MayDay - What Are the Quality Signals?

[MisterGemini]

Hey Mr. Gemini, I gave you rep for your latest post since I'm pretty sure it was a tedious process and I appreciated you shared in detail the results.

Still, I have to disagree on the importance of the Title tag: I'm pretty sure they diminuished the weight of this factor in ranking positions, since different of my sites that lose first page rankings had exact kw title (besides exact kw domain and good on page SEO - and zero or so incoming links) and now in the first page I see sites that barely have the main query kw in the title.

Yeah I noticed that as well, but what those pages do have is categorization! That's the difference I think that is really confusing people. Basically this is rather exciting as far as SEO goes. It's like Google took the whole setup and mixed up everything to where now everything is broken up into pockets of categorized sites based on the type of keyword query that is entered.

This basically means all you have to do to is look at the type of content #1s are displaying, how google displays its side bar to get an idea of what kind of content it associates with the keyword, then match up with that plus the Title and other regular optimization.

Google has given more weight to the quality scoring over the relevance match. That is why you see less exact Title matches, but more category match.

Guys... this is really exciting stuff! It means you got a whole new index to game. Those that have moved to the top are now up for grabs. You just have to understand the keyword category association and hit it in your content.

 

[MisterGemini]

Ultimately the update is about High Quality.
And you don't have to go into "overobsessive keyword stuffing" mode on your content.
Try building links from blogs and domains that exist for over three years.

You can create a special google query to find those.
First you got to strip the domain to root, like this "blackhatworld.com"
Then you got to have a date 3 years ago.
Green is root domain; Orange is the date in dd/mm/yyyy;

http://www.google.com/search?q=site:[COLOR=Lime]blackhatworld.com[/COLOR]&tbs=cdr:1,cd_min:1/01/2000,cd_max:[COLOR=DarkOrange]7/31/2007[/COLOR]

Also try high authority links like, edu, gov, wikipedia, sites that are adopted into google news.
And sociables like, twitter, digg and facebook.
When high authority/quality domains take over the long tail query niches, you are not going to solve it by adding some extra keywords.
You solve it by getting high authority/quality links.
If you're having trouble due to the new algorithms, this is certainly something that can help you.
Thats corner where the sugar lies, just look out for cavities.

Word to big bird! That's some excellent advice, and awesome contribution with the time code.

 

[MisterGemini]

i really think this is the end of micro niche sites such as made for adsense type.

It means the end for the typical methods taught today generally with MNAs. Those that approach the niches that are informational queries will still do ok I think, but those that attempt to get into niches that are product related are absolutely screwed like you said. They likely will never get the rankings/traffic with the typical methods that have been taught in the last 6 months. UNLESS, they use product listings in their content instead of written text to bring the quality signal google is looking for in association with the query.

If they can adapt to change their methods to match the query type with the content google is looking for, then they have a better chance at ranking. They have to go beyond the few pages though I think. All the top positions I saw had sites that had at least 20+ pages, but most were in the 1000s of pages. Throwing up an article with adsense just isn't going to cut it anymore.

End game.

 

[Andi49]

I just wanted to add something to the discussion regarding Ganalytics. I dont think google uses the data from GAnalytics but I am pretty sure they use the data from google toolbar and the Chrome webbrowser. This data can't be faked by the webmaster and therefore gives an exact indication of how valuable a page is for the browsing visitor.

 

[MisterGemini]

I just wanted to add something to the discussion regarding Ganalytics. I dont think google uses the data from GAnalytics but I am pretty sure they use the data from google toolbar and the Chrome webbrowser. This data can't be faked by the webmaster and therefore gives an exact indication of how valuable a page is for the browsing visitor.

It's a good observation, though I am standing from the opposite side.

Without GA, google cannot get a 'complete' picture of the traffic and the going-ons with a site. With the Gaybar and Chromo they get some occasional data, but it's like trying to solve an equation with missing pieces that way. The sampling doesn't tell them as much as what 'all' the traffic from all the users tells them.

A Gaybar and Chrome can be manipulated to as much extent as any potential manipulation with GA. The only difference is, the GA gives a full view for Google to then apply equations against with their ranking algo.

In other words, a sampling of 2% of their traffic through these methods doesn't give them enough data vs a sampling of 100%, which GA gives them. There is also too many people who can attest to the GA effects on their sites. How the bars or Chromo impact them is pretty difficult to measure.

Either way, it's not consequential to the quality signals it appears.

 

[clyde]

This thread is too much for my mini brain.

but good work!

 

[eNdl]

This is simple, Google is letting the people who use their search engine decide what websites or domains show up for keywords people are typing in their engine. Google are using their toolbar and analytics to check bounce rates, CTR, etc.. This is kind of equivalent to how page rank came about (the more links pointing to your site the more valuable in Googles eyes) and I also wouldn't doubt if their using their adsense platform to secretly gain information related to peoples websites also.

With the page rank phenomenon and people manipulating ways to increase their page rank Google is using a quieter approach so many webmasters can't game the system. But at the end of the day, especially with Google owning so many platforms now, they can easily see which links are being shown on what page and what topic the page is about. Google can now read real time discussions, snippets and dates the content was published.

It still comes down to regular seo like backlinks, keyword density and so forth but now with the ability to check for certain keywords used on Google within the last 24 hours using their sidebar attribute, Google is now trying to lean more towards a real time search engine with only the hottest domains about ranking for those keywords at the time of the search.

Just my .02! nice discussion.

 

[lostgringos]

There is no such thing as n/a for ranked domains.
If you are indexed you are pr 0, at least.
N/a means a error in the pagerank retrieval.

Also pr is not a scoring algorithm domains. It is a document scoring algorithm.
Meaning the root domain, "example.com" can be pr0.
But "example.com/somewebpage.html" can be pr 4.

If you have a site about radio's. And i have a site about radio's.
But you have pr 3 and i have pr2, you will outrank me.

Ultimately the update is about High Quality.
And you don't have to go into "overobsessive keyword stuffing" mode on your content.
Try building links from blogs and domains that exist for over three years.

You can create a special google query to find those.
First you got to strip the domain to root, like this "blackhatworld.com"
Then you got to have a date 3 years ago.
Green is root domain; Orange is the date in dd/mm/yyyy;

http://www.google.com/search?q=site:[COLOR="Lime"]blackhatworld.com[/COLOR]&tbs=cdr:1,cd_min:1/01/2000,cd_max:[COLOR="DarkOrange"]7/31/2007[/COLOR]

Also try high authority links like, edu, gov, wikipedia, sites that are adopted into google news.
And sociables like, twitter, digg and facebook.
When high authority/quality domains take over the long tail query niches, you are not going to solve it by adding some extra keywords.
You solve it by getting high authority/quality links.
If you're having trouble due to the new algorithms, this is certainly something that can help you.
Thats corner where the sugar lies, just look out for cavities.

Would you mind being a little more specific with the search query...can you give us an example...and thanks so much for your post...

 

[MisterGemini]

Google analytics uses Javascript.
Javascript runs in your browser, on your computer.
With php for instance, the server does all the computing.
With javascript your browser receives the code and you do the computing.
This means google can always see who you are, and/if traffic is fake.
Often the determination of a actual visitor is pared with the acceptance and recollection of a cookie.

Only 95% of all people on the web block javascript;
http://www.w3schools.com/browsers/browsers_stats.asp (scroll down)

I've seen a video from matt cutts saying they don't use analytics as a ranking factor.
There's two things i don't like about that.

1). Matt Cutts is unreliable and has absolutely nothing to do with ranking.
He is head of the anti spam department. His main job is about recognizing and disabling spam.
If you want to know about ranking, then Amit Singhal is the go to man.
He leads the group that creates and maintains the core algorithms.
He has a lot of interesting publications. You can basically see what kind of ideas he has.
http://singhal.info/publications.html
He also spoke at TREC a couple of times. Which is a government sponsored conference held every year, and where the great minds of text retrieval come together to discuss. There are some free books with sum ups about TREC on google books.
Also he reveals the best stuff on his twitter, http://twitter.com/theamitsinghal
This qoute;

It's worth to keep an eye on that.

2). A company that screens your wifi connection, from there google maps car, to get some extra data.
Will probably not resist the urge to use your analytics data.

MADs on a roll! Excellent advice once again for everybody to follow and get input.

I actually never thought about the fact that Matt Cutts is just in charge of the spam department. For so long he has been spewing off about every aspect of what Google says yay or nay too, you forget his place. I guess that's part of the psychological warefare against spammers. The wouldbes take in every word he says as though he has access to it all. You are absolurely right to be following Amit. Thanks for providing his Twitter account!

I'd give you some rep, but bhw still regards me as a newbie. Only been here two weeks. So take my thanks instead.

 

[klawre1221]

I think this was mentioned earlier and seems to be true as it regards my area of the web. One of my main competitor's has shot to number one on a highly competitive keyword and another moderately competitve keyword. He had added a lot of user interactive stuff like the ability to add tags to pages and also user reviews. It does look like Google is liking pages that offer user interactivity. This is the product area. I had a great informational site that was ranking number one until a few weeks ago and it has now disappeared. I now have one small site that has the keyword in the domain ranking on the first page and has only a few hundred links to it.
Just kind of verifying what has been thrown out so far.

 

[MisterGemini]

I think this was mentioned earlier and seems to be true as it regards my area of the web. One of my main competitor's has shot to number one on a highly competitive keyword and another moderately competitve keyword. He had added a lot of user interactive stuff like the ability to add tags to pages and also user reviews. It does look like Google is liking pages that offer user interactivity. This is the product area. I had a great informational site that was ranking number one until a few weeks ago and it has now disappeared. I now have one small site that has the keyword in the domain ranking on the first page and has only a few hundred links to it.
Just kind of verifying what has been thrown out so far.

Wow.. that's a good add in, thanks! User added content helps. Or the appearance of it.

 

[Andi49]

Yeah that is true. Mad Cuts is like the Google-Buddha. Always friendly and smiling. He is the face of google but at the end he is just a puppet, who does what he is told to. I remember that video where he said, they are not using GAnalytics Data. He actually didn't say that, instead he said he asked another guy of google and the other guy said to him that they don't use the data.

 

[cody41]

Ok, so let's draw down to a narrower focus within this spectrum.
We can all agree that recent algo changes have affected micro niche sites, and will continue to affect them going forward. I've seen no indication of an algo rollback like the types we've seen from several years ago.

So in order to be successful, we'll either need to create 1) Large authority sites 2) Or pseudo authority sites that have a composite of factors that contribute to a best user experience within that niche. I think the future success of building out either the large or medium site will hinge upon the profile of site that we develop within the targetted niche that we're in.

If I'm building a site on leather sofa's, i think i'd include pages surrounding manufacturers, history of, locations to purchase, construction of, and then: best deals, product placement from amazon, maybe some ebay listings as well, and then followed up by an area of reviews.

That sort of site doesn't necessarily have to be 100's of pages to be successful. It needs enough of a footprint to lend itself as viable resource of user targetted information to google so that it provides good information to the end user.

Backlinking will always be about backlinking. That has and will never change. Forget the concept of do/no follow. Get those links anyway you can. Popular, and correct wisdom, dictates that of like similar sites that you can get linked back to you will help tremendously. My testing with free blog commenting tools has shown that very point.

Let's keep this discussion rolling! Next stop - pseudo authority site profiles for medium sites I honestly think we can put our collective heads together here build out, and test, what a successful footprint looks like for this new type of hybrid site.

 

[MisterGemini]

Yeah that is true. Mad Cuts is like the Google-Buddha. Always friendly and smiling. He is the face of google but at the end he is just a puppet, who does what he is told to. I remember that video where he said, they are not using GAnalytics Data. He actually didn't say that, instead he said he asked another guy of google and the other guy said to him that they don't use the data.

The Google-Buddha.. why didn't I see that!?! THAT"S why he SHAVED HIS HEAD! HE'S THE GOOGLE-BUDDHA! haha

What does the Google-Buddha say: Spam causes suffering. To avoid suffering, follow my eight fold path to rankings.

Need I say... beware of false prophets.

 

[MisterGemini]

Ok, so let's draw down to a narrower focus within this spectrum.
We can all agree that recent algo changes have affected micro niche sites, and will continue to affect them going forward. I've seen no indication of an algo rollback like the types we've seen from several years ago.

So in order to be successful, we'll either need to create 1) Large authority sites 2) Or pseudo authority sites that have a composite of factors that contribute to a best user experience within that niche. I think the future success of building out either the large or medium site will hinge upon the profile of site that we develop within the targetted niche that we're in.

If I'm building a site on leather sofa's, i think i'd include pages surrounding manufacturers, history of, locations to purchase, construction of, and then: best deals, product placement from amazon, maybe some ebay listings as well, and then followed up by an area of reviews.

That sort of site doesn't necessarily have to be 100's of pages to be successful. It needs enough of a footprint to lend itself as viable resource of user targetted information to google so that it provides good information to the end user.

Backlinking will always be about backlinking. That has and will never change. Forget the concept of do/no follow. Get those links anyway you can. Popular, and correct wisdom, dictates that of like similar sites that you can get linked back to you will help tremendously. My testing with free blog commenting tools has shown that very point.

Let's keep this discussion rolling! Next stop - pseudo authority site profiles for medium sites I honestly think we can put our collective heads together here build out, and test, what a successful footprint looks like for this new type of hybrid site.

I was thinking about this in practical terms the other day because I got 3 new projects on my plate right now that all have different types of targets. When I took what I started to understand here and applied it to these projects, I realized I am going to turn out some pretty different sites. However, there are some commonalities.

Basically you want to align yourself with how google has categorized. Just take a look at the side bar:

• Lets see.. we got Images - any kind of gallery will do. A flickr plugin with rewrite capabilities would work nicely if you want something auto.
• Video - Youtube et all - no need to explain I hope
• Maps - Google Maps.. only one source for that - there is way more in BHW on how to get into gmaps and game them then I could ever offer. This is where geo-targeted searches live.
• News - You need PRs (Thats Press Releases.. not PageRank) to get into here.. but I think using a Pligg or something similar will get your SERP results for these types of queries also.
• Shopping - Product data - but more specifically this is for google products, so only way in on this is with your own products. You need content with product attributes brands and buy buttons etc.
• Books - Google books - I don't know the signal for this.. perhaps ISBN numbers?
• Blogs - Have a blog. Not clear on the signal for this yet, though it might be from the content generated tag in html, or they use the structure as the signal.
• Updates - Twitter anybody? Also noticed that they put Google Buzz higher up.
• Discussions - Forums! Shouldn't need to explain this.

So now we know the primary categories to look at, we need to understand how your keyword query matches up with the content type.

Basically there are two ways to go about this. You can try to mashup the data all into one, OR, you create separate sections of your site for each type of content.

There are many CMS solutions out there for all this. Just in the breakdown I gave above, you can accomplish creating a site with all the various signals using Wordpress with several plugins like Voteitup for Digg style news voting, youtube and flickr plugins, and BBPress for forums integrated along with a little bit of aggrigation of news sources.. and you can cover pretty much the whole gambit all with just a Wordpress site.

Mind you.. it all depends what you want to accomplish with your site and what your core category is. If we are talking product, then you need to get your content including as much product attribute and branding as possible. I would then use these other various content forms to be sub-cats within a site like that to then link to the products associated with them. My main reason for this, page load speed time. If you try mashing all this content into one page, you are going to have one mother of a slow page unless you are really crafty with some more advanced pre-load code stuff. Thats way out of reach for most though. So break the content down into appropriate categories and have them load separate from your primary product money maker page.

Anybody else notice that there is no 'articles' section. Pretty sure that falls in with 'everything'.

I'm too excited about this! I need to get out of here and start writing down more details for my new projects and how this applies.

I'm sure everyone who has shared in this thread has their work cut out for them as well!

Mister Gemini

 

[chockomonkey]

Well a lot of it they can't keep track of without Ganalytics. Analytics requires you add some code to your pages. Without the code a lot of the information can't be collected.

I'm sure that if you have analytics those factors are being considered. It would be ridiculous if they aren't. So if you're site has an extremely high bounce rate it's possible that analytics could actually be hurting your seo efforts. If you're using the data you get from analytics then you should be working on those factors as part of your seo. If you aren't paying attention to the analytics data, then you very well may be better off not to include it for your pages.

The point is that the bounce rate of any site is something Google already has the power to track on their own because people tend to bounce back to their SERPs.

I agree with you that there is additional information collected which only the code enables, but that data (i'm just assuming) means less to google... It would give them information about your other traffic sources, and times on pages within your site... but this information i don't find especially juicy as I like doing white hat stuff.. (to me it simply comes down to not using analytics if you're doing anything BH)

One thing it may give them, which may be tied into this Quality Signal business, is visitor loyalty/trending. Ganalytics definitely tracks this so they could use it against you theoretically, but with Personal Web Search being forced on everyone, i'll bet they already know how often x visitor visits y site.

Oh, and obviously there is no reason to have any analytical programs if you don't use the data collected to improve upon what you're doing.

 

[thestig]

 

[thestig]

also guys i've also noticed that googles not indexing some of the new pages that i've added to may old sites, time to rework those sites and ping them and see what happens?

 

[MisterGemini]

 

[thestig]

These are definitely elements to include, but you also want to try and include the product attributes. With all the various product pages I saw, they almost always had various product attributes and brands filling their content. Note that those comparison sites do well because they have so much of this data on their pages. Be careful in using terms like comparison and review in your keywords, it will affect the results of your core keyword phrase.

I mentioned epinions in my findings, well the more I looked the more I was finding similar on other product pages. They have extensive set of links within a page that all are associated with the product attributes and brands for the search query.

I found one site that was obviously very well crafted and used a very solid linking structure that gave them a blast to the top for 3 primary search terms in their niche that I know account for over 10k of searchs a day each. I am now going head to head with those guys with one of my projects. At least, for some of the terms I want.

This all however brings into question some long standing methods of determining low competition. As I was doing my standard research I was starting to wonder things like:

• Does the allintitle competition number really have any meaning now?
• Does the amount of links they have really have as much meaning?
• How do we know the traffic estimates we are seeing today in tools like MS are based on 'everything' organic, or the categories of search in the side bar?
• How does this new categorization of queries effect the data I am getting that I have been used to for years?

All in all, I really don't know. Allintitle appears to be a defunk way to estimate the competition. I can do a query for it and get a number, but with the new quality scoring, I now know that a hung chunk of that query is likely way off the charts and doesn't poss any 'real' competition. I have seen link numbers on page that were 1/10 the number of their competition below them. I guess all we can do is just go forward and learn new ways to understand the data we get.

I think that most of what we have learned has to go out of the window and we have to start over, i also think keyword domains are on there last legs, i think the best method would be to have a domain centred around the words buy, shopping, or just any name, it works for amazon and walmart, we also have to how use categories more when using wordpress and use the seo plugin to the max, that means not just filling out the details in the plugin but when posting any content filling out the seo details at the bottom of the post page, i think backlinks will be the same as well as all domains having an even scale because i've used some free .co.cc that rank great and maintain there ranking we next to no backlinks, plugins such reviewazon because it displays prices etc