A large part of the search marketing game that gets little discussion is perception. Are the search results relevant? Are the search results fresh? Is there adequate result diversity? Is that particular result worthy of that ranking? What techniques did they use to rank there?
User vs Engineer PerspectiveGord Hotchkiss does a great job covering the searcher’s perspective, but rarely do you get to see how a search engineer thinks of the results. This NYT article offered a snapshot, but that has been filtered public relations. The results show not what the engineers want, but the best they can do given their current mindset and computing resources. Reading Changes in the Search Results If you can learn to read changes in the results you can see what they are trying to fix right now, what issues will become a big problem, and what issues they do not care about. For example, right now, Google does not care for result diversity. They are so afraid of small spam sites that they: allow garbage search results from authoritative domains to rank for a wide array of keywords allow category leaders to own the first page of search resultsWhy You Should NOT Trust a Search Engineer’s Blog You can’t really trust the perspective of a blog posted by a search engineer because they typically discuss the view of search from an ideal world. In addition, the role of the search engineer blog is to control and manipulate public perception more than it is to share useful information. In some cases they tell you how going off topic is wrong, while they are proud to cite your off topic marketing and praise it if you are syndicating their spin. If You Were a Search Engineer, Would You Lie? When you look at how they try to manipulate people you can see the holes in their algorithms. They are nothing but an algorithm, an ad network, marketing, and how they manipulate people to cede power and authority to their fickle relevancy algorithms. If they are hypocritical in their view of the web then manipulation is a large and important piece required for them to keep what authority they have. How to Spam Google Right Now A few tips they don’t want you to know the truth about: Buying old sites works amazingly well. Buying and redirecting sites works amazingly well. Paid links work amazingly well, and you have a strong brand or can tolerate a bit of risk you would be an idiot not to exploit that hole. Exact match domain names play a good role in helping a site rank for the associated keyword phrase. The supplemental results suck, but they don’t want the portion of the web they throw into it to realize just how bad it sucks. The search results have a lot of hand editing in them. Hand editing is gratuitous for smaller websites, but they are afraid to edit out large corporations.Have You Ever Been Hand Edited? Search relevancy algorithms change depending on what types of spamming are popular and effective at the time. After experiencing your first hand edit on something you worked hard to build it changes the way you perceive search engines, and how much you are able to respect them. If you are a professional you are not supposed to take it personally, but it is hard not to if you have to fire all of your employees.
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