Hey guys and gals! I have recently been playing with the "related:" search operator in Google to analyze a few of my sites and for some reason I have nothing show up when I try it. A search for "related:mycompetition.com" comes up with numerous results all related to the industry. So I guess my question is this: Is this important to the SEO and serps rankings of my sites? Personally, I feel that it would have some level of importance, that is having Google recognize your site as being related to the top 10 sites. and for my next question: If it is important, how can you persuade Google that you are related to these sites?Is this something that comes with domain age, or can simple outbound links to my competitors be enough to sway the related sites in my direction? Thanks for your help!
The related command refers mostly to backlinks. It really is saying that these sites have similar link profiles. If you want to show up in related searches, you need to have some of the same links as your competition. Simply linking to your competition won't do anything.
Ahh, that makes a lot more sense now. I was looking at it from a different angle, thanks for clearing that up for me.
Hi Fireball, Thanks for asking this valuable questions and i really got some good answer from the vansterdam. So i must thank him too. And i expect some more from the webmasters in the DP. Regards Erhythm