You have a valid point there. Einstein thought that his theory of relativity could explain a relationship between everything in the universe. But modern quantum physics left Einstein behind. Just in the same way, Google should be wary when placing such weight on age as a quality signifier. That 8 year old 'authority' site might be inactive and out of date. Why would anyone consider such a site (and there are plenty of them about) relevant in any way?
I should add here that I think that coming up with any search engine algorithm that produces good results and is not exploitable is probably an exercise in pointless folly. I think the two are mutually exclusive. Having an algorithm based heavily on 'age of domain' is potentially no less (or more) exploitable than having an algorithm based on link anchor text. Given sufficient manipulation and exploitation they will both product equally crap results. It's a nice discussion though
Jager totally broke google for me as an user, This weekend I have done searches for personal stuff and All I get in google is really old sites either unrealted or out of date information some examples: emeril tickets local condo searches buy terracotta pots (and related) There are some more.. I ended up using msn
Eloquently put - I couldn't agree more. In a way I think that the idea of 'sandboxing' new sites is fairly short-sighted. I mean, they seem to really like older domains but how on earth are they going to get around the backlog of sites that has built up over the years? Webmasters aren't going to just stop making new sites because Google won't rank them. For now they might think that this age filter is the best means to an end, but I would argue that they are storing up big problems for the future.
I don't see how it would exploitable, mnemtsas, you can't really exploit the age of a site, you can't artificially add years to it. And if people are thinking "oh, well, I will just buy a domain that is 10 years old and use it for my site" it would be really easy for Google to do a check and see that a domain about carrots is now being used on a site about home insurance. I actually think this is a very smart move from Google.
kalius - those are some pretty poor results. It's exactly those kind of searches that need 'beefed up' with fresh results. Fair enough, if someone buys allaboutcarrots.com and is daft enough to change the content from one extreme (carrots) to another (home insurance) then they deserve to drop out. I'm sorry but I just can't see it. Yes I can see that it makes it more difficult to spam then engines with cookie-cutter affiliate sites - but it doesn't get rid of the problem. I am well aware that someone at a workstation in the Googleplex has a better handle on the big picture, but it is hard to get around the fact that by filtering the top 10 by age they are sweeping the problem under a rug. Not all black hat webmasters will care if their site ranks top 10 in the morning. Some will just wait out the sandbox and then spam the index.
Sure it's exploitable. Anyone with the $$ can purchase relevant old domains and dominate the rankings. It might have killed off the little fish like you and me but people will still be able to work around it.
Geez, you can't do an algo analysis with lame search terms like "emeril tickets" which has 139,000 results, give me a break
That's exactly my point, it would be sooo easy for Google to figure it out, why do you think they have their own registar now? They are doing deep analisis of the domains, a case like the one you describe would be spotted in 2 seconds
A user looking for information doesn't care about the # of results, The only inportant things is: Does the results have the information I'm looking for? IF not everything is worthless. Those are searches I have done this wekend for personal reasons, not related in any way to my seo work. check # 3 and 4 on this one car dealers madison wi -- Mapquest results??
Good point. I'm not the sharpest tool in the shed, but I can guarantee you that someone will come up with a way of exploiting it. Without a doubt. Once the knowledge of how to do it gets out the results will go to crap just like they have in the past. It could be argued that the results at the moment are already crap so at least it'll be a short trip. Still, I'll stand by my statement that applying a huge weighting based on age of domain is silly. Sure apply something. But saying that >5 years old = reputable and < 5 years old = sack of steaming excrement is stupid in the extreme. By appying such a filter just to prevent exploitation at the expense of search results quality is commonly known as 'thowing out the baby with the bath water'.
Nobody was incinuating that Google was totally rubbish based on one search. Anyway, you can talk all you like about the finer intricacies of how Google is filtering out young sites, analyzing domain information and linkage data. Just don't miss the forest for the trees. I believe that no matter how strong their brand is (and I think it is being diluted with every new add-on they release into beta) that Google is running the gauntlet of losing marketshare. OK, they have a commanding position now but that is not going to be a permanent fixture. The sandbox, old age filter (or whatever you want to call it) is indicative of their myopic approach to search, which used to be laser-like. Whatever way you cut it (I could not care less for company ethics etc.) Google are publically listed and the only tune they dance to now is that of Wall Street. End of rant.
lol, funy how every time there is an update we get filled with people saying that Google is the big bad wolf and hurts poor innocent webmasters and all it wants is money and bla bla... What I see here is nothing but a small shift on the way Google ranks sites. Before this, anchor text was the huge value. As soon as people figured out the love Google had with anchor text they started artificially modifying it by using tools like the Coop (which is wrong since it is not meant for it), linkvault (which they say IS made for this), sitewide links, etc. So, google saw that the anchor text was working in an unnatural way, and they decided to include another value in their algo which is way more difficult to modify or play around with: the domain's age. And, as always, there will always be a webmaster unhappy because his site dropped, and another webmaster doing the happy dance because his site jumped up to the top. The solution? Simple, as I have always said, build your site and FORGET ABOUT GOOGLE!! Why do people insist on getting rankings for their site 3 months after they have built it? Go attack MSN and Yahoo first, I assure you, whenever Google feels like it, it will slowly start counting your site in, but now this seems to be a very slow process.
Amen, and to add something: new seo's do a better job hurting themselves than helping themselves when it comes to Google. Sometimes it's better to just forget about them and create content, advertise, etc. Act like they don't exist, and when you least expect it, they may even hit you really well!
Agreed. No point crying about it, just find other marketing avenues and move on. I'd argue whether it's a small shift. It may be for your site(s) but it sure isn't for others. Yes they've clearly tweaked things, and good luck to them for trying to improve things and stop serp manipulation. Yup, agreed. Again agreed. With one massive exception. If they make the searchers unhappy then they've shot themselves in the foot. They don't have to keep you and me happy. They do need to keep joe public happy when he's trying to find the nearest 'blue widget' retailer. And if they don't then I guess they're in trouble. Yup. Agreed. Build your websites as if search engines didn't exist and eventually (and it looks like eventually could be a very long time) Google will decide you're important.
Totally agreed... sometimes we forget about the average joe... we are webmasters, we know stuff that most people out there don't even know exists... It would be very interesting to see some company do an extensive survey and gather people's opinion about the search results quality... maybe for you or me the results are crap, because we use a webmaster mentality, but who knows, those results might be gold for the average person
yeah but its sort of strange google always does one of these updates right before christmas shopping season begins then sites start coming back after its over