How Small Sites Suddenly Gain High Positions In Google SERPs

Featured Home Page Discussion This 63 message thread spans 3 pages: 63 ( [1] 2 3 )  > >   How do small sites suddenly gain high ranks
 9:36 am on Mar 21, 2013 (gmt 0)
Hi everyone, I just want to share a finding and perhaps ask if anyone has noticed the same and found any reasons behind it.

We have held position 1 on Google UK for a certain keyword for a good year or so, we have over the past couple of days dropped to P2. Thats not a huge issue but we have been replaced at the top by a site that is keyword stuffed, only has 7 backlinks to their entire domain from 2 other linking domains....A very low quality site indeed. The site in question has never been on the radar before and it has suddenly appeared from nowhere.

Also, on another site I work with, we generally hold top 5 in Google for out main keyword, 2 weeks ago, a domain less than 2 months old, suddenly appeared straight at position 3. Again their site is keyword stuffed and all there inbound links are footer links that seem to be from a link network.

Isn't this the sort of stuff Google is meant to be preventing? It seems the extreme low quality is starting to get back up there.

Any thoughts?

 12:40 pm on Mar 21, 2013 (gmt 0)
Well if they have valuable relevant information then they might deserve a high ranking regardless of whether they have many backlinks or some keyword stuffing. Their usefulness to visitors should be the main factor, not backlinks.
 1:39 pm on Mar 21, 2013 (gmt 0)
They are poorly designed affilaite sites with little unique content. Very low quality.
 2:07 pm on Mar 21, 2013 (gmt 0)
Well if they have valuable relevant information then they might deserve a high ranking regardless of whether they have many backlinks or some keyword stuffing. Their usefulness to visitors should be the main factor, not backlinks.

You are kidding?

 2:12 pm on Mar 21, 2013 (gmt 0)
In my niche I have seen a number of small sites like this. Their information is old (like 2009 old), very low number of back links yet they occupy one of the top 5 spots. This isn't just for one page most of the pages on the site ranks high.
 2:36 pm on Mar 21, 2013 (gmt 0)
It's called "fresh meat" and Google eats it up initially, sometimes...and it might last a day or two, or up to a week or two if lucky. It's a flaw in the algo as far as I'm concerned, but it's their playground.
Blackhatter's are currently having great success and fun with this "Achilles Heal" of G.
 3:09 pm on Mar 21, 2013 (gmt 0)
The short answer is that Google loves spam.

Simply buy a throw away domain, $10
buy 100,000 to 500,000 links from a mass marketer, $150
hire a freelance designer to build the site $150

When the new domain ranks, takes about 4 days, just 301 to what ever you like.

Rank and Bank, Churn and Burn, call it what you like, many in the tough niches are doing it because it works. Don't believe me? Go check out what the payday loans serps look like.

If a $500 investment brings in $1,000 or more a week, and stays there for even just 3 or 4 weeks, you make a great ROI.

Now rinse and repeat, build 10 throw away domains...

The only ones that are hurting right now are those so called white hats trying to do what Google says.

I don't wear a hat, I make money online, as the rules change so must you... or put on a white hat and get an outside job like many other failed webmasters are doing. More worried about the color of some fictitious hat, rather than making money to support their family. I am not evil, I do not wear a hat of any color, I just do what lots of testing has shown me works. I do not call it spam if someone searches for payday loans and see's my site, clicks to get their payday loan and moves on. That is a good user experience and despite what you read here, Google Loves Spam.

Sorry I have been reading these boards for years, so much BS, sometimes I need to rant a bit as so many just dont get it. Throw away the F***ing hat and make some money, once you have money, make whatever color hat site you want. But make money first by following the lead of people who are doing it now.

1- Learn how to build cheap sites that are good for the user, sell what you say you are selling.

2- Learn where to get mass links that work for cheap.

3- Now this one was the hardest for me to learn. Never, Ever, EVER fall in love with your site, just rank and bank, churn and burn, rince and repeat.

...end of rant ... enough reading, back to work everyone.

 3:17 pm on Mar 21, 2013 (gmt 0)
Well that's one way. And probably the only way for that particular niche.
 4:07 pm on Mar 21, 2013 (gmt 0)
Well that's one way. And probably the only way for that particular niche.

If it works in the tough niche, then it is even easier and cheaper to do in YOUR niche... think about it

 5:47 pm on Mar 21, 2013 (gmt 0) 7:29 am on Mar 26, 2013 (gmt 0)
Well, Thats true some sites still rank with keyword stuffing I also faced this problem last month but now that site going downward and my site getting rank well and normal to the top of SERPs. So wait and watch this site will go backward soon mate.
 11:26 am on Mar 26, 2013 (gmt 0)
Sad thing is that most of the older established sites are so riddled with penalties & other negative ranking factors that it's relatively easy to launch a new site, pepper it with links, enjoy some candy then crash & burn.

Then just 301 the links to a new site. Rinse repeat.

Unfortunately most of us are attached to our brand names.

 12:22 pm on Mar 26, 2013 (gmt 0)
Search on Google for "honeymoon period seo" you will see a lot of discussion about this phenomenon.
 1:06 pm on Mar 26, 2013 (gmt 0)
only has 7 backlinks to their entire domain

Just because you only see 7 backlinks doesn't mean those are the only backlinks the domain has.

Much like Google prevents you from seeing queries typed in by those logged into their Google Account... all domain owners can prevent you from scanning the backlinks they provide.

If you disallow a link checker from crawling... guess what?

 1:53 pm on Mar 26, 2013 (gmt 0)

appropriate name, love 'em & leave 'em

moTi

msg:4558598

 2:20 pm on Mar 26, 2013 (gmt 0)
ok, ranting time. i'll play the devil's advocate. eat this:

i can't remember that i've ever read a WebmasterWorld member stating that the fresh website who dares to rank above him is a good website with quality content and deserved the rise to the top. strangely, every time that happens, the content of the new contestants is disqualified as utter rubbish.

sadly, WebmasterWorld nowadays seems to be a pool of grayed established publishers with mostly decades-old content who most of the time do nothing else than complain about the newcomers instead of getting their act together and step up to a new level in order to face the competition. how dare others come up with fresh ideas in order to disrupt the set structures.

ranking a quality new website nowadays is so much harder than ten or five years ago. my website is top-notch in its area, it absolutely deserves to overtake the old stuff in the serps in next to no time. instead, it's a wearing and depressingly tedious fight for months and months with various setbacks for whatever reasons google decides.

i'm sick of the whining. it's pure preservation of the status quo with the established webmasters enviously only wanting to preserve their dated, meanwhile often completely useless stuff in the serps. i'd wholeheartedly welcome any step google and its algorithms take to understand the quality of new websites more rapidly.

 3:12 pm on Mar 26, 2013 (gmt 0)
Whenever these discussions come up: the factor time barely gets enough attention in the discussions. I have seen poor domains outranking the good ones, but never for longer than 6 weeks. At least not at serious terms with more than 5k search volume per month.

Google is pretty harsh, just not pretty fast - IMHO. It can happen to see crap for 6 weeks, but it will vanish or be replaced by new crap. In the past 11 years I have been playing that game, Google always repaired the glitches to the necessary levels to stay on top of their financial wealth. That this is NOT our wealth - well...

 7:17 pm on Mar 26, 2013 (gmt 0)
Yea, there is a pretty funny one in our niche. They are trying to rank for a PHP script and doing very well! A couple of sites tried their script and then removed it. Google must still be counting the removed backlinks. Meanwhile there are no backlinks pointing at it according to Majestic (except internals).
 8:10 pm on Mar 26, 2013 (gmt 0)
I have actually seen this in a SERP recently for a "lead gen" type of term. When doing a competitive analysis I could find no clear reason a new, thin site with few obvious links was ranking in the top 4 for a highly competitive term. I assumed it was an abberation or heavy link buying that the link research tools haven't caught up to yet and which Google hasn't caught up to and burned.

Churn and burn still works, just not for as long on a given domain as it used to.

 12:53 am on Mar 27, 2013 (gmt 0)
I have about 4 competitor sites which I just looked at that have been in the serps for a few months now and are slowly taking over different keywords. They are EMD domains which is not necessarily a bad thing but after looking more closely at them they are all pretty much the same. Same Wordpress type site and theme with just the graphics and content different. You can tell the same person wrote it but just changed things enough. Looking further into the backlinks from Alexa I see these sites have about 70 or so different backlinks.

I checked out over 10 of the backlinks and I see they are blogs with each about 6 articles with keyword loaded entries. They link to about 6 different sites in each article. 2 sites are usually theirs and the other 4 are genuine sites like Wikipedia, Techcrunch, etc. Some of the sites do share ips.

Basically someone created these sites which look okay at first glance and almost all of the backlinks these sites have. I am not sure how an algorithm could spot this but it just shows you the lengths people go to rank their sites.

 11:42 am on Mar 27, 2013 (gmt 0)
I am not sure how an algorithm could spot this but it just shows you the lengths people go to rank their sites.

Are the sites relevant and have any quality? If so would your question better be:

but it just shows you the lengths people HAVE TO go to rank their sites.

G's brought all this crap on themselves, they started it and now they're having to live with it and try and sort it out and the more they try the bigger mess they're getting into.

 1:45 pm on Mar 27, 2013 (gmt 0)
Are the sites relevant and have any quality?

They are about the topic but the post are just spun different ways talking about how good the product is. I would put the quality just above a scraper site. The posts are just there to sell the product.

The backlink sites are just filled with posts on different topics spun so they could include their sites using different keywords for the link.

 3:27 pm on Mar 27, 2013 (gmt 0)
ok, ranting time. i'll play the devil's advocate. eat this:

Candidly, I agree. Maybe the problem with ranking lower is 'ones content does not deserve being higher'... it's all FREE, the results that is... how can anyone complain about something they got for free.

One thing you'll never hear is Wikipedia complaining about lower ranks... they simply expand their content diversity & content appeal.

 3:42 pm on Mar 27, 2013 (gmt 0)
The only ones that are hurting right now are those so called white hats trying to do what Google says.

I don't think there's more accurate words to describe how I'm feeling right now.

Sad thing is that most of the older established sites are so riddled with penalties

I've said it before and but I'll say it again, google should stop punishing spammers and instead concentrate on rewarding sites that have an established record of doing the right thing. If you've never keyword stuffed or bought links you deserve ranking, and a medal. I want my medal.

 5:07 pm on Mar 27, 2013 (gmt 0)
If you've never keyword stuffed or bought links you deserve ranking, and a medal.

While I understand your sentiment and I know your comment was probably tongue-in-cheek, let's remember that it's not if you are a "white-hat" that determines whether you deserve to rank, it's whether you have done everything possible to actually deserve to rank. If you want to rank #1 and you can't objectively say you are the unquestioned best result for a query, then you don't "deserve" to rank #1 no matter what tactics you use.

 5:31 pm on Mar 27, 2013 (gmt 0)
It's not enough to just follow the rules.
 5:39 pm on Mar 27, 2013 (gmt 0)
Google loves spam in the organic results. It boosts their bottom line.

My hat has been getting dirtier and dirtier for a couple of years now. If you do everything white-hat and Google still bans you, accusing you of being black-hat over and over for every site you build ... guess what happens?

 9:23 pm on Mar 27, 2013 (gmt 0)
The only ones that are hurting right now are those so called white hats trying to do what Google says.
I don't think there's more accurate words to describe how I'm feeling right now.

Ya know how ridiculous that sounds!

You're just trying to... "just make a great website?"

Once upon a time Google thought... "a video sharing archive that's what we need!" They invested in video.google.com and it was a dud.

They could have tried again and created video2.google.com and if that turned out to be another dud made video3.google.com but instead they had money so they bought youtube.com

Moral...if you suck at making things great... hire the people that do that and you won't need to worry about webspam.

 9:36 pm on Mar 27, 2013 (gmt 0)
Moral...if you suck at making things great... hire the people that do that and you won't need to worry about webspam.

They had a lott of money fathom so buying youtube.com was an option.

Youtube was an incredible site, and has improved under Google. But you have to have very deep pockets to fund it. Not everyone has that kind of money. So we have a go ourselves. Try and follow the rules because there seems little other direction.

 10:38 pm on Mar 27, 2013 (gmt 0)
They had a lott of money fathom so buying youtube.com was an option.

Yes that is true. But the creators of Youtube didn't have alot of money to create Youtube, which is the point of "just making a great website".

This 63 message thread spans 3 pages: 63 ( [1] 2 3 )  > >  

View the original article here

Google AdSense Updates 5,000 Publisher Ads Giant Arrows Create Bad Clicks

Featured Home Page Discussion Have You Been Affected By The Nessie Update?
5,000 of you have! 11:11 am on Mar 15, 2013 (gmt 0)
For those wondering what may, or may not, be happening with their AdSense arrows (Nessie).

User Mike in adsense forum get response from Adsense support:

"""Thank you for your email.

On Friday 9th, a change went out that removed the arrow button (Nessie) from the text ads appearing on about ~5000 publishers websites. These publishers possibly intentionally or unintentionally have ad implementations that mislead users as measured by the rate of accidental clicks. For these publishers we will continue to serve ads but we have removed the arrow button. These changes are meant to optimize the experience for advertisers, publishers and users alike. Some of these publishers may see fluctuations in their CPCs, CTRs and/or RPMs from smart pricing due to these implementations.

We have put together this FAQ:

Q. Why is the button no longer on my website?

A. Our systems have determined that some ad elements in text ads implemented on your site are not performing well for users, advertisers, and/or the publish network, therefore, the arrow button may not display on your ads moving forward. Different ad elements may or may not appear in text ads depending on what is deemed best performing for users, advertisers, and publishers. We believe these changes will encourage advertisers to spend more on the network, and lift earnings for our publisher clients in the long term.

Q. Why was the button removed from all the pages of my website?

A. Our systems have determined that some ad elements in text ads implemented on your site are not performing well for users, advertisers, and/or the publish network, therefore, the arrow button may not display on your ads moving forward. Different ad elements may or may not appear in text ads depending on what is deemed best performing for users, advertisers, and publishers. We believe these changes will encourage advertisers to spend more on the network, and in our publisher clients in the long term.

Q. Why has my CTR gone down?

A. Clicks/CTR are largely a factor of ad type, ad rendering and ad placement amongst others. Depending on the performance of an ad unit we may change how ads are rendered to prevent accidental clicks. You may want to check your ad implementations as they may be causing users to take unintended actions. Please see How you can help to prevent invalid activity for more.

Q. Why has my CPC gone down?

A Many factors determine the performance of an ad including CTR, CPC, user intent, advertiser ROI, and others. While we can?t draw specific conclusions about your site, in general our algorithms are designed to optimize and reflect the value users and advertisers are receiving from specific ad placements.

Q. Why has my Revenue/RPM gone down?

A.. Many factors determine the performance of an ad including CTR, CPC, user intent, advertiser ROI, and others. While we can?t draw specific conclusions about your site, in general our algorithms are designed to optimize and reflect the value users and advertisers are receiving from specific ad placements.

Q. Can I do anything specific to get the button text back?

A. No. While we can?t draw specific conclusions about your site, in general our algorithms are designed to optimize and reflect the value users and advertisers are receiving from specific ad placements. This can change over time and may or may not include additional ad elements like the clickable button.

Our internal team is working on this now and will have more information on the network wide impact of these changes.

Thank you for your understanding. "

 1:17 pm on Mar 15, 2013 (gmt 0)
One of 2 sites I manage is affected (no grey arrows). It's a very high volume traffic site. My other site, small traffic like 10K pageviews a month is unaffected.
 1:50 pm on Mar 15, 2013 (gmt 0)
Yep, arrows gone from my site also. Earnings have fallen about 50%. I'm slightly positive that smart pricing will iron out my earnings to normal levels after a while, it's just reflecting the drop in clicks at present.
jpch

msg:4555282

 2:17 pm on Mar 15, 2013 (gmt 0)
5000 sites is less than 0.25% of sites running AdSense...just trying to put this in perspective of the bigger picture.
 2:25 pm on Mar 15, 2013 (gmt 0)
Nope.

Yea, the fact that there's only 5000 seems odd to me, it's such a statistically small percentage of AdSense sites. I wonder how they found them and determined they had to turn off the arrows?

 2:44 pm on Mar 15, 2013 (gmt 0)
> I wonder how they found them and determined they had to turn off the arrows?

I clicked through to a gallery site the other day that appeared to not have any navigation links at all, just a couple of AdSense ads. If I didn't know better, the AdSense arrows would be the thing I'd click to advance to the next page. Pure MFA. My hunch is Google went after high CTR sites and niches abusing the navigation angle.

 3:18 pm on Mar 15, 2013 (gmt 0)
.25% of sites but most likely those are the higher traffic sites, so a much higher percent of search traffic than .25%.
 3:26 pm on Mar 15, 2013 (gmt 0)
I don't know if I believe that 5,000 publisher number. My site that was affected, even with the arrows which definitely helped CTR still had a very low CTR. But it is so high volume that the sheer amount of "invalid clicks" must be what caught Google's attention. Honestly, the text ad relevance dip is a much bigger impact on my bottom line than the loss of the arrows.
 3:31 pm on Mar 15, 2013 (gmt 0)
Interesting that the system allowed turning of this feature on a site by site basis.

I guess it's more or less the reverse of turning on Beta features for select sites.

 3:40 pm on Mar 15, 2013 (gmt 0)
Arrow is misleading? Eureka! It's like putting a big arrow on your shop and then wonder why your customers go to the neighboring shop.

It seems I'm one of those 5000, I just realized that there are no arrows on my site.

Our systems have determined that some ad elements in text ads implemented on your site are not performing well

They are damn right.

...ad implementations that mislead...
One of my 728x90s has a small news box on the right side. I guess users thought (or google thought that users thought) the arrow is pointing to the box and clicked the box instead of the ad.

levo

msg:4555335

 3:52 pm on Mar 15, 2013 (gmt 0)
Lost the arrows (never liked them) and can't find any arrows on competitors' websites.
 4:14 pm on Mar 15, 2013 (gmt 0)
Also wonder why they named them after the Loch Ness Monster.
 4:29 pm on Mar 15, 2013 (gmt 0)
I didn't like the look of the arrows, but the extra money was nice while it lasted.
 6:33 pm on Mar 15, 2013 (gmt 0)
Still have arrows, yet no real increase in income since they were introduced. Who wants my arrows for free? I'll send them ASAP. :)
 7:03 pm on Mar 15, 2013 (gmt 0)
If I didn't know better, the AdSense arrows would be the thing I'd click to advance to the next page. Pure MFA. My hunch is Google went after high CTR sites and niches abusing the navigation angle.

Interesting observation. One that had not occurred to me. When Nessie came out my CTR definitely rose. The layout of my site has always been the same and hasn't changed since I launched it on Oct 2nd.

My site layout has longer pages, about 3-4 screens worth for each item. At the top is a leaderboard, about half way down there is a leadboard. At the bottom was a rectangle (now removed).

The ads were placed in the open (no border), while the content areas are bordered. I've now added blue rounded borders around ads, so that it's clear what part is the ad. A bit late though.

If someone thought the arrow took them to more content, I can see that. Hadn't occurred to me, but that makes a lot of sense.

I'm one of those people who eliminates ad javascript when a page is viewed from any of my own ip addresses and the ip addresses of my employees. I never wanted anyone to click on our own ads.

[edited by: Chris13 at 7:16 pm (utc) on Mar 15, 2013]

 7:15 pm on Mar 15, 2013 (gmt 0)
I only wish they would get rid of all the ads in French and Spanish on my site. Most of my visitors are from the U.S.
 8:30 pm on Mar 15, 2013 (gmt 0)
Would be better if we received this kind of notifications instead of their unhelpful suggestions. Only after reading this post I discovered that the arrows are gone from my site.
 9:22 pm on Mar 15, 2013 (gmt 0)
I didn't like the button arrows when they first started appearing, but I like them now because they've increased our CTR. As others have said, 5,000 out of something like 2 million Adsense publishers is a drop in the bucket.
 10:55 pm on Mar 15, 2013 (gmt 0)
My solution to this is just to ride it out. Google can easily see my page design before and after Nessie and see that the page design hasn't changed one bit and that my ad implementation didn't change until after figuring this out.

I expect it will take a few months for everything to settle down. I've probably lost advertisers over this and only time will bring them back, if ever.

At least now I understand it and can move forward.

CTR now is well below that of before Nessie. While this change is for 5,000 sites, the message is for all 2,000,000 and if you have an increased CTR, I'd be double checking my layouts for any positioning where people would think there might be more content on that arrow button. Just my opinion.

 12:09 am on Mar 16, 2013 (gmt 0)
Also wonder why they named them after the Loch Ness Monster.
"Update? What update? You're imagining things. There was no update."
 12:59 am on Mar 16, 2013 (gmt 0)
The arrow definitely increased the earnings on my high traffic site, by a huge margin. December/January were my biggest months ever.

Now that it's gone, the text ad CTR & CPC is laughable in comparison.

 1:42 am on Mar 16, 2013 (gmt 0)
I have a high traffic site that lost arrows. Very high earnings while they were on. I don't know why Adsense didn't turn arrows off system-wide but instead singled out specific sites. This must be one hell of a manual job - 1. Find 2. Block.
 2:33 am on Mar 16, 2013 (gmt 0)
Still have the arrows. But CTR & CPC went down in the last couple of days.
 12:27 pm on Mar 16, 2013 (gmt 0) 4:23 pm on Mar 16, 2013 (gmt 0)
i would not believe anything that google says - 5000 is just a number they are happy to announce they messed up with.
 7:14 pm on Mar 16, 2013 (gmt 0)
Have You Been Affected By The Nessie Update? Yes!

You better watch out
And it's best not to cry
No reason to pout
Wish I could tell you why
Google has me shaking my head

I've checked all my ads,
And I'm checking them twice;
Getting rid of those that are naughty not nice.
Google has me shaking my head

They see you when you're clicking
They know where you have shopped
Google knows when you are bad or good
But either way the revenue stopped

No changes to the layout, the site left alone
My clicks have disappeared enough to make me moan
Google has me shaking
Google has me shaking
Google has me shaking my head

Sorry, I do feel better now though.

 9:41 am on Mar 21, 2013 (gmt 0)
Same here as supergml. I still have the arrows but CTR and CPC went down.
levo

msg:4557303

 2:52 am on Mar 22, 2013 (gmt 0)
Got arrows back today & earnings dropped 50%.
 

View the original article here

Google AdWords: The Value of Negative Keywords

Featured Home Page Discussion Negative Keywords
Big list vs Small List 6:21 pm on Mar 24, 2013 (gmt 0)
Can a VERY big list of well thought out negative keywords have a very positive impact on an account?

I read elsewhere of people using thousands of negative keywords to improve the performance of AdWords accounts and before I go off and do more research, I like to check in here first.

For instance, can a negative keyword have a positive impact even if it isn't showing up in the SQR (Search Query Report) or as it is now termed the MSQ (Matched Search Query through Analytics)?

We all know about the positive use of general negatives like job and resume and such (for non-job related sites) but will these type words have a positive impact even if they aren't actually driving those inadvertent clicks?

I think it would - because it would lower inappropriate impressions - which in theory will improve CTR and cost per conversion.

Agree or disagree? And why?

 7:03 pm on Mar 24, 2013 (gmt 0)
Agree, because QS is primarily based on CTR, getting rid of irrelevant imps, helps.
 7:55 pm on Mar 24, 2013 (gmt 0)
others (on another channel) seem to disagree that negatives have minimal to no impact on QS...
 10:17 pm on Mar 24, 2013 (gmt 0)
Well let's use our heads and figure this one out... lets take a precise example and there are plenty of them.
1. You have a search term "Portsmouth Real Estate". and you are in Virginia selling Portsmouth, Va real estate.
2. When someone in Portsmouth, NH searches for Portsmouth Real Estate and your ad comes up "Portsmouth, Va Homes for sale and another realtors ad comes up "Portsmouth, NH homes for sale"... whose ad will normally get clicked.... of course if the person is really looking for real estate in NH... the won't click the Va ad.... so we just got an impression that's very unlikely to get clicked.. every time that happens.. "impression and no click".. your QS suffers a little bit more... not only that, I don't want him to click my ad and make me pay a dollar since he won't buy from me anyway... so not only did I lose QS score points it cost me a freaking buck cause I did not use negative keywords effectively... I should have all states but my own in the negative box.. so that alone is 51 negative keywords right off the bat... Make sense?
 10:30 pm on Mar 24, 2013 (gmt 0)
Thanks TommyTX, logically I totally agree that this type of approach will improve the performance, hands down.

...however in your particular case, I don't think negatives would prevent the search from showing as the searcher didn't enter a state name - more like geotargeting would help but that's a different subject.

Marketing wise, yes, using negative state names in that general case makes a lot of sense.

Where I'm going with this is the going consensus (that I'm trying to confirm or disconfirm) seems to be that QS applies only to exact match queries, so negatives that eliminate broad match impressions don't apply.

 1:40 pm on Mar 25, 2013 (gmt 0)
it simply comes down to CTR, as it appears you have already identified. I have run numerous experiments that shows data to backup the theory that improved CTR increases QS, and improved QS lowers CPC. Your original question was does a large negative list "...have a very positive impact on an account?"... According to my experiments I would say yes as I am defining "...a very positive impact..." as a lower cost with higher conversions. For instance... I have a DUI Attorney client located in LA, and when they came to me their average CPC for the LA County area was $46.00 a click... after I included a larger negative keyword list we saw an immediate reductions in CPC of $6.00 that first week. After continuing to make adjustments to their Ad Groups to make them more relevant and also restructering their ad variations we saw their QS increase 1-2 points for their main keywords and their CPC drop another $6.00 the following week as well.

hope this helps...

 1:56 pm on Mar 25, 2013 (gmt 0)
I've been seeing it too, for sure.

I've been picking off the bad ones for years and enjoying the benefits.

I always wondered if there was any data proving or disproving that pre-emptive negative keywords (those not found in detailed search query reports) also had a positive impact.

I'm trying to get some insight about the rifle-shot type of management where you are picking off negatives that you know vs the blindly eliminating tons of words that you don't see in query reports.

 4:08 pm on Mar 25, 2013 (gmt 0)
It is more complicated than we're all saying, of course.

For exact match, for example, negs shouldn't matter.

And the QS shown is for the exact match version of your other match types, so there's data you don't see - your QS for a non-exact match.

Eliminating searches you know don't convert well enough, makes sense whether if affects QS or not.

 5:02 pm on Mar 25, 2013 (gmt 0)
Rodger that RF!

Other reading suggests there are at least 2 QS type metrics - that which is shown (like toolbar PR) and that which is what is really going on (much like what we learn in advanced backlink analysis).

Fortunately, we have a reasonably decent view of what we're told are the actual queries, and that presently isn't being obscured as much as it once was.

Thinking this through (with all your help of course) has brought me to think up an advanced negative test case which I'll be running to see if I can boost ROI.

 7:45 pm on Mar 25, 2013 (gmt 0)
Heh I've worked on accounts where I've run up against the limit on negative keywords (at one point it was 5000, not sure if it's changed - I don't work on that account anymore)

Part of the problem was really really broad terms that could mean one of a dozen things, and part was because the client had let it their display network campaign run pretty much on autopilot for years and years and there was a lot of cleaning up to do.

 8:27 pm on Mar 25, 2013 (gmt 0)
Hi Netmeg - thanks for chiming in!

Where's eWhisper when you need him?

 8:23 pm on Mar 27, 2013 (gmt 0)
It seems there's two sides to this discussion - one is control and the other is QS.

As for control; negatives are amazing. We have many accounts with more than 100k negatives in them (and some are often 1 million - don't try this without the API). Google changed the negative keyword max from 5000 to virtually unlimited a while ago. These large negative lists are mostly for control - not for QS reasons.

From a control standpoint, you might use negatives to block ads from showing in one ad group so they show in another one. This is common when you have ad groups that are general (say website hosting); others that are discount based (cheap website hosting); and others that are specific (vps website hosting). By using your negatives to 'shape' which ad shows; your overall CTR and conversion rates should go up. In fact, if you don't use negatives in that situation, you will probably have some of the 'wrong' ads shown; and if someone is looking for a VPS, you never want to show them a general hosting ad. So using negatives for ad shaping based around what type of ad the end user should be seeing is essential in many accounts.

There are many ways you can control ad displays in this way; like some companies have absolute monthly budgets. So you might have an brand, exact, phrase match, and broad/modified broad campaigns. In this case, you'll spend all you can on your broad, exact, and phrase and use the broad to help you hit run rates. To make this work; you need all of your phrase match words as negatives in the broad campaign; and all your exact match words as negatives in the phrase campaigns.

For larger accounts, I'm a huge fan of the negative keyword lists as I often find that the negatives are not applied correctly to multiple campaigns. If you download your campaign negatives, and put them in a pivot table - look at how many negatives you have by campaign - seeing high level numbers can be enlightening.

From control to QS... So negative words won't directly affect individual word QSs as they are only calculated when the query matches the word. However, part of QS is overall QS for the account. What negatives will do is block these irrelevant queries so that you don't show for low CTR terms that don't matter for you, and then the entire account's CTR/QS will go up; which then indirectly helps a keyword's QS used in the auction. Its a bit convoluted, and since overall history isn't that huge of a deal for most accounts; the odds of you actually noticing negatives helping QS is pretty low.

So, I do find negatives are very important; but they are more essential from ensuring the correct ad shows for each query as opposed to trying to eek out slightly higher quality scores.

 8:39 pm on Mar 27, 2013 (gmt 0)
Looking at massive numbers of MSQ terms has been quite eye opening indeed. And this is on well managed (manual) accounts. We'll be seeing some nice performance improvements as a result of this deep dive I figured out how to do.

I also get to look at Marin data occasionally but I don't know the tool well enough - does Marin and other auto management tools automatically mine and apply negatives? Do you trust it?

 2:26 pm on Mar 28, 2013 (gmt 0)
Now if we could just get G to show us the kw's imps w/o any clicks... :-)
 2:33 pm on Mar 28, 2013 (gmt 0)
@RhinoFish ... exactly! been wanting that for some time now as well!
 2:38 pm on Mar 28, 2013 (gmt 0)
don't expect it anytime soon... but there are ways!
 2:53 pm on Mar 28, 2013 (gmt 0)
@chewy ... I'm looking into my keyword details report now, and am seeing a few search terms with impressions but no clicks (never noticed this before), but is there another way that you are referring to? Thanks!
 3:33 pm on Mar 28, 2013 (gmt 0)
Pretty much proprietary - some big houses claim they can see it - experience in looking at billions of words across various performance metrics is the thing that becomes valuable. Just keep looking.
 8:00 pm on Mar 28, 2013 (gmt 0)
If your account is in an MCC; you can easily get 0 click data.

If you run the search term report from the MCC; there's still the old option to include '0 impression' data' which will give you all the queries with 0 clicks but have impressions.

 2:02 am on Mar 29, 2013 (gmt 0)
If you have nothing to do for a couple of hours, read this for a mind boggling argument on what is and what is not true on quality score.
[rimmkaufman.com...]
Wow! That even made me weary about QS...But no matter what google says, I will never be convinced that Negative keyword used correctly will NOT indirectly raise the quality score of you entire campaign. IT WILL! Since we know for a fact that bad impressions will decrease, and CTR WILL increase... it has to since you are showing more ads that are more likely to get clicked... and if CTR goes up so will your QS.... its easily proven... Simply take any account with the QS averages pretty stable.. apply very careful and correct negative keywords.. a nd watch you QS overall go up... it will happen...
 1:32 pm on Mar 29, 2013 (gmt 0)
Didn't have time to read EVERY word of the article, but I find it funny that that the article title says "NEGATIVE KEYWORDS DO NOT AFFECT GOOGLE ADWORDS QUALITY SCORES"...yet the final comment by "Google Adwords Help" says..."Matthew Mierzejewski has also written a fantastic post on this topic and detailed how negative keywords impact Quality Score."...hmmm? Two articles that contradict each other? There wasn't a link to the latter so I could read that article...just found it humorous.

Taking all this in, and reviewing the original question again from chewy, I'm still of the belief that even though the QS of broad match terms are based off of it's exact match we would still see a slight increase in QS, OVER TIME, as our CTR would get better as we continue to add negatives as this would, as chewy stated earlier, "lower inappropriate impressions".

 4:11 pm on Mar 29, 2013 (gmt 0)
eWhisper, thanks, I didn't know that was still there! Always learning!

When combing Placements, the external report makes it harder to take actions, but still, great tip!

I wish they'd have this available at the account level.

 4:13 pm on Mar 29, 2013 (gmt 0)
eWhisper, aren't I looking for "0 clicks", not "0 imps"?

(yep, question for myself, will run and see)

 4:48 pm on Mar 29, 2013 (gmt 0)
Hmmm... thanks eWhisper... just ran a report from here and also added a filter to remove all terms with clicks so I could simply see terms that have impressions with no clicks... I immediately saw 3 terms that have generated around 400 impressions each over the past 90 days that haven't generated a single click. 2 of them I can see need to have improved Ad Ranking, but one is a definite candidate for removal...Thanks!

@RhinoFish ...you were saying "I wish they'd have this available at the account level."... When I just ran this report it appears that they offer the ability to select "Account and Campaigns" as a radio button. After you select it it opens your entire MCC where you can navigate to the account and/or campaign that you need...

 6:53 pm on Mar 29, 2013 (gmt 0)
Seems to work even without MCC but with some limitations that seem to apply even when viewing via MCC. Super nice!
 7:04 pm on Mar 31, 2013 (gmt 0)
"@RhinoFish ...you were saying "I wish they'd have this available at the account level."... When I just ran this report it appears that they offer the ability to select "Account and Campaigns" as a radio button. After you select it it opens your entire MCC where you can navigate to the account and/or campaign that you need..."

It lets you select for the report, correct, but it's an external report, meaning you can't click a result and convert it into a negative keyword, you're not in the account when viewing the report, you're in exported data.

Still a very great tip from eWhisper!

 

View the original article here

Google Pressurises Sweden To Drop The Word "Ungoogleable"

Featured Home Page Discussion Google Pressurises Sweden To Drop The Word "Ungoogleable"
 5:13 pm on Mar 26, 2013 (gmt 0)
LOL
This is a crazy situation to be in.

The Language Council of Sweden has dropped the term "ungoogleable" from its list of new words, following pressure from Google to adapt its definition to something more flattering for the company. According to Sveriges Radio, Google wanted the meaning of the term ogooglebar ? which describes something "that you can't find on the web with the use of a search engine" ? to be altered so that it would only describe searches performed using Google's own search, something that the Language Council was not willing to do.

Language Council head Ann Cederberg said engaging Google's lawyers took "too much time and resources," prompting it to remove the phrase from its 2012 list of new words. But that won't be the last you hear of it. Cederberg is well aware that "ungoogleable" is already a popular word in Sweden, and Google will not be able to stop locals from using it.Google Pressurises Sweden To Drop The Word "Ungoogleable" [theverge.com]

 5:55 pm on Mar 26, 2013 (gmt 0)
One term that is not "ungoogleable" is "Streisand Effect".

Mountain View needs to hire some smarter lawyers.

....

 6:52 pm on Mar 26, 2013 (gmt 0) 6:57 pm on Mar 26, 2013 (gmt 0)
At least there was no z , my speelchucker thinks that there should be..:)

re Google applying pressure about "ungoogleable/ogooglebar..

doubleplusungood ..

[edited by: Leosghost at 7:01 pm (utc) on Mar 26, 2013]

 7:01 pm on Mar 26, 2013 (gmt 0)
Sweden got a cease and desist letter?

:)

 7:16 pm on Mar 26, 2013 (gmt 0) 11:00 pm on Mar 26, 2013 (gmt 0)
It's a trademark issue. To protect their Google trademark, they need to keep "google" from being used generically to describe search.

From the article, my emphasis added...
Google wanted the meaning of the term ogooglebar ? which describes something "that you can't find on the web with the use of a search engine" ? to be altered so that it would only describe searches performed using Google's own search, something that the Language Council was not willing to do.
I'm assuming that the wording would be legally OK if it were something like...

...something "that you can't find on the web using Google"
or...
...something "that you can't find on Google" .
IANAL, but that's my guess.

 11:37 pm on Mar 26, 2013 (gmt 0)
they need to keep "google" from being used generically to describe search
Perhaps they should start closer to home:

Searches related to ungoogleable
ungoogleable words
ungoogleable quiz
ungoogleable puzzles
ungoogleable band names
ungoogleable man
ungoogleable pub quiz
ungoogleable trivia
ungoogleable riddles
Source: google.com

...

 11:57 pm on Mar 26, 2013 (gmt 0)
Uh-oh. Does that mean one of these years they're going to stomp on me for using the phrase "not google-friendly"?

On the positive side: If your words for "search-friendly" or "searchable" don't include a mention of g###, then the term "search engine" (or Swedish equivalent, duh) remains in the language. There Exist Search Engines Other Than Google ;)

 12:07 am on Mar 27, 2013 (gmt 0)
Bing results..169 000 results
#1 Urban Dictionary: ungoogleable
www.urbandictionary.com/define.php?term=ungoogleable&defid=1283366

#2. ungoogleable a word, phrase, name, person, place, or thing that is unable to be found on google, which means that it probably doesn't exist or is so rare that ...
Word Spy - ungoogleable
www.wordspy.com/words/ungoogleable.asp

n. A person for whom no information appears in an Internet search engine, particularly Google. ?adj. Also: unGoogleable, ungooglable, unGoogle-able.

mine.."impossibility to bowl a cricket ball whose trajectory takes it along the ground, due to the the unevenness of the ground,( possibly caused by mountain view lawyers lying[sic?] in the way ) or to shoulder injury"

Wonders if the "bosses" at Google could currently "get over themselves", even with the aid of a Saturn 5 launch rocket..

 2:26 am on Mar 27, 2013 (gmt 0) 3:09 am on Mar 27, 2013 (gmt 0)
btw, I had to read the first post three times before it percolated into my head that "ogooglebar" is the actual Swedish word they're talking about. Led astray by the phonetic accident of "bar", obviously.

o = "un-"
-bar = "-able", "-ible"

D'oh!

D'you suppose this will shortly be followed by similar stories from Norway and Denmark, replacing "o-" with "u-"? What about Germany?

Speakers of languages like English that don't have an Academy-- in any country-- are sitting pretty.

 3:17 am on Mar 27, 2013 (gmt 0)
LIA will no doubt tell us it is also a nightclub in a NSFW district of the capital of Thailand..

added..is it not also the name for the part in Chrome where you type the search term ?

 5:15 am on Mar 27, 2013 (gmt 0)
Ogooglebar is a traditional Swedish Christmas Carol.

(Loosely translated...)

Ogooglebar, Ogooglebar,
How busy are your lawyers!
My rankings suck in wintertime
And still they fall in Panda time.
Ogooglebar, Ogooglebar,
How busy are your lawyers!

Ogooglebar, Ogooglebar,
You can never please me!
Your algo's bad when I rank low
My links are spam when on blog rolls.
Ogooglebar, Ogooglebar,
You can never please me!

Ogooglebar, Ogooglebar,
Matt Cutts can teach us lessons.
I've lost the faith and hope sublime
Since text link ads became a crime.
Ogooglebar, Ogooglebar,
Matt Cutts can teach us lessons.

 9:23 am on Mar 27, 2013 (gmt 0)

they need to keep "google" from being used generically to describe search.

Did Hoover ever succeed regarding vacuum cleaners?
 9:58 am on Mar 27, 2013 (gmt 0)
Did Hoover ever succeed regarding vacuum cleaners?
Don't know.

Am I allowed to Bing it?

...

 10:47 am on Mar 27, 2013 (gmt 0)
Did Hoover ever succeed regarding vacuum cleaners?
Depends what country you're in, doesn't it.
 11:18 pm on Mar 27, 2013 (gmt 0)
When Google does things like this it reminds me of "the brain" on TV, that kids show with the mouse that keeps plotting to rule the world. It never works out in the end.
 1:00 am on Mar 28, 2013 (gmt 0)
Pinky and the Brain..
You mean Larry and Sergey..Eric was added later by the ( producers / VCs ) money men..

"It never works out in the end" in the TV version..because they don't have "Eric"..in the real world ,with "Eric"..it's working out just fine..depending on your ( mountain)view point..

 1:59 am on Mar 28, 2013 (gmt 0)
It's a trademark issue. To protect their Google trademark, they need to keep "google" from being used generically to describe search.

Bing was running a major TV ad campaign using "don't get scroogled" at one point, now they've changed it to "Bing it on" with consumer "taste tests" as it were. Maybe they just don't want to tangle with Microsoft.

 10:17 am on Mar 28, 2013 (gmt 0)

Censorship raises it's ugly head once again.

"Thou shalt not take the name of the Lord thy Gooogle in vain"

Give it a free reign and it soon becomes blasphemy.

Interesting NewStatesman article follows...

birdbrain

 8:42 am on Mar 29, 2013 (gmt 0) 

View the original article here

Google to Target "Bad Merchants"

Featured Home Page Discussion This 41 message thread spans 2 pages: 41 ( [1] 2 )  > >   Google to Target "Bad Merchants"
 5:13 pm on Mar 11, 2013 (gmt 0)
Danny reported on a discussion at SXSW regarding Google working on an algorithm to find and demote "bad merchants". They don't give any specifics of course, but the general feeling is to look for signals beyond reviews, because there are so many fake reviews.

Matt Cutts says:

We have a potential launch later this year, maybe a little bit sooner, looking at the quality of merchants and whether we can do a better job on that, because we don?t want low quality experience merchants to be ranking in the search results.

Article here.

[searchengineland.com...]

Heads up.

 7:20 pm on Mar 11, 2013 (gmt 0)
With the pay-for-play Google Shopping now rolled out, I think this may well be the most controversial update ever.
 7:29 pm on Mar 11, 2013 (gmt 0)
if (adwords=='no') {merchant='bad'}
 7:31 pm on Mar 11, 2013 (gmt 0)

if (adwords=='no') {merchant='bad'}

Yup. Was my first thought, too.

 7:51 pm on Mar 11, 2013 (gmt 0)
I'm thinking it's more if Google Trusted Store = no.
 8:16 pm on Mar 17, 2013 (gmt 0)
I've looked at the Trusted Store and everything about it stinks. There are a lot of requirements which your average 'great' store is not able to meet...ever... due to the way it works. Their definition of store is only a small portion of how people actually operate.
 10:02 pm on Mar 17, 2013 (gmt 0)
My guess is this is a tactic to get people to sign on for the "Google Trusted Store" program. As with "Google Product Search", it will be free at first, as the initial benefit is to Google. Once they have enough merchants hooked, the product will be sunset, and replaced with a paid program.
 3:24 pm on Mar 19, 2013 (gmt 0)
Once they have enough merchants hooked, the product will be sunset, and replaced with a paid program.
Good call on that.
 6:11 am on Mar 20, 2013 (gmt 0)
I'm sure my A+ BBB rating will have no bearing on the beating about to befall our site...again.
 6:27 am on Mar 20, 2013 (gmt 0)
I contacted G the other day about this as my products are mainly downloaded rather than shipped. I'm pretty sure their response was copy/paste, but basically if you can't provide shipping info on most orders you don't even qualify for the program among many other requirements. There was, however, that classic G open ended comment along the lines of they 'may' change the program in the future.

Does this strike anyone else as odd that their program doesn't support downloadable products? I mean we are talking about the web/internet.

 10:03 am on Mar 20, 2013 (gmt 0)
I think they'll gain less traction with this than g+. But honestly I don't think it matters to them, really just another tool to dilute the serps.
 11:51 am on Mar 20, 2013 (gmt 0)
Another hurdle in the way for affiliate marketers? Will all affiliate marketing sites be labelled as 'Bad Merchants' in Google's eyes - except of course Google themselves?
 12:17 pm on Mar 20, 2013 (gmt 0)
Trusted Stores is only available to US merchants at the moment so if "bad merchant" treatment is dished out elsewhere in the world before it's available to merchants elsewhere, we'll know that's not how they're identifying bad merchants.

Mind you, the requirements are quite stringent so if you qualify and maintain the standards over a long period of time it would add a lot of credibility to your business in Google's eyes. They'd be crazy not to factor that into the algo.

Some big brands struggle to provide the sort of personal service customers really want, but this is what small business is great at, so this could be a way for smaller businesses to fight back against big brands in the rankings.

I think they must have another method for identifying bad merchants, but it would make sense for them to boost rankings for sites with great Trusted Store ratings.

@ethought
After looking at the 'Eligibility' section it looks pretty clear Google don't regard affiliates or drop shippers as 'trusted' merchants. The writing has been on the wall for years and the noose is tightening.

 12:34 pm on Mar 20, 2013 (gmt 0)
Another hurdle in the way for affiliate marketers?

well, let's see, directly from the trusted store participation agreement:

Restrictions

No Affiliates, Drop-Ship Consolidators, or Multi-Level Marketers

Each Merchant participating in the Program must be the merchant and seller of record, meaning that the Merchant charges the customer?s credit card directly and ships or causes to be shipped the customer?s order. Drop-shipping is permitted, provided the Merchant is not working primarily through drop-ship consolidators or ready-made drop-shipping sites. Merchants bulk listing products fulfilled through drop-ship consolidators are prohibited. Multi-level marketing businesses are also prohibited, such as businesses that recruit members or offer rewards for recruiting others and/or selling services.

 1:05 pm on Mar 20, 2013 (gmt 0)
I've had an e-commerce website for 6 years - sold tens of thousands of items to thousands of customers. I wonder - how do I prove that to Google? Hand over customer information? Do they do a test purchase from our site?
 1:24 pm on Mar 20, 2013 (gmt 0)
If you're talking about the Google Trusted Store program, they require a feed of your orders and your shipping and your returns. And they give your customers the opportunity to give feedback on how you did.

If you're just saying in a general sense - we don't know what they'll be looking at yet. One thing that seems pretty obvious is that they'll be looking for fake reviews. What other things could they look at? Maybe how long you've been around, how "acccountable" you look - i.e. physical addresses, pictures/names of staff, whether you have a storefront. Large numbers of bad reviews? I'm not sure how that would work in conjunction with uncovering fake reviews, but *I* use it when I'm researching a new vendor, so seems like Google would to some degree. Social media presence? They can't really see much except for Google+, and none of my customers nor my clients customers are there.

Dunno. We'll just have to see.

 2:25 pm on Mar 20, 2013 (gmt 0)
they require a feed of your orders and your shipping and your returns

That's interesting. The natural question is how much data will they need....names and addresses? Seems like a privacy problem if they want to dig too deep. I of course have that information, but my privacy policy is pretty standard - I don't hand over customer details to 3rd parties. Still, if Google ever cross that seemingly inevitable rubicon and demote non-Trusted Stores in Google's SERPs, or place a message in the SERPs along the lines of "[warning: not a member of our Trusted Store Program]" under non-member listings, then you can bet store owners will want to hand over as much customer info to Google as possible just to join the program and not go bust :(

 2:33 pm on Mar 20, 2013 (gmt 0)
netmeg, as you know, in my other thread about the Merchant center recognizing my product feed as having problems. Is it possible that the warning we have just received about a large number of our products be tied into this? It might be a stretch, as I'm not sure if they issue these types of warnings all the time, it's just the first I've seen or heard of it.
 2:36 pm on Mar 20, 2013 (gmt 0)
to clarify, I wonder if a lot of merchants are going to be recieving messages like this and if they've ramped up their manual inspections of feeds in order to crack down on incorrect product identifiers in order to find those who don't comply and mark them as 'bad merchants'.
 2:47 pm on Mar 20, 2013 (gmt 0)
I doubt it. The product feeds are now tied to AdWords and they're still trying to maintain a clear distance between what happens with AdWords and what happens with organics.

(Yea, I know, lots of people don't believe that, but that's their lookout)

 6:40 pm on Mar 20, 2013 (gmt 0)
If you're talking about the Google Trusted Store program, they require a feed of your orders and your shipping and your returns.

Umm.. that would be a violation of privacy.... and considering that Google has no real problem turning over information to the government, then there's a real problem.

Why would merchants be so willing to turn over order and customer information to a third party.

It's against our privacy policy and we wont do it.

 6:52 pm on Mar 20, 2013 (gmt 0)
A roll out of this to the EU would not get past legislators here ..privacy, competition, restrictive trade practices, banking and finance regulations..etc etc ..

Plus IMO..( having read the TOS there ) anyone signing upto this elsewhere would need their heads examining..giving all that data to G ( with the distinct probability that they would use it to shaft you later ) ..in response to the thinly veiled threat of ..SERPs positions might depend on this..and non participation would result in lack of our "Google trusts this site" badge..

Reads like a protection racket.."bend over to be a "trusted" site ..or it may well go badly for you in the short term"..and in the long term they'll use it against you any way ..even if only to up the cost of your adwords..

 7:34 pm on Mar 20, 2013 (gmt 0)
Well in the first place, they don't take any customer information unless the customer opts in (and even then it's just the email address and country) Everything else is specific to the order, the products, the quoted shipping date and the merchant.

The shipping and return feeds are also anonymous as far as the customers, and don't include any address information. Just the order number, the shipping company and the date. They take this to make sure you ship when you say you ship.

 8:05 pm on Mar 20, 2013 (gmt 0)
Just the order number, the shipping company and the date. They take this to make sure you ship when you say you ship.

(my emphrasis)

Well again - interesting. I tend to use Royal Mail (I'm in the UK) because my parcels are small. There is no "record" of such deliveries unless you choose recorded delivery which is significantly more expensive when you're sending out dozens of parcels a day. A lot of e-sellers use Royal Mail in this way. I'm sure most countries have a standard mailing setup like Royal Mail that allows for low-cost shipping. I guess it's another step toward "officialdom" where we will have to spend more on shipping just to have a paper-trail just to please Google.

[edited by: ColourOfSpring at 8:06 pm (utc) on Mar 20, 2013]

 8:06 pm on Mar 20, 2013 (gmt 0)
netmeg :)

That is still more information than would be legal for them to have about your customers if they ran this in the EU..

And as regards EU customers purchasing from US sites ( even if the customer "opts in" ) ..Google would still have to apply for ( and get registration approval ) before being able to hold this kind of EU customers data..yes even just email and physical address..precisely because the customer is not purchasing directly from G..

Rules are much stricter her e about who can know what and who can do what ( thankfully ) than they are in the USA..Google would probably also have to register as a credit organisation ( and be subject to the various financial services acts etc of EU member states ) in order to be able to offer their "money back" part of the deal..

IMO G will not try to roll this out in the EU..

They would not want to have to comply with all the legislation ( consumer, competition, financial services, insurance , credit, banking services etc )..and first time any EU customer ( even one who may have signed up ) has a problem with Google as a result of any of this..the pitfalls for G will be come self evident..

I would expect that EU companies ( not being eligible to "sign up" ) will also shout if they appear lower in serps ..or if the lack of G's "badge of trust" in serps appears to affect their business..

I often wonder if Larry, Sergey and Eric ( or their lawyers ) truly understand the cultural and legal differences between the USA and the rest of the world..

It frequently appears that they do not..or if they do..that they do not take them seriously enough..not every legislator can be lobb^^^^ought off..not in the EU anyway..

MS and Apple and other US corps appear to have a similar "comprehension" problem when viewing or dealing with the world outside of the USA..

 8:17 pm on Mar 20, 2013 (gmt 0)
Well in the first place, they don't take any customer information unless the customer opts in (and even then it's just the email address and country) Everything else is specific to the order, the products, the quoted shipping date and the merchant.

netmeg, just realised....I guess that would mean having a tickbox on your checkout page along the lines of "can we pass on your email address to Google?" - I can't imagine a lot of people ticking that, and might even put people off buying (as a shopper, that would seem absolutely unnecessary from my - the shopper's - perspective).

IMO G will not try to roll this out in the EU..

I agree. One good thing about the EU is that's it's curtailed so much of Google's invasiveness in Europe.

 8:27 pm on Mar 20, 2013 (gmt 0)
More along the lines of "if you want to give us feedback about your transaction with this site, sign up here" I think.

Google has plenty of lawyers all over the world, and if it doesn't pass EU legal muster, then they won't roll it out in the EU. So far anyway, there's no promise of better SERPs whether you have it or don't, and nobody's being forced into it. But from what I've seen, they're not having too much trouble getting US vendors to sign up.

 8:37 pm on Mar 20, 2013 (gmt 0)
Google has plenty of lawyers all over the world, and if it doesn't pass EU legal muster, then they won't roll it out in the EU.
Not to drag the thread off topic ..but just to say ..privacy / street view / driveby wi-fi recording /EU ongoing investigations..G's lawyers in the EU are not doing too good a job avoiding trouble for them to date..

And that is just the brief list..it actually is much bigger..so is the list of MS and other US corps errors vis a vis EU laws and culture..

So much easier to not walk into the minefield than to try to get out of it once you are in there..

So far anyway, there's no promise of better SERPs whether you have it or don't, and nobody's being forced into it. But from what I've seen, they're not having too much trouble getting US vendors to sign up.
I suspect the message from G about "not being trusted by G" is subtle enough , not to be easily seen as "forcing"..iron fist , velvet glove...US . merchants will be reading between the lines..

 8:47 pm on Mar 20, 2013 (gmt 0)
G's lawyers in the EU are not doing to good a job avoiding trouble for them to date..
And yet, they still get paid. Nice racket.

Marshall

 9:21 pm on Mar 20, 2013 (gmt 0)
I suspect the message from G about "not being trusted by G" is subtle enough , not to be easily seen as "forcing"..iron fist , velvet glove...US . merchants will be reading between the lines..

Leosghost, like any agent with power, they don't need to be explicit. A bouncer just has to stand by a door - the implication of his role is made simply by his size and his position near the door.

Question: how often do Google reassure us little webmasters with our concerns (esp. since Panda and Penguin roll-outs)? Never. There is an overwhelming cloud hanging over every website owner that relies on Google (i.e. most websites, sadly), and Google do nothing to calm those fears. In fact, they thrive off it. Their guidelines are more a list of warnings than recommendations. GWT really IS a list of warnings and alarms to make you paranoid. Purely from a business perspective, I do not blame Google for maximising this kind of leverage.

In regards to the data that Google would require for this program, they would obviously benefit from that kind of data enormously - yes, it proves a vendor is sending out the goods, but...come on - an email address + country + order details = very very useful information for a company whose sole job is to turn that kind of valuable data into profits.

This 41 message thread spans 2 pages: 41 ( [1] 2 )  > >  

View the original article here

Google, Google News, marketing services

Discuss the premium home page Google says, Google News is a non-marketing services
On March 28, 2013 (gmt 0) at 5: 51 pm
Well, that was on him in Google News.

Be careful, it'll hit me.

Google News violates our quality guidelines and marketing services when we have to use this kind of promotional strategies, consider an article.

Remember, just like Google search, Google News, quality guidelines violation takes action on the site. Engaged in fraudulent or promotional tactics such as the above articles, or even the entire publication, may be removed from Google News.

Site news content affiliates, promotional, advertorial, mix, marketing materials (for your company, or anyone else), we strongly recommend other non-news content directory, or if you remove a host is blocked on my robots.txt crawl only news articles on Google News Sitemap. Otherwise, we learn the news content and promotional content mix, we are not A Google News Google News.Google, marketing services [googlenewsblog.blogspot.co.uk] can be excluded from the entire publication.

On March 28, 2013 (gmt 0) 9: 08 pm
> Site mixes news content partnerships, advertorial, or marketing materials, promotions

ER ... For example, a newspaper like?

The company from their servers to eliminate all possible Web sites seem to be intent on. I'm glad I don't rely on them anymore.

albo

msg:4559348

On March 28, 2013 at 9: 17 pm (gmt 0)
Dstiles-Google as part of their "clean-up" in the "search" feature to uninstall?
On March 29, 2013 (GMT 0) 4: 21 pm
Google some of the guidelines and they instead they are forbidden for you want to see the vague language for an example of be would lay down if it is a good thing.

Product launch news or marketing materials? Company merger news or PR? Upcoming IPO news or marketing vehicle to sell a stock? Press release news or marketing materials? The announcement of a new AdWords feature news or marketing materials?

On March 29, 2013 (GMT 0) 4: 42 pm
Google has a few instructions and they will ban you for vague language instead, wants to see an example of it would be nice if that would lay it down
Why are they so far as well;) Served the will to break the habit

My grandmother used to say. .. "They can knit the fog had money from it if they are thinking" ...

On March 29, 2013 (GMT 0) 7: 19 pm
«How to get rid of the competition for a vague policy background as one of the best. I asked Yelp.
On March 29, 2013 (GMT 0) 8: 06 am
Albo-I doubt it: they just pretended that they already have scratched it's new data. :)
 

View the original article here

MakeupAlley.com - Google AdSense Case Study Website Teardown!

Featured Home Page Discussion This 42 message thread spans 2 pages: 42 ( [1] 2 )  > >   MakeupAlley.com - AdSense Case Study Website Teardown!
Finding Out What Accounts for 50% Earnings Increase 10:48 pm on Mar 21, 2013 (gmt 0)
Latest post [adsense.blogspot.ie] at Official AdSense Blog announces newest case study, MakeUpAlley.com [makeupalley.com]Case Study PDF here. [services.google.com]

The results are pretty dramatic, although a before and after screenshot would be helpful to see the previous ad placements. Archive.org has a record but it's not apparent where the ads were placed from their snapshot. Archive.org snapshot here:

http://www.webmasterworld.com/r.cgi?f=89&d=4557249&url=http://web.archive.org/web/20110426015647/http://makeupalley.com/ [web.archive.org]

A side by side review shows that the new MUA site only has two navigation choices in the nav bar, compared with eight choices last year. Site visitors are now funneled to the Product Reviews section (an obvious money page section) and the forums. Fonts and layout look identical.

Gone is the link to the Links section and the link to Favorites is also removed. Somewhat redundant so no surprise. Also gone are links to MY MUA, Swap, Mail, and Diary. What they did to the navbar was create a tighter focus on driving site visitors to the money pages and to their community (content creation & site stickiness).

Clicking through to the Product Reviews section and doing a side by side review reveals a web page layout that is essentially the same. The site is supposed to be highly successful.

What do you think? Big change? Meh? Any lessons here?

Goals
? Improve user experience
? Increase user engagement

Approach
? Revamped landing page with simplified design
? Grouped, highlighted affiliate links,related content
? Made product ratings, reviews stand out
? Reorganized AdSense ad units
? Used Google Analytics to conduct A/B test

Results
? 171% increase in on-site interactions
? 21% more clicks on affiliate links
? 50% lift in AdSense revenue

 12:22 am on Mar 22, 2013 (gmt 0) 12:39 am on Mar 22, 2013 (gmt 0)
I'll have to look at it when I have time to create an account - I'm still flabbergasted that you can't see most of the site without registering.
 12:45 am on Mar 22, 2013 (gmt 0)
It probably helps that they are begging for ad attention. I visited the site and was greeted with the following message:

It seems you are blocking ads for this site.

Please be aware that MakeupAlley relies on advertising as an income. To support MakeupAlley you don't have to disable your ad blocker completely but only for this site.

 1:16 am on Mar 22, 2013 (gmt 0)
Well, I will go back to what I said about RealCarTips.com. They made changes that work to appeal to their most profitable segment of the audiance.

A person who wants to buy wants to know "Am I looking at the right product?", "Is this product well rated/good?" And "Oh look, a place to buy it..."

Before, the page was set to appeal to everyone - be they lookie loos or actual shoppers - and when you aim to please everyone, you don't really please anyone. The new page is geared almost exclusivly to a shopper who is already into the sales process and just needs confirmation to buy.

Lesson: pick your best (read most profitable) audience and please them the best. Ad income will increase because they will buy.

 1:55 am on Mar 22, 2013 (gmt 0)
The new page is geared almost exclusivly to a shopper who is already into the sales process and just needs confirmation to buy.
IBAs and geo-targeting rather defeat that on the site though..I visited 10 different pages and each time got adsense for Ski resorts or ski equipement ( in French from French advertisers <= who really push their stuff at end of season..I have not been looking at ski resorts or related sites )..saw only one adsense ad for cosmetics ( top banner spot..each time for the same budget French cosmetic site ) ..actually their links to ebay were the most "in your face" things I noticed..

Colour scheme is very well suited to the subject ..and the ads delivered ( image ads blend well with it ) ..simple to navigate ( as far as one can do so before hitting the "register wall" )..clear..good choice of sizes via the "switcher" in the footer..

Obviously aiming for the under 40 audience..( font size is a little small for over 40s ..yes I see the font size switcher ..but I'd put it at the top too )..easy to see why it would be "sticky" for its target audience..

The community aspect of it works well, I can imagine ( and from thread lengths there it appears to be the case ) that the visitors comments, reviews and dialogues sell it for many..

Only see a button to pinterest..no facebook "like" ..and definitely no G+ ..button choices make sense for their market ..

Didn't read anything of what G said about it..just assessed it as a male visitor with design background and knowledge of the womens fashion* and accessories market would..

*I have some apparel sites..mainly womens stuff , my designs / brand..luxury / expensive..I do not run adsense on them..

 2:31 am on Mar 22, 2013 (gmt 0)
IBAs and geo-targeting rather defeat that on the site though..

...just assessed it as a male visitor

Ahh, but see, this page of not for you. You mean nothing to it and so they don't cater to you (no offense, although if you are working a metrosexual thing... ;) ). This page is for tech savvy, young, female and on the verge of being ready to buy makeup. The IBAs would be for makeup. They would have already done their lookie loo reasearch, so their IBA would reflect that. I am not saying it works for every visitor. I am saying in only works for the ones who are ready to buy. And that is who you want anyway.

 3:04 am on Mar 22, 2013 (gmt 0)

Agree with you on the IBAs ( and no I haven't got the legs for other than "metro french" ..nor the interests, I'm one of the small number of designers of womens wear who are only interested in women..:)..the aggressive geo-targeting by G is a shame though..it seems 90% of the time to over ride even IBAs..( for me the adsense on the BBC is always for "expat investment opportunities" and QROPS..

I suspect that even if I suggested to my wife to surf for an hour or so, and then visit makeupalley, that our IP showing on G's radar, would still result in adsense for French ski resorts and kit ( which will be hyped until after easter ) in most of the ad slots available on that site..

G being too simplistic..

Ads relevant to the site subject ( remember the "good old days" of site relevant ads, prior to IBAs and re-targeting ) ..would do better for G and MUA..particularly when one considers just what the annual spend is in France on cosmetics and fashion etc ( one of the highest per capita spends in these consumer sectors in the world ) ..and where L'Or?al and other major cosmetic groups and fashion companies are based..

The site works well though, despite G's sledgehammer approach to geography..congrats to MUA inc ( if it is anyone here, or if they read this at some point :) even the "registration nag" is probably an extremely efficient "hook" to keep the visitors coming back once they have given details ( we, here, are far more reticent about doing so than the average website's visitors, particularly in MUA's demographic )..well put together, and, as you said, tight and focused..

 4:47 am on Mar 22, 2013 (gmt 0)
Results

? 21% more clicks on affiliate links
? 50% lift in AdSense revenue

anyone notice if there were affiliate links on pages with adsense?

 5:03 am on Mar 22, 2013 (gmt 0)
So these sites are supposed to be the "role models" for guidance. Right? Otherwise why feature them?

No arrows.

Guess they're one of the 5000 bottom of the barrel.

 11:50 am on Mar 22, 2013 (gmt 0)
Thanks hannamyluv, I think you zeroed in on one of the major reasons why the site improved its earnings. The official Google Case Study PDFs are short on details. It's really nice to dig down and find the real reasons some of these sites are doing better! :)
 1:01 pm on Mar 22, 2013 (gmt 0)
Please be aware that MakeupAlley relies on advertising as an income. To support MakeupAlley you don't have to disable your ad blocker completely but only for this site. Surely, one could construed that it was bringing attention to the adverts, or even hinting to click on them.

With that, and the invalid privacy policy, I am surprised Google didn't thoroughly check out the site before telling the world about it.

 1:54 pm on Mar 22, 2013 (gmt 0)
Surely, one could construed that it was bringing attention to the adverts, or even hinting to click on them.
That's the impression it left on me too. Using the Firefox add-on RequestPolicy when I arrive on the site the page is totally non-functional until I allow a call to an external resource that presumably feeds their CSS. From that point the page renders properly but I still would have to allow another call to Adsense to see the ads (I didn't in spite of the puppy-eyed plea).

I can understand a warning message indicating that proper site functionality requires javascript to be enabled. However they are not concerned about that. Instead the immediate emphasis is on the ads.

I thought I've read in these forums before that it's a violation of Adsense TOS to beg for attention on your ads? But this is a google sanctioned case study so I guess not huh?

jpch

msg:4557418

 2:54 pm on Mar 22, 2013 (gmt 0)
I wonder if they are a Premium Publisher and have been granted so sort of pass on the notice about ads? I would think the Privacy Policy would have to comply regardless of being a Premium Publisher or not.

My take away - very sloppy work on Google's part to feature a site with such obvious questions that aren't explained or answered by Google.

 4:26 pm on Mar 22, 2013 (gmt 0)
Nice thread.

I find it difficult to get by because I'm not part of that niche. I find it as a website I would never build, it goes against many things I believe in, in terms of web design. I really don't see (good) content it's just a few lines and then user generated content but it makes sense in that way. Weird.

But as the previous example the ads became really visible to me after the third click inside the site.

 4:34 pm on Mar 22, 2013 (gmt 0)
I actually think all that is beside the point. Their biggest plus is that they are capturing the user at almost the perfect time in the buying cycle. That's always going to be the best kind of site for AdSense, whether you're about makeup, cars, or trips to DisneyWorld.

I also admire that they've obviously built their own gated community. Probly don't care much about Google updates at all.

 5:11 pm on Mar 22, 2013 (gmt 0)
Great. Now makeup adds are following me around.
 6:06 pm on Mar 22, 2013 (gmt 0)
Their biggest plus is that they are capturing the user at almost the perfect time in the buying cycle.

Agreed. Lines up with the old saying that it's not about how much traffic but what kind of traffic. Focusing on quantity of traffic at the expense of actively cultivating traffic on the buy cycle can slow down monetization.

...the ads became really visible to me after the third click inside the site.

Is that a coincidence or is it possibly a way to cultivate higher paying clicks, return visits, and decrease bounce rates?

 8:16 pm on Mar 22, 2013 (gmt 0)
Surely, one could construed that it was bringing attention to the adverts, or even hinting to click on them.

Funny, I was thinking the same thing and the way it's worded I think it's a violation of the AdSense policy that plainly states you can't entice people to click the ads.

However, only people with ad blockers are seeing this message and based on tests I ran in the past the odds of getting people to either enable javascript or disable the ad blocker are pretty small, they tend to just go away.

However, this site is a real estrogen magnet and if you're looking for that stuff and this site fit the niche you needed I can see people disabling ad blockers just for that site.

However, I would reword the message more to fit within the AdSense guidelines like my message that simply stated that the site required javasscript enabled and ad blockers disabled in order to view all of the content as some content was being delivered via ad networks and other feeds that were being disabled inadvertently as technical collateral damage. Basically, if you wanted the full experience, you needed to disable all blocking technology.

Then I shifted gears for a while and simply blocked the site altogether when ad blocking was enabled vs. putting up a big message on the site to see if that would cause higher engagement and it got about the same results as a message on the page.

But I never enticed anyone to click the ads whatsoever and find their wording over the top by pointing out they use those ads to earn revenue which could be a factor in some of the increase in AdSense via "tip" clicking assuming ad blocking is being disabled.

 9:41 pm on Mar 22, 2013 (gmt 0)
What I find weird: blocking those that block ads from accessing our sites.

Esp. when it's established you cannot make them stop blocking ads, then why bother: just let them have the content the cost to us in negligible to let them have it anyway. And there is a benefit in it for us in letting them have it: the potential referral they might make elsewhere to you if if only 1 in milion does it it's better than nothing...

 10:01 pm on Mar 22, 2013 (gmt 0)
ust let them have the content the cost to us in negligible to let them have it anyway.

I think you miss the point that often on this type of site that the ads themselves ARE the content. Give you a quick for instance in that a page about WHERE TO BUY CAMERAS with reviews and such can only direct you to the locations selling the cameras if you have ads enabled making the page completely useless without the ads which is why I blocked it entirely as an experiment.

Likewise, if you land on a page about Philedelphia Plumbers why in the heck would you block ads from local plumbers when it is actually the valuable content you seek!

FWIW, in most affiliate situations it's all ads, including the advertorial text being used from those advertisers, so why in the heck would you let them read the advertorial without actually being able to give the advertiser that created that content the ability to benefit from their content?

Not applicable to all sites, but applicable to many.

FYI, I got my kitchen remodeled on the cheap from a local vendor running a test ad in Facebook and had I blocked those ads I'd have never found the contractor I wanted and they did a fabulous job inexpensively and my neighbors come to look at our kitchen as an example and have even brought in other contractors to show them :)

Unlike any other form of print medium you can't block ads in newspapers, magazines, etc. unless some wacko cuts them out which I've witnessed thus depriving others of the experience.

Now I'm off to get a $5 cheesesteak sandwich that I saw advertised in an ad yesterday because I don't block them and am about to enjoy the benefits of seeing them..

 10:26 pm on Mar 22, 2013 (gmt 0)
For all clarity: I'm not advocating blocking ads.

If the ads are the content, ...
That's wrong on so many levels. Anyway, nothing I ever want to make, run nor visit.
No matter what it pays.

Erku

msg:4557597

 10:43 pm on Mar 22, 2013 (gmt 0)
Very interesting. I am reading these comments and not have finished yet. But someone mentioned about relevant ads. while it's true that they are great, there is something you need to know.

Relevant ads usually = cheap ads
Behavioral and retargeted ads = more expensive clicks

on average.

We have had many relevant ads, but we had more clicks, cheaper clicks, less revenue and more traffic going out.

 10:51 pm on Mar 22, 2013 (gmt 0)
Server Time: almost 9 minutes late.

What is the purpose of displaying current date/time if it is incorrect?

 11:25 pm on Mar 22, 2013 (gmt 0)
Alexa traffic rank is 2,528 (US)

Google Adsense to monetize this level of visitors?

Bull#*$! all around...with that kind of traffic (?) I would expect every cosmetic company of the world to compete for advertisement slots paying REAL money instead of Adsense pennies.

Bull#*$!

 11:34 pm on Mar 22, 2013 (gmt 0)
Bull#*$! all around...with that kind of traffic (?) I would expect every cosmetic company of the world to compete for advertisement slots paying REAL money instead of Adsense pennies.

My BS alarm hasn't gone off, and I'm pretty sensitive to that kind of stuff.

AdSense ads are a whole lot easier to run than to have a separate set of employees to sell, manage and bill advertisers.

The site is pretty rudimentary, so I doubt any kind of advanced advertisement system has been implemented.

 11:39 pm on Mar 22, 2013 (gmt 0)
They have plenty of affiliate ads too. I think their strategy is spot on (not all of us make "pennies" with our AdSense - and the cosmetic industry is pretty darn competitive)
 11:41 pm on Mar 22, 2013 (gmt 0)
Alexa traffic rank is 2,528 (US)

A) Alexa does not mean anything. Nor does Compete, Quancast or any other of the "traffic reporting" sites. All they are good for is comparing one site to another in the same niche. Their reports are worthless beyond that. And, really, Alexa is the most worthless of the lot.

B) Ah, yeah, like top companies have a army of people who just search out good websites to work individual contracts with that they then have to manage after that? Because you know, they want to spend 100s of hours of manpower on that. And on the flip side, like a website like this wants to hire someone whose sole purpose is managing ads and seeking out new ads. You know, cold calling the top cosmetics companies in the world and hoping a secretary feels sorry for you that day. And, yep, I get that some companies would and do and are successful, but it does not make sense for all companies.

I would bet that site, even if it gets tons of traffic, is run by only a handful of inhouse people. I think that most people would be shocked at how many "top 5000" sites are run by no more than 1-10 people. Heck, if I remember correctly, Twitter is only run by about 300.

[edited by: hannamyluv at 11:49 pm (utc) on Mar 22, 2013]

[edited by: martinibuster at 1:47 am (utc) on Mar 23, 2013]
[edit reason] Edited for clarity. [/edit]

 11:52 pm on Mar 22, 2013 (gmt 0)
From reading it's threads ..I'd say.. that to it's audience.. it exudes "cred"..and I agree with everything hannamyluv posted in msg:4557612..
 12:22 am on Mar 23, 2013 (gmt 0)
On the relationship between number of staff and credibility:

I believe their is none. A one man shop can be just as good as a 30.000 bee shop.

However, I believe if you are running a website covering a certain industry (any industry) than it does add a lot to your credibilty if you actually are supported by the major players of that industry.

Support may come in various styles: Links, Advertisement, Social Media Recommendations, Collaborations, offline support etc. - Many activities may not be available to Google algorithmes because things do happen outside the Google world.

Therefore, anything Google does is flawed because Google does not take into account what happens in the real world!

This 42 message thread spans 2 pages: 42 ( [1] 2 )  > >  

View the original article here

Big Brands In Google SERPs Do Not Have The Upper Hand

Featured Home Page Discussion This 75 message thread spans 3 pages: 75 ( [1] 2 3 )  > >   Big brands do not have the upper hand - Matt Cutts
 8:41 pm on Mar 12, 2013 (gmt 0)
Big brands cannot do whatever they want. They look at value add, etc. Faster, better, better UI, content, etc.

It is weird, Google does take action on big sites and big sites often do not like to talk about it. So it happens a lot. [seroundtable.com...]

Live blog interview with Matt Cutts.

How are members seeing those quality signals playing out in the SERP's compared to "smaller" brands.

 3:31 am on Mar 13, 2013 (gmt 0)
I would guess it happens more than we think, but it could definitely look like brands have an inherent advantage even if they don't.

What I mean is when I look at the big brand sites they generally have the latest user interfaces, top notch design, the most up to date or close HTML, the best or very very good organization and a bunch of little things deep pockets can probably afford to do easier on a site than most people, so I personally think he's telling the truth when he says the advantage isn't brands in general, but with deep pockets comes the ability to be all over things others may not have time for, make time for, or be able to afford and when the difference in "scoring" between 1 and 11 is probably .1% or less the little things that "don't count for much" can make all the difference in my opinion.

Another way to say it or look at it is: There are 200+ ranking factors using 200 as a nice round number, if 190 are equal and the brands can hit 10 of the time consuming or expensive or seemingly unimportant factors just a bit better who wins the tie breaker the site with the deep pockets and the teams of people working on them or the site with one or two people who just don't have time, cash or maybe even the knowledge to do the same thing?

Things like that custom server making a site just a bit faster the brand likely has instead of a shared host. The HTML5, schema.org, ajax implementations that can make a site a bit more focused or understandable to an algo. Possibly the 5 (or however many) different designs or flexibility of design for different screen sizes that's time consuming and difficult to implement but generates a slightly better behavior from a certain sub-set of visitors.

There are so many little thing they can do better based on the cash they have to spend they might not have an inherent advantage but at the same time I think they definitely have an advantage simply due to the level they can afford to build a site on where many cannot.

So, do they have an inherent advantage based on name? I sort of doubt it.

Do they have an advantage on depth of pockets and what they can put into a site over most people? I don't see how they couldn't.

 6:18 am on Mar 13, 2013 (gmt 0)
Big brands can do whatever they want; even more if they have millionary campaigns in Adwords.
As always, you should read Matt Cuts with a grain of salt. He's only a PR from Google and what he says is that what Google should do, not what really does. It makes him to seem a bit silly but that what he's paid for.
 6:49 am on Mar 13, 2013 (gmt 0)
you should read Matt Cuts with a grain of salt
Definitely. He doesn't make all the decisions; it's his job to justify them.

Big brands certainly do seem to get preferential treatment in one area: penalties. The most recent was publicly slapped to send a message, then let off after, oh, er, 10 days?

 5:12 am on Mar 14, 2013 (gmt 0) 10:36 am on Mar 14, 2013 (gmt 0)
The majority of pages the big brands have, invariably, at the top of the subjects I'm interested in are just doorway pages with links to other sites (which are way down in the SERPs and usually packed with information) which actually provide the advertised products or services. By any quality based standards these brandspam affiliate pages would be way out of sight.
 4:05 pm on Mar 15, 2013 (gmt 0)
Guess this kinda belongs here - BBC gets an unnatural links notice. Good luck figuring out which.

[seroundtable.com...]

 5:18 pm on Mar 15, 2013 (gmt 0)
Lol...If I had to choose between Google and the BBC it would be the BBC every time.

More fud from G.

 5:49 pm on Mar 15, 2013 (gmt 0)
I sure wish the BBC would have told google to p*ss off. The more penalties google hands out the fewer good results in the serps there will be.
 9:10 pm on Mar 15, 2013 (gmt 0)
big sites often do not like to talk about it. So it happens a lot
Well here's a brand that was open about "it". But I can't imagine a site like this would ever receive a penalty.

If backlinks are going to be part of the upcoming major Penguin update [webmasterworld.com...] and if part of the process is collecting data from the dissavow tool adjustments, you'd have to think that sites like the BBC would be exempted by sheer weight of global brand authority.

It makes me wonder who hasn't received a links notice and if so why.

 1:42 am on Mar 17, 2013 (gmt 0) 9:57 pm on Mar 18, 2013 (gmt 0) 10:14 pm on Mar 18, 2013 (gmt 0)
I mean, if you can't trust the BBC from a link quality point of view, who can you trust? (Fox News folks, relax)
ROFL

Friday we broke the story that the BBC received a Google link notification of unnatural links.
Very interesting.

They received a "blanket notice" when the reality was it was only unnatural links to One Page out of 268,000 indexed. Talk about f'ing FUD!

Makes me wonder how many site owners over-react to the notices they receive, disavow everything and in the process tank themselves by essentially saying "most of these links don't count"? Hmmm... Maybe a bit of granularity to all webmasters the same as the BBC got would be in order here.

Something like "we found unnatural links to N pages or N% of your site" would likely be clarification enough for webmasters to "chase" and "fix" an issue but not "give too much away" about what specifically triggers the notice/penalty.

Unreal FUD they've been spewing via WMT.
Makes me very glad I refuse to use it.

The lack of insight into webmaster reactions about these notices makes me think it's quite a bit like the "not selected" bs they decided to display for a while, which only caused fear, uncertainty and doubt, oh, wait, that means the not selected was the definition of FUD! too.

 10:29 pm on Mar 18, 2013 (gmt 0)
Oh, and what no one else has pointed out yet, so I will myself, is I stand corrected and "big brands" obviously do have an upper hand since JohnMu took the time to research why a major brand (the BBC) received an unnatural links notice, but I don't see him taking that kind of time and doing that kind of research for everyone who receives one, which he should if there's not favoritism or partiality from Google's side of things.

He made Matt Cutts look like a complete liar on this one, but I don't blame MC specifically for that, because I doubt he had any way of knowing JohnMu was going to do this for one specific brand and not everyone receiving a notice when he made the statement, but JohnMu represents Google as much as MC does, so Google definitely "went out of their way" for a major brand in a manner they do not for everyone.

Hopefully Matt Cutts will eventually retract the statement or find a way to include everyone with the granularity of information the BBC received from Google (via JohnMu) otherwise his statement will go down in history as complete BS because it is.

Not one single webmaster I've read reporting on an unnatural link notice has received the granular answer the BBC did, what they have received is basically generic, vague, and, since it's not the "desired reply or a desired e-mail" it's essentially a spam answer from Google.

In my opinion, it's complete BS to say Google does not favor "big brands" unless they start to provide this type of answer for everyone now that a "big brand" has received a very granular answer since no one else, to my knowledge, has ever received this granular level of reply from a Google Rep.

 11:19 pm on Mar 18, 2013 (gmt 0)
For years Google has been looking for ways to adjust the algorithm to give higher rankings to big brands. Even if they knew that such an adjustment would hurt the overall quality of the search results, they were still willing to implement it. The final result is that a bias in favor of big brands is built into the algorithm itself. And it's a very strong bias.
 11:23 pm on Mar 18, 2013 (gmt 0)
Litmus test to whether Google favours big brands or not: Has their ever been a big brand that has been penalised by Google for literally years like a lot of small businesses have? I can't think of one. Interflora's penalty lasted 11 days, for example.
 11:44 pm on Mar 18, 2013 (gmt 0)
Google didn't disclose which page of the BBC was penalized.

J.C. Penney Penalty was lifted - although i noticed @Netmeg mentioned a belief that not all rankings may have returned to previous capacity.

Responding to several questions about J.C. Penney, Cutts confirmed our report earlier this week that the penalty was lifted after 90 days.

?We saw a valid reconsideration request? from JCP, Cutts said, and explained that, after reviewing the request, Google found that the company ?did quite a bit of work to cleanup what had been going on. You don?t want to be vindictive or punitive, so after three months the penalty was lifted.? He later added, ?I think the penalty was tough and the appropriate length.? [searchengineland.com...]

It's important to note the resource required to clean up and communicate effectively with Google favors brands. Brands are also a good PR reference and communications tool to leverage from all sides involved.

 11:53 pm on Mar 18, 2013 (gmt 0)
One thing I try to keep in mind with regard to a site like JCP or BMW is they're expected to be seen in the results by searchers, and they do such a high volume and rank so highly across a number of terms even a short-term penalty could cost them more $$$ than "regular sites".

I'm not saying they don't have an "advantage", but the "cost per day penalized" is likely much greater for a brand (and Google for not including them) than it is for penalizing a "regular site" for a longer period of time.

It would be really interesting to see how much the 90 day penalty cost JCP in sales and how that "stacks up" against the sales of most sites penalized for a longer period of time.

 12:06 am on Mar 19, 2013 (gmt 0)
TOI, well certainly there's been a lot of small businesses that have either gone completely bust, or made lots of staff redundant (see various members of WebmasterWorld) when they've been kicked into the long grass for years. I wonder how many people were made redundant at JCP or BMW or Interflora? The companies themselves certainly survived the penalties - can't say the same for the SMBs that get hit.
 12:22 am on Mar 19, 2013 (gmt 0)
It's worth revisiting this video from Matt Cutts on lifting penalties [youtube.com...]

Here and in other instances, MC mentions that for some sites, where remedial steps are too difficult to action, it might be better to start again. In the case of Interflora it was easy for a large resourced company to identify the tactics and placements of offending links, and/or take down the offending recipient landing pages and re index new URL's as another option.

 12:35 am on Mar 19, 2013 (gmt 0)
If big brands don't have an advantage, then ask stub pages, yahoo answers and ehow must ranking due to sheer editorial excellence :rolls eyes:

It is obvious to anyone that has been monitoring data over the last several years that large brands receive a significant advantage, from shorter penalties and glossed over penalties to rankings for terms they aren't remotely relevant for and nearly fixed page 1 for tough phrases when their profiles are weaker than non-brands. Oh yeah, and googlers will actually look I to allegations of big brands when something funky happens. If one our smaller sites has the same issue, we're branded as evil spammers first and have to prove we aren't...two-faced policies.

 8:12 am on Mar 19, 2013 (gmt 0)
Here and in other instances, MC mentions that for some sites, where remedial steps are too difficult to action, it might be better to start again

Whitey, I remember that MC comment. I think his comment does not reflect actual reality for many many cases out there. I've had one site that had barely any links pointing to it - it was punished in March 2012, and remains so to this day. My remedial action? I removed all of its links in March 2012 (not that hard as it was relatively new site, and not many links) - good and bad links (in my eyes) removed, submitted a reconsideration request confident that a site with literally - LITERALLY - ZERO links pointing to it should get a clean bill of health. I got back "we still see links...." - rinse and repeat several times over (several months over) including me asking where ahrefs and opensiteexplorer and GWT were missing these links that you're not liking.....get back the exact same canned response. It's like engaging with an unreasonable person - after a while you have to give up because they're just operating on another level to you. That's actually the scariest part for me. Google have all that power AND can be incredibly unreasonable at the same time. Not a great combination.

With Interflora, the scale of their link building was enormous - it wasn't just the paid advertorials - they were doing article marketing on a grand scale too across thousands of privately owned blogs. I doubt they would have (or will be) able to get all or even half of those removed without the good will of thousands of blog owners. And yet their penalty was lifted in 11 days.

So to sum up, reality is a lot murkier than Matt Cutts likes to portray. It's not a cut and dry "do A and Google will do B" negotiation process. If you get a penalty, you have to worry that it's actually a de facto permanent ban from ranking well regardless of your remedial efforts.

 10:53 am on Mar 19, 2013 (gmt 0)
Of course big brands have an advantage. That advantage starts with their financial ability to buy links, develop on-topic supporting websites for linking purposes and employing the staff to properly manage these sophisticated link building tasks. Because big brands have the financial capabilities to employ sophisticated link building schemes, they generally maintain control over the links that they create. Small businesses are more likely to participate in link building techniques that leave their links on websites that they do not have full control over. Once caught, the big brands can take down the links they created rather quickly.

Not only are big brands capable of removing their paid/built links quickly, once caught, but the reconsideration requests they send to Google are clearly reviewed much faster than small businesses. And the overall penalties these big brands receive for manipulating the SERPS with backlinks, in many cases, are not fitting for the level of sophistication used.

To say that big brands do not have the upper hand over small businesses is inaccurate. One need not look any further than how Google recently applied penalties, lifted penalties and responded to big brands in public to see this advantage.

 2:52 am on Mar 21, 2013 (gmt 0)
If one our smaller sites has the same issue, we're branded as evil spammers first and have to prove we aren't...two-faced policies.
My guess is that high profile sites receive attention because they get publicity. However, I've no reason to doubt Matt Cutt's words that a lot of big sites don't talk about it.

On balance, an editor from Google would surely say, for something like the BBC , this is a huge site with great reputation and a large staff. We're not going to hold the penalty for minor breaches of guidelines.

Where the reputation of a website is not publically known, and there is an inbalance between real reputation, popularity and breaches of the guidelines [ particularily links, poor content distinguishment ], the smaller site will have trouble getting attention from Google. Realistically, there are probably 10's of 1000's of reconsideration requests a day and not all of them will receive [ perhaps ] the degree of consideration big sites do.

Filing a reconsideration, in the minds of a smaller reputation site, exposes them to risk of editorial whims which fall outside of guidelines and may invite discretion - I don't know how disciplined Google is on the manual front, or how accurate my statement is - but survival can scare good webmasters and siteowners from being entirely honest. For that part Google could probably do more to build community involvement through authenticated processes to better infom individual site owners that demonstrate good intent, or the willingness to change.

Small website owners, are very often hoodwinked by a section of SEO advisors into shelling out money for bad practices. It irritates Google, good SEO's and well intentioned siteowners. Big brands can more easily deal with that by sheer enormity of pressure to correct.

The filing of mass notices of linking violations, where only one page is offending is probably an overkill and causes a lot of unecessary angst for folks who are trying to compete yet comply efficiently. In particular small sites, or an employee in a large organisation.

If Google is now baking in alernatives to links, in the form of UI, quality , brand signals , social authentication it has sufficient commercial cover to be more open about helping siteowners to compete and better administer more adequately in a democratic web . This is probably important to support it's marketing mantra, creating a reactive, vibrant and fresh search experience, especially in areas it wants to encourage participation in.

I do think Google could receive a benefit by further encouraging small site owners to participate at grass roots level, at the same time as it's trying to grow it's business and product. A big brand web, with only Google assetts could become boring.

Special note on context - Matt was referring to penalties. I digressed a bit.

 11:41 pm on Mar 21, 2013 (gmt 0)
Matt Cutts, Google's head of search spam, said on Hacker News, "we were tackling a spammer and inadvertently took action on the root page of digg.com."
Google released an official statement as well:

"We're sorry about the inconvenience this morning to people trying to search for Digg. In the process of removing a spammy submitted link on Digg.com, we inadvertently applied the webspam action to the whole site. We're correcting this, and the fix should be deployed shortly." [seroundtable.com...]

A timely example that errors do occur, but may not be treated equally unless you're a brand.
 12:44 am on Mar 22, 2013 (gmt 0)
Matt Cutt say what benefits Google, not us. Matt Cutt and Google also say that SERPs best results for users but we know that SERPs are best for Google pocket.
 1:01 am on Mar 22, 2013 (gmt 0)
In the process of removing a spammy submitted link on Digg.com
I don't understand what this means. It seems to say that Google was trying to remove a Digg page from the SERPs instead of removing the spammer's page that the link pointed to. Maybe my brain isn't working right now, but what am I missing?
 1:42 am on Mar 22, 2013 (gmt 0)
Matt Cutts: Here's the official statement from Google: "We're sorry about the inconvenience this morning to people trying to search for Digg. In the process of removing a spammy submitted link on Digg.com, we inadvertently applied the webspam action to the whole site. We're correcting this, and the fix should be deployed shortly."

From talking to the relevant engineer, I think digg.com should be fully back in our results within 15 minutes or so. After that, we'll be looking into what protections or process improvements would make this less likely to happen in the future.

Added: I believe Digg is fully back now.

A fuller transcript from Google. Lots of traffic involved with Digg, so probably fair play. But it does demonstrate what can go missing lower down the food chain.
 4:16 am on Mar 22, 2013 (gmt 0)
Of course big brands have an advantage. That advantage starts with their financial ability to buy links, develop on-topic supporting websites for linking purposes and employing the staff to properly manage these sophisticated link building tasks.

There are certainly other advantages. As others here have observed (but in different language) big brands have an advantage because GOOGLE NEEDS THEM in addition to their need for Google. They got into that position by doing lots of things right. In many cases, these are physical world businesses rather than exclusively online.

Even those that only conduct business online often do a lot of offline advertising and brand awareness building. The percentage of navigational searches that they get is often way beyond the level that other more "ordinary" sites get. In fact, trying to get significant non-navigational traffic can be the factor that triggers their violations of Google's guidelines in the first place.

 8:37 am on Mar 22, 2013 (gmt 0)
A timely example that errors do occur, but may not be treated equally unless you're a brand.

I wonder how many times Google have messed up with small business websites and NOT corrected these mess ups? Just too busy to manually check those reconsideration requests I guess.

As others here have observed (but in different language) big brands have an advantage because GOOGLE NEEDS THEM in addition to their need for Google. They got into that position by doing lots of things right. In many cases, these are physical world businesses rather than exclusively online.

I get your point on navigational searches tedster. We see these big brands everywhere outside of Google and search for them online. However, remember Google's unique selling point? Their indexing power - to be able to show you the ENTIRE internet, up to date. It was Google's ability to show you those obscure sites as well as the branded sites. Their brand-favouring shrinks this down to perhaps 10,000-15,000 popular sites. Any competitor can come up with a commercial search engine that can EASILY match that and then some. Sure Google are also including some smaller sites into the commercial searches too, but the brands are getting more and more coverage - far more than even just 12 months ago. If Google keep going like this, someone might as well come up with a shopping search engine that gives more variety than Google does, and it WON'T be hard to do. Google are still way ahead in terms of long tail / non-commercial searches of course.

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