How Google Learns & Detects

Sometimes if you try to really understand the crazy brains of search engines, you can have a complete brain lockup and fall asleep instantly 😀 . One thing to understand is in the Google realm, you are trying to understand the thought processes of phd professors who feel that the world just is not complicated enough for them. Matter of fact, the way Google gets these brains interested in working for them is they place billboards or ads out in the public that makes no sense to the typical human brain, but it actually has a hidden message in the ad only geniuses can figure out. Once the brain discovers the message, it will tell them if they figured it out, Google wants them. These are the people you are up against in trying to understand how Google works.

Of course, along with these genius types, there are also the normal typical techie nerds that are a lot more like us. Combine the two and things tend to get a little more understandable. So the point of this rambling is I thought I would explain how the googlebots learn and detect many aspects of our websites.

There are two definite parts that can penalize or ban a website; humans and computers. The human editing is obvious common sense. Someone, usually your competition, runs and tattle tells to Google if you’re doing something wrong, they visit your site, find the issue and penalize your website. The part that might take a little thinking is the computer side of things.

Computers that learn are able to learn based on patterns. Something that is repetitive is typically a way anything can learn. Haven’t you heard the old saying, “Tell yourself something at least three (3) times in a row and you’ll probably remember it later”? A good example is trying to remember someone’s name. If you do not repeat it, you might not remember it. If you say it a few times quickly, your chances of remembering are much better. Well, our brains are just like computers. Computers can learn if situations are repeated.

Now mind you, this is a very broad explanation. There is much more involved, but if you can grasp this notion, it might help you in preventing your site from being penalized for anything you do. Do not get involved with anything that involves an identical pattern one can easily spot. If you decide to buy text ads, do not buy them all from an identical network type or from the same ip address. Now we will always recommend focusing on buying text ads on like partner sites to boost your traffic, but the simple fact of the matter is, people buy text ads to help their link popularity. So since it happens, you need to know how to protect your online presence. If all of the locations you place your text ads are very similar, you run the risk of being detected. There is no guarantee they will catch you, no matter what those google people say, but there is no reason to risk it.

There are other text link broker services that offer links on sites that all have the same layout, linking structure and link placement. These places are easily being found by Google and while we hate to see it happen to our friendly competition, it is happening. This is the great part of LinkWorth due to our partner listings being unique site by site. If you have any questions, feel free to contact us and we will be happy to answer what we can.

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Why Webmasters Target Google

At first the title may seem like an obvious point, for traffic. Today I was thinking about how the webmaster talk seems to always be on how to get listed better in Google rather than Yahoo, MSN or any of the other engines out there. I started thinking about the obvious and not so obvious points that make a webmaster become so focused on Google and realized this might be a good post on our blog.

The Obvious Reason – Traffic!
As anyone with half a brain knows, Google is the most searched engine out there. Why would you not want a percentage of the traffic within your respective market from Google? The percentage you would get from their users would probably equal all other engines combined. That doesn’t mean all markets, but typically our clients that track origination of users from search engines claim Google far surpasses the others. So this point alone would be the obvious reason why one would target Google.

The Not So Obvious Reason – The Challenge!
This could compare to an every day life phenomenon that seems to be a trait in all humans. It’s human nature to always want what you either cannot have or is tough to get. For example, women typically go after the men that treat them like crap or will not give them the time of day. Men typically go after women that are completely out of their league. It’s all about the challenge. Getting someone that throws themselves at you is usually not as much fun.

The same I believe goes into targeting search engines. Google is the obvious challenge search engine to listed well with. MSN tends to be one that throws themselves at you and getting good placement is fairly easy. Yahoo is somewhere in between the two, but compared to Google, is fairly easy. Google seems to have more of a “us against them” attitude towards webmasters. There are more penalties and filters put in place to defeat the webmaster’s ploy for top placement than there are new features to make their product better.

Speaking of penalties, who ever said “constructive criticism” was the way to go? If Google wants to penalize a website, whether it is a good move or Google’s mistake, they just do it and move on. It’s as if they think everyone knows about their webmaster guidelines and know the Google fact or fiction tidbits. What if someone just took Google offline and failed to mention it to them? Think they would freak out and want an explanation? I think they fail to realize that as big as they have become, people rely on what they offer to survive as an online business. A good practice would be to shoot a message to websites that are penalized or banned telling the website owner why it happened and what steps would be required to get reincluded in their search results. I believe in Google’s eyes, ever site owner will know if they are doing right or wrong, which is completely inaccurate.

I stumbled off topic a bit there, but the point of this post is to shine a light on the idea webmasters go after Google for more than just the obvious.

Not So Obvious Reason #2 – Self Accepting Trophy
Any webmaster will agree that getting listed well on Google is a great achievement. An achievement that is one we like to talk about to anyone interested in listening. So once it happens, not only is it a great traffic boost, but it’s a self accepting trophy that we can parade around with because we conquered that elusive challenge. Nothing like telling another webmaster, “We’re #1 on Google for our keywords!”.

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WordPress Launches 2.0

For those of you that use wordpress, if you haven’t had time or even heard that they have launched version 2.0, do yourself a favor and upgrade to the new version. So far, it is a far superior program compared to it’s previous versions. Many new features and the administration has many new upgrades that make things much easier.

One big addition was the change of making your blog SEO friendly. Originally our blog pages/posts had parameters or variables on the end, which as you know, aren’t always so search engine friendly. Here is an example:

Before: http://blog.linkworth.com/?p=60

After: http://blog.linkworth.com/space-and-the-internet/

We tried to incorporate this feature previously but it failed due to issues with changing the .htaccess file. It appears they changed something and converting was a breeze.

So THUMBS UP to WordPress and their people!

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Space and the Internet

As I sit here with the Discovery Channel on and my laptop in my lap, I start thinking of possible similarities between space and the internet. To the human brain, the internet seems like endless bits of information where one would never be able to find and locate everything. Space on the other hand, seems like an endless vast area of stars/planets and galaxies that we might never know the true extent of.

Both space and the internet are bound by technology and to increase these boundaries, technology advances are required. To find and locate new resources, both space and the internet require robots to search what we’re interested in. Of course, space tends to cost billions and billions of dollars, where the internet generates billions and billions of dollars.

In the next century will there be penalties handed down to planets who may have life and they try really hard to let their existence be known? Will the space robots dictate which planets should be known and which should not? Imagine a planet in the next solar system that has life identical to ours but is far more advanced with using existing resources to live and cure known diseases, yet our space robot notices a relationship with another planet it deems not so worthy, so it disregards this possible sister planet due to pure speculation.

I know the comparisons seem as far fetched as much as crop circles are being created by another life form on Earth (if you enjoy space and great images of the earth, pick a satellite and view the earth from this really great page) that our feeble brains have yet to discover, but when does the time come when people are allowed to make their own decisions? Why must we let computers tell us what is and is not right for us? I’m fine with computers helping us in our decisions, but not actually telling us we cannot read a particular site because it feels it’s not worthy of being shown.

Lets take this further with the example of our possible sister planet our space robot disregards. Take a website that has been put together for the sole purpose of helping people who might have a terminal condition. The author has a home remedy that he/she used and it completely cured their condition and wants to share it so others can maybe help themselves by reading their ‘how-to’. This individual makes no money on the website but wants to put a little money into promoting it and helping it be found by other similar patients, so they use whatever tactics they can to promote their site. Their funds are very limited so the cheapest methods are the only solution. Right when the website begins to appear for other hopefulls to read, a certain search engine giant feels their methods are not fair and removes the website from the listings and now no one can read this possible life saving information.

The point of this post is to illustrate how we allow our advances in life to be controlled by those who feel they need to censor what we see, along with their computers. I’m all for making sure information provided is legitimate and trustworthy, but if there is a planet worth learning about or a website worth reading, there should be no 3rd party involved in saying what can and cannot be found. In a perfect world, censorship, no matter what form it is in, doesn’t exist. Maybe our space robot will find that perfect world and we can travel to this wonderful land and escape through the goo-hoo-gates that currently have our world in its grips.

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Santa Paid a Visit and Spoke SEO

As I sit up late on Chrismtas Eve, I was paid a surprise visit by Santa. It seems he wanted to better serve all the boys and girls by creating a website with a virtual ordering type system. This way good boys and girls could simply submit all of their wants and wishes through the internet to help Santa get around the world quicker and more efficient.

Deep into our converation, Santa asked me about how he could make his site visible on the major engines. I explained the idea of link popularity and building text link ad campaigns to help his situation. I also explained Google coming after those who purchased textual links and before I could get any further, he stopped me and said, “Google does provide a valuable asset but it failed to make the ‘nice’ list”.

Needless to say, Santa and I spoke in great length about SEO techniques and link building tactics. The conversation lasted for a short time as he had to get back to work. He said that since we were good, our stocking would be full of relevant number one positions.

Thanks Santa! Check to see where Santa is.

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All I Want For Christmas Is . . .

I thought since it is time for giving and receiving, it only makes sense to put together a wish list for SEOnta Claus. Hopefully he’ll deliver everything since I have been a good boy. 😐

Dear SEOnta . . . This is my top 5 list of what I would like for this Christmas:

5. A tool that will optimize a website with the click of a button.
4. Less people saying they are seo experts.
3. More people using Yahoo and MSN.
2. Less Google fear in everyone.
1. Search engines stop the link hypocrisy.

😀

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“ASK” and You Shall Receive!

If anyone wants to keep up with the search engine world, the only real way to do this is by reading, reading, reading, reading and oh yeah, reading! The sites I tend to skim through you can find on the blogroll to the right. Of course, please do not take this as our thumbs up to listen and believe everything read on these sites, because while you can get some good info on them, most are just good windows into the rest of the world. A good illustration would be if something at work or within your family happens, you always have one or two people you instantly ask because they seem to always know the gossip. . .well that is just like this industry. I personally like to keep up with new theories and conversations out there, so I try and pay attention to the people who somehow have the time to post on every forum out there, maintain their own blog AND somehow still have time to do their jobs! It’s quite puzzling sometimes because if I spent time to post on just two (2) forums each day, there is no way I could keep up with the work we do for our customers.

Now that I’ve prefaced this post, I was reading one of these blogs earlier and found something that brought a chuckle to me. Mr. SEObook is one of those guys who I see E V E R Y W H E R E ! Matter of fact, he’s been here before to reference one of our products he wrote about along with another write up claiming we gave “less than stellar advice” on changing up link placement and titles of text ads. And mysteriously, someone ran to Matt Cutt’s with the email we sent around the same time we were related to pigs and lipstick on Aaron’s blog. (Which, by the way, our less than stellar advice seems like the sure fire way to get a link counted now with the recent Google update that can discount links on the sides, head or foot of the page. I hate when we’re wrong 😉 )

Ok, back to my point. . .on Mr. Wall’s blog, right under the title/logo, this is what’s said:

Got search engine questions? Ask Me!

Then as I was skimming through his recent posts, I happened across this gem:


Recently I had one person contact me about 5 times a day asking questions like where is the Overture suggest tool. Stuff that would easily pop on the first page in Google if they used the exact same queries as they instant messaged me with. I explained to them that search is there for a reason and my time was limited, but my explanation was to no avail.

Had I not progressively ignored them and gave continuously shorter answers to encourage reading or searching I would have probably got about 50 questions a day from them. Eventually things were not going to do well.

hehehe . . . I still get a chuckle out of it. Now don’t get me wrong, I can get good info from there since he seems to never sleep, but I couldn’t help but think of my wife when I read that!

“DO I LOOK FAT IN THIS?” . . . “A LITTLE” . . . “SLAP, PUNCH, SCREAM”

Then I was really shocked when I read this:

they bought my ebook ($79)

I hate to give “less than stellar advice” again, but in my opinion, posting that just doesn’t seem like it will help the sale of his ebook. It seems like more of a rant to tell friends that might not have an interest in purchasing anything.

On a side note, although I haven’t paid for the ebook, I have read it is a good bit of info for those just getting into search engine optimization. Plus, $79 bucks is a lot easier to chew than the thousands upon thousands of dollars these other companies will charge you on a monthly basis and do the same thing.

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Season Greetings To All

The LinkWorth Team wants to wish all of our customers, readers and everyone else a special holiday season. As there are many celebratory occasions, here are a few of the well known greetings. . .

MERRY CHRISTMAS

HAPPY HANUKKAH

HAPPY QUANZA

We would also like to wish everyone a wonderful and very prosperous 2006. Have a great New Year’s Eve and be safe!

From all of us at LinkWorth

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Automated Blog Content Publisher

Building a website and making it attractive for others to read, you would have to literally devote hours of each day for quite a long time to build the content up quick. Then throw in the typing of each post it would require and you have quite a project ahead of you. I’ve come across a software program that might serve to help people keep their content always up to date and 100% relevant.

This software program can create a new blog, which would be easily interchangeable to other themes, and allow you to setup a timed (cron) script that would search for articles written that discuss the same things you write about and post the information of each article if finds into your blog. It takes a set amount of data from the article, stores it as cache and provides a hyperlink to the author’s page. So it would be just like have an employee that helps you write posts for your blog while you are still posting your own tidbits. This will no doubt, make your blog site a very information rich source that other blog readers will find worthy of a hyperlink from their site to your site. 😉

This program is a great tool for anyone looking to keep a very up to date and informative blog on any given topic. You simply provide a keyword and it looks for articles with that keyword. It can be used for one single website or unlimited.

It was created to be used on linux servers which have CPANEL. It’s also probably not something for a beginner. Some definite computer skills are needed and knowledge of php, html & mysql. With that being said, once the software is installed, it’s fairly simple to execute and the blogs that are created are simple to manage and maintain. Visit sites like https://www.linode.com/docs/guides/check-linux-ports-in-use/ for additional guidance.

I created a sample blog site with the software. The theme is “advertising” and it will find news about ‘advertising’ and create blog posts when it finds.

This is about the extent of installing the program and creating a blog site:

1. Upload the directory of files to your web server
2. Open up the main page which shows the account creation form
3. Enter domain and other needed fields
4. Select the theme layout you wish to use
5. Set cronjob details
6. Submit info and website is created and on autopilot

I’m sure there are a million ways this software program can be used for one’s benefit. If you are interested in obtaining a licensed copy of this software, have questions about it, fill out the comments form below and be sure to include your contact email (don’t worry I don’t do anything with emails. It’s just to send you the info). Interested parties will receive further information regarding the software and where it can be purchased.

Again, if you are interested, complete the comments form and I will get in touch with you. Your comments will not appear so it will be a private conversation. 😉

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Beat The Sandbox Suggestion

I came across this thread over at SEW Forums where they are talking about a possible way to help your “sandboxed” site get listed faster in Google. The trick sounds pretty interesting, but I’m sure now that it’s out in the open, Goo will find a way to axe the results IF it really works. Here’s the breakdown…

Let’s look at the following as an example of Dave’s advice.

I launch a new site at www.RedWidget.dom

It’s all about (obviously) Red Widgets and Y and M think it is a great site and rank it well as we have undertaken some SEO (on and off page), it provides the greatest content out there and DESERVES to be there at #1

Unfortunately as the Red Widget domain is newly registered and it is NOT a CC TLD (another lil clue there people) it doesn’t rank for diddley squat on the mighty Google, other than maybe some obscure image searches.

Thankfully I have a few well established, old sites and domains out there. I choice to pick one, that is on theme (no harm in using on theme IMHO) and is called www.RedAndYellowWidgets.com. I decide to replicate the content from redwidgets.dom to either (and this is where I add to Dave’s work above) a subdomain on the old domain

http://redwidgets.redandyellowwidgets.dom

or a subdirectory on the old domain

http://redandyellowwidgets.dom/redwidgets/

It just so happens that instead of leaving the defacto standard header information within the pages, I adapt the date that my web server *thinks* the pages were created and backdate it by, I don’t know, let’s try a year or two.

I place a link from a well crawled page (maybe the homepage?) on my site (or maybe links from other sites, maybe bought links, maybe a site map submission or even just some prolific toolbar usage) just so that it gets noticed by a certain search engine spider. Once that is done I wait.

I wait and wait and wait (probably just a few days) until the site has been spidered properly (I’d suggest MozBot, but you may think differently) and then I would 301 every page on the OLD site to the NEW site.

Hopefully you’ll see your rankings increase on G to match those on M and Y!

You know, if you have an old domain that is indexed well and a new site that is in the box, no reason why you can’t give it a shot. If it works… woohoo!

Read all following comments over at SEW Forums.

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