Latest Hot Topics In SEO & Search

ISDI SEO WorkshopJune 14, 2011

Barry Schwartz

SEO & Search• About Me

• Google Updates

• History

• Famous Updates

• Panda

• SEO Penalties

• Future SEO & Search

About Me

New York (8)

City University of NY

RustyBrick• 1994 > 1999 > 2011

• Web Development & Software

• Mobile, iPhone & Android Applications

• 20 Employees

• MTV, Harvard, Harper Collins, etc.

Search Engine Roundtable

• Started 2003

• 10,000+ Stories

• Tracks Search & SEO

• Awards, etc.

Search Engine Land• December 2006

• Names

• Danny Sullivan

• Chris Sherman

• Greg Sterling

• Via Search Engine Watch

SMX SphinnCon

• Chair SphinnCon Israel

• 2008

• 500 Attendees

Cited

SEO & Search• About Me

• Google Updates

• History

• Famous Updates

• Panda

• SEO Penalties

• Future SEO & Search

Google Updates

• How Google Updates

• Famous Updates

• Panda In Detail

GoogleBot

Google Index & Servers

Google Dance

• Monthly Index Updates

• 2000 - 2003

• Data Centers Update

• Danced For ~ Week

• PageRank Watchers

Rolling Updates

Types Of Updates

• Algorithm Updates (i.e. Panda)

• Data Refreshes (i.e. Individual Complaints)

• Index Update (i.e. Caffeine)

Google Updates

• How Google Updates

• Famous Updates

• Panda In Detail

Famous Updates• Fritz (Summer 2003)

• Florida (November 2003)

• Austin Update (Jan 2004)

• The Sandbox (April 2004)

• Bourbon (May 2005)

• Big Daddy (October 2005)

• Supplemental (Jan 2007)

• Paid Links (October 2007)

• Dewey Update (Mar 2008)

• Vince / Brand (March 2009)

• May Day (May 2010)

• Caffeine (June 2010)

• Scraper Filter (Jan. 2011)

• Panda (February 2011)

Fritz Update

• Summer 2003

• Index Update

• Google Dance Over

• Daily Index Updates

• AKA “Everflux”

Florida Update• November 2003

• Algorithm Update

• Before Holiday Season

• Overly SEO’d Sites & Affiliate Sites

• Businesses Went Bust

• Theories on AdWords

Austin Update• January 2004

• Algorithm Update

• Revision To Florida

• Targets More SEO Techn

• Link Farms, Stuff Keywords, etc

• Easy SEO Dead

Google Sandbox• April 2004

• Algorithm Update

• New Sites Won’t Rank

• Buying Old Sites

• Bourbon Update Fixes It? May 2005

Bourbon Update• May - June 2005

• Algorithm Update

• Off-Page Factors

• Reciprocal Links

• Irrelevant Links

• Duplicate Content

Big Daddy / Jagger• Oct. 2005 - Mar. 2006

• Index/Algorithm Update

• Infrastructure Change

• Low Value Pages Gone

• Supplemental Index?

• Faster Index Updates

Goodbye Supplemental

• Dec. 2006 - Jan. 2007

• Index Update

• Supplemental Index Gone

• Main Index Goes Deeper, Faster & Comprehensive

Paid Links• October 2007

• Algorithm Update

• Paid Links Targeted

• PageRank Penalties

• Forbes, NewsDay, Blogs & SERoundtable.com

• Why Now?

Dewey Update• March/April 2008

• Index Update

• Google Dance Like

• Targets:

• SEO’d Content

• Links

Vince / Brand Update• March 2009

• Algorithm Update

• Big Brands Take Over

• Google Said Not Brands

• Trust, Authority, Quality & PageRank

May Day Update• April - May 2010

• Algorithm Update

• Long Tail Impact

• Quality Change

• Many Sites Hurt

• Quality vs Off Topic

Caffeine Update• August 2009 - June 2010

• Infrastructure Update

• No Ranking Change

• Pages Missing From Index

• Faster, Fresher, Deeper Index, Within Minutes

Scraper Update

• January 2011

• Targets Low Quality Scraper Sites

• Warned Days Prior

• Panda Soon To Come

Panda Update• Late February 2011

• Algorithm Update

• 12% Of Results Changed

• Targets Low Quality Sites, Less Useful Sites, Little Content, Little Value

Famous Updates• Fritz (Summer 2003)

• Florida (November 2003)

• Austin Update (Jan 2004)

• The Sandbox (April 2004)

• Bourbon (May 2005)

• Big Daddy (October 2005)

• Supplemental (Jan 2007)

• Paid Links (October 2007)

• Dewey Update (Mar 2008)

• Vince / Brand (March 2009)

• May Day (May 2010)

• Caffeine (June 2010)

• Scraper Filter (Jan. 2011)

• Panda (February 2011)

Google Updates

• How Google Updates

• Famous Updates

• Panda In Detail

Panda Update In Detail

• Pre-Panda

• Panda Goals

• SEO Opinion

• Tips & Techniques

• Have Sites Recovered

The Pre-Panda Google

• Bad Press

• SEOs Complaining vs Taking Advantage

• Google’s Focus On Hacked Sites

• Poor Quality Results

• Content Farms Rule?

Pre-Panda Press• Paul Kedrosky, Dishwashers, and How

Google Eats Its Own Tail:Google has become a snake that too readily consumes its own keyword tail. Identify some words that show up in profitable searches -- from appliances, to mesothelioma suits, to kayak lessons -- churn out content cheaply and regularly, and you're done. On the web, no-one knows you're a content-grinder.

The result, however, is awful. Pages and pages of Google results that are just, for practical purposes, advertisements in the loose guise of articles, original or re-purposed. It hearkens back to the dark days of 1999, before Google arrived, when search had become largely useless, with results completely overwhelmed by spam and info-clutter.

Pre-Panda Press• Alan Patrick, On the increasing uselessness

of Google:The lead up to the Christmas and New Year holidays required researching a number of consumer goods to buy, which of course meant using Google to search for them and ratings reviews thereof. But this year it really hit home just how badly Google's systems have been spammed, as typically anything on Page 1 of the search results was some form of SEO spam - most typically a site that doesn't actually sell you anything, just points to other sites (often doing the same thing) while slipping you some Ads (no doubt sold as "relevant")...

Google is like a monoculture, and thus parasites have a major impact once they have adapted to it - especially if Google has "lost the war". If search was more heterogenous, spamsites would find it more costly to scam every site. That is a very interesting argument against the level of Google market dominance.

Pre-Panda Press• Jeff Atwood, Trouble in the House of

Google:Throughout my investigation I had nagging doubts that we were seeing serious cracks in the algorithmic search foundations of the house that Google built. But I was afraid to write an article about it for fear I'd be claimed an incompetent kook. I wasn't comfortable sharing that opinion widely, because we might be doing something obviously wrong. Which we tend to do frequently and often. Gravity can't be wrong. We're just clumsy … right?

I can't help noticing that we're not the only site to have serious problems with Google search results in the last few months. In fact, the drum beat of deteriorating Google search quality has been practically deafening of late.

Pre-Panda Press• TechCrunch: Why We Desperately Need a

New (and Better) GoogleThe problem is that content on the internet is growing exponentially and the vast majority of this content is spam. This is created by unscrupulous companies that know how to manipulate Google’s page-ranking systems to get their websites listed at the top of your search results. When you visit these sites, they take you to the websites of other companies that want to sell you their goods. (The spammers get paid for every click.) This is exactly what blogger Paul Kedrosky found when trying to buy a dishwasher.

Pre-Panda Press• ReadWriteWeb: Content Farms: Why

Media, Blogs & Google Should Be WorriedGoogle Needs to Wake Up and Smell the Coffee

I can only hope that Google and other search engines find betters ways to surface quality content, for its own sake as well as ours. Because right now Google is being infiltrated on a vast scale by content farms.

If you thought it was bad enough that many professional blogs pump out 30 posts a day, often regurgitations of press releases or quick write-ups of "news" such as Twitter being down for a few minutes (note the irony of that tweet), this new type of Google gaming is on a far bigger scale.

What Demand Media, Answers.com and AOL are doing is having a much greater impact on the quality and findability of content on the Web.

Complaints

• Aaron Wall of SEO Book on Mahalo *

• Michael Gray on eHow, About.com, etc. *

• WebmasterWorld Complaints On Google Quality *

Hacked Sites

• 2009-2010 Focus on Hacked Sites

• 2011 Move Resources Back To Search Quality

• Google Reduced Hacked Sites In Results by 90%

Panda Update In Detail

• Pre-Panda

• Panda Goals

• SEO Opinion

• Tips & Techniques

• Have Sites Recovered

Google’s Answer: Panda

• Shut Press

• Answer To Bing

• Answer To Quality

• Shinny Search Results

Quiet The Press• Matt Cutts Admits Faults

Referencing Press *

• Says Spam Reduced

• Hack Sites Less

• Index Size & Freshness Improved

• Promises Improvements

Bing & Blekko

• Google Copying Bing

• Blekko Mocking Google Spam & Bans Content Farms

• Facebook Planting Smear Campaigns

Quality = Panda• February 24, 2011 *

• 12% Results Change

• Huge Changes In Results

• April 11th, 2% Changes & Global Rollout

• 84% Overlap on Chrome Extension

Apple Packaged Results

Panda Update In Detail

• Pre-Panda

• Panda Goals

• SEO Opinion

• Tips & Techniques

• Have Sites Recovered

Who’s Hit?

• eHow.com 66%

• ezinearticles.com 90%

• associatedcontent.com 93%

• mahalo.com 84%

• articlesbase.com 94%

Source: Sistrix

eHow DeclineSource: Sistrix

Mahalo KeywordsSource: Sistrix

40% Say Hurt• 40% said Less Google

Traffic (Negative Impact)

• 25% said Same Google Traffic (No Impact)

• 18% said More Google Traffic (Positive Impact)

• 14% said Don't Know Yet

Source: SERoundtable.com

Types Of Sites Hurt

• Low Quality Content?

• Mass Produced Content?

• Sites With Lots of Ads?

• Copied Content

• Less Useful Content

Did Google Improve?• Google Says Yes

• 84% Blocklist Overlap

• Wired Quote

Wired.com: Do you feel that this update has done what you wanted it to do?

Cutts: I would say so. I got an e-mail from someone who wrote out of the blue and

said, “Hey, a couple months ago, I was worried that my daughter had pediatric multiple sclerosis, and the content farms were ranking above government sites,” Now, she said, the government sites are ranking higher. So I just wanted to write

and say thank you.

Singhal: It’s really doing what we said it would do.

“According to our metrics, this update

improves overall search quality,” Wysz, Google

Forums.

Did Google Improve?

• SEOs Mostly Say No

• Bias?

"Farmer," on the other hand, as a reaction to criticisms

regarding the quality - as opposed to relevance - of sites appearing in the search results, has achieved the same sort of scale of collateral damage as

"Florida" without actually hitting the mark. - WebmasterWorld

Pandalized

Panda Update In Detail

• Pre-Panda

• Panda Goals

• SEO Opinion

• Tips & Techniques

• Have Sites Recovered

Tips To Recover

• Google Advice

• SEO Advice

Google Advice : Help

• Google Opens Support Thread

• ~4,000 Posts Since March

• Very Few Google Responses

Google Advice: Jan 28

One thing that is very important to our users (and algorithms) is high-quality, unique and compelling content. Looking through that site, I have a hard time finding content that is only

available on the site itself. If you do have such high-quality, unique and compelling content, I'd recommend separating it

from the auto-generated rest of the site, and making sure that  the auto-generated part is blocked from

crawling and indexing, so that search engines can focus on what makes your site unique and valuable to users world-wide. 

- John Mueller, Google

Google Advice: March 7Our recent update is designed to reduce rankings for low-quality sites, so the key thing for webmasters to do is make sure their sites are the highest quality possible. We looked at a variety of signals to detect low quality sites. Bear in mind that people searching on Google typically don't want to see shallow or poorly written content, content that’s

copied from other websites, or information that are just not that useful. In addition, it's important for webmasters to know that low quality

content on part of a site can impact a site's ranking as a whole. For this reason, if you believe you've been impacted by this change you should evaluate all the content on your site and do your best to improve the

overall quality of the pages on your domain. Removing low quality pages or moving them to a different domain could help your

rankings for the higher quality content. - Wysz, Google

Google Advice: May 6

• Amit Singhal

• 23 Questions

Google Advice: Q1

• Would you trust the information presented in this article?

Google Advice: Q2

• Is this article written by an expert or enthusiast who knows the topic well, or is it more shallow in nature?

Google Advice: Q3

• Does the site have duplicate, overlapping, or redundant articles on the same or similar topics with slightly different keyword variations?

Google Advice: Q4

• Would you be comfortable giving your credit card information to this site?

Google Advice: Q5

• Does this article have spelling, stylistic, or factual errors?

Google Advice: Q6

• Are the topics driven by genuine interests of readers of the site, or does the site generate content by attempting to guess what might rank well in search engines?

Google Advice: Q7

• Does the article provide original content or information, original reporting, original research, or original analysis?

Google Advice: Q8

• Does the page provide substantial value when compared to other pages in search results?

Google Advice: Q9

• How much quality control is done on content?

Google Advice: Q10

• Does the article describe both sides of a story?

Google Advice: Q11

• Is the site a recognized authority on its topic?

Google Advice: Q12• Is the content mass-

produced by or outsourced to a large number of creators, or spread across a large network of sites, so that individual pages or sites don’t get as much attention or care?

Google Advice: Q13

• Was the article edited well, or does it appear sloppy or hastily produced?

Google Advice: Q14

• For a health related query, would you trust information from this site?

Google Advice: Q15

• Would you recognize this site as an authoritative source when mentioned by name?

Google Advice: Q16

• Does this article provide a complete or comprehensive description of the topic?

Google Advice: Q17

• Does this article contain insightful analysis or interesting information that is beyond obvious?

Google Advice: Q18

• Is this the sort of page you’d want to bookmark, share with a friend, or recommend?

Google Advice: Q19

• Does this article have an excessive amount of ads that distract from or interfere with the main content?

Google Advice: Q20

• Would you expect to see this article in a printed magazine, encyclopedia or book?

Google Advice: Q21

• Are the articles short, unsubstantial, or otherwise lacking in helpful specifics?

Google Advice: Q22

• Are the pages produced with great care and attention to detail vs. less attention to detail?

Google Advice: Q23

• Would users complain when they see pages from this site?

Google Advice: May 6

• Amit Singhal

• 23 Questions

• Solution

One other specific piece of guidance we've offered is that low-quality

content on some parts of a website can impact the whole site’s

rankings, and thus removing low quality pages, merging or improving the content of

individual shallow pages into more useful pages, or moving low quality pages to a different domain could

eventually help the rankings of your higher-quality content.

Matt Cutts : May 25th

Tips To Recover

• Google Advice

• SEO Advice

SEO Advice

• Check Your Analytics Data To Ensure You're Investigating the Right Problem

• Pinpoint The Query Categories and Pages In Decline

• Make a Prioritized Plan

• File A Reconsideration Request

Vanessa Fox: http://selnd.com/gcovE8

SEO Advice• Address the most

significantly impacted pages first, get rid of them

• Use Meta Robots noindex, follow tag on individual pages

• Delete the pages permanently

• Don't delete, improve the content of the page immediately.

• Reduce the number of internal links

• Improve the content X ad density ratio. More unique content on ad heavy pages.

Ben Pfeiffer: http://ser.bz/eW8vZH

SEO Advice• Remove redundant

pagination

• Use the rel="canonical" attribute on duplicate pages

• Do nothing quite yet, watch and see what happens

• Revisit those dark and forgotten parts of your website, eliminate any junk

• Address boilerplate content. Reduce it, or consider making it unique for each page

• Give Google feedback on the update and how it impacted your website

• Submit a reinclusion request once you have cleaned up portions of your website

Ben Pfeiffer: http://ser.bz/eW8vZH

SEO Advice• Reduce Number Of Ads

• Move Placement Of Ads

• Quality Content

• Don’t Let Google Access Questionable Pages

• More Investment in Content

• Different Writing Styles

• Vary Length Of Articles

• Info Architecture To Expose Good Content

SEO Advice

• Wary of UGC

• Analytics: See Pages With Low Time Spent

• Site Speed?

• Do Not Manipulate Google

Panda Update In Detail

• Pre-Panda

• Panda Goals

• SEO Opinion

• Tips & Techniques

• Have Sites Recovered

Any Recovery?

• April Some Reports of Incremental Returns

• False Full Recovery Reports

• Poll

• Expert SEOs

Did You Recover From Panda?

74%

8%

5%

13%

NoYes - Not FullyYes - FullyN/A

Expert SEOs Say...

NO

Expert SEOs Say...

NO

Expert SEOs Say...

NO

Expert SEOs Say...

NO

Expert SEOs Say...

NObut... slight uptick in traffic like 10-20%

but no FULL recoveries

Expert SEOs Say...

NO

Expert SEOs Say...

No

Expert SEOs Say...

No

Panda Manually Pushed

Panda Timeline

• Panda 1.0 - Late February (12%)

• Panda 2.0 (International) - April 11th (2%)

• Panda 2.1 - Early March

• Panda 2.2 - Mid-June?

Panda 2.2 : Expect...

• Coming Very Soon (being tested internally)

• Improved Scraper Detection

• No Manual Exceptions Still

• Updates To Date Have Not Been Push Backs (i.e. Florida pull backs)

Google Updates

• How Google Updates

• Famous Updates

• Panda In Detail

SEO & Search• About Me

• Google Updates

• History

• Famous Updates

• Panda

• SEO Penalties

• Future SEO & Search

Google Penalties

Google Penalties

• Google Webmaster Communication

• Official Google Penalty Notifications

• Unofficial Penalty Signs

Google Communication

• GoogleGuy @ WebmasterWorld

• 2001

GoogleGuy = Matt Cutts

Adam Lasnik

• 2007

• “Mini Matt”

• Official Google Rep For Webmasters

More...

and more...

Google Penalties

• Google Webmaster Communication

• Official Google Penalty Notifications

• Unofficial Penalty Signs

Official Notifications

Official Notifications

Official Notifications

Google Penalties

• Google Webmaster Communication

• Official Google Penalty Notifications

• Unofficial Penalty Signs

Unofficial Signs

Unofficial Signs

Unofficial Signs

Unofficial Signs

Unofficial Signs

Source: SEOmoz

Source: SEOmoz

Google Penalties

• Google Webmaster Communication

• Official Google Penalty Notifications

• Unofficial Penalty Signs

SEO & Search• About Me

• Google Updates

• History

• Famous Updates

• Panda

• SEO Penalties

• Future SEO & Search

Search Evolution

• Search 1.0 - On Page Factors - 1996

• Search 2.0 - Off Page Factors - 1998

• Search 3.0 - Vertical Factors - 2007

• Search 4.0 - Social Factors - 2010

Search 1.0

• 1996

• Textual Search

• On-Page Criteria

Search 2.0

• 1998

• Off-Page Factors

• Links & PageRank

Search 3.0

• 2007

• Vertical Results Blended

• Ask 3D

• Google Universal Search

• Bing

What Is Search?

Question

Answer

Answer

Search Marketing & SEO• Search Marketing is

working to be found when someone overtly expresses a need or desire

• Search or

• Shaking A Phone or

• Taking A Picture

Search Marketing & SEO• SEO is working to be visible in the unpaid search results

Free

Paid

Social Media is...• Social Networking:

Facebook, MySpace, LinkedIn

• Social Bookmarking: Delicious, StumbleUpon

• Social News: Reddit, Digg

• Social Knowledge: Wikipedia, Yahoo Answers

• Social Sharing: Twitter, YouTube, Flickr, Yelp, Foursquare, Facebook…

Search 4.0

• Social Search

• Human Elements

• Twitter, Facebook, Google Reader, Google +1, Blocksites, etc

Social Search Is...

• Search Results Influenced By Social Sites

• Your Social Network

• Global Social Networks

• Not Searching Social Content

• Facebook Search or Twitter Search

Real Time Content

Real Time Search

Google Real Time

Bing Real Time Search

Search Evolution

• Search 1.0 - On Page Factors - 1996

• Search 2.0 - Off Page Factors - 1998

• Search 3.0 - Vertical Factors - 2007

• Search 4.0 - Social Factors - 2010

More Search Features

• Geolocation (Location)

• Personalization (Search History)

• Blocking Sites

• +1 Sites

• Social Search

Search Marketing 4.0

• Tweets & Likes Is New Link Building

• Not Only Ranking Factors

• Get More Visibility, More Traffic, More Links

• Authority Counts (i.e. auto-retweets)

Google Me

American Airlines

Chrysler SuperBowl Ad

TV Makes Users Search

Follow Me on Twitter

Friend Me On Facebook

Facebook Pages

Offline MarketingGoes Online

Your Customers Are Searching... Make Sure You Are Found!

@rustybrickFollow Me On Twitter

facebook.com/rustybrickLike Me On Facebook

rustybrick.com/barrybarry@rustybrick.com

More On Search

• searchengineland.com

• seroundtable.com

• searchengineland.com/searchcap.php

• sphinn.com

• searchmarketingexpo.com

Questions?

Questions SubmittedOnline By Attendees

Q1: Mobile SEO?Is there any main difference between the Mobile SEO

respect conventional SEO?

Mobile SEO Issues : Old Phones• Google’s Mobile Index vs. Web Index

• UserAgent : Googlebot-Mobile

• HTTP "Accept” Header to Serve Mobile Pages

• Mobile Markup Languages

• WML, XHTML Basic, XHTML MP & cHTML

• Mobile XML Sitemap

• Resources: http://goo.gl/izztR

Mobile SEO Issues: Smart Phones

• Detect UserAgent: http://goo.gl/QC5TY

• Use Special Stylesheet

• Keep URLs The Same

• Keep Content The Same

• Make User Interface Easier

• Make Speed Faster

Desktop Version

Mobile Version

Print Version

Mobile SEO Issues• Duplicate URLs with Same Content

• m.domain.com

• domain.com/&printable=yes

• Different Content on Same URLs

• Cloaking

• IP Delivery

• One Site, One Content, Different Dress

Q2: Speed CrawlHow can you make Google to crawl your website after

an update in your content, pages, etc?

Increase Crawl Frequency

• Update Content Often

• RSS Feeds May Help

• XML Sitemap Files

• Higher PageRank

• More Links & Higher Up In Site Structure

Q3: Panda ExpandedIs the Panda algorithm identifying duplicate contents and patterns: same URLs, titles…(?). If your site has

been hit, how can this be overcome? Will it be enough if you rewrite the content? or should you add more value by adding more contents (images, video…). How good will the algorithm be at identifying those same things in

other languages.

Cutts On LanguagesSource: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ets7nHOV1Yo

Q4: Hit By Panda?Do you know of any site which has really been hit by Panda (not any other kind penalization/ban) and has

managed to get rid of it? If so, How?

Sorry - No

Q5: UGCHow does Google consider users’ profiles on social

networks and user generated content by them? Could be a lot of void users profiles (therefore, dupes) or not frequently updated a signal of a low quality site? What

about used generated content?

If users are creating content for your site (eg if you have a wiki or something similarly user-created), then I think it's definitely a good idea to help them to create high-quality content, be that by providing a spelling checking mechanism, or by making it possible for other users (or you :-)) to fix quality-issues as they are found.

On the other hand, if these are comments or testimonials left behind by users, then I think it would be a bit weird to modify them. Would you like to have that happen to feedback that you leave behind on other sites? Personally, that would bother me a bit. As the site-owner, I think it's fine (and usually expected) to make an editorial decision in whether or not a comment should remain on your site. Ultimately, it's up to you do make a decision on where you want to draw a line :-).One way to think about this is to look at what users are searching for when they reach pages like that. Are they looking for the content in the comments? If so, one solution could be to take some of those comments and to keep a cleaner version within your own content, referencing the exact user comment further below on that page. For example: "Update: In response to this article, XZY left an insightful comment saying ABC. You can find the full comment below."Another possible solution might be to allow users to "+1" (upvote) comments, and to only show the most insightful ones by default. Users would still be able to view all comments (maybe on a separate URL that isn't indexed, or through the use of AJAX), but by default, the ones shown and allowed to be indexed would be the ones that your users have found to be the most important ones. Depending on your audience, I imagine that could result in the lower-quality comments disappearing on their own.Hope this gives you some ideas :) -- it would be great to hear back from you regarding your choice and how that works out for you.

Link Building Tips• Quality Pages

• Guest Posting

• Sponsorships/Partners

• Infographics

• Videos

• Tools

• Badges/Awards

• Incentives

• Testimonials

• Get Scrapped

• Exchange Links

• Paid Links...