Thursday, January 11, 2007

Google Indexing and Page Rank Update

Matt Cutts posted the latest on Google indexing and where page ranks stands. If you check your page rank in your Google Toolbar, you may see something different than before. But according to Matt, that won't affect your search rankings. The PR score has been there for awhile and is now being updated. Dave Naylor reports there may be an outage.

I wouldn't really put too much into PageRank scores. Many obsess with this. Many of mine went up, some stayed the same, some went down.

In the meantime, Google is sending the sites plenty of traffic and I continue to add great content and keep our linking reputation high. Several of my pages with PageRank don't rank in the search engine. These are those ones that show up after you click that infamous "If you like, you can repeat the search with the omitted results included..." at the bottom.

That means your page is in the index, but not ranking.

However, it's strange to have PageRank results from three months ago (according to Matt) and have the SERP tell you a different story. Wish they would do some catch up.

You might have read HalfDeck's page about Supplemental Results and are doing all kinds of crazy stuff to get you out of the sandbox. Matt addresses this by trying to calm people saying pages in supplemental will still perform well in search. But even Matt has said that those pages in supplemental are "deemed less important" from a PageRank perspective. Cutts tells us that the bot will come by more often and give Google fresher results. It doesn't make me feel any better - sorry.

Supplemental is not good for search consumers. They have no clue if they are getting the best or parts or old outdated. What tier am I getting results from? Google index, or Supplemental index? And why not go with an expanded Google instead of this "experimental" approach as Google's Nate Taylor said it would be in 2003?

Why supplemental? Money. It's less expensive to search fewer pages.

If you're there, Matt McGee has a great article on how to break free.

A few days ago I reported on Google's new patent to sniff out duplicate content. I don't think you should worry that much because ranking poorly may be because of the "Google Sandbox" and dupe content becomes a scapegoat. Search Engine Roundtable addresses Google Fix for Duplicate Content and there's even a thread in WebmasterWorld I've been following with advice. More on Dupe Content Filter and a WMW thread with some advice from Google's Adam Lasnik.

There is a good video out from Rand Fishkin of SEOmoz interviewing Google's Vanessa Fox on these issues. Check out the new video on Social Network Marketing as well. Lot's of great stuff.

Wednesday, January 10, 2007

Keeping Up With CES

Consumer Electronics Show Las Vegas 2007Just a quick note today to appreciate what Technology Evangelist is doing at CES this year - covering it in ways you couldn't because of the size of the show.

I couldn't make it this year, but already have plans for next year and will be broadcasting from the show. Hope you can join me.

Have you been?