The google dance - will you survive ...

OK,

We all know Google is almighty and Google knows all, but don't forget, a lot of this knowledge we are giving to Google without even thinking about it.

When you start a website (such as in our case the iLikeViral which we set up a few months ago) you set up a site, and like we do also install the Google analytics. This is even before starting any advertisements or baclinking. Of course in the beginning you will have no visits, as nobody knows of your site. However ALSO GOOGLE knows this as you have installed the analytics !!

Now suddenly Google starts to see back links ALL over the place, but in the Google analytic there are still no visits. Google starts to think, how may it be that this site has all those backlinks but so few visits. Something strange is going on !!!! Google however gives the site the benefit of doubt and ranks it higher and lower (puts it in Google Dance), just to see IF THERE IS any real interest !!! This is called the Google dance. If your site is interesting and starts getting visits during this DANCE, Google "thinks" ok there may have been some validity in the backlinks after all. However IF during this time there is little interest, few visits especially through the Google search, you will PROBABLY rank lower after the Google dance and have a hard time getting back up.

What I am saying, is that IF you are doing a huge amount of back linking, MAKE SURE to have it followed with "real" visits, and best of all would be to have many of those visits coming through some search on Google. This way, Google will KNOW that your site is one of authority, and that they are giving you a higher position because that users value that position. In fact a huge amount of visits may not be needed but rather quality visits, that stay and browse your site.

I would think that the software needed (or maybe just the co operation of BHW members) is to follow up a huge back linking program with a lot of valid visits, both through the Google search, and directly to the website and thereby making the back links seem like they are true back links and not just a huge amount of links and with no obvious visits supporting this.

Older websites tend to do better, and I think that is because they may already have a few fixed visits to the site that support that their could be some real backlinking going on be real visitors.

I am pretty sure this is the way GOOGLE works, and why do I think so ..... simply because this makes sense and because this is what we saw happen on our iLikeViral site!!

What do you think ????? Should a huge backlinking program be folllowed by some good quality visits or do you think it is absolutely irrelivant ? What is your experience ?? Please say number of visits, site had before backlinking build, and how quickly traffic got soon after. Did you follow up with some advertising program to get direct visits or what ?

Very interesting topic I bookmarked it. I have real visits to my websites mainly due to email marketing. But I dont know if I will survive.

or... If you really feel the need to put analytics on your site wait until you have a good enough ranking that results in real visitors.

Personally I stay away from adding analytics to my sites as a general rule. No sense in giving Google any more info than they really need.

this is definitely a reasonable hypothesis. Ill take it into account in my next backlink campaign

Almost none of what you say is true.

For having done seo for over 400 websites this is just not how it works.

Not a stupid theory at all. But unfortunally I belive Matt Cutts in this video:
http://www.youtube.com/user/GoogleWebmasterHelp#p/u/30/LLmO1GE4GvI

Ok, those of you who don't think this is true (I actually know it is true, will relieve why later my reasons for why) how come you don't think Google works like this ? You don't think Google has common sense and knows how to put 2+2 and get 4 ?

volund said:

or... If you really feel the need to put analytics on your site wait until you have a good enough ranking that results in real visitors.

Personally I stay away from adding analytics to my sites as a general rule. No sense in giving Google any more info than they really need.

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Absolutely valid, I think it is not necessary to give it all away to Google before you even you start campaigning your website. The thousands of people who work at Google are not that stupid. They will know enough even without the analytics being installed on your site before you start spending your money on back link campains.

Fhenrir said:

For having done seo for over 400 websites this is just not how it works.

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If your experience shows something totally different it would be interesting to know more stats from your experience ? I am pretty sure that this is how things work from my experience but of course noone knows exactly how Google works so this is why I opened the discussion We all just have to guess but together we can find out, I am sure

Threads like this make me lose faith people on this forum.

Don't blame your suck on some google conspiracy. The reason your site isn't doing well? Because it's not natural for a website to just launch then get "back links from ALL over the place."

Google knows of your backlinks without analytics. They don't care about visitors and traffic.

If you're building hundreds of links days after launch, and they're not coming from digg, reddit, news agencies, etc like something truly viral would, Google's going to throw up a flag.

that flag will get your site reviewed by a quality rater - of which I spent over a year doing. They'll look at your spammy site and determine whether or not it's legit. Most likely, it's spam. They'll mark it as such.

Plus, you're looking at it backwards. Traffic doesn't cause rankings. Rankings cause traffic.

You're also confusing correlation and causation in a few places, but that's a lesson for another post.

Have G ever did this to a competitor of mine
i would like to spamm links to death
What does the Google Flag does ?

TheHockeyGod said:

Threads like this make me lose faith people on this forum.

Don't blame your suck on some google conspiracy. The reason your site isn't doing well? Because it's not natural for a website to just launch then get "back links from ALL over the place."

Google knows of your backlinks without analytics. They don't care about visitors and traffic.

If you're building hundreds of links days after launch, and they're not coming from digg, reddit, news agencies, etc like something truly viral would, Google's going to throw up a flag.

that flag will get your site reviewed by a quality rater - of which I spent over a year doing. They'll look at your spammy site and determine whether or not it's legit. Most likely, it's spam. They'll mark it as such.

Plus, you're looking at it backwards. Traffic doesn't cause rankings. Rankings cause traffic.

You're also confusing correlation and causation in a few places, but that's a lesson for another post.

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I think they also use analytics to track anormal visitors peeks etc. If you do your seo right and start receiving huge amount (let's say +500% uv/day or something like that) of traffic and let's say 80% of your traffic is from SE and you use analytics you WILL raise alerts in their system.

Google knows of your backlinks without analytics. They don't care about visitors and traffic.

Click to expand...

They don't say it, but I really think they use ctr (in the search results) and bounce rates.

this is what i found out about my google experiments with some autoblogs i had where i made some changes before backlinking and my traffic source was twitter

after adding google adsense my blog ranking and google traffic increased a notch

after adding analytics (my blog was already getting traffic from twitter) the traffic from google increased

i havent added the site to webmasters as yet

i have learnt that google uses its products to check activity on a site and use it for ranking purpose. I am going to do some really blackhat stuff on the site to see if affects my ranking

before adding analytics i was getting 1-2 visitors from google no i am getting 20-30 per day

just my 2 cents

regards,

I use analytics, the webmaster tools, etc from Google and I've not seen an increase in traffic as an after affect.

Lately been concentrating on the natural search and complete optimization. It's a daunting and sometimes frustrating task. Every so often I see a little spike in traffic...but nothing consistant.

I've been posting blogs, twitter, facebook, etc I increased page/descripttion/keyword relevancy.

I've been looking at ScrapeBox and SeNuke...

I'm not sure what direction to move next.

What I mean, is that if site has some visits, then it is natural to get backlinks (exact number of normal links, I dont know), but without any traffic, and suddenly having great amounts of backlinks will be very strange in eyes of Google (that is if they have any thinking people optimizing the engine).

Employees of Google know this forum as it is getting HUGE amounts of visits, and they would be stupid, not to read what is going on. So let's give them the intelligence of knowing that many sites starts creating huge amounts of backlinks without traffic, then the backlinks obviously don't make sense.

IF HOWEVER, the webmaster follows up on the backlinks, and ALSO creates traffic by some method, then the backlinks will look much more reliable then otherwise and site should rank much quicker up in the search engine.

I have noticed that Google IS IN FACT checking traffic in relevant areas, and if site is getting traffic from that area, the site is going to go higher in the search engine, BUT ONLY in that area. It is therefore OBVIOUS that Google is checking traffic, where it is coming from to give ranking. For example, you may rank Nr. 1 in Denmark for some english search word that corresponds to site's keyword, IF that site is getting traffic from Denmark. The same site and keyword may not be visible in other Google search engines. This is 100% certain.

ranga said:

this is what i found out about my google experiments with some autoblogs i had where i made some changes before backlinking and my traffic source was twitter

after adding google adsense my blog ranking and google traffic increased a notch

after adding analytics (my blog was already getting traffic from twitter) the traffic from google increased

i havent added the site to webmasters as yet

i have learnt that google uses its products to check activity on a site and use it for ranking purpose. I am going to do some really blackhat stuff on the site to see if affects my ranking

before adding analytics i was getting 1-2 visitors from google no i am getting 20-30 per day

just my 2 cents

regards,

Click to expand...

This would read to me, that if you are using tools like this, Google rates you as being more serious website than having no tools set up. This makes sense.

TheHockeyGod said:

Threads like this make me lose faith people on this forum.

Don't blame your suck on some google conspiracy. The reason your site isn't doing well? Because it's not natural for a website to just launch then get "back links from ALL over the place."

Google knows of your backlinks without analytics. They don't care about visitors and traffic.

If you're building hundreds of links days after launch, and they're not coming from digg, reddit, news agencies, etc like something truly viral would, Google's going to throw up a flag.

that flag will get your site reviewed by a quality rater - of which I spent over a year doing. They'll look at your spammy site and determine whether or not it's legit. Most likely, it's spam. They'll mark it as such.

Plus, you're looking at it backwards. Traffic doesn't cause rankings. Rankings cause traffic.

You're also confusing correlation and causation in a few places, but that's a lesson for another post.

Click to expand...

You get all confused about Google conspiracy vs common sense! What I am suggesting here is only common sense and not conspiracy. If Google has intelligent employees doing the SE optimisation, they WILL see alot of backlinks without traffic as dubious.

As I said in my post above, I have seen it with my own eyes that Google DOES rank sites higher/lower according to traffic and that is in fact important factor. It is one of many factors, but they for sure are using it. I know 2 different 100% concrete examples proofing it.

I am not discouraging people in doing backlinks, absolutely not, what I am suggesting, is to try get some traffic at the same time (banner ads, PTC traffic, facebook ads etc). Then the backlinks look much more normal.

I would be interested in your information on Google changing the rankings depending on a sites traffic. I have never seen any evidence of this and how is Google tracking the traffic in the first place.

I would hazard a guess and say that a very small percentage of sites have analytics installed so where are these traffic numbers coming from? Google can track how many people click on your site from a Google search but they do not have any way to track your other traffic sources without analytics. Honestly I really do not see how they could be ranking sites using information that they can only apply to a small percentage of sites.

It's easy, just dont use Google Analytic. There are plenty of other good tracking tools out there.