Google Knowledge Graph and Search Rankings

A number one search engine ranking is worth about twice the traffic of a number two search engine ranking and the traffic diminishes quickly from there. This is perhaps a sad commentary on how people use search engines, but be that as it may, it is true.

Anytime there is a Google change or modification, webmasters become concerned that their traffic will drop along with their income or popularity. Often, these concerns are valid. Sometimes, these concerns are selfish and have nothing to do with concern for actual readers.

Consider a low-quality, garbage, ad filled, website. If a Google update figures out how to drop this site out of the rankings, the owner of that site will be negatively impacted. The users doing searches, however, will not. In this case, you can be sure that most people won’t care if the owner complains.

In other scenarios, a Google change actually boosts such content ahead of good content. This is bad for everyone concerned. The owner gets less traffic, users find less helpful information, and Google’s reputation takes a hit.

The latest hubbub is about something called the Google Knowledge Graph. I’ll call it GKG from here on, but I don’t know if that will stick.

Essentially, the GKG actually answers certain kinds of queries rather than pointing you at a website that might do the same. For example, if you search on Albert Einstein, a new area to the left of the traditional search results appears. This is the GKG that everyone is talking about.

As you can see, the information there is rudimentary, but potentially very helpful for certain kinds of searchers. For example, if you are searching to find Mr. Einstein’s birthday, it is right there for you to see. This kind of GKG is potentially most detrimental to encyclopedia types of websites such as Wikipedia. It may also hurt websites like Huffington Post that routinely crank out any page, any time, that might pull in a few page views.

One common example is people searching for something like SuperBowl start time. In the past, the Huffington Post would publish and article with a dozen questions listed at the top in order to garner as many search matches as possible and then use its high-traffic website as all the link juice needed to push its page near the top of the search results. Assuming GKG answers these questions right on the search page, the some of those type of sites might lose traffic.

Fortunately, for many website owners and writers making money online with websites, this addition won’t have much impact on their traffic. These search results only show up for very specific queries, those where specific factual information is at hand from any number of sources. Incidentally, these types of searchers are generally looking to buy anything, so these are low click through advertising opportunities anyway. (They are valuable to big websites that generate a lot of cost per view types of revenue.)

Anyone writing useful detailed information probably will continue to draw just as much traffic since GKG only supplies basic details even on someone as famous as Albert Einstein. You can bet that not much will show up to siphon away traffic on your Colorado Dads website, for example.

For users making basic informational searches GKG will be a welcome addition. For everyone else, except the big web traffic slurpers, there won’t be much impact.

Google Knowledge Graph Big Deal or Not? is a post from Best Hubris. All content exclusively written by Freelance Writing Business of ArcticLlama, LLC

Various web traffic measuring firms published winners and losers from the original Panda update showing that sites like Suite101.com and HubPages had been hammered while eHow and others had emerged mostly unscathed.

Lately, another round of complaints have come courtesy of those who escaped Panda I but were subsequently slaughtered by Panda II. The second Panda update affects even fewer websites than before, according to Google. The most notable hit this time around was eHow.

What Changed In Google Panda 2 Update?

That eHow parent Demand Media escaped mostly unscathed from the original Panda update was a head-scratcher for many. After all, if the update was to go after the so-called content mills, then shouldn’t the mother of all content mills be hit?

The quick re-update released by Google may have been in response to such criticism. It may have been that no one was more surprised than Google that SEO content generation master eHow slipped away from the original Panda update.

What changed between Panda 1 and Panda 2?

Google, of course, has been only vague about what things were changed to update its all-important search algorithm.

What many people have seized on is Google’s statement that having lots of low quality webpages on your website can hurt the high quality webpages on your website.

That’s a nice theory, but there is a major problem there. Google has admitted that they cannot algorithmically determine what is high or low quality on a single page of text. That means that Google is using other factors to determine, by proxy, what is high or low quality. What are those new factors?

One Google source mentioned that having too many ads, or too convoluted of navigation, things that deliberately put the monetization of a webpage above its usefulness could be a factor. This makes sense if that was how the first wave of Panda was implemented.

Consider that among its many sins, the one thing eHow does not do is complicate its webpages. Sure there are plenty of ads, but the content runs uninterrupted down the center of each page. Likewise, reasonable content based navigation takes prominent places on each page. The top-left placement is links to other content, for example, not an ad (which is below). Likewise, at the end of the articles are more ads, but they are Google’s own text ads, right where the company recommends placing them. The graphics are all normal and natural based on the content. There are no garish, giant graphics or other usability sins. In fact, the quality of content (which cannot be judged algorithmically, yet) aside, there are no real design issues with Demand Studios.

What Google Penalizes In Panda 2 Update

What Google may be penalizing in its second round of updates is likely to be less about what is on the page, which is what they did their best to judge in the first round of Panda, but rather what is not on the page.

Consider a site like eHow. With millions of pages of content, there is one thing that makes website like eHow different than other websites: links.

Don’t get me wrong, eHow has plenty of incoming links, it makes sure of that. And, that, is precisely what Google could target.

Consider that eHow has a dozen articles, or more, about many topics, each with a title that differs by just a few words, and each cranked out quickly and cheaply by freelancers who get a flat-rate fee for each published article. How could such webpages ever build up any incoming links? How could they ever be found in the first place if traffic was not sent there directly by Google?

The front page can’t hold every article published each day for more than a few seconds each. Writers get a flat-rate pay with no additional revenue sharing or other reason to build their own links. And eHow isn’t exactly a site that you brag about writing for.

In other words, the only links going to eHow articles are eHow links. Tons of them. Tons and tons of them.

Google has always counted incoming links from the same place as worth less than links from multiple websites. That makes sense. Internal links are like your mom saying that you’re cool. Sure, she really believes it, but that doesn’t make it a worthwhile assessment.

But sites like eHow can overcome reducing internal link worth with sheer volume. Assume that each “same site” link were valued at 1/10th of a unique site link. In that case you need just 10 of your own links to equal 1 “real link”. Even a 1/100th or 1/1,000th, eHow is one of a handful of sites on the Internet that can send that many links to each and every webpage it has, and it can do it dynamically to ensure that every page gets incoming links of some sort.

With Google’s over-reliance on the title tag to determine any webpage’s relevance, only a handful of link power is needed to push a webpage to the top of the search results when the title is an exact match to the search performed, and eHow has more than enough links for that.

Of course, ignoring internal links can be a bad move. The more times the Washington Post links to its own article, the more likely it is that webpage is a definitive source of information about the topic. The catch is, that the same article is also  likely to have several of incoming links from non-Washington Post websites. That gives Google a way to separate “good” internal links from dime-a-dozen computer generated internal links.

As we’ve seen, giving internal links a lower value cannot overcome massive internal linking. But, what if Google tweaked its algorithm to count external links, judge the relevance, and ONLY THEN count those internal links. That would make those exact match titles that eHow depends on so impotent to overcome “real” content, no matter how many internal links it throws at them.

Another possibility is that Google stopped counting links that are computer generated. Crawl the same page more than once and only count the links that haven’t changed. That would take a lot more power than the above solution, but it would ensure that only “real” links were counted. Of course, that would diminish the power of worthwhile lists of dynamic links like “Most Popular” or “Most Commented”.

Regardless of how it was actually done, what Panda II did was to change how internal links were used in determining the quality or relevance of a webpage. Having done that, eHow’s millions of pages all became members of that sad group of webpage unlinked by anyone but their own website.

Still, SEO experts and technology writers around the web insist on harping on the Panda I update news about low-quality content somewhere else on your site. They might be right, but the way Google is judging low-quality is now very different than it was just a few weeks ago.

How Google Panda 2 Update Hit eHow and Others is a post from Best Hubris. All content exclusively written by Freelance Writing Business of ArcticLlama, LLC

Both the writer and Matt Cutts quickly lose sight of the real issue and veer off-track into the actions taken by Google after the fact. However, the real conclusions that should be made come from what was happening to Google’s results BEFORE someone (a high-profile someone) pointed it out to the company.  The data gathered in reporting how JC Penny scammed its way to the top of Google’s search results without anyone noticing is not so easily explained away.

How Google Search Spam Keeps Getting Worse

It has been suggested by stock investors and analysts on Wall Street that Google as a company is a one-trick pony whose only ability is to make money from online advertising clicks.  Perhaps there should be more concern that Google is a one trick pony whose only ability is to count incoming links to webpages.

Google has a carefully constructed mythology in which it insists two core ideas are true.  First, that content is king and that quality content will naturally attract links and, by extension, that the best quality content will attract the most links.  Second, the company has webmaster guidelines, and unofficial company spokespersons, constantly reiterating that counting links is not all there is when it comes to ranking highly, and that those who engage in forbidden practices like buying links or link schemes will be detected and punished.

The Times article proves that neither of these things are true.

While investigating the mysterious #1 Google ranking for everything from dresses to area rugs it was noted that there were tons of incoming links with the same anchor text from websites all over the web.  Many of these links came from low-value, low PageRank webpages and websites.  In fact, many of them came from seemingly dormant webpages.  Most came from sites completely unrelated to the search terms that JC Penny was ranking #1 for.

Unfortunately, the article heads off course with the sensationalistic news that JC Penny was manually penalized for cheating Google’s rankings, or more officially sounding, "violating Google’s webmaster quality guidelines."  Google’s Cutts and other commentators have attempted to spin this as a lesson in what happens if you do naughty things like buying links or other black-hat SEO tactics.  Ironically, it actually proves the opposite.

Google Cannot Detect and Filter Spam or Black-Hat SEO

The article notes that JC Penny was able to rank #1 for all of these high-volume search terms for MONTHS, completely undetected by Google. It was only AFTER a journalist detected it and gathered up the evidence that Google MANUALLY adjusted the rankings to penalize JC Penny’s, who unlike smaller website will reap no long lasting penalty from Google because they are both too big to eliminate from the rankings and because they are blaming their SEO contractor for the issue.

In other words, if you cheat, lie, and steal your way to the #1 Google ranking without attracting the attention of a major journalist, you are going to be very successful for a very long time.

Here are the real lessons to be gleaned from the New York Times article.

1. Black Hat SEO Works — Not only does it work, but it either takes a very long time to detect, or it cannot be detected at all.  JC Penny violated one of the "biggies" by buying links and no one noticed a thing until it was all over.
2. Google’s "Hundreds" of ranking factors are a joke — Google goes out of its way to say that there are hundreds of factors that go into a ranking, and there probably are.  Unfortunately, none of those factors has anything near the weight of backlinks.  Google-bombs have shown this to be true for years.  All that really matters is that there are a lot of links with the right anchor text and any webpage will rank higher and higher for that term.
3. Links are Links – Google always says that links from "related" pages are more valuable than links from unrelated pages.  This is either untrue, or the additional value is so insignificant that it affects nothing but tie-breakers between two equally linked webpages.  Most of the links Penny bought were on pages that have nothing to do with home goods or clothing and yet they were enough to propel them to the top of the SERPs for months during the holiday shopping season.
4. Google’s Algorithm Is Flawed — In order to "fix" things, Google had to MANUALLY tweak its search results. In other words, the company’s vaunted algorithm would keep ranking Penny’s #1 for all of those terms without manual intervention.  That means that unless what you are doing ends up in the New York Times, chances are that no one will detect what you are doing and that even if they do nothing will happen.  Google can’t have an algorithm with hundreds of thousands of manual patches on it that have to be managed.

Link Counting Is Dead

The biggest lesson from the JC Penny search spam scam is that link counting is worthless.  It may have been true that links were earned in the past, but that is no longer the case.  Webmasters routinely link to their own stuff for the sole purpose of SEO.  Numerous website owners and publishers post articles anywhere and everywhere for the sole purpose of getting links to their websites.  Bloggers and others routinely exchange links in order to help each other out.

Perhaps most telling is the increasing number of websites that deliberately link without the primary keywords.  Technology websites writing about Norton Antivirus no longer link to the company using the anchor text Norton Antivirus because that will just boost another company’s website.  Rather, they link with the work Norton or with a unusable "click here" type of text.  Keep in mind that these websites no exactly what they are doing and they are deliberately withholding link value for their own benefit.

The day has come for Google to admit that counting links is no longer a meaningful way to rank websites.  While it may be useful as a lessor factor, it has no place in the mix as a primary ranking criteria.  The only reason Google continues to dominate search is that it has the best index of websites to pull from, not because it returns the best results from an equal index. 

As technology matures and indexing becomes less of a technical challenge, the company’s edge will diminish.  The only question is whether Google can figure out a new trick before that happens.

NY Times Exposes More Google Spam is a post from Best Hubris. All content exclusively written by Freelance Writing Business of ArcticLlama, LLC

The truth is that Google’s search algorithm grows less useful every day. Far too many people, for far too long, have been gaming a system that wasn’t really all that clever in the first place. The reality is that Google makes many very big, and naive, assumptions in its search rankings, like the only reason someone links to another page is that they think it’s good.

The only reason it still stands as the number one search engine is because no one has come up with a better search ranking algorithm AND paired it with an index that rivals Google’s.

It’s that last part that makes it difficult to judge other search engines and the quality of their rankings. The greatest webpage ranking system in the world is worthless if it does not have the ability to rank all of the web pages out there.

Is Credit Karma a scam?

Blekko Search Fail

Before we get to how good Blekko is as a search engine, let’s start by saying that it has failed before it even matters.

The key to using Blekko is something called a hash tag. You either no what that is, or you don’t. If you do, great. If not, then Blekko is a search engine that you have to learn to use. FAIL.

Search is a basic function that people already believe that they know how to do. In reality, most people are terrible at searching, and by extension terrible at using Google search engine. For example, searching for something like, “life insurance” is just not smart. After all, what is it that you are looking for with that search?

• Do you want to know what life insurance is?
• Do you want to know how life insurance works?
• Do you want to know what kind of life insurance there is?
• Do you want to know who the life insurance companies are?
• Do you want to buy life insurance?
• Do you want to get a license to sell life insurance?

Obviously, a search like this one is a bad search and whatever Google, or anyone else, returns as your search results has to be considered good enough, because there isn’t really enough information to go on.

As a rule of thumb, if you are searching on less than three words, it’s a bad search.

You can get much better search results from Google by not only searching for more words, but by using Google search operators. Put a phrase inside quotation marks, and Google will search for pages with that exact phrase. Use the minus sign and Google will find webpages that match your search but do not include the word with the minus sign. Finally, use site: to limit Google to only searching a single website domain, or a certain type of domain.

For example, if you want real, straight, unbiased, ad-free tax information then add site:irs.gov as the last word of any search you make. The site operator restricts Google to bringing back the highest ranked webpage from the IRS instead of the webpage that spends the most time building links pointing to it with the right anchor text.

Almost no one who searches Google each day uses ANY of the search operators to improve their searches. At best, they just keep trying different combinations of words until they find something that looks about right.

If no one has bothered to learn anything about how to use Google other than to type words into a box, and it has been the ONLY really respected search engine for years, then how likely do you think it is that anyone will put the time and effort into learning how to use hashtags for search?

Blekko Search Algorithm and SlashTag

Blekko’s slashtags are re-branded hashtags. Instead of using #keyword like on Twitter, you use /keyword, hence slash-tag.

The idea is that you perform you search for the information you want with a slashtag. The slashtag makes your search results better.

What is a slashtag?

Good question. A slash-tag is a useful keyword or phrase created by blekko users in which they group the best websites and webpages they have found. This human element eliminates those glaring mistakes made by Google where some spammer’s ad filled webpage ends up #1 in Google search results because he uses bots to build backlinks by spamming blogs and article spinners to post “original” articles all over the web with links back to his webpage using the targeted link text every time.

Blekko works because none of the true, honest, and good-hearted, blekko users would ever include such a junk website in their slashtags.

And, therein lies the rub.

How Blekko Will Fail

Blekko can, and may be, successful as long as it stays a small, under the radar, not worth the time, search engine. Then, the Pollyanna style world envisioned by the blekko search engine just might work. But, the day it is even a minor factor in the world of search, or as a generator of traffic, the dream dies and along with it, blekko.

If we have learned anything in the past decade or two, it is that the only thing less useful than a slow-moving manually created web directory, ala Yahoo Directory, is a fast-moving, automated, platform built around user input. Before it’s rebuild kicked them all out, Digg’s front page was populated almost exclusively by stories dug by a small set of power users that dedicated themselves to manipulating Digg at every stage. The honest, kind-hearted, Digg users (the same group blekko is counting on) couldn’t get on the front page to save their lives.

How long before slashtags for mortgage are filled not with the best mortgage resources on the web, but a SEO consultant’s client list? Then comes the internet marketers pushing their own websites, and those of other IM-ers who will return the favor in kind. After that comes the outright spammers and bots. Blekko will fight them off the best it can, but in the end, those willing to do just under the level of what it takes to be banned will overtake blekko and any usefulness it has as a search engine.

The company’s ideal is that by using your friend’s slashtags, or those of well known blekko-ers (?), that the spammers slashtags will be relegated to the unused pile of trash at the bottom of the Blekko well. Unfortunately, that means that you have to have friends using Blekko first, and not just a little either. They need to be building tons of useful slash tags in order to cover all the topics you search on. Barring that, you’ll need to already know where good expert resources on a topic are in order to use their slashtags.

Sure, you can use the BestHubris slashtags. I jumped in and created an account to try it out

But, if you don’t already know that BestHubris is a great resource for business strategy information, computer software interface design criticism, and a wealth of online marketing resources, then how will you use my slashtags?

You can search for slashtags, of course. Search for /life-insurance, like the poor Google user from our example above. Today, you won’t find an overwhelming list, but if blekko takes off, that won’t be the case. When that happens, what is the difference between trying to decide whose life insurance slashtags to trust and trying to decide which of Google’s search results for life insurance to trust?

There isn’t one, and that is the whole point.

One last thing to remember is that your friends do not know everything you will ever need to know, no matter how big of a group that is. For example, might hot water heater is leaking out the bottom. I have lot of friends, and a lot of them have had a hot water heater replaced, or installed, or fixed by a plumber. Still not one of them knows enough to give me advice. Certainly none of them knows enough to create a slashtag, even if they had heard of blekko.

In the end, the only way to know everything is to look at everything. That’s what Google’s search spiders do each and every day. Ranking the web pages they send back regardless of whether or not you know (or can find anyone) anything about those topics is what its automated algorithm does.

Human users end up either messing up that information with their own self interest, or worse, unknown self ignorance, or they end up just not having the information at all.

Lest you think that I’m just opposed to blekko, you are wrong. I love blekko. If its index is deep enough, blekko could be the best search engine for research online.

Have you tried Blekko search engine?

Do you think blekko will succeed?

Why New Search Engine Blekko Will Fail is a post from Best Hubris. All content exclusively written by Freelance Writing Business of ArcticLlama, LLC

As a result of the rollout of Instant Search, Google decided that nobody needed the WonderWheel anymore (or it just didn’t want them using it anymore) and removed it from the More Tools section on the sidebar that shows up on the left side of the screen during web searches. Fortunately, you can get the WonderWheel back by changing some Google settings, but it isn’t pretty.

Basically, you have to change one of your search settings. These are the same settings where you can turn on and off the adult content filter and change your search results to 20 per screen instead of 10, and so on. There is new setting in there for Instant Search. Select Do Not Use Instant Search and your Google search interface goes back to the way it was before the rollout of the the new instantly changing search screen, including having the WonderWheel.

The bad news is that no one knows how long going back to the old version of Google search will be an option for users, but for now, at least, you can revert to the original setup and use WonderWheel. In doing so, you lose access to the very useful update of Instant Search. To get around this, either use one of the web browser private browsing modes and change the setting in there only when you need to use Wonder Wheel, or setup a different profile that has WonderWheel on but Instant Search off, and vice versa so that you can easily switch between.

Or, you can do like I do. Since I rarely use Internet Explorer (usually only to go to microsoft.com) I have changed the Google Instant Search setting OFF in my IE browser and left it on in my real web browsers so that whenever I need wonder-wheel, I just fire up Internet Explorer and do my searches inside there.

Have a good one.

Google WonderWheel Tool Gone Restore It Fast is a post from Best Hubris. All content exclusively written by Freelance Writing Business of ArcticLlama, LLC

Well, sort of. If by accessing Google, you mean accessing everything except for the core Google service of search.

Ready made for the “much ado about nothing” files, come the Google Command Line Tool and Google API. Unoriginally titled, GoogleCL, Google Command Line (I guess) is a Python application build using Python gdata libraries in order to make Google Data API calls from a command line. This would be so very important and a great tool for web developers and search engine researchers everywhere, if it only had any functionality at all related to search. Instead, GoogleCL allows you to play with a bunch of the toy Google products and services.

Want to upload a bunch of pictures to Picasa from the command line? Sure, no problem.

Want to create Calendar events from your command line? You can do that too!

Want to read about Southwest airlines rewards credit card? Oh, wait, that’s my thing. Oops.

What about managing contacts from the command line? You bet!

How about posting YouTube videos? Of course.

If it is a tangential side Google service developed in order to show up Microsoft or Apple, then it can be accessed using the Google command line tool.

How About Command Line Search Tool and API?

No! What are you crazy? People would use that to poke holes in the already fragile Google search index and search results rankings by being able to automate tedious processes like checking search ranking positions, whether or not a particular webpage has been indexed or not, and how many incoming links point to a webpage, and where they come from.

Google wants you to like them, and wants you to think that they are the best source of cool, free, open-source tools in the galaxy, but they aren’t dumb. Search makes money. Sure, AdWords brings in the actual dollars, but the only reason anyone bothers is because advertisers know that “everyone” uses Google search regardless of operating system, browser, and in many cases, even location.

The reason everyone uses Google’s search is because it is the best search engine on the Internet. Of course, the entire underpinnings of the company’s search rankings is coming apart at the seems as more and more content publishers seek to manipulate Google’s search rankings for their own benefit. Now that SEO is something that everyone, everywhere, does and pretty much everyone does the same way, the only thing that really matters any more is link count and how close the title tag matches the search. A command line interface might expose that reality to more people (or at least allow it to be proven beyond doubt).

So, enjoy the latest plaything from Google. Just don’t expect it to change your life.

Have a great day.

Google Command Line Tool is a post from Best Hubris. All content exclusively written by Freelance Writing Business of ArcticLlama, LLC

Another involves branding. Any company that hopes to be successful for the long term needs to think about branding. Branding means distinguishing yourself from others who do, or claim to do, similar things to your company. That is why it is Coke vs. Pepsi, not Great Cola Soda vs. Tasty Cola Soda. Both of the latter would be regarded as cheap generic knockoffs, not high-end brands.

Incidentally, this is one of the best ways to distinguish an ongoing concern with concern for the long-term future from one that just hopes to make a splash on the Internet. Trabach Motors (or whatever) is probably a lot more serious about their future in making cars while Best Top Motor Cars is probably a lot more serious about their website generating cash flow in any way possible.

However, in the last few days, I’ve noticed some things that are search optimized even though they were created before there was such a thing as a search engine, or at least before anyone cared what the search engines were looking for. This post, is dedicated to them.

Search Optimized Brands – Accidentally SEO Ready Brands

• Pur – The water purifier brand kills a handful of birds with one stone. First, it’s very name catches the most probably typo or spelling error. No need to register another domain for that. Also, "pur" is part of the word pure. No doubt, this counts at least a little bit when both pur and pure show up in the website text in a way that seems both natural, and like it exists thanks to "stemming." Finally, pur.com (somebody beat them to it) or even purwater.com would be great domain names, especially if they had been savvy enough to grab pure.com and purewater.com too.

Others Coming

Yes, I have others. I just have to find that notebook. It would help if I developed better organizational skills.

SEO When SEO Wasn’t Cool is a post from Best Hubris. All content exclusively written by Freelance Writing Business of ArcticLlama, LLC

Today, I have questions rattling around in my brain, some of which are more important than others, some of which could change the way do things or handle my workflow, and some of which are nothing more than minor concerns that an inquiring mind wants to know about.

1. Is it really worthwhile / doable / smart to use WordPress to manage a normal "static" website?  The truth is that static websites generally aren’t really all that static, but they do have a more set structure, unlike a blog. Often, the changes and tweaks made to a page are relatively minor and it seems like overkill to fire up Dreamweaver CS4 just to add a link to a freelance writing samples page, for example.  On the other hand, I get more flexibility and understand more of what is going on from a non-WordPress angle. (My HTML / XHTML / CSS is stronger than my PHP / mySQL.)
2. Why can’t I find a non-complicated way to make lists on a website with explanation text?  Take the list you are looking at. Ideally, there would be a number followed by the question.  Then, underneath that there would be this explanatory text instead of having to rely on the bold to separate the question from the text.  I know it can be done, but it’s just so much effort to click all the buttons to make it happen or keep all of the <ol> <ul> <li> code straight.
3. Is Technorati (or any others) really that important? Unfortunately, the worlds of web design, search engines, SEO, and social networking are all dominated by techie types.  That means that when it comes to things like Technorati, Digg, Twitter, or whatever, the volume tends to be disproportionately loud.  Is getting indexed, listed, or whatever on these sites worth the time and effort?  Or, more specifically…
4. Is It Better To Add Technorati Specific Tags to Posts, or Will WordPress’ Ping Take Care of It?  Considering that I have no real interest in trying to force my way to the top of Technorati or any other site by any means other than writing good stuff, do I get any benefit from taking the extra time to "tag" my posts with Technorati tags? 
5. Do All Those Incoming Yahoo Glue Links Count for Anything?  My incoming links for some of my sites are filled with links that come from Yahoo Glue.  Do I get anything out of those? 
6. What If Google Knows What It Is Doing? Pretty much all SEO techniques both on-page SEO tactics, and off-site SEO linking, assume that Google needs a lot of help getting its index and search rankings results right. In other words, that Google isn’t a very good search engine.  That doesn’t seem right does it?  I mean, it’s the #1 Search Engine in the world for a reason.  Microsoft has tried 3 times to create something that even comes close and couldn’t.  Does it really make sense then that Google’s search results are so delicate that they can be heavily influenced by something as simple as changing a few HTML tags?
7. If Google Knows What It Is Doing, Then Why Do So Many Search Results Suck? As a corollary to the above, why are some search results so terrible?  Is it that Google’s famed reliance on incoming links, or links pointing to a webpage or website, makes it too vulnerable to being conned into ranking lesser sites above better ones?  This seems especially true when it comes to authoritative websites.  Consider this search for california school rankings

The obvious authoritative source is the actual rankings published by California.  In fact, both of the sites that rank higher are nothing more than interfaces tacked onto the data provided by the third link.  A search for california school ratings produces a similar result except that the #4 result becomes the #2 result.

There are much worse examples, this is just the one I came up with off the top of my head for a quick blog post.  Fortunately, the other sites listed above the official one aren’t scam sites or obvious web spam.  They are both trying to milk free publicly available information to show advertising and get people to sign up (get email addresses) and perhaps even pay for "premium" information.

The fact that the official California API results ranks so high, however, is a testament to Question #3.  Look at the Academic Performance Index (API) page from the California Department of Education, and you will see a website that has no redeemable SEO qualities whatsoever – in the traditional sense, at least.  And, yet, there it is at #3.

Like most "official" websites, they have better things to do than keyword research, emailing other websites to beg for links, and so on.  On more competitive keywords, this is often much worse, with scam sites or obvious web spam ranking above the official resources. 

The worst examples are often those where the higher ranking sites offer biased or otherwise slanted information, while the official, unbiased, sites rank much lower.  This is because of a combination of using every SEO trick in the book, and then the fact that like minded supporters will link to the websites that promote their point of view, rather than the straight factual websites which might include information that they don’t like.

Search your favorite, financial, political, governmental, or judicial topic to find examples.

Back to Work

Ok, I’ve spent too much time writing this today already.  Off to make money freelance writing.  Don’t worry, I’ll be back later.

A Question of Greatness is a post from Best Hubris. All content exclusively written by Freelance Writing Business of ArcticLlama, LLC

Although many reviewers reserved judgment about whether Bing was better than Google, a few search engine reviews were so bold as to claim that Bing was equal to Google Search.  No major reviewer would make the claim that Bing was better than Google Search.  All of which begs the question, "Why should anyone bother to switch?"

One possible motivator is privacy.  Google keeps user’s search data for 90 days.  But, that isn’t all that Google collects.  Google Ads have been installed an countless websites around the web, each of which potentially collects another data point about you and your Internet habits.  Google Analytics has been installed on even more websites resulting in yet another potential collection.  In short, Google can already see you coming and going, maybe it would be best to perform your searches somewhere else, if another search engine was just as good as Google searches.

Unfortunately, Bing is not as good as Google Search.  I haven’t performed any tests, and I haven’t bothered reading anyone else’s tests or searching reviews, or search engine results.  I don’t have to.  I can tell you that Microsoft Bing is not as good as Google Search without performing a single search query.

How?

Microsoft’s Bing search service offers no method to restrict your searches by date.  The lack of a time restricted search is just one reason I never took Live Search seriously either.

Nothing knocks quite as much web spam off the first page of search results like restricting a search to the past month, or past year.  Sites looking to snooker you into clicking to see their ad-filled pages built up high-ranking sites and then move on.  Revisiting those pages risks unintentionally making edits which lowers the search engine ranking.

More importantly, there are numerous topics for which information that is two years old is no longer accurate.  Things like taxes, computer programs, electronics, media, real estate, investing, jobs and careers, and even fields like medicine can have important changes that take what was once true and make it inaccurate, at best, and completely false at worst.

Without a way to limit your searches by time, there is no way to know if the information you find is out of date, unless you already know something about what you are searching for.  Doesn’t that defeat the whole point of a search engine?

After all, if you know something about what you are searching for, you might already have a good idea where to find some good information.

In "News" searches only, you can choose to sort by most recent instead of by best match.  Of course, that trades one issue for another.  Instead of having to wade through the search engine results of a regular web search to find links that a recent, you get to comb through the results by date looking for ones that are relevant.  Neither choice is worth doing.

Think I’m exaggerating?  Maybe you’re curious about Microsoft’s current search efforts, but you aren’t a huge techie and you don’t know what this year’s search engine is named.

Try this search on Bing: "microsoft search engine"

Actual Screenshot from Microsoft Bing 7/29/09 

That 3rd result about "Microsoft’s New Search Engine" looks promising, doesn’t it?  (Too bad it’s about Microsoft’s previous search engine.  Oh, wait.  It is actually about the attempt BEFORE the last attempt!  In fact, it is about the beta release of Microsoft’s MSN search engine at search.msn.com!  If you’re wondering that is from 2004, five years ago.

Google recently rolled out a "More Options" link on every search page that allows you to use time-based criteria easier and more effectively for any search.  Before that innovation, Google allowed you to search within a specific time frame from its "Advanced Search" screen. 

In other words, Google has offered date based searching for a long time.  Microsoft, a company that has made its entire living off of playing copy cat to other’s innovations, missed the boat on this particular feature.  Or, perhaps, they are simply incapable of delivering such queries and results at this time.  Either way, the lack of date based searching makes MS Bing a non-starter for this user before a single search is performed.

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Why Google Search Is Still Better Than Microsoft Bing is a post from Best Hubris. All content exclusively written by Freelance Writing Business of ArcticLlama, LLC

You bet it does, but it would rank awesome for search engine traffic if that was what you were going for.  People always search for things like “Top 10″ or “Best whatever”.  The problem is that everyone involved in building and designing websites knows that too.

Some web publishers will deliberately write articles for search terms and key phrases like these in order to generate maximum organic traffic.  That is fine.  There is nothing wrong with playing the game.

What I HATE though is unscrupulous websites who will title their articles like this, even when the article does not fulfill the title!  Take this article which I have deliberately linked to in a way to be mostly worthless to the other site.  The title of the article is “The World’s Best Dividend Stocks”, clearly an attempt to hit some solid keywords.  Again, I have no problem with this IF the article meets the expectations of the title!  This one does not.

Instead, this article is about the much more prosaic (and not searched on) topic that foreign companies also pay good dividends and that you should look at them too.

WHAT?!?!

In what way does that satisfy “The World’s Best Dividend Stocks”?

It doesn’t.  Not at all.

If someone, say me, were looking for some international equities that have historically paid high dividends, I would be interested in an article with such a title, as that website knew I would.  Of course, upon reading this “No duh” article, I have no additional information about the world’s best dividend paying stocks.  All I know is that there are 3 US stocks were the “best” S&P 500 stocks for 50 years or so.  Later, the author reports that 40% of foreign dividend paying stocks that trade on a US exchange have doubled in the past six years.  And, that makes them the world’s best paying dividend stocks how?  Is it the author’s contention that all the foreign dividend paying stocks that do not trade on a US exchange cannot be some of the world’s best dividend paying stocks, or is the author simply too lazy to find a tool that would allow him to research non-US stocks?

It gets worse.

The next section is about how foreign countries may tax your dividends.  NOT IF YOU ARE BUYING THE STOCKS THAT TRADE ON A US EXHANGE!

Before Google came along, this article might have had a more accurate title, something along the lines of “Don’t Forget International Stocks When Looking For Dividends.”  But, that has too many “stop words,” and way more people search for “Top Dividend Stocks” or “Best Dividend Stocks”, so the world’s thinnest connection to a title optimized for search engines will have to satisfy those who actually want information about international high yielding dividend stocks, which will be how I refine my search to exclude the shifty and banal results I got from my last search.

The Top 10 Best Worst Google Features Inventions Of All Time is a post from Best Hubris. All content exclusively written by Freelance Writing Business of ArcticLlama, LLC