Comments on: google’s ‘web history’ is a ticking time bomb for seo

By: Joel Cheesman

Joel Cheesman — Mon, 14 Jan 2008 13:48:39 +0000

No doubt anything Google does will try to be gamed. The key for them, I think, is to diversify the algorithm to a much greater degree. By diversifying, they make it much for of a guessing game as to what works best and to what degree. Plus, through diversity, they can continually keep SEOs guessing by changing it up now and then.

By: Martin Eriksson

Martin Eriksson — Mon, 14 Jan 2008 09:35:22 +0000

Right. So if it truly uses that aggregate data to improve the overall results (and not just each individual user’s results based on that user’s behaviour) - how long is it going to take for someone to hire a team of 500 or 5000 people in a cheap offshoring country to click on their site in the search results?

It’ll be hard to game but it’s still gameable.

By: mevans05

mevans05 — Fri, 11 Jan 2008 20:41:09 +0000

?And the road ahead for search marketing is steadily going to shift from link acquisition and generic content creation to usability, stickiness and superb, original content (in many formats). It’s a simple formula that’s elusive: Be Remarkable.”

I agree totally. The idea of creating remarkable content really has been the name of the game all along, but many SEOs have chosen to ignore it because it’s HARD to create interesting and remarkable content about a lot of topics. They fail to recognize that it’s just as hard/time consuming/expensive to solicit links and manage all those paid directory listings - and as was seen in 2007 these tactics will soon catch up with them as the engines crack down on links. Not to mention that natural link growth is a byproduct of great content! All in all the personalization of search results is great news for those SEOs who have been focused on the creation of remarkable/interesting/compelling content instead of link building.

By: Julian Stopps

Julian Stopps — Fri, 11 Jan 2008 13:54:30 +0000

Excellent post, interesting to see yet another of the subtle ways Google is updating its search product.

Using this approach Google seem to understand that the question of “which content is valuable/useful” should be based upon user activity, not links or content keywords.

In the long term I hope this leads to web publishers focusing on the quality of their content (to retain visitors), rather than trying to find new ways to adapt SEO techniques to this new approach.