OPTIMIZING FOR
GOOGLE IN A POST UPDATE WORLD: A Further Analysis of the Recent
Mid November 2003 Update
DECEMBER 2, 2003
By David Kelly (For More Information about Dave Kelly’s
Search Engine Goldmine, CLICK HERE search-engine-goldmine.com
In this article I want to touch on a few things that you can
do, and how you can find words that will not be filtered by Google’s
obviously clumsy attempt to to force sites that go after revenue
producing keywords into paid advertising.
Some of you may have seen mention of a new site that has popped
up recently. www.scroogle.org This site will allow you to enter
any search phrase and see how many sites have been removed from
the top 100 with the new Google filters, I will also show you
how easy it is to prove once and for all exactly what Google has
done.
I think this entire mess with the most recent update is based
almost solely on data Google has collected from their Adwords
program. They know which words CAN and DO generate revenue.
There is a nice little program called Adwords analyzer This little
program allows you to find keyword phrases that have very few
adword campaigns running, enter a search phrase and it will display
how many adword campaigns there are for a given phrase.
Let’s look at a screenshot
Now, using scroogle.org, let’s see how many of these words
had their results turned upside down.
Mortgage calculator: 53 of top 100 dropped
Mortgage broker: 87 of top 100 dropped
Mortgage: 31 of top 100 dropped
Mortgage company: 95 of top 100 dropped
Mortgage rate: 73 of top 100 dropped
Home Mortgage: 67 of top 100 dropped
refinancing mortgage: 79 of top 100 dropped
Mortgage Loan: 83 of top 100 dropped
Now, let’s look at another screenshot for keywords related
to apples:
Now, using scroogle.org, let’s see how many of these words
had their results turned upside down.
apples sweet: 15 of top 100 dropped
apples recipe: 4 of top 100 dropped
apples carmel: 0 of top 100 dropped
apples bobbing: 0 of top 100 dropped
apples candied: 0 of top 100 dropped
apples control mind: 4 of top 100 dropped
apples caramel recipe: 32 of top 100 dropped
Does anyone see a pattern? You can repeat this for almost any
keyphrase. It is something you can duplicate across a broad range
of keywords over and over again, while the ‘good folks’
at Google will simply state it hasn’t happened.
Apples and words related to apples simply are not revenue producers
for Google, there is no need to apply any filters to these words.
The results are largely unchanged from the previous update. You
can repeat these results over and over again, find a keyphrase
that has few Adword campaigns and you’ll find a keyphrase
that has been largely unaffected by the recent Google update.
Find a keyphrase that has a lot of Adword campaigns and you’ll
find that most top sites were dropped. I think you’ll also
find it applies more to 2 word phrases than to single or 3 or
more word phrases. I’m also certain that the amount bid
is a factor, bid price is not factored in above.
At least for now, the key to ranking well at Google has nothing
to do with changing your optimization strategies, it has everything
to do with finding keywords that have very few adword groups.
These words are not going to be filtered. There are still many
niches that are not over saturated. Find them and you will do
well, go after major adword revenue producers and it won’t
matter what you do. They will put the hammer down on you.
I still believe their is some randomness to the application of
the filter, without randomness the algorithm could be reverse
engineered. By allowing for some randomization, it makes it impossible
to 100% reverse engineer what they are doing because you will
find a few exceptions, I believe this is by design.
Don’t take my word for it, you can repeat this process
over and over and get the same results. It’s a money grab
pure and simple in my opinion. Others will state it’s an
attempt by Google to thwart SEO techniques. Is it? Maybe.. But
I don’t think so, The results at Google are now so bad it
is laughable. Do a search for web design Calgary and you’ll
see the Calgary Flames hockey team site as the # 1 ranking, Targeted
results? Relevant results? Hardly.
Am I a bitter Search Engine marketing consultant who just lost
a lot of top rankings? Nope, actually this update has been very
kind to the vast majority of my sites. Many of these sites are
optimized for largely non competitive terms. But this update HAS
affected a LOT of sites, and at the most crucial time of year,
the holiday shopping season. I believe it was a carefully calculated
move both in planning and timing.
PREVIOUS UPDATE: DECEMBER 1, 2003
IS GOOGLE PENALIZING COMMERCIAL WEBSITES?
If you read any of the major online webmaster forums, you’ve
no doubt seen the complaints raining down about this google update.
What at first appeared to be simply a penalty or filter applied
to over optimization, seems to be something much more sinister
now that things have settled down a bit.
Let me state up front that I have no firm proof, nor does anyone
else, but their is ample evidence to suggest that Google has selectively
applied their new filter to the more popular money making search
terms. There are many examples, I will discuss just 2, one of
which is a client of mine and another that was referenced in today’s
search day.
I have a client who sells rugged laptop computers.. to the military
his main keywords have always been rugged laptops, rugged notebooks..
many of his links use this phrase..
He has occupied the # 1 ranking for both phrases for almost 2
years, he even has a link from CNN
if you search for rugged laptops
http://www.google.com/search?hl=en&lr=&ie=ISO-8859-1&c2coff=1&q=rugged+laptops
he is now nowhere to be found after this update
if you search for rugged notebooks
http://www.google.com/search?hl=en&lr=&ie=ISO-8859-1&c2coff=1&q=rugged+notebooks
he is still ranked # 1, but rugged notebooks is not a competitively
bidded adword, at least from a pricing point, but laptops is..
now if you search for rugged laptops -blah
http://www.google.com/search?sourceid=navclient&ie=UTF-8&oe=UTF-8&q=rugged+laptops
+%2Dblah
he is right where he should be, at # 1, adding a -madeupword,
removes the filtering..
but if this were simply a penalty based on linking, or over optimization,
his site would have been penalized for both terms and this is
simply not what has happened.
Let’s look at another example as mentioned in Search day
today.
You’ll see the listings as they once were or should be.
What does the -blah do? Well, you can use -anymadeupword and
it will yield the same result.
The -blah simply tells google to return all results except those
that contain the made up word, since there are none, you see the
real unfiltered results.
Of course Google denies this is happening, but words don't mean
much, Not when the evidence is right there to see. The penalty
I referred to in the previous update seems to exist, but only
on words that Google can sell via adwords and make money on.
Google always wants to pretend they are the good guys, the guys
in the white hats whose sole purpose in being is to provide the
best results for the searcher. NONSENSE. Google is a money making
behemoth who apparently has chosen the holiday season to give
this little gift to al the small businesses who have made them
what they are.
This reminds me somewhat of a similar move by Alta Vista a few
years ago, a move that took them from the top of the search engine
world to irrelevant in less than 6 months.
I still expect a rollback of this filter in some way. Google
will never acknowledge there was a problem. But the biggest problem
as I see it is accountability. Google is accountable to no one.
They currently have 80% market share of all online search and
feel free to do as they wish, and they probably have this right,
but webmasters have a right to call them on it and get the word
out, that Google apparently is not really what they pretend to
be
