Why Google's Link Based Search Algorithms are Here to Stay
Recently in the post I did called an “Open Letter to Google” a lot of debating went on. One thing to come out of this is that many SEOs consider the link based algorithms used by Google and other Search Engines to be so flawed that they should be done away with. That the engines should rely solely on the sites content.
One individual actually said the following,
And my point is exactly what the author stated – on-page SEO work is relatively trivial compared to off-page, and off-page largely consists of link building. And so, without the link-based page rank algorithm, a large piece of SEO work goes away and perhaps people start to wise up and realize that the on-page stuff isn’t that hard. Follow the best practices and integrate it into your content production work-flow. Educate your staff instead of paying lofty prices for external SEO companies. Like the author said, it doesn’t take much time to teach. – Stated by TinPig on Sphinn
Now while I disagree with many things Mr. TinPig has to say I do agree with the fact that Onsite SEO is very easy to learn and to teach for that matter. I can teach anyone with good PC skills to do exceptional on site SEO in less then a month, if they can’t learn in that time frame in fact they get to go try to learn somewhere else on someone else’s payroll. This fact though is exactly why Link Based Algorithms will be with us for a very long time.
Let us look at just one small competitive niche for example. Say “Dallas Mortgage” for instance. This industry is fiercely competitive and right now there are several dozen mortgage brokers that are actually in Dallas trying to do a decent job of SEO to be ranked for this one (relatively small) niche. Now add to this the fact that Dallas is a major market and many companies in Houston, Austin, San Antone, etc that can underwrite a loan anywhere in the state are focusing on SEO for this one term as well. Lastly add the literally thousands of affiliate marketers that are working to build leads for companies like LowerMyBills.com, Ditech, etc who are also making mirror sites that optimize for this term and this one very small niche is persued by thousands of people.
To accomplish this goal some of these people are doing pure white hat (and getting owned by the way), some are doing varying levels of Gray to Black hat methods and some (affiliates mostly) are doing pure spam. To get a rank for this term you have to play by the Google rules and you must get links for it. Here is a news flash, no one is likely to give out links for “Dallas Mortgage” in the idealistic “democratic” way that Google suggests we get links. So to rank for this term you either directly create, negotiate, request, buy or beg links from quality sites.
Now to my idealist White Hat SEO brethren the solution is simple, just pull this link component out of the equation and judge sites on their content, what could be wrong with that? To anyone with an ability to think forward even a little bit the problem is like a oncoming train! Just go back to the fact that on site SEO is simple to accomplish, easy to learn and simplistic to teach. It only requires knowing and following standards, some very basic math and some skill with keyword research. So what scream the idealists!
Well what this means is all those thousands of people chasing “Dallas Mortgage” now will each create content with specific key word densities, proper tags, etc. Some will “win” for the moment and the loosers will just copy there techniques and try to do 1% better. Very soon the precise formula is determined and all the sites are using it and in a statistical tie with each other. Now also understand that with the exception of perhaps some of the “made for adSense” sites most of these sites will actually lead the visitor to a source for a Dallas Mortgage, they are not all junk as many would claim. Does this stalemate sound familiar? It should if you have been around a decade or more as it is very much how some of the first engines worked.
So what happened next? We needed a “tie breaker” some way to take two sites that both were quality from a code stand point, both had real sources of “dallas mortgage” information and both had a 2.5% (or whatever was in en vogue at the time) key word density for the term. What, short of a subjective and therefore flawed human review, was left for the search engines to use. Nothing but the infamous link. Why?
Beacause even though you can build your own links, even though you can buy them, even though you can build an entire series of sites just to pass link power around, some number of links will still be 100% beyond the control of the actual site owners. Right now we only have two choices in this. Human review or links as a component and humans can be bribed, wrong, bias, etc. Links at least use math and my friends, “math doesn’t lie”.
Do I think we have swung to far and links now have to much influence? Yes I do, I think it should be impossible for any page to rank for any term that is clearly not present on it at all. Yet Google “click here” and you find Adobe and if you Googled Miserable Failure in the past you found George Bush and Michale Moore (thanks to bloggers Google Bombing). Eventually Google had to hand job out those results for Bush and Moore because there were so many links nothing else would have made them go away.
I would have loved Google to simply have tinkered with things so that a word must be on a page. Sure keep the link portion but if I look for failure on Google I ain’t looking for Bush or Moore (regardless of your opinion of either). What this leads us to though is a simple understanding, links are not going to stop pushing rankings for a very long time. Google may move to put more weight back into content, which I would welcome but links will be a driving force for a long time to come. I for one don’t think removing them all together would create some sort of democratic internet eutopia, that others seem to belive it would.
What do you think? Is there to much weight on links? Would it be good if Google put more weight on content? Do you like things they way they are now? Or do you think I am wrong and TinPig is right and that Google should just stop using links to rank sites at all, if so how do we then break the 100 “ties” for a first page ranking?
April 9th, 2008 at 1:17 pm
Everything can be gamed, including the law, which is why we have lawyers. I think we need more actual internet user input, things like bounce rate, to add a balance. Not everyone who browses the internet owns a site to cast their own “link vote” on said site. And that is who the internet exists for. Without visitors, we would have no need for a site in the first place. Just going to a pure content rating is what the search engines did before Google existed. We need new technology, not revamped old stuff.
April 9th, 2008 at 1:20 pm
@Stephan,
I think you and I are on the same page with this. I do think measuring things like what a user does on the site is helpful but it is also not a full answer though. For instance often I need zipcode information on certain cities and town. I search the info, find it and am off the site in seconds with the back arrow.
This would show as 3 seconds on the site with bounce but I found what I wanted. So how do you know that a user was unhappy just because the visit was short and they backed out, it really depends on what they are looking for and what they want to do with it when they find it.
April 9th, 2008 at 1:57 pm
That was my point though. That it should be a combination. Bounce rates can be misleading just as CSS tricks, keyword stuffing, and huge networks owned by one person can. Checks and balances. Make the search engine gamers jump through more hoops. Of course, I have a gamer at times so I don’t know why I am suggesting this.
April 9th, 2008 at 2:20 pm
@Stephan,
You said, “Of course, I have a gamer at times so I don’t know why I am suggesting this.” Because at heart most of us want search to be better. Sure we game it but we want it honestly to be something we can game and really good at the same time. We also like the challenge, at least I do.
April 9th, 2008 at 2:55 pm
Yes, that’s true.
April 10th, 2008 at 2:53 pm
The cries for the end of link centric algos is usually from those less and aware of the various other layers in the form of indexing, retrieval and ranking methods also employed by the search engines. Some are also link centric such as personalized pagerank and harmonicrank, others more semantic such as phrase based indexing and retrieval, HTMM and others based on methods from temporal factors or page segmentation to user performance metrics (which Google said they are looking at for reg SERPs not just personalized) – my point being is that too many in the SEO world stopped at PageRank and that is all they see and understand.
Also, with such knowledge one would understand that with more complex systems, the need for better on-site (not merely on-page) becomes more important than ever. The better your onsite talents the less one is dependant on back links. Very few SEOs have even a cursory knowledge of search engineering and complaining link centric algos without supplying realistic alternatives seems to be the call of the day lately.
Do I feel that the current system is ideal? No, but such solutions need to be flexable, scaleable and the meet the lightweight computational needs of a large search engine. This isn’t as simple as, ‘just use the content’ or to arbitrarily integrate ‘social search’ and so forth. When SEOs lament it is more likely at their own shortcomings, not the search engines. Our job is to understand them… not whine about what WE think is wrong and HOW it should be fixed. We are in the end, SEOs, not search engineers; stick to understanding them – not changing them.
Too many arm-chair quarterbacks in this gig… ;0)
2c… l8tr
April 10th, 2008 at 2:54 pm
If not links how else can you do it? content is just content the value is what people attribute to it not computers?
April 10th, 2008 at 2:55 pm
How could google put a value on content?
April 10th, 2008 at 2:56 pm
@Dave,
Damn fine and insightful commentary there. One of the best posts ever made on my blog, thank you very much for your contribution.
Jack
April 10th, 2008 at 3:00 pm
oh and Google and others have been looking at user performance metrics for not only personalized search, but RI SERPs as well. See the review of this Google patent; http://www.reliable-seo.com/knowledge-base/technical_seo/ranking_via_user_performance_metrics.html
..and more on user performance metrics; http://www.huomah.com/search-engines/algorithm-matters/beware:-google-is-watching-you.html
and of course it’s relative, personalized search; http://www.huomah.com/search-engines/search-engine-optimization/what-every-seo-should-know-about-personalized-search.html
Now those are merely based on human interaction elements that can be used in the ranking process… I could go on and on about other methods …. but SEOs can only see PageRank…
So, really, the SEs are on this…it is the SEOs that are not… the SEOs are the ones stuck on PR and Links… the search engines have moved on. It is part of the system obviously, just not as singular as most SEOs seem to believe.
April 10th, 2008 at 3:07 pm
@Dave,
Damn after yesterday I was loosing hope thanks for restoring it. Just so we are clear the intent of my article is to explain why links for now must remain a PART of rankings not the fundamental end all be all. I think they should also be careful about the “metrics” issue though and not give to much weight to one thing over the other.
For instance I already commented above about bouncing when you just want data and find it fast. Additionally with a few hundred dollars a week, some proxies and a bit of help from “The East” I could easily game performance metrics.
It is doing all this in balance that will make search better and I do think Google is on that path to some level.
April 11th, 2008 at 7:55 am
If you’re looking for Waldo in this very crowded world, sometimes it’s better to see where other people who looked for Waldo found him.
April 13th, 2008 at 7:15 am
I think you are exactly right. Incorporating link data in search results obviously worked very well for Google. The fact that links then were critical to ranking well, people sought to get links which does result in the link factor becoming somewhat manipulated and in some ways making results worse. However, even with difficulties, linking must remain a factor. My related post http://curiouscatlinks.blogspot.com/2007/12/googles-search-results-should-factors.html
April 16th, 2008 at 5:22 pm
If google learns to read, I hope they will get rid of all the spammy websites before they start judging the decent one.
May 12th, 2008 at 10:57 am
I think using link anchor text is a good way for Google to score a particular website, but this method is far too easy to manipulate and I am constantly finding unrelated, spammy looking sites in Google’s search results.
I absolutely agree that for a page to rank for a particular term, that term MUST be on the page, and it’s ranking cannot solely be determined by the number of inbound links it has with that anchor text.
What still amazes me on a daily basis is the number of websites who rank in the top 3 positions and have nothing but spam backlinks. You find a site that’s #1 for a particular term, and when you analyze their backlinks using Yahoo’s site explorer or a similar tool you find that all of their backlinks are on spam blogs or directories.
I’m surprised Google still doesn’t have this under control… despite everything they say they’re going to do to clean up search results I’ve seen little improvement… so far. But, I have faith in Google and strongly believe they will clear up matters like this over time.
July 17th, 2008 at 4:08 pm
In some respects I agree with you. I am a Real Estate agent and like the Candy get frustrated when I see someone who is in one of the top positions and do an analysis on their links. The majority of the links are reciprocal links with other Realtors which is supposed to be frowned upon by Google.
I have also seen pages that clearly rank well because of keyword stuffing so it goes both ways.
September 22nd, 2008 at 4:49 am
Google keeps on changing their algorithm standards as everyone knows. But i do think that they put more weight on quality content as far as possible. In recent future, we are expected to see some amazing algorithm developments which will boost quality stuff on web.
October 7th, 2008 at 2:05 am
I think you are exactly right. Incorporating link data in search results obviously worked very well for Google. The fact that links then were critical to ranking well, people sought to get links which does result in the link factor becoming somewhat manipulated and in some ways making results worse.
October 20th, 2008 at 12:07 pm
Yes there is too much weight being placed on links. Linkbait is becoming too common, and it’s getting harder and harder to find actual content on the web.