Google is not perfect nor will it ever be. They will always have to make changes or end up like the rest of the them placed at the bottom of S.E. lake with cement shoes. The only time I get really crappy results is when someone as doorway pages. Or of course if a site comes up before mine in the serps -lol
At least the Toolbar PR is broken. At least, leaving it like this for web years imo means its broken.
All I'm saying is the "inconsistencies" are minor (I personally don't notice them in anything I monitor or search for), although I'm not saying they don't exist. They might even be throwing a little inconsistency in there on purpose. The more difficult it is for someone to define exactly how/why something is ranked where it is, the more difficult it will be to manipulate the results. That in itself has value for Google's ultimate goal (return only relevant results, not necessarily optimized/manipulated). The the things that end users don't care about, but makes people trying to manipulate rankings label Google as broken, may very well be done on purpose. Realtime updating of PageRank in the toolbar, the sandbox effect, rankings jumping around, the link: function, etc. When you think about it, no end user will notice any of it. But if you look at what the end user does notice... consistently relevant result (at least compared to any other search engine), Google is doing a bang-up job. Of course SEOs are going to complain when they can't formulate exactly how Google works or how to manipulate rankings consistently. Because if they can't manipulate it as easily or understand why everything is like it is, it must be broken. People should remember that Google does not want it's rankings manipulated... and if they throw some things into the mix to make manipulators throw their hands up and think the whole system must be broken, then who knows... that might just be what Google is going for.
Remember the past... Remember the Florida update? Masses of SEOs were screaming that Google was broken. A few diehards said "its not broken. Google just wants to stop seo's from manipulating their search engine". The argument was hot and heavy. What came of it? Google eventually rolled it back quite a bit. Why? Because it was broken. Sometimes, the SEOs are right.
Well, you could argue that Google is always broken in that case, because they make algorithm changes daily, and will continue to do so.
I think you just called me a "manipulator" about 6 times. That comes awfully close to personal attack, and I have to tell you I don't find it endearing.
It wasn't meant as an insult, but do you deny you have attempted to artificially manipulate your search engine rankings? Manipulator is really a more accurate term than optimizer when it comes down to it. I'm a search engine manipulator myself...
G spokepersons refer, in public, to such a person as an optimizer, although there is some doubt that they use the same term in the Plex. Their efforts to defeat optimizers will continue forever, and rightly so.
Yes I deny it. Here is what my normal SEO process is. 1. I do keyword research to find out what people seeking the products or services of the web site are most likely and frequently searching for. This isn't manipulation, it is just good marketing to understand your customers. 2. I work very hard on making the site as user friendly and as easy to navigate as possible. This helps Google crawl the site -- they should be happy with that -- but more importantly it makes the site more useful and relevant for the human visitors. 3. I make sure that the content includes the words from my keyword research because if that is what people are looking for then that is what is relevant to them about the products or services on the site. If the site is selling left and right handed blue widgets and my keyword research indicates that most people don't care which hand the widget is for as long as it is blue, then by all means I will put more emphasis on the color than on which hand it is for. But that is only good marketing and if people are looking for blue widgets it makes my site more relevant for blue widget. That's not manipulation. That's understanding your customer and giving him/her what they want. 4. Now Google has established that they will place emphasis on inbound links. I didn't set that criteria, they did. So as part of the marketing and promotion strategy for any site I will seek to get them as many inbound links as possible. And in most cases this will include reciprocal links. I could let the site just sit around and wait for the generically developed links, but no matter how good a site is it is difficult for niche sites to attract a lot of inbound links generically. I believe that SEO is part of web site marketing, advertising and promotion. So unless you believe that all of these pursuits are manipulative -- is every ad in Time magine a blatant manipulation? -- then what I do is not manipualtion perse.
I do something similar. I write my content, then look for ways to fine tune my content so google know what KWs are applicable and which KWs I prefer that are a direct relation. If I write an article about car motors, and car engine is a better KW for traffic, I change motor to KW in the article. WHats so wrong with that? Thats not manipulation.... thats optimization. Manipulation is when you have a site about Viagra, that comes up in the serps for SHINY NEW TOOL
Right, it's not manipulation until you start doing things to make your sites rank higher in search engines for those terms. Simply finding out what keywords are good is just that... research, not manipulation. It makes it more useful for the user, but I wouldn't say that making a site friendly to navigate makes it more relevant. Agreed... as long as it's done for the sole purpose of helping the users that are already on the site, then yes... I agree. So you are saying that by artificially doing things that you know makes a search engine think you are more relevant (crafted anchor text on in-bound links for example) is not manipulating the search engine? Can you honestly tell me that things like text links in site footers are for the user? And that they would still be there if it didn't boost your rankings? As far as Google placing an emphasis on inbound links and anchor text... you and I both know this is true (along with every other manipulator [heh]), but I have never seen anywhere that Google tells webmasters to do it. If that isn't manipulating search engine rankings, then I don't know what is. To some extent is it manipulative, although less so. Just like picking a company name like "AAA Garden Care" manipulates their placement in the yellow pages.
I'll argue this one until I die... Let's say I had a page with no content other than the word "Viagra" on it... with enough manipulation, I could rank #1 for the search term viagra. What I'm saying is Google is going for relevancy... I could have my one word site rank #1 for the term, but it's really not relevant or useful to anyone for anything... and the only way to get there is by manipulation. Take advantage of what we know about how Google determines relevancy is manipulation if you ask me. I'm not sure why everyone thinks it's a bad thing. I manipulate search engines myself, and I don't think I'm bad.
How is Google going to judge the relevance of the on-page content if they can't crawl the site? I didn't say it makes it more relevant but surely it assist Google in determining the relevance. The decision about relevance is Google's and only Google's to make, but I can't see how helping them or assisting them in doing their job is a bad thing. To a very large extent this is a forum about SEO. You make it sound like we are a bunch of whores. Let me ask you, why are you sponsoring a web forum for a bunch of whores?
So things like footer text links and the like are done so Google is able to spider the site? I also agree with you that relevance should be determined by however Google sees fit. But it does become manipulation when we know about some of those things, and do things to alter how Google would otherwise see our relevance for anything. It sounds like you are arguing that it's our job to determine relevance for Google, and if that's the case, why not just have Google start reading a meta tag or something like: <meta keyword="viagra" relevance="15">
This thread has drifted a long way from the title. You're now talking about definitions of words. Manipulation or optimization? Which is correct? I would say that trying to optimize your site for Google, or manipulate the results, is just "competition" and normal business practice, just like Shawn's example of Yellow Pages. Any business does whatever it feels appropriate to improve it's market position, both online and offline. Getting back to the broken bit. I would tend to side with the "broken" brigade. You can notice daily that pages from sites go in and out of the index for no apparent reason, both on new sites and old sites. How can it be "relevant" to add and subtract the same page from the index - it's relevant on Monday, Tuesday and Wednesday, but not Thursday, ... oops it's Friday today, so it's relevant again.
Google is bigger than a single page though. When passing judgment on Google for relevancy, you need to look at the search results themselves. Individual pages (or even sites) are always going to fluctuate. It's the nature of trying to algorithmicly determine relevancy and the variables that determine relevancy are fluid. There might be part of Google that SEO and webmasters would claim to be broken, but I don't think the overall relevancy of Google is one of them.
Well, there are two different Googlebots running around, they are definatly working on something. What it is - that's the debate.