by Alan Rabinowitz
These are theories discussed in the offline SEO arena with several different SEOs this week.
Nothing is proven, just possible theories based on experienced SEO opinions. I call them conspiracy theories because they are just that. Paranoid theories from people who see too much in the results pages of Google. These are created out of the SEO haze that happens towards the end of the week to those of use to busy to be on the forums.
This should, of course, be taken with a grain of salt. It is meant to be somewhat humorous.
The SEO Conspiracy Theory – October 2006
- If there are spam filers that penalize, there may be “friend” filters that increase rankings. Well Hello – remember me? Please?
- Google dating back to 1998 has too much legacy code so it may never fix issues like 302 hijacks and canonical mishaps due to a costly rebuild and no beta testing portal that is not public.
- Duplicate content filters are overly aggressive and syndicating content can hurt competitors rankings once the domain reach has spanned over 50.
- Type “Google” (no quotes) into Google and see potential sub-domain spam. NOTE: In 2002-2003 Google PR 0’d sites using excessive subdomains. So today subdomain spam may be sticking around.
- Google is more inclined to believe that everyone is a spammer and would take more drastic measures, rather than conservative measures, unless of course you are BMW.de then they’ll tell you and give you a get out of jail free card. So SEO needs to now be overly safe and more linkbait marketing.
- Google is more filter based and in the relevancy game, little is expected than a few more aggressive spam filters until they buy something new.
- Domain Name based companies (My-Keyword-Named-Company.com) rank high for the domain.com keyword term since the mini September/October 2006 Google update.
- We LOVE the Yahoo! Update!
- In case no one has said it enough lately, Live Search is awesome! Thanks for Keyword research on he fly on a Major Search engine. Finally something to help the laymen searcher!
- We’re getting bored about talking abut 302 redirects and canonical issues, c’mon lets please fix it already.
That’s it, just a few theories, opinions and ideas on the Search Engines and SEO.