Matt Cutts Q&A on Big Daddy and other issues

Excellent find. Thanks for posting. DP members rock!

 

This is Matt's quote: "In general, getting good quality links would probably help us know to crawl your site more deeply..." Plain enough from the Google "horse's mouth."

 

I think Matt worded that very carefully for a reason. My point is that, as you previously posted, he did not say anything about PR. He used the words generally and probably. So there are no facts to work with here really.

You quoted Matt as saying...

I can't find the words, "is important, because that will raise pagerank, which will induce Google to crawl your site better", anywhere in Matt's blog.

I believe those are your words and Matt was very careful not to make such a statement.

Furthermore, if you look at the answer in it's entirity, Matt goes on to point out there is more to good crawlability then page rank.

So while back links are generally good, we all work um, no where does Matt say go get links on high ranking PR pages.

I suspect that this quote from the google webmaster guide lines would be why Matt worded his reply the way he did.

My point is too many webmasters want to simplify their jobs in SEO like they have a silver bullet from one idea. It's just not like that, there are way more things to consider.

There are pros and cons to your assertion and they should be considered.

 

I dont agree with that statement. We have a new site launched Dec 3rd 2005. This site about a week after it was launched has been spidered by google daily. This month and months prior Googlebot has used 1.5 GB of bandwidth or more per month crawling the site. Googlebot is in the site day and night. As for PR this last PR update which was our first only gave us a PR 2, so I dont see the coralation between PR and crawling, not at least with this new site.

 

@Las Vegas Homes

How many pages does Google show indexed on their website for you? All of them?

Christoph

 

thank you for posting that.

it appears that google site crawling does not affect your pr... but pr could affect how often and how deep google crawls... neither of which is relevant to ranking in the google search results.

if your site is search engine friendly, it will get crawled sooner or later, regardless of the pr... i don't see anything significant in what matt posted.

 

Are they planning to change their algo for pagerank calculation again?

 

One must also consider why we're trying to read into Matt's words- he's being very very careful in what he says. Of course he's not going to say "buy relevant quality links" because that would facilitate something that google does not want to happen- making PR a bought/sold for commodity since that's not an intention of the system.

HOWEVER, what he is saying makes complete sense if you take the 10,000 foot view of all of this- keep your links static and clear throughout your site, and make sure you have good PR on the pages you want emphasized. PR DOES have value. Now, how you get that PR is up to us. We can reach out in ask in kind to fellow webmasters in our niche to trade links, OR, we can go ahead and purchase links from sites within our niche that will share down it's PR value to our internal pages, if we choose to have that link pointing to a deep-page on our site.

Like someone said before- the chicken and the egg. Do you buy the egg, or do you ask to exchange eggs with other people? Either way will get you your new egg.

 

Not quite all but over 36k. I was just trying to relay that I dont know that Google only looks at PR when deciding how much or how often it spiders a site.

 

On one hand you have Matt saying that buying links will harm your reputation with Google, and on the other you have Matt saying (according to Shoemoney) that buying a link in BOTW.org will aid you getting out of the sandbox.

There really is nothing Google can do about bought links, providing you aren't buying or selling multiple un-relevant ones on/for your sites.

If your site is listed or if you're selling links on a site such as 'Credit Cards' and 'Web Hosting' on a site about Racing Cars, then this is blatent selling or suspicious and I'm sure Google would see it that way, but if you buy or sell a couple of links on a site about Racing Cars to other sites on Racing cars.. Google hasn't a little-bitty clue.

Pete

 

I will reiterate again (and again I fear) that you can not buy a link in BOTW.org You can submit your site for review, for free if you have a non-commercial site, or via the BOTW submit service, and pay for an expedited review.

During the review process, the editor checks to ensure that the submission contains a substantial amount of unique content, and meets additional listing criteria. If the site is approved, your listing is placed in the most relevant category with a title and description, as chosen by an editor. The basic rule of thumb an editor uses is trying to determine if adding the site will make the directory a better place for the user. And, does the site maintain the quality that we want associated with BOTW?

Paying the submisison fee does not, by any means, play a role in determining whether or not the site will be included. If the site does not meet the guidelines, it does not get listed.

I also have no knowledge of how a listing in our directory may or may not effect a theoretical "sandbox". I do know that approved listings will be placed in relevant categories, and provide webmasters with qualified traffic. What various search engines choose to do with that data is up to them.

 

I always buy directory listings in various dorectories when possible for new and old sites I work on. It has never seemed to directly aid in getting out of the sandbox, the link age filter still apllies when links are purchased, even from respected directories IMHO.

 

I think dmoz & yahoo listing are the only way that can help pull your site out of the box..

 

Dont count on it, I have had many site listed in Yahoo for months that were still in the sandbox, in addition I have seen sites listed in DMOZ that aren't even indexed by google and sites in DMOZ that are in the sandbox.

However, I have never had a site listed in Yahoo for more than six months and stay in the sandbox longer than that.