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High Rankings Advisor: Blackballed from Google - Issue No. 017July 3, 2002 ________________________________________________________
~~~IN TODAY'S ADVISOR~~~ *Introductory Comments: ----> Keeping Cool *Search Engine Marketing: ----> Blackballed from Google ----> Keyword-rich Domain Names Feedback *This Week's Sponsor: ----> LinkSurvey Link-Popularity Software *Other SEO News: ----> Terra Lycos Launches Lycos 6.0 ----> Deceptive Search Engine Advertising *Stuff You Might Like ----> Selling Subscriptions to Internet Content *Advisor Wrap-Up: ----> I'm a Yankee Doodle Dandy ________________________________________________________ ~~~Introductory Comments~~~ I've got a fairly long issue for you today. I'm avoiding the heat wave by holing up in my air-conditioned office and just writing, writing and writing! I'm sure many of my American readers are on vacation this week, and I'm expecting a huge amount of out-of-office replies at any moment now. Hopefully you'll at least read this when you get back. There's lots of good stuff here, including feedback to last week's keyword-rich-domain rant and my rebuttal. So without further ado, let's move on to the good stuff! - Jill ~~~Search Engine Marketing Issues~~~ ++Blackballed from Google++ From: Bob M. Dear Jill, Thanks for your great newsletter. It's one of the few, perhaps the only one, of the many newsletters that I subscribe to that I find regularly informative and useful. I especially enjoy your informative rants, so perhaps I'll supply justification for you to climb up on your soapbox and wax eloquent. I'm relatively new to search engine optimization. Earlier this year, when I knew less than I do now, and at the request of upper management, I submitted our site (already listed) to Google under a different URL. I was wary of this strategy at the time, and have become more so the more I have learned. I'm not surprised that a search of Google for the alias URL produces no results. But I'm also concerned whether Google may have taken punitive action regarding our existing, established site/URL. One pretty good hint is that one keyword that had produced a #4 Google rank last November now shows nothing for us in the first 20 pages. Two other bits of information complicate drawing any causal inference: first, we completely redesigned the site in February this year. (I've been careful to make the content keyword rich and appropriate.) Second, I know Google gets search results from Open Directory in addition to the information gained from their own crawlers. Open's volunteer editor policy means the updated information we sent them in February has yet to show up in our listing with them (or, for that matter, in Google's). Nonetheless, our keyword ranks in Open are very good, in stark contrast to Google's. My primary questions are whether our Google rankings are being suppressed in response to our misguided attempt at a duplicate listing, and, if so, how we can atone for our sins and restore our good standing with them. Thanks for your weekly information in general, and any help in particular. Bob ++Jill's Response++ (Note: Bob didn't want his site to be mentioned in the newsletter for obvious reasons, but it was supplied in his original email.) When I get these kinds of questions, the first thing I do is check the site with my Google Toolbar turned on, so I can see if the PageRank graph is grayed out or at zero. If Google has imposed a penalty on a site, it's usually evident by looking at the PageRank. (For more info on PageRank and the Google Toolbar, please read my PageRank Summary here: <http://www.rankwrite.com/archives/issue070.htm#seo>. Gee...lots of Rank Write references today!) So I plugged Bob's site into IE and saw that it had a respectable PageRank of 5, which indicates that there's no penalty involved. Next, I checked Google's cache of the page to see if they were showing a blank page, or something other than the current site. Strangely enough, Google had no record of the page in its cache. So I checked the backward links, because usually if it's not in the cache, there will also be no backward links. However, there were *a lot* of backward links. So things seemed stranger by the minute. The site was indeed listed in DMOZ as Bob had stated, and also in Yahoo!. It's got backward links and a good PageRank, so what could be the problem? It seemed to me that for some reason Google must not have been able to spider the site. My first thought was that the server may have been down when the Googlebot came a-crawlin'. But then something else hit me. Perhaps Googlebot *couldn't* spider the site. Perhaps it was excluded from crawling the site through the robots.txt file. For those who don't know what this is, it's a simple text file that you can put on your server to exclude search engine crawlers from accessing certain pages or directories of your site. For instance, if you have password-protected directories on your site with info that you don't want the general public to get their hands on, you might exclude crawlers using this file. (For more information on this, please see: <http://www.robotstxt.org/>.) So the next thing I needed to do was check out Bob's robots.txt file. (To do that, you simply type in the domain name followed by "/robots.txt" into your browser, e.g., bobsdomain.com/robots.txt.) Here's what I found there: User-agent: * Disallow: / Disallow: /Admin Disallow: /Appraisal Disallow: /Content Disallow: /Custom Disallow: /Images Disallow: /Logon Aha! There was the answer I suspected! Someone in Bob's organization had put up a robots.txt file that excluded ALL search engines from indexing ALL parts of his site! (To be sure I was reading the file correctly, I checked with a techie friend, who confirmed my suspicions.) The moral of this story is that if your site is not showing up in any given engine, the chances are that you are *not* banned. It's actually very, very rare for engines to ban or penalize sites. You have to be doing some pretty nasty things for that to happen. It's extremely rare to be banned by mistake or simply because you did something that you didn't know would be considered spam. Those that get banned for real almost always know *exactly* what they did wrong. So don't just assume that you're banned if your site is missing. Do some detective work and find out the real reason, then fix it! I've seen other instances where the problem had to do with misconfigured servers and IPs and other things like that. Sometimes it's as simple as your site being down when the bot tried to visit it. Just remember that you're probably *not* banned. If you think you did something that the engine might consider spam, then fix it and wait for the next crawl. If you never do anything even remotely shady, you won't have to worry, now will you? ____________________________________________adv. LOOKING FOR HIGH-QUALITY LINK PARTNERS? ____________________________________________ LinkSurvey link-popularity software is the tool you need. Check the link pop. of a whole bunch of related sites all at once. Our user-friendly software saves you tons of time & aggravation! Search through all the major search engines in one fell swoop, and quickly create your own detailed link-popularity reports. Free trial and no-risk money-back guarantee! Learn more now at: <http://www.antssoft.com/linksurvey/index.htm>. _____________________________________________ ++Keyword-rich Domain Names Feedback++ From: Chris Beasley Sorry Jill, you've got some misconceptions about keyword rich domain names. First of all rarely do I see people advocate them for search engines, however people do tend to refer to any search service as a search engine, when this is simply not so. They need to differentiate between search engines, directories, and simple portals. However a keyword rich URL still helps for search engines, you just haven't thought things through far enough. You mention this: >>Some rank highly simply because there are keywords in the hyperlinks pointing to the site. Google is especially susceptible to this phenomenon, which has been dubbed "Google Bombing" in the Web Blog world. If enough sites link to a site using the specific keyword phrase in the hyperlink, it can have a dramatic effect on rankings. << Which shows that you know how important anchor text is with link popularity. However what you do not realize is that almost all links take two forms and they either have the site title, or the URL, as the anchor text. Obviously, if you have keywords in your site title (not your title tags, your actual title), or in your URL then this will help you. So its not that the keyword rich URLs are helping directly, its that they are helping indirectly. On the topic of directories you mention: >>With directories such as Yahoo!, it may appear as if keywords in the domain name make a big difference to rankings. After all, the directories are not spidering the words on your pages and don't have much to go on to determine your position. But you know what? My very unscientific research shows that in actuality, keywords in the Yahoo! title are the more likely reason for top rankings.<< Obviously why even publish that if its so unscientific. I could just as easily claim that the URL was weighted more than the title. As for how much each portion is weighted? I'm guessing its about equal, however the fact of the matter is it is very easy to provide proof that Yahoo, and other directories, take URLs into their ranking algorithm. For instance, check this out: <http://search.yahoo.com/bin/search?p=webmaster+resources> Notice those bold words, those are words that Yahoo! counts in it's ranking algorithm. You will notice that it counts titles, descriptions, URLs, and category names. Additionally Yahoo! probably uses click-popularity and they most likely have a hidden field that editors can use to rank sites. LookSmart has such a field after all. Another thing I take issue with is this claim: >>Just to be sure I wasn't leading you down the wrong path, I asked Tom Wilde, General Manager of Search Services at Lycos, if domain names factored into their ranking algorithm. He told me that they are a factor in the Lycos algorithm, but since they're so open to being abused, they're a very small factor. He confirmed that the Title tag and the body text copy were given much more weight than the domain name.<< How is the title tag any less abuseable than the domain name? At least domains cost money and if you have a good one you're either lucky or you paid a decent amount of money for it. That's more of a question for him, not you though, since you're just repeating what he said. At least he supports the use of hyphens, that parsers often require punctuation to parse keywords is also verifiable simply by looking through results at Yahoo or DMOZ. For instance Yahoo! will parse the first keyword in a run on word, so in the word "carcity" it would parse "car" but not "city." DMOZ would parse neither. The biggest reason to have keywords in your site name and in your domain name is for link popularity. I'm sure you know how important anchor text is, and having keywords in the two most common ways people link to you is a big help. I tend to use keyword rich names and domain names for all my sites, and I've gotten #1 listings on every major search engine (except Inktomi - but they're dying anyways) thanks in part to that. For businesses or e-commerce sites I would agree with you that a good name is better. But for content sites, where you need so many visitors to make a buck, I'd sacrifice brandability for traffic. You really have to be honest with yourself in regards to branding too. Branding is expensive and unless you've got tens of thousands or even millions of dollars to spend on advertising in most cases you will not brand your name. Buying a unique name does not make you branded; branding requires gobs of money or gobs of luck. Most people would be better off if they just admit that it is not going to happen and instead they work on building traffic. Chris Beasley http://www.sitepoint.com/articlelist.php/82 ++Jill's Response++ Thanks for sending in your thoughts on this issue, Chris. I always appreciate feedback, and your comments are well taken. A few others also wrote in to express their disagreement with me, but not as many as I thought would. The notion of using keyword-rich domain names as part of your SEO strategy is so ingrained in everyone's heads that they are not willing to give it up without a fight! Many have based their search engine strategies on purchasing multiple keyword-rich domains. Downplaying its importance is obviously not going to sit well with everybody. I do need to comment on what Chris and others have pointed out. What I was talking about in my article was the *direct* influence that a domain name has with the search engine's ranking algorithm. I maintain that the engines do not place much emphasis on the words in the domain name itself. But I do agree that there can be an *indirect* benefit from these domains. That's because these sites are also using keywords in the site name, the Title, the copy and the links pointing to the site. So yes...of course there is an indirect benefit that comes from having your keywords in your domain name. It becomes part of your site's identity and how other sites refer you. It encourages those linking to you to use those same keywords in your hyperlink. However, you'll get the same effect simply by naming your company something that uses the keywords. For instance, let's take my Rank Write site. I noticed a long time ago that I was ranking very high for the single word "rank." I never optimized for such a broad term, yet the site is in the top-10 in nearly every engine and directory. I had originally assumed it must be because the word was in the domain name. In fact, I mentioned this once in RW issue 060 from August 2001 <http://www.rankwrite.com/archives/issue060.htm>. (The question concerned whether to hyphenate words in the domain name.) Here's what I said: "Although I do believe that the search engines see dashes as a space, which could theoretically be helpful, I also have a gut feeling that they can also separate words in a domain name. I say this because I've seen our RankWrite.com site rank high for the one-word 'rank' in a few engines and I think it might be partially attributed to the fact that the word 'rank' is in our domain name. Again, I haven't studied this; it's just something I've noticed." Well, that was nearly a year ago. After speaking with Tom Wilde from Lycos last week, and after hearing others' opinions on the matter in my forum hangout (Ihelpyou), I now believe that having the word "Rank" in the domain name was not what was causing my top positions for that word, but having the word "Rank" in the name of the site, Rank Write. If you take a look at the backward links to the Rank Write site, a good portion of them use the name "Rank Write" in the hyperlink pointing to it. But even if the domain name was JillandHeathersRantingPlatform.com, as long as the site was still named Rank Write, the links to the site would be using the word "Rank." The thing is, it's unusual to have a site named one thing and not have its domain name match up. If I used that other domain name, I probably would also name the site "Jill and Heather's Ranting Platform." Then perhaps the site would rank highly for "Ranting" instead of "Rank." But it wouldn't be a direct result of the domain name. It would be an indirect result. Certainly if all else is equal on two sites (and this is rare), the domain name could give one site the edge; I've never disputed that. But it's really all the other indirect factors that matter much more than the actual words in the domain name. The fact of the matter is that all the evidence that anyone has sent me to show that keyword-rich domains DIRECTLY affect the rankings in the spidering search engines can *always* be explained through other means. Until I see some direct evidence where *only* the domain name is causing the high rankings, I will stick with what I've been saying all along. If you're starting a new company, then by all means, think of a keyword-rich name for it, and purchase the matching domain. I absolutely believe that's a good idea. (Not something with more than two keywords in it, however.) If you have an existing company that already has a name without keywords in it, please don't sweat it. Don't go nuts and change your company name. Don't purchase tons of extra domain names "just in case." Just do what I always say to do: Make your site the best it can be by writing about your products or services using the words that real people use. Thanks to all those at the Ihelpyou forums who helped me to clarify my stance on this matter: <http://www.ihelpyouservices.com/forums/showthread.php?s=&threadid=373 1>. ~~~Other SEO News~~~ ++Terra Lycos Launches Lycos 6.0++ Lycos has added lots of new features, including the integration of FAST's entire database (apparently the largest in the world), support for PDF searches and an extremely up-to-date news search. This is all great news for Lycos, but they will have to make a concerted effort to get the general American public to start using their search engine. (I hear they're big in the UK.) All the features in the world don't matter much to site owners and SEOs if people aren't searching there. It will be an uphill climb to get Google users to switch to Lycos, that's for sure. As I've said many times before, the title of Most Popular Search Engine is Google's to lose. They will have to screw up badly to get people to go elsewhere. And even if they do, it will still take a long time for people to switch. The problem for search engines like Lycos is that there are no signs of an imminent Google screw-up. At any rate, good luck with the new launch, Lycos. I like the look and ease of use. But I'm still using Google! (Do you ever wonder if the bigwigs at the other engines also use Google? <grin>) Read more about Lycos 6.0 here: <http://www.terralycos.com/press/pr_07_01e_02.html> and see their new interface here: <http://www.lycos.com>. ++Deceptive Search Engine Advertising++ Remember last year around this time when Ralph Nader's "Commercial Alert" filed a complaint against the search engines for deceptive advertising? They claimed that search engine ads (such as pay-per-click links) were not always clearly labeled as such, and therefore the searching public was being misled. (You can read the original complaint here: <http://www.commercialalert.org/index.php?category_id=1&subcategory_id =24&article_id=33>.) Well, the US Federal Trade Commission (FTC) has finally had a chance to respond to the complaint. You can read it in PDF format here: <http://www.commercialalert.org/PDFs/ftcresponse.pdf>. It's actually a very interesting read. Many of the search engines and directories had already started to do a better job of labeling their ads as "sponsored results"; however, it's still not always obvious to the general searching public. It will be interesting to see if the FTC's response has any effect on how the results are labeled in the coming months. The FTC also discussed pay-per-inclusion (PPI) results in their letter. These would include Inktomi listings that were paid for through companies like PositionTech. I can't imagine how they could label those types of sites, nor am I sure that they need to be labeled. At any rate, we'll see what happens! ~~~Stuff You Might Like~~~ ++Selling Subscriptions to Internet Content++ This has nothing to do with search engine optimization, but last weekend I read the entire 253-page transcript from ContentBiz's "2nd Annual Selling Subscriptions to Internet Content Summit" which was held in NYC on May 21, 2002. To tell you the truth, I assumed a word-for-word transcript of the entire event was going to be extremely boring. Much to my surprise, this very fat, spiral-bound transcript kept me enthralled the entire weekend. To be sure, I did skip through certain parts of some speakers' presentations, but most of them were riveting. I could actually picture the speakers up there at the podium giving their spiels, and they were very good! The subject matter was very interesting to me because I have had fleeting thoughts about making this very newsletter a paid subscription. From the feedback I get, and the growth in subscriber numbers each week, I do think it would be a viable option at some point. Reading the transcript regarding ten companies who have successfully made the transition was a great learning experience. The company reps shared all their secrets, including the mistakes they made along the way. One could definitely learn what to do and what not to do when making such a huge change in business models. The speakers also gave some great advice on what kinds of content could successfully move to a paid model. (I do think mine would fit...but don't worry, I don't have any plans in the works -- yet! As long as you guys keep sending me chocolate and purchasing some of the stuff I recommend, I'm cool with the status quo.) If you have great content that you're currently giving away for free but would like to start charging for, then this transcript is a *must-read*. Please note that it's not cheap. It'll set you back $199, and it's only available in printed form (shipped Priority Mail). However, if you're seriously considering making the move, you'll easily make your $199 back by not avoiding the costly mistakes of those that came before you! To learn more and/or order your copy, please visit: <http://www.site-pros.com/contentbiz>. ~~~Advisor Wrap-Up~~~ Happy birthday to me! (Oh, and to America also!). Yep, I'm a July 4th baby. There's nothing like the special feeling I get when those fireworks shoot off every year in my honor. What's that you say? The birth of our country? Shhhh...don't shatter my illusions! To all those who get my birthday off from work, enjoy it! I'll be doing my favorite thing -- working! - Jill    |
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