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Then I have seen multiple sites say basically the same thing and in some instances actually copy verbatim what he said and even try to pass it off as their own material. I actually wrote a post about it and I personally think he is wrong. I also think he confused the rollout of search wiki and what that was supposed to entail. Search wiki came out just a few days later and I think it would have been wiser to wait and see what it was for sure before saying anything.
Anyways all the talk is that Google is changing and well... duh of course it is. But is PR really going to die? Is G just going to stop counting links? I mean honestly there is no proof for any of this and to me speculating about something and saying its positively true are two different things. How can any of these people know for sure?
Then today I saw a post of someone saying they know someone who works at Google and they confirmed that they were indeed changing things but offered no specifics so again I found this frustrating and annoying.
Of course a lot of speculation is around whether Google will turn to more semantic searches and that probably will happen or is already happening. The other thing rumored is that search wiki results will impact your site. That users could push your site down and Google is going to start using these results. For one thing I dont see that many people using search wiki to actually get enough usable data. Personally I found it to be a stupid feature and less than useful. Why would you want to rank your search results? I rank my search results by what I click on. If I dont click you didnt get any rank. I think thats how most people use search engines and I dont see that changing. I just dont see the use of search wiki and cant see them changing their entire algorithm for this thing. Maybe adding a tiny bit of weight but even that I question. Regardless there still is no proof for this.
I have also seen major speculation about traffic impacting how your site shows up in ranks. That is higher traffic sites will rank higher. To me this seems the complete opposite of how Google wants results to work and the opposite of everything I have seen them do. This would be disastrous for new sites and would make new sites almost impossible to show up in results and then it would just turn into an endless loop from there. Again I have seen no concrete evidence for this but I have seen many sites claiming this to be true.
The other thing I have heard is that Google is going to be counting bounce rate. If you have a bad bounce rate Google will see this as being a less than useful result and then rank your site worse. Then from this I have seen people speculate that Google can somehow determine if you have good content. I have even seen some people claim that Google will know if you are converting visitors into customers or clients. This last example is about as ridiculous as the speculating can get and to me obviously utter BS. Google can know if a client calls me on the phone and wants my services? Wow they must be everywhere then.
Anyways I am relatively new to SEO but in the past 4 months have spent hundreds of hours learning and researching. Maybe every year people make these same sorts of ridiculous claims and since I am new just havnt noticed them but I am hoping some people here can shed some light on this. What bothers me is when people get a lot of attention for making bold claims and have absolutely no way of even proving what they are saying. Maybe some of this stuff is true but I would like to know where I can find this info and how people can know this stuff before Google announces it.
Thanks
Edited by chrishirst, 12 January 2009 - 04:00 AM.
