and crew are talented SEO's and link builders and I could feel OK with being #2 (though of course, worked hard to take back the #1 spot when we slipped to them). But this? Somehow being beaten by a hit counter just doesn't feel right. Something is wrong with this update.

So What Changed?

Now, while I don't love the effect, the cause shed great light on the current update. It is obvious that Google is giving weight to sheer link numbers. There were definitely some good links in the BitWise mix including a couple .edu sites but overall the quality of the links was low so it's pretty clear that they're winning by sheer volume. The new algorithm favors volume.

So What To Do?

What are we doing about it? Very little. Knowing that Google can and will occasionally weigh volume more highly is a good reminder that for ourselves and our clients we need to take this into account when we're doing our link building however an algorithm like this can't hold. It's too susceptible to sp@mming and thus, it must be readjusted.


So if you too have watched your site fall to a competitor that appears to have poor backlinks I would recommend to take our lead, build links - that's always a good policy - but don't panic (as hard as that may be - trust me I know). There will be another update. If we were to follow the lead of the site that jumped to #1 we'd build thousands of low-quality links overnight and drop our keyword densities down to 1%. And where would we be a few weeks from now?

Labels: google update

In today's episode of Webcology on WebmasterRadio.fm Jim Hedger and I discusses a couple recent events at Google. Namely the release of their Q1 earnings (SURPRISE - they're up over last quarter) and Yahoo! using Google's paid ads instead of their own. Rather than re-hash "old news" (OK - it was earlier today but you can listen to it all by downloading the podcast here) I'm going to cover a new issues - Google's latest update.

Recently there's been much news about a massive shift on Google named the "Dewey Update". The update itself caused much chaos as SEO's around the world reported huge swings in rankings. The forums have been abuzz and the update, unlike most, took place over weeks with some sites changing positions wildly 3 and even 4 times in a day. The update appeared to have settled late last week with only minor tremors affecting the rankings in what one might conclude to be a new way of adjusting rankings on Google's end - a more fluid approach to rankings.

Tonight however there's been another significant shift however there's a pretty major difference - this one is much more in tune with the updates prior to Dewey which took place on an almost weekly basis,usually starting on Thursday or Friday evening.

A major difference between what we're seeing now and what we saw with Dewey in that the effects and changes appear far more logical whew one can look at the results across numerous sites. The changes seem to take into account adjustments made to the sites and increases in backlinks rather than massive adjustments to the ranking system affecting what can only be described as almost random factors (I'm sure they weren't actually random however it was impossible to get a lock on what was being tested with the changes occurring too often for any proper analysis).

Obviously as an SEO I'm very happy to see this return to stability and as a searcher I appreciate that what I see today is likely going to be similar to what I will see tomorrow. Helps instill in me faith that the results I'm being presented with are actually relevant. Or maybe I prefer it as it reduces the frantic calls from clients asking why they dropped positions from where they were 2 hours earlier and my only reply being, "well - check it again in a couple hours". ;)

Labels: google, google update, jim hedger, webmaster radio

In what can only be considered a devastating leak of information from Google HQ in Mountain View, a confirmed but as yet publicly anonymous executive from Google has leaked papers detailing some of the key fundamentals to Google's link value calculation system. The announcement by Google earlier today details some of the contents of this information as they work hard to minimize the effect that this will have on their algorithm as SEO's around the world scramble get their hands on it. The news, first leaked by SEO-guru Danny Sullivan on Search Engine Land, comes as a shock of sorts and leaves SEO's scratching their heads figuring out what to do. There has been startled reaction from the community but first - let's cover a few of the key points (we'll provide a link to more thorough information below).

The leaked information confirmed and illuminated the following information:

• The PageRank we see in the green bar has no bearing on how a site will rank. This information is generated internally based on user expectations and not as a ranking factor.
• The weighing of factors occurs in the following order: Google's internal PageRank, position on page, number of links on the page, anchor text, relevancy. I found it VERY interesting that trust is not yet a calculation on link worth though this may be an omission in the information provided.
• Reciprocal linking is detectable and while it is not penalized, no value is given for the links. A limitation outlined in this is the Google apparently has little ability to to detect legitimate linking sites that happen to link to each other.
• Paid links are not detectable. There is currently no architecture for the automatic detection of paid links. Google relies on reporting by SEO's and webmasters.
• There's a lot more in there - this is just what I've gleaned at the time of this writing. There's a link below to the documents themselves.
  

I had a chance to have a very brief chat with Matt Cutts (quality control guru from Google) who has told us he will be responding on his blog once more information on the leak becomes available (and I'm sure when he's given the OK by the Gods of Google to talk). His response to this leak was, "... this is obviously an issue we are going to have to deal with quickly. We expect SEO's to take quick advantage of this information and a strategy is being developed to deal with this and make adjustments to the algorithm shortly." You can monitor Matt's comments on his blog and a big thanks to him for taking a moment out of his understandably hectic schedule to answer a couple questions for me.

On the other side of the coin sit the SEO's. While we're all obviously reading all the information we can on the leak - we do so with some concern. In an email from Rand Fishkin from SEOmoz he noted, "You might think this is a great opportunity for SEO's but it's not - in fact this is one of the worst things that could happen. All the information we're all reading will be invalid by the time we could employ the tactics and we're about to head into a period of significant instability in regards to Google's rankings . Not only do we have to fear for the rankings we've worked hard to attain over the years - we also have to deal with rankings that will be in a constant state of flux over the next few months. Clients are NOT going to be happy." Good call Rand and you can monitor his comments on the subject on their blog at http://www.seomoz.org/blog.

This is obviously an issue you're going to want to research this issue - there's a lot more about this and links to the documents on the cnet site at http://www.news.com/8301-13577_3-9907571-36.html. Well, the article is actually about Google's April Fool's Day joke but we think ours was fun too. :) Enjoy the day. ;)

Labels: april fools day, danny sullivan, google, google update, link building, rand fishkin, seomoz

Last Monday we reported that Google was in a state of flux. There was some minor stabalization late last week (i.e. there was still some up-and-downs but things were mainly quiet) and now we're seeing an odd bag of results.

As we're located up in the "Great White North" (an ironic name given that Beanstalk is in Victoria, BC and we had all of 5 flakes of snow this winter) we're used to putting &gl=us (standing for: Geographic Location = US) after a search query to mimic US results. Well that isn't working today and we're getting different results out of Canada with our own geographic specifiers, our US specifier and results from logging into our California servers. Normally a search with &gl=us and a search off our California servers will yield the same results - but not today.

I've also checked the same phrase with a client in Seattle who's seeing a totally different set of results and Boston is seeing the same at in California.

And so the flux continues ...

Ahhhh that days of the Google dance when once every 4 to 6 weeks there'd be a major shake-down and then stability for another month. Of course, if you got kicked in the butt in an update back then you had to wait out the month before you could expect to see any adjustments so there are pros and cons to both environments.

I've only had the opportunity to do a cursory analysis of this update. it appears (non-conclusively) to be related primarily to links. Site with large link growth aren't being credited with those new links and sites with fewer links that are older are seeing a boost. This is always the case but we're seeing it to a much larger degree on some of the datacenters. And in the end, the truth will likely lie somewhere in between. Again, this is based only on a preliminary analysis and should not be considered conclusive in the least.

Good luck you you all during the update. (unless you're competing with our clients ;)

Labels: google update

Just thought I'd give all our readers a head's up that Google is showing VERY mixed and ever-changing results at the moment. This is expected on Fridays and over the weekends but here we have it on a Monday. This first came to my attention when a client of ours was seeing their site on the first page of Google and I saw them on page 2. I then logged into our server in California and saw a totally different result and out of Texas it was different yet again.

So be alert and aware, Google is on the move. What you see today may have very little bearing on what you see tomorrow. :)

And good luck to you all.

Labels: google update

This morning while checking some of my personal project websites I noticed a few had some extra green in the pagerank bar than normal. Most of these sites are rather fresh out of the box and were previously either a page rank zero or unranked. This comes as a surprise since the last update was not too long ago. At first I decided to look around and see how far this update had infected the data centres. Other SEO and SEM users have been reporting similar trends on many different search news sites. As of this writing the update appears to have affected mostly young sites and a handful of larger ones. This is definitely not a slap like the big penalty update at the end of 2007. As with all updates the search results are shifting around as we entertain another google dance.

On the contrary there is at least one large spanking that has certainly taken place. Technorati has been stripped of all it's pagerank leaving them with a pagerank zero. There are only a few sub pages that have held pagerank: Entertainment, Sports, Popular, Help (which is a sub domain) all still have something higher than a zero.

It would seem despite popular myth that the green bar is not going anywhere anytime to soon. The web master radio show today features a segment regarding this update. I suspect that another blog post will follow this one with more information and details.

Labels: google update, pagerank

A lot of SEO is pure, predicable mathematics. We're dealing with highly complex mathematical formulas and thus, a lot of it can be predicted with solid accuracy. Even still, there are some parts where it's mainly guesswork; where we have to "shoot from the gut" where (as Steven Colbert would put it) truthiness plays a bigger role in decision making than fact - especially when facts are not available. The prediction of algorithmic and/or toolbar PageRank pixels are such events. The fine folks at Google don't call me up personally to let me know when updates will happen (I know, you're disappointed but it's true).

That said, here's some truthiness for you - there's an update coming and it's coming this weekend. What kind of an update I don't know. I'd bet algorithmic but I wouldn't bet a lot. I'd put a lot more money down of there being an update of some kind however.

This post was inspired by a phone call I had recently with a client who asked when I thought the next update was coming. I said probably tomorrow afternoon or evening. I realized shortly after saying it that I said it quickly and with little hesitation and so I decided to make it public so you can all mock me if I'm wrong. :) I'm not sure why I'm so sure the update is coming then. I've made predictions of updates in the past and I'm generally pretty accurate though it has more to do with a feeling than a knowing. Perhaps there's a pattern I've yet to pick up consciously. Or maybe it's that phone call from Matt I got earlier. ;)

Labels: google update, truthiness

Well the dust hasn't even settled yet on the three PageRank updates we were graced with in October and Google's launched another volley and a vast number of sites lost some (or more) of those little green pixels.

In our preliminary analysis there appears to be a bit more to it than the gaining or losing of some visual PageRank (mainly losing it appears at this point). In a chat I was having with Jim Hedger earlier when we were comparing notes both of us agreed that we've seen some shifting in the rankings over the past few days and both of us expect to see more in the near future (and by that I mean within the next couple days).

From Jim's observations a lot of the sites affected have had some association with SEO/SEM firms though may not be involved directly in the industry or sell links. I haven't seen that myself as some non-SEO related sites got the hard smack (again?) but an observation worth noting while we seek common trends in what's going on.

Now, lets be clear - what appears in the green bar is not a particularly relevant reflection of the value of a site or it's ability to rank highly (used to be - not anymore). That said, with all these major changes going on one can only assume that this is indicative of other changes in the way sites will be ranked. Or Google's just messing around with us for fun or because the rumors are true and they're going to dump the whole thing altogether and they want us to be thankful for it by the time it happens. :)

To be sure we'll be watching this carefully over the weekend and over the upcoming days and weeks (and months, and years ...) and we'll keep you posted as we have more time for analysis. Some useful reading and placed to keep watching are:

• here of course :)
• AndyBeard.eu - Andy has been following this closely since October and is reporting on it well. He brings up some great points in today's post titled ZERORANK. One of my favorite points is one I've griped about before, that there's no way to request reinclusion to Google without "admitting" that you did something wrong to begin with. Well what if you were actually penalized incorrectly?
• DigitalPoint Forums - A discussion on the subject.

So a thought for Google to close out the blog for the weekend - next time, please wait until our butts have healed from the first spanking before launching into the next round. :)

Labels: andy beard, digitalpoint, google update, jim hedger, pagerank

Well is was an enjoyable 12 hours but the folks over at Google are up to it again and the visible PageRank (that green bar) is on the move once again. This latest round appears to be an effort to correct some of the wrongs (basically, to give PageRank back to those that shouldn't have lost it). This leaves me with a big question, if we didn't see any change in the rankings and the site's aren't selling links then who cares?

While I don't put stock in what the green bar tells me, it is of course interesting to monitor what's going on (and of course to consider what must be happening at the text link brokers). Bought a PR7? Might be a PR3 but is it worth the same $30/mth you were paying? ;)

So all I can really recommend to our valued visitors is to do the same as I am (and this is coming from a guy who's site went from a 6 to a 4) ... relax, drink some Chai tea and check your rankings. They probably weren't affected and so in the end ... who cares? :)

And so from there I'm going to meander onto a new topic and one that's a lot more interesting - branding vs. marketing vs. advertising. Sometimes it can be very difficult to tell the different between one and the other and so I was happy to see that Neil Patel (apparently as funny as he is smart) posted a GREAT post to illustrate the difference. You can read it on his blog here.

Labels: google update, neil patel, pagerank, paid links

Today I feel sorry for my kids. Every parent reading this will remember those times when they heard a loud BANG and assumed incorrectly who had done it. TELI !!!

"But it wasn't me !!!"

A couple days later the milk's spilled all over the place. KAEMON !!!

"But it wasn't me !!!"

Well now I know how they feel.

I got into work this morning, launched my browser. When Firefox loads it starts with 4 tabs, one for each of the major engines and a second datacenter for Google - all with our primary phrase preset for easy reference. All looked right in the world. Then I went to our blog. It took a second to realize that the little green bar had changed. What was once a 6 was now a 4.

Hmmmm. This sometimes happens when the PR of the last page I was at holds so let's go to the homepage. OK, now the homepage in a new window. OK, let's try a different browser altogether. OK, now it's time to stop - You're a PR4.

What could I have done "wrong"? I don't sell links. I had couple paid links but I got rid of any that weren't producing some decent traffic ages ago so really I was using text links to buy traffic. Surely Google of all people can't have a problem with that. I did have a few outbound links from our left nav on our homepage but they weren't paid for - they just pointed to resources such as SearchEngineWatch.com. You know, resources I really did feel worth passing a vote for. Meanwhile there are sites I can see up against me that I can confirm buy links (and some that sell them) that actually attained increases in toolbar PageRank (though we still beat them in the SERPs so ... :) So why do I lose toolbar PageRank and my brother doesn't?

Well, for anyone who read my now ironic though well-timed blog rant from last week on PageRank you'll know that while I might be obsessed with search engines and I might be obsessed with Google, I care a lot more about where a site appears in the SERPs than I do about a little green bar.

A lot of sites have been blasted in the last couple rounds of PageRank updates. Here are some blogs and forums where you can go for discussion on this topic:

• Matt Cutts Confirms Paid Links & Google PageRank Update - SearchEngineJournal.com
• Real or Fake PageRank Update In Progress (round 3) - AndyBeard.eu
• Hilarious PageRank Update Impacts Google Badly - SearchEnginePeople.com
• Google Rumors: Google PageRank To Be Reset - GoogleLady.com

A simple search on Google's Blog Search Engine (should I rel="nofollow" that just to be cheeky? - you'll notice .... I didn't ;) for "pagerank update" will provide you many more hours of reading.

Good luck to you all as this continues. Maybe in the end my wishes will come true - the green bar will go away and we'll all be stuck building links for relevancy and judging our results by our rankings. For some reason the Beatle's "Imagine" is running through my head. :)

And Google, just so you know - I wasn't selling links ... it was my brother.

Labels: google, google update, pagerank

It took a while for me to notice (about 5 or 6 minutes after getting in this morning) but Google's SERPs are screwed up. It's not the regular sort of screwed up I've referred to before where rankings are messy and the algorithm is "broken". No, this time what I'm seeing just makes absolutely no sense.

My default homepage is the Google set of search results for seo services. Normally I see our site at #1 followed (or occasionally replaced) by WeBuildPages, Network Solutions and the usual suspects of the 51 million-or-so pages that show up. Today the rankings in the top 10 are about the same. A little bit of shuffling but nothing surprising - however the total number of pages dropped down to 3,270,000. Now Google datacenter http://64.233.179.104/ (Note: link removed as it no longer works) shows 32 million pages which is a bit better but Yahoo! is showing 44 million. Isn't Google the largest index?

Admittedly, I don't think this is going to last for too long but it's an odd update indeed that leads to such results. This is not the only phrase we've seen this for either. There are a wide array of phrases that are showing serious drops in the number of indexed pages on Google.com. If I see anything come of this, I'll be sure to post more info here however at this time I haven't seem any top ranking sites booted due to this drop.

Now, speaking of odd things - below you'll find a picture of Danny Sullivan. For those of you who don't know - Danny is the godfather of SEO. I know, I once had a dream I was a black hat SEO and woke up with a horses head dancing around my monitor as the screensaver.

Needless to say, most SEO's look up to Danny (with the exception of Doug Heil of course). And then we see a picture like this:


Oh Danny Danny Danny ... I had so much respect for you. ;) Now I've gotta have more as it take kahunas to wear THAT in public. ;) Hope the folks at BOTW bought you a drink or two or ten for that (or maybe it was a drink or two or ten BEFORE that ;)

AND

To top off an odd day, I'm not sure what to make of GOOG. Yesterday I wrote that if the stock went up today I'd give a free link to my bud rumplepup as I got a link when I made him wrong so it only seemed fair. Well yesterday GOOG closed at $639.62 and it closed at $644.72 today so by that count I was wrong however my advice was to sell the stock first thing in the morning. Well, the stock opened at $654.56 and went down from there. So I was wrong on one count and right on another. What to do? What to do?

Oh to heck with it, he's my buddy so I'll go with being wrong. :) So rumplepup, here's a link to your skin care products site. While it doesn't have a lot to do with SEO (with the exception of the fact that Robert Garcia (rumplepup) is a good SEO himself) I'm happy to link to the site. He's a good guy and note, he has the HackerSafe logo. It's a good thing to add to your site as well, great for conversions (even on our site and we don't sell anything through ecommerce).

We have a review of HackerSafe complete with videos, etc. here. Might as well make the free link a worthwhile example for our visitors. :)

And on that note, have a great weekend all !!!

Labels: danny sullivan, google update, robert garcia

The long delayed Google PR update is now at hand. Originally predicted for mid July 2007, it is only a month late based on previous Google trends. Honestly this comes as no surprise with the amount of minor Algorithm changes we have seen nearly week on week, for around the last 2 months. The last thing Google wanted to do was post an update with some of the bugs that we've seen in the last couple weeks in the SERPs.

The update looks to have started on Sunday, August 5th when Google started giving new sites (PR 0) more Authority. My conclusion about the update starting on the 5th has to do with a brand new site having its Google traffic increase around 5x overnight. Next we observed sites that had been incorrectly assigned higher PRs see significant decreases (this seems mainly to happen to PR2 sites showing as PR5 or PR6), as well as domains that had expired seeing a PR drop, or a complete loss of PR.

This morning I observed the new website mentioned above which was setup in the end of June drop from a PR4 (this was an incorrect value which actually belonged to another site that google had assigned to both domains) to a PR0, then this afternoon jump back up to a PR4 which is inline with the amount of Links, and strength of links that are linking to the site.

We have guestimated in house that the PR update should be done by Wednesday night or Thursday at the latest. The big thing we haven't seen finish is the main domain PR update, and update of PRs for internal pages.

Labels: google update

Last night while sitting in my front yard pondering this latest update on Google (yes I know, I need to get a better hobby) a factor occurred to me that I hadn't considered previously. Now, I haven't had time to really test it yet but I am seeing some evidence of link growth rate being a factor in this recent update on Google.

Essentially what this means is that it is possible that sites with a high growth rate in links are ranking higher than sites that may have more links overall, but who's link acquisition rate is slow.

As noted, I have not had the opportunity to test this or even look into it in great detail however, it occurred to me and there are some indicators that this may be the case and as it was missing from our article on the update I felt it necessary to add it here.

I hope that this update was kind to you all and wish you well through the subsequent adjustments that are sure to come.

Labels: backlinks, google update

As many of you are likely well aware, Google has been tinkering with their algorithm. The update start rearing it's head last Thursday evening and produced some fairly major changes in the results. We have published our latest article on this update and what we've seen as it's causes, effects, and issues.

I won't get into the details here as those of you interested will likely read the article. You'll find it on our website titled, "Google Algorithm Update Analysis". Hope it was nice to you. :)

Labels: google update, seo article

The forum's are abuzz with the lastest Google update. Early indicators (as noted in the forums by some generally respected posters) are that this update puts a lot more weight on the number of links vs. the actual anchor text.

This move is being blasted on the forums as a move towards rewarding big budgets and big companies. While this does certainly positivly affect the ability for larger companies with larger budgets to attain top rankings it also follows the overall philosophy of links. The more links you have to your site the more vites, the more votes the more popular and thus, the higher you should rank.

Could it be, I would ask those who are complaining, that Google has caught on that as SEo's we're running out and building a ton of well optimized text links SOLELY to get higher ranking thus undermining the value of the democracy of links? Links with varying anchor text undoubtedly appear more natural to Google and thus, sites with varying anchor text pointing to their site are being rewarded.

I have not at this time had the opportunity to fully analyze the current algorithm however, I would speculate that this is not the last we're going to be seeing of Google shifts this month. We've still yet to see the PageRank and backlink updates so there's surely more to come.

Be sure to visit Beanstalk' SEO blog to keep updated on these events as they occur.

If you'd like more inoformation on this update and just can't wait until we post again you may want to check out the thread on the WebProWorld forum on the topic at http://www.webproworld.com/viewtopic.php?t=54379 (Note: link removed as the page no longer exists).

Labels: google update