Someone posted about WebCEO yesterday and it made me look at their newsletter when it came today. It's got shed-loads of insights from Google themselves!
I've seen 50% of these questions asked here in the last 3 days! (regional ranking, page moves...)
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Dear Reader,
Happy tidings - the Web CEO Team has added a newsletter to our offerings. We are not only going to share with you the SEO concepts and [...blah, blah..]
Summing up Googlers' answers to webmasters' questions, we took notice of a few things webmasters are very curious about, but they can only guess at - even the expert opinions differ a great deal. Read the answers and conclusions from the third online Webmaster Chat.
Googler: "... if a site is made in a way that users run away right away, then chances are that we might not be recommending it as much as other sites that users like."- We can conclude that the information Google receives through its toolbar is used in the ranking algorithm.
Googler: "I think it is fair for Google to use that [age of a site and the amount of time a domain is registered] as a signal in some circumstances." - The age of domains and sites are ranking factors.
Googler: "Google uses a bunch of signals like location of the server or the TLD in order to determine which users might be interested in the sites content. "- This means the location of the server does influence the local page rankings.
Googler: "If you're moving from one URL to another (even if it's on a different domain), ranking signals can be passed via a 301 [redirect]." - Google will pass your old domain ranking information to the new domain if you make a proper redirect - 301. However, you should not use a 302 redirect.
Googler: "We work hard to make sure a site can't have a negative effect on another site." - So, a bunch of links from "bad neighborhoods cannot cause a drop in site rankings."
Googler: "We generally treat all links the same - be it from .gov or .edu or .info sites."
Googler: "PageRank is re-computed all the time (different PageRanks every day). But we update the toolbar PageRank 3-4 times/year." - The toolbar PageRank is often misleading and does not show a true picture.
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Quoted text from Google following by a summary from WebCEO editors.
I've seen 50% of these questions asked here in the last 3 days! (regional ranking, page moves...)
-----------
Dear Reader,
Happy tidings - the Web CEO Team has added a newsletter to our offerings. We are not only going to share with you the SEO concepts and [...blah, blah..]
Summing up Googlers' answers to webmasters' questions, we took notice of a few things webmasters are very curious about, but they can only guess at - even the expert opinions differ a great deal. Read the answers and conclusions from the third online Webmaster Chat.
Googler: "... if a site is made in a way that users run away right away, then chances are that we might not be recommending it as much as other sites that users like."- We can conclude that the information Google receives through its toolbar is used in the ranking algorithm.
Googler: "I think it is fair for Google to use that [age of a site and the amount of time a domain is registered] as a signal in some circumstances." - The age of domains and sites are ranking factors.
Googler: "Google uses a bunch of signals like location of the server or the TLD in order to determine which users might be interested in the sites content. "- This means the location of the server does influence the local page rankings.
Googler: "If you're moving from one URL to another (even if it's on a different domain), ranking signals can be passed via a 301 [redirect]." - Google will pass your old domain ranking information to the new domain if you make a proper redirect - 301. However, you should not use a 302 redirect.
Googler: "We work hard to make sure a site can't have a negative effect on another site." - So, a bunch of links from "bad neighborhoods cannot cause a drop in site rankings."
Googler: "We generally treat all links the same - be it from .gov or .edu or .info sites."
Googler: "PageRank is re-computed all the time (different PageRanks every day). But we update the toolbar PageRank 3-4 times/year." - The toolbar PageRank is often misleading and does not show a true picture.
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Quoted text from Google following by a summary from WebCEO editors.
