In 2008, Eric Schmidt called the Internet a cesspool and said that brands were the way to sort it out. Popular blogger Michael Gray aka Graywolf says that big brand media sites are "the real cesspool of the Internet."
A recent SEOBook article highlights a good deal of evidence that Google is placing more emphasis on brands than ever before. Author Aaron Wall takes an in depth look at how Google's algorithm has evolved over his own SEO career, and points out some hints Google has provided in the media as to where its headed before answering a few questions from me for this article.
Google search engine ranking team Google Fellow Amit Singhal published a blog post “Introduction to Google Ranking” at the official Google blog. While not going into the specific nuts-and-bolts factors influencing SERPs (or search engine results pages), Amit outlined a number of broad principles to keep in mind when optimizing your web pages.
I know many of you have heard of TrustRank before. Some say Yahoo came up with it first or Google has it trademarked. Well this video of MC explaining what TrustRank is should help clear up a lot of misconceptions:
So Worried that You Forgot to Compete
While on the link buying panel at WebmasterWorld's Pubcon a few people were pushing that you might need to consider how Google will view your current link buys 5 years down the road, and that they may hurt you then for what you do now. Upon hearing that I said something like "less than 5 years ago I bought spammy links and if I did not I probably wouldn't be speaking here right now". That got a cheer from the crowd. Who wants to be worried about what Google thinks or does 5 years from now? That is no way to innovate or take marketshare from current market leaders.
A French blog presented a glimpse of Google's search rankings hitherto unseen by anybody outside the AdWords sales department. The big discovery: dollar amounts ascribed organic rankings, among other bits of information.
If you had to pick just 100 blogs that would provide you with all the content you need to stay informed on everything that interests you, which 100 would you pick?
Google has several "search operators" that provide important insights into improving search engine rankings. One of the most important commands is "Allinanchor" as it heavily influences Google's ranking algorithm - by providing relevance to inbound links.
In an acknowledgment of how relevance in search advertising has been so successful, Microsoft moved to give higher quality ranked ads a better shot at appearing.
Aaron Wall noticed Major Yahoo! Ranking Changes.
“Yahoo search normally moves rather slowly with small changes, but I just saw some pretty big shifts in Yahoo rankings, including:-