MayDay - What Are the Quality Signals?
- Thread starter MisterGemini
- Start date
MisterGemini
Senior Member
- May 25, 2010
- 1,112
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You spin an article far enough, it becomes unique.
I have expressed in other threads though that I am not a big believer in the unique content/dup content cross domain myth. Others have their say on the matter. However in regards to how unique content impacts rankings in this new Caffeinated google, is still unclear. There is no evidence to suggest its good or bad.
Actually in a number of my results on various searches, I was finding quite a few aggregates ranking in the top 5. As most know, those are nothing but dup listings of everyone elses pages.
people, this is just one of the things i really dislike about this forum, everyone wants to learn how to do something but they really give nothing back. Now the way i see it is that were all in the same boat here, which puts us all on the same level as some peoples incomes are starting to hit rock bottom, we all have to club together and do some research and bring back your findings. This place is a goldmine for resources which we all have to use in the near future and i've got a little plan hatched but i'm not sharing shit if people dont bring nothing to the table, mr g started the thread and i myself have noticed a lot of things that can help us, model number domains still rule so you can build a mfa site built around these terms, the long tail keywords can be won again but were all going to have to get domains like eg:enjoyinggreentea.com this way you can rank for keywords but you've then got the two main keywords and backlinks still count because i've got sites still ranking with only a few backlings,so come on guys lets rock n roll together and kick some g ass...
MisterGemini
Senior Member
- May 25, 2010
- 1,112
- 727
people, this is just one of the things i really dislike about this forum, everyone wants to learn how to do something but they really give nothing back. Now the way i see it is that were all in the same boat here, which puts us all on the same level as some peoples incomes are starting to hit rock bottom, we all have to club together and do some research and bring back your findings. This place is a goldmine for resources which we all have to use in the near future and i've got a little plan hatched but i'm not sharing shit if people dont bring nothing to the table, mr g started the thread and i myself have noticed a lot of things that can help us, model number domains still rule so you can build a mfa site built around these terms, the long tail keywords can be won again but were all going to have to get domains like eg:enjoyinggreentea.com this way you can rank for keywords but you've then got the two main keywords and backlinks still count because i've got sites still ranking with only a few backlings,so come on guys lets rock n roll together and kick some g ass...
Model numbers OF COURSE! Buddy, you just gave me some wicked ideas on stuff I can do with just that.
Thanks for your contribution. My intentions with this thread was to get everyone bringing in their contribution on understanding this quality signal stuff going on. Since starting it I think we have all gained a whole lot of insight that the rest of the world is still confused about. It's so difficult to get away from the presumption and concepts we have developed over the years about what matters in search ranking with google. This update has created a paradigm shift in the way google works, means we have to do the same if we want to keep gaming.
Here is a question, have you noticed any difference in the match being to the right or the left in the domain name? In the example you gave enjoyinggreentea.com .. wouldn't it be better for it be greenteaenjoying.com ? At least if the core term is 'green tea' ?
chockomonkey
Regular Member
- Mar 27, 2009
- 366
- 41
I had to comment on this part simply because i know how much ipopbb actually has given back to this community
There are plenty of people who just want a hand-out visiting these boards, but Ted ain't one of 'em! :director:
chockomonkey
Regular Member
- Mar 27, 2009
- 366
- 41
My intentions with this thread was to get everyone bringing in their contribution on understanding this quality signal stuff going on. Since starting it I think we have all gained a whole lot of insight that the rest of the world is still confused about. It's so difficult to get away from the presumption and concepts we have developed over the years about what matters in search ranking with google. This update has created a paradigm shift in the way google works, means we have to do the same if we want to keep gaming.
What I'm noticing about the changes is that they are pretty logical... and i like that! In one of my niches my site actually went from page 2 to page 1, slot #2... i'm assuming because of this categorization change. For this particular niche and keyword, i believe that google brought diversity to the SERPs to include the multiple meanings of my keywords, thus giving me credit for another way people search in my niche.
As this update was from the "quality department", i think a lot of us here in the Whitehat section of the forums are already sitting okay. They obviously have changed some of the ranking factors, but if we make the slight shift to focusing more on putting ourselves in the searchers shoes, then trying to deliver a qualtiy experience... then that will please google.
«ó«ô»ò» Lurk «ó«ô»ò»
Newbie
- May 16, 2008
- 33
- 6
I could squat and grunt out...
"Quality comes from good content that the user feels is what they were looking for when they clicked your link in the search results."
But I'm not.
Here's the reality. You need humans. You must find as many people as you can who are in your targeted demographic. Then you need to sit them down at the computer and have them go to your website. Then do nothing. Don't tell them what to click, don't tell them what you are trying to do. Just tell them to act as though they want to [INSERT WHATEVER YOUR CONVERTING ACTION IS LIKE "Buy an ebook" or "View me sticking things into myself on my webcam"]
Then they will ask questions and complain about stuff not being right.
This is gold.
I'll say it again.
This is gold.
Over the years I have come to understand that Google views quality through the eye of the beholder. It's not your analytics, it is the behavior of visitors to your site. Google sees everything and they know how visitors act on a high quality site. They can then see if the visitors are behaving the same way on your site.
If you change your site based on what you watch people do on it, you will be amazed at how SEO unfriendly it seems. You will also be amazed at how much Google suddenly loves you.
I tried shortcuts. I even wrote code that made videos of mouse movements of visitors. I scanned my analytics religously. FOR YEARS! and nothing comes close to watching real people visit your site while you scribble down their bitching and whining with which you change your site to accommodate them.
I love this forum and this is the best that I have to give back.
I have learned stuff and more than once, I have laughed so hard that I had to use my nebulizer.
Thanks BlackHatWorld
"Quality comes from good content that the user feels is what they were looking for when they clicked your link in the search results."
But I'm not.
Here's the reality. You need humans. You must find as many people as you can who are in your targeted demographic. Then you need to sit them down at the computer and have them go to your website. Then do nothing. Don't tell them what to click, don't tell them what you are trying to do. Just tell them to act as though they want to [INSERT WHATEVER YOUR CONVERTING ACTION IS LIKE "Buy an ebook" or "View me sticking things into myself on my webcam"]
Then they will ask questions and complain about stuff not being right.
This is gold.
I'll say it again.
This is gold.
Over the years I have come to understand that Google views quality through the eye of the beholder. It's not your analytics, it is the behavior of visitors to your site. Google sees everything and they know how visitors act on a high quality site. They can then see if the visitors are behaving the same way on your site.
If you change your site based on what you watch people do on it, you will be amazed at how SEO unfriendly it seems. You will also be amazed at how much Google suddenly loves you.
I tried shortcuts. I even wrote code that made videos of mouse movements of visitors. I scanned my analytics religously. FOR YEARS! and nothing comes close to watching real people visit your site while you scribble down their bitching and whining with which you change your site to accommodate them.
I love this forum and this is the best that I have to give back.
I have learned stuff and more than once, I have laughed so hard that I had to use my nebulizer.
Thanks BlackHatWorld
ipopbb
Power Member
- Feb 24, 2008
- 626
- 855
How do the search fields come into play if they all have one? I just don't understand. All manufacturers and all online retailers are going to have a search field. All forums and blogs have them too... I don't mean to be daft... I just don't understand what I'm supposed to be looking for. Not looking for a handout. Just trying to understand the discussion.
No biggie if its work... It sounds interesting. I just don't understand comment and it sounded like an observation worthy of understanding... wasn't debunking or disbelieving.
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MisterGemini
Senior Member
- May 25, 2010
- 1,112
- 727
Being in the whitehat section of blackhatworld turns us grey
That's great you got positive results and that this helped you understand that change.
You know this whole change up has gotten me thinking about keyword tools. It would be great if they could somehow be able to identify the categorization the same way google has so that we can understand better the context in which google takes them.
Imagine for a second you found a niche term. You build up a site for it and you have done everything right. Yet no matter what you do, you can't get beyond the beginning of page 2 or the bottom of page 1. All because you didn't have an understanding of this quality signal going on with google now and the terms association with it. That is the state I think a lot of people are in right now, white or black, or orange pokeadots hat.
Now the good news with all this. Prime time to be introducing new tools, site builders, and the like that harnest this new google.
I give it 2 months before we start to see 1/2 the junk out there become new again with a minor twist after everyone has gotten shaken down and still don't know whats going on.@ thestig - I got to give you props on domains with model numbers... I never thought of that and it is just about as good as going for brands but without any worries about TMs!
As for domain names. Yes, in my new projects I have registered domains with the primary in the left and something else in the right. One I used an unrelated term, but together it will create a brand, in another I used an accroynm with the primary keyword, and with the third I had a 2 word keyword and a descriptive word which will be the basis of the whole site. Now the cool part is that the document URLs we create will almost always have the primary keyword in them as well as part of the title. This is going to effectively give a double boost for match on that one word, and that was what I saw happening most often in all my searches. The first part of the term had a stronger match than the second, if there wasn't an exact, then they would put that at #1 given all other necessary elements were met as well.
I had an interesting idea today while analysing how I was going to build the link structure to some of these sites. I like the idea of being able to take search queries and display them on the home page with links to the subcategories included in them with a search query of the key phrase as a tag. In other words say someone lands on the home page from google for the search term 'green socks' .. from the home page I would present them with 4 categories with drop down menus with more.. but the 4 categories would display based on search query 'green socks shop' 'green socks community' 'green socks answers' and so on. If they just clicked on the category and not taken one of the drop down menus that came up with mouseover, then that click would take the term as a tag search in that section and bring up the results accordingly. The possibilities are scary in terms of indexing power and the links it will generate internally.
Anyhow, I thought that was pretty cool so I thought I would share it.
MisterGemini
Senior Member
- May 25, 2010
- 1,112
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Ok, let me try breaking this down with the example we mentioned before that is close to what Frankie pointed out 'search cat food'
Now I query 'search cat food' and look at the results. First, side bar shows me nothing but everything, meaning they don't categorize it into one of their sidebar parameters. However, look closer at the top 3 results you got.
All the pages had the following at the very top of their page code/tags:
Code:
Site #1
<!-- #search-box-->
<div id="search_box" class="search-box">
<form action="/cat-food" accept-charset="UTF-8" method="post" id="search-theme-form">
<div><div id="search" class="container-inline"><div class="form-item">
<input type="text" maxlength="128" name="processed_keys" id="edit-processed-keys" size="15" value="" title="Enter the terms you wish to search for." class="form-text" />
</div>
<input type="submit" name="op" id="edit-submit" value="Search" class="form-submit" />
<input type="hidden" name="form_id" id="edit-search-theme-form" value="search_theme_form" />
<input type="hidden" name="module" id="edit-module" value="reviews" />
</div>
</div></form>
</div>
<!-- /#search-box-->
Site #2
<form id="askForm" name="askForm" action="http://search.purina.com/search/" method="get"
target="_blank">
Site #3
<div id="search" class="grid_7">
<div id="search-box">The search function (not to mention the 'search' term was in the first URL) was at the top of the code/content in the page.
Now search 'cat food'. You early said you didn't see a difference. Well take a look at the top 3 results. First, we now have google side bar jumping saying 'HEY, THIS IS A PRODUCT TERM - LET ME SHOW YOU SHOPPING SITES!'. Didn't do that before. Also shows, News, and Images. So these elements are 2nd and 3rd up in quality relevance to the term 'cat food'.
#1 is one cat food brand, #2 wikipedia (grrrr all you linkers), #3 another cat food brand #4 cat food brand.. and finally at #5 we get a result similar to the previous query of 'search cat food' None of these sites with the exception of #3 had search prominent in its site. #3 however did not include terms like 'search' in their action for the form either.
ipopbb I know you are Mr. code tag watcher. So consider that the search form element can certainly be associated as a quality signal when someone uses the term 'search' along with a keyword for a query. As we can see, it brings up completely different results with google, who sees the the sites different from one another in delivering what the customer is searching for.
In the past, all you would have gotten would be all those brand name cat food and wikipedia. Today though, you get sites that google thinks will deliver what it thinks is the actual function/content of site that the search query is asking for.
I'm not sure how I can explain it any clearer. Perhaps another term would be more helpful? One you are familiar with?
I hope this has helped clarify.
cody41
Power Member
- Jun 18, 2009
- 691
- 276
Good call Gemini...I said the same thing in ipop's thread, roughly that google is scanning code tags and assigning relevance. For years google has counselled white hatters on how to properly construct a webpage..ya know, the hierarchical stuff. Now those structures are paying off. The quality signs and constructs of a page will go a long way, in my opinion, to how the page is going to rank.
A good test would be to mimic the site construct of a certain site, albeit without their css coding, and then see if we can get the same kind of google response on the search output pages. That may tell us how categorization is working.
Many of my sites are still doing well because i really think i was onto something along time ago with natural language inclusion for my content output. Also, I'm a MONSTER fan of the google wonderwheel. You guys want a pro-tip? Go here and start testing out some of the outputs in google for site displays for those keywords. Now start tracking, just like Gemini did, on what some of those sites share in common.
http://dxjones.com/wonder/wheel.php?q=cat+food&n=2
The commonality between them will be A key to unlock the rest of this conundrum.
Oh, and if you're building out sites, the wonderwheel is a great top level answer on how to start structuring your content locations/descriptions on your site. I could build a site tomorrow on cat food and utilize those keyword terms along with natural language (or LSI) inclusion and probably do pretty well.
The wonderwheel may be an indicator to what google is grouping together for different categories...
A good test would be to mimic the site construct of a certain site, albeit without their css coding, and then see if we can get the same kind of google response on the search output pages. That may tell us how categorization is working.
Many of my sites are still doing well because i really think i was onto something along time ago with natural language inclusion for my content output. Also, I'm a MONSTER fan of the google wonderwheel. You guys want a pro-tip? Go here and start testing out some of the outputs in google for site displays for those keywords. Now start tracking, just like Gemini did, on what some of those sites share in common.
http://dxjones.com/wonder/wheel.php?q=cat+food&n=2
The commonality between them will be A key to unlock the rest of this conundrum.
Oh, and if you're building out sites, the wonderwheel is a great top level answer on how to start structuring your content locations/descriptions on your site. I could build a site tomorrow on cat food and utilize those keyword terms along with natural language (or LSI) inclusion and probably do pretty well.
The wonderwheel may be an indicator to what google is grouping together for different categories...
MisterGemini
Senior Member
- May 25, 2010
- 1,112
- 727
MisterGemini
Senior Member
- May 25, 2010
- 1,112
- 727
Hey, do you know if the author of that script is giving copies at all? Or possibly licensing?
That is one killer find and recommendation! You are absolutely right about the structure and terms!
So to make your natural language content you use dragon speak?
How do you discover your LSI keywords? Just using the same ~google syntax? Or is Wonderwheel the way to go in 2010?
teague
Junior Member
- Nov 5, 2008
- 119
- 49
I've been following this from the beginning and taking notes! Thank you very much MisterGemini and ipopbb. I've been getting emails from Keith Baxter about a new way to make websites, and he has said that the wonder wheel is an awesome insight as to what google thinks is important.
He recommends to make a site with the domain name using level 1 of the wonder wheel. Use level 1 keywords for your categories. Use level 2 for your article topics. Make 1 article for each category. Use level 3 for synonyms.
He recommends to make a site with the domain name using level 1 of the wonder wheel. Use level 1 keywords for your categories. Use level 2 for your article topics. Make 1 article for each category. Use level 3 for synonyms.
MisterGemini
Senior Member
- May 25, 2010
- 1,112
- 727
That sounds pretty decent, but from my research, that is half the formula.
You have to take into regard the categorization of content. You need to consider if the keyword term is a shopping/product term, if it's a video term, if it's an image search term, if it's a discussion type term, if it's an information seeking term and so on.
If the type of content you present to google is a mismatch for the keyword content quality type, then you are going nowhere near the top.
Geez.. Baxter is selling this stuff?
What the hell am I doing giving it away!?
medway
Junior Member
- Mar 26, 2008
- 152
- 15
I checked out mens digital watches in co.uk google. Surely enough, it was product data. That's what I been trying to convey in my posts. The content matches with the keyword request. You didn't get a 500 word article on mens digital watches did you? No, instead you got a catelog of watches to choose from that were most relevant and gave you the quality experience you wanted. The query mens digital watches has been categorized as a product, and thus google ranks the pages with product on it, not just any content. They now choose what type of content to display.
The first 5 listings I saw were all pages full of mens digital watches. #5 being Amazon.
mensdigitalwatches.c0.uk
I'm checking this term in the uk using google.com and the #3 is a typical xfactor site, so not sure if the product page theory is actually true yet.
I think youre seeing that simple due to it being a co.uk TDL, where as google.com is giving the .org site a priority.
The one main thing I've seen in all this 'mayday' update is regional ranking changes. Sites I had sitting in both top 3 for .co.uk and .com as well as US ip and UK ip searches have dropped on one end.
So maybe I still rank #1 in US but not in UK anymore.
MisterGemini
Senior Member
- May 25, 2010
- 1,112
- 727
A report that came out the other day indicated that .org is given higher weight actually. This report is 6 months old before this update though, so it's not easy to tell what really applies now. However, your observations might be an indication the domain extension of .org still being given the best preference is a sign.
Hi guys, anyone got any ides to which might be the best way to design a shopping clone site, trying to build a site like amazon, walmart style sites, with like a grid design where i can add product and have some content within the site, checked out some of the datafeedr style and popshops, but cant find a thing and i really want to get away from the blog style template, any ideas