Two posts in one.
This was originally going to be about the disconnect between what SEOs worry about and the average internet user. But a recent Shoemoney post made me want to bring up a combined issue. And while each could have been its own post, I decided to combine it, SEOmoz points be damned.
Myopic SEOs and Search Engines
If you ask the average non-SEO, non-blogger internet user about things like Digg or Reddit or any of the social bookmarking sites, you’re likely to find out they have no idea what you’re talking about.
The people I ask about such things spend a majority of their lives online.
They know about and have videos up on YouTube, they have Facebook and MySpace accounts, they shop regularly (weekly/daily) on Ebay and Amazon, and they use IMDB and Wikipedia a dozen times a day. They visit one or two internet news sites a day. They use Match.com or eHarmony. And they read a handful of blogs (mostly related to gossip or politics). They may even use Craigslist. And a small percentage use Firefox as their browser of choice.
But that is where the Internet ends for them.
We all know these people. They aren’t stupid by any means, or even non-technical. They just see the Internet as a utility. Like another channel on the TV. Or a book on their bookshelf. They are the ones that still have their homepage set to whatever came with their browser.
A lot of them are also Yahoo and MSN users. Especially when they want to find something to buy.
I was at a relative’s house. He’s an experienced computer programmer, actually. We went to his den to look something up and he started searching Yahoo. I asked why not Google and he said, “Google hates me, I can never find what I want without a lot of trouble.”
My two teenagers (who fit all of the above description about people who spend most of their free time online) make the same comment all the time. They can do a whole host of things online and on their computer, but when it comes to searching on Google for some hard to find term they call on me.
I used to attribute this to Google’s index being too big. Now I think it is because of Google’s attempt to fight spam, and the fact that in some (most?) cases it makes them less relevant. And this is becoming a more increasing problem.
Jeremy summed this up perfectly when he was talking about JohnChow.com. Obviously, Google banned him because he was doing all of the things Google said you shouldn’t do to build links. The search term he targeted was “making money online,” which he does and he used to rank number one. Now, he doesn’t even rank for his own name. Google banished him to the hinterlands by hand.
So, someone who is completely outside of the SEO community – you know; 99.9% of Internet Users – searching for John Chow won’t bring up John Chow in Google.
How does that make Google look?
So here are things Google says they do well and that you should be afraid of (FUD), but they don’t:
1) Inter-site Duplicate Content.
If the AP runs a story that is picked up by several newspapers, or even a magazine article that is widely circulated, most of the sites get indexed and may show up, even if it is an omitted result.
We’ve all seen this. And sometimes scraper sites come out on or near the top.
I don’t think the Google algorithm can tell the difference between syndicated content and duplicate content, and I don’t know how it even could unless someone complained.
Do a search on the exact phrase “6 things I know (or think I know) about SEO” (written by me), and my YOUmoz entry comes up first. I believe I heard Google claims to place the earliest version of the content first. I wrote and posted this article on my own blog back in February (and was crawled by Google afterwards). I posted it on YOUmoz in May. No complaints on my part – I posted it freely out across the internet and even submitted it to some article sites – but how can they claim to have mastered duplicate content issues if they can’t even place the earlier version first? I think intrasite duplicate content is a far more serious ranking issue than having the same content as someone else’s site.
Lesson: Authority is more important than being first.
2) Google-bombing. It is isn’t as prevalent, but it still exists.
Let’s take my cousin, who wants to buy a home from the homebuilder Lennar. He goes to Yahoo and types “Buy Lennar Home.” Wow, lennar.com is number one. Yahoo for the win! Now we go to Google and type in the same keywords.
Yikes! Not only is lennar.com not in the top 10, but the first few sites tells us that Lennar is a bad homebuilder. Yay to the power and democracy of the Internet! Boo poor crappy Lennar!
But if I were undettered by a few Internet whackos, I’m probably going to Yahoo to find a Lennar neighborhood near me. How else to explain this than Google-bombing or the unintentional but innocent equivalent of anchor text links on the behalf of the affronted internet whackos – and more importantly, the neglect of Lennar to focus on their own anchor text.
However, even if you throw out the above as a fluke, most of the remaining top ten search results are news articles. They do not take me to Lennar.com, which I think most reasonable people would expect to be in the top ten.
Lesson: Lots of content and good anchor text links from large authority sites are more important than … well everything else (domain name, title page, even the company name!). This is probably THE essence of ranking well in Google.
3. Paid Links
So much has been written on this that I don’t even have anything more to add. Essentially, I believe this is not going to go away in the near future. Either Google will have a change of heart and give up, or the whole thing will go even more underground.
Lesson: If it helps to get traffic then pay for links – but keep quiet about it.
