On Friday, my client was sitting neatly in position two for a very competitive search phrase “Furniture” and so I enjoyed my weekend looking forward to seeing the analytics on Monday. However, I was in for a shock when I checked the search engine results pages (Serps) for my targeted phrases. My client was nowhere to be found in the top 10, in fact none of my client’s competitors were even in the top ten, instead it was loaded full of shopping engines including Amazon, PriceGrabber, Bizrate, Yahoo Shopping, Ebay, and Overstock. There was a change that is directed towards sending Googlers directly to these engines versus directly to the actual furniture provider’s websites.

There are several theories as to why I think Google may have done this. First, Google claims to want to send their searches to the most relevant pages and perhaps Google feels that during the holiday season, people want to use these comparison shopping engines versus actually shopping directly from the manufacturer and feel that they are providing better results by doing this. That is the Google friendly theory. Another less Google Friendly theory is that a lot of these companies that had great visibility in Google no longer do and at the worst timing, just in time for the holiday season. What are these companies going to do? Adwords of course! Now that these companies don’t have the visibility they need from the natural results, they will have to pay to gain visibility through the Adwords search network and pay Google for every click thus significantly increasing Google’s revenue off this particular industry.

There are several other reasons this may have happened as well and as of now, I can only speculate. I will be reviewing several other industries to see if this change is consistent but I am most familiar with the Furniture industry which is why I was able to immediately see a major change in the SERPs. If you know who was ranking in top 10 for other industries and just saw a huge change to favor these giants as well, I would love to hear from you.

It’s been a while since I have posted a good article on here so it’s time I write about what I have been reading.   This particular post is going to talk about the impact of all the numerous big time lawsuits based on copyright infringement which seems to be the thing to do these days.    For example, the RIAA is suing what seems to be anyone and everyone, YouTube is being sued, Viacom is being sued, the Internet Archive is being sued, and all for relatively the same thing… Copyright Infringement.

The Internet is still very young relatively, and we are going through a learning process of how this flood of information can and should be handled.  Most people view the Internet as a free source for exchange of information and it has been viewed like that since the Internet became mainstream in terms of the sheer volume of people that utilize it for the purpose of exchanging information.

Many lawyers are seeing opportunity to make big money by exploiting how the overwhelming majority of people view the Internet as public domain.    People now are finding out the hard way that the Internet is not a free, open exchange of information and that attorneys are finding their hands in the pot more frequently.   Attorneys claim to sue in order to give financial compensation where it is due but in reality and overwhelming percentage of the financial contribution goes to the attorneys that are representing the so called victim’s of infringement.

There are multiple organizations that talk of an open internet but don’t really do much in creating the environment to support one from what I have found.   Because of this, I thought about if there is anything we could do to actually help support the idea of an open web into something more than just the idea.

Shown by the sheer volume of lawsuits, it is evident that we are already in too deep to fix the problem of the Internet.  How would you go about “fixing” something as big as the Internet anyways?

Is there anything we can do then?  There is nothing one man can do to fix this problem but as we all know there is strength in numbers in which the masses have the power to make change.  Seeing as the problems is that we are learning the World Wide Web is not a free source of exchange of ideas and information after the fact it presents us with the foregoing knowledge that we need to create a stated free or open web in which the exchange of all information is free and open before information and exchange occurs.  This would effectively remove the ability for any attorney to claim suite for any information exchanged in this open web.

Is it possible to create a new open web?  Probably not because it would require the restructuring of the Internet which would require millions if not billions of man hours.  That being said, let’s take a hypothetical look at what I think would have to happen in order to accomplish this.

1. We would need a new uniform resource location system.  Currently we use a “www.sitename.com” syntax which identifies that you are on the world wide web at the site called sitename on the .com extension.   In order to create complete inarguable distinction, I propose that we change this core attribute of the current web to a new syntax as follows.   The new uniform resource locator on the open web would be “open.sitename” which would signify you were on the open web at location “sitename”.  This would create a clear, undeniable sign that the information contained at that location was free for exchange.
2. Current businesses, blogs, and any other site that wanted to be included in the new open web would have to request their domain name in the new open domain registry.  This would have to be a free transition meaning if you own www.sitename.com you are automatically the owner of open.sitename.  It would be the domain owner’s responsibility to load their existing site into the new open domain via FTP if they wanted their site to be found on the new open Internet.    The only way that any site owners would consider this is if Internet users such as the masses of the public made a vow to only use the new open web.  This would force a transition.  Without that, there would be no purpose or justification for the time and money it would take for the transition.   Is it possible to get the overwhelming majority of people to boycott the WWW in order to start using open.web?   I don’t know, but probably not likely.
3. Make the open.web accessible through current www. Search engines such as Google, Yahoo, and MSN.  If open.web domains found their way to the top of search results and user’s make a conscious effort to chose the open.web domain versus a www.sitename.com website, I think we could theoretically make the transition.
4. Site’s that have member areas which required payment could still be on the open.web because users would know in advance that information was only available by payment.

The idea is not to create a non profit web but to put profit on the web into the right hands.  To put profit into the actual websites that are selling products or services while creating a free exchange of information.   The idea is not unflawed and I don’t claim it to be.  It’s more to provoke thought to people in the public and hopefully someone that can take more action on these ideas.

Thanks for your time,

Brad Henry

 

The Internet as we know it now will not be the same five years down the road. What will the internet look like at that point in time? My guess is it will be similar to a virtual world where you are represented by a virtual character. You won’t go to websites or search engines any longer to find what you want. Instead you will go to this virtual world directory and search through a navigation to find the store, product, or whatever it is you are looking for and “teleport” directly to where you want to go. If you haven’t seen the game “Second Life” yet, it depicts where I think the internet may go. Right now, that game has online stores your character can visit and buy psuedo clothing and items but I think over time, this will progress into your character being able to buy real life goods and services that can and will ship the actual products to you in the real world. This would greatly expand the user experience for any type of ecommerce business.

As of now, this is just a game but I am going to keep a very close eye on the development of this because I think it will revolutionize the Internet as we all know it today.

Thanks,

Brad Henry, SEO Analyst
www.seoslap.com

Google is in the middle of their Page Rank, Backlink, and Toolbar exports right now and these typically take a couple days to weeks. These numbers don’t reflect any new information, they just show the changes that have been in effect for the past 2-3 months but haven’t been visible such as Page Rank for new pages or backlinks for new sites.

This is not the big change that can re-arrange the search engine results pages as we know it. That change is reserved for a less frequented occasion. After researching into the patterns that Google has shown in their previous Algorithm updates I have been able to make a prediction of when I think the next major Algorithm change will be and some of the major impacts it could have.

Historically, Google had major updates in their algorithm on the following dates.

1. 04/2001
2. 11/29/2001 (7 months later)
3. 10/14/2002 (11 months later)
4. 11/16/2003 (13 months later)
5. 02/11/2004 (3 months later)
6. 02/03/2005 (12 months later)
7. 10-11/2005 Three separate Algorithm Updates over a month period. (8 months later)

Seeing as how the longest stint Google has gone in the recorded history I could find was 13 months back in 2003 and we are going into month 12 of no algorithm updates, it would be ignorant not to expect the big change within the next month or so.

Because they are in the middle of the current Toolbar, Backlink, and Page Rank update I can not foresee the update happening within the next 2 weeks. I am hypothesizing that their efforts are focused on rolling that project out, getting it off the belt then switching their efforts towards the Algorithm change.

We know its coming, now what should we expect. In order for Google to stay king of the mountain they are going to need to try to remove a lot of the spam that is out there from their index. I have heard about the Class C regulator which will impact a very large part of the SEO and design community. If you have a majority of your backlinks from the same Class C IP address, you might want to give them a hug goodbye… Word on the street is they are going to eliminate duplicate Class C IP address backlinks in order to take away that control that specific industries such as SEO, Development, and Design have over their backlink structures.

A lot has changed over the past year in Search Engines and Google will have to make some directional changes in their algorithm to stay on top. Google’s new Algorithm will also be much smarter in being able to determine bad links from good links. If you are tied into any types of link farms, or bad link neighborhoods I would suggest that you try to take care of those issues now versus once you can’t be found in Google.

In order to provide the most relevant data versus the most optimized, Google will probably adjust the new algorithm to be able to identify any Black Hat SEO tactics that have been used and abused over the past year such as Cloaking, and 302 redirects for both Search Engines and visitors.

What should you take away from this article? Just that we are due for the big one any day now and we should be taking precautions to make sure that we have great SEO friendly site structures with relevant data. Avoid any Black Hat tricks because they probably won’t be working for long.

If you have any inside information or anything else to add to this article, we would love to have your input.

Google has recently updated their Page Rank and Backlink Information. How will this impact your site?

The Google Page Rank and Backlink update started in late September and from what I can tell is still happening. I have recently noticed that the Google Toolbar Page Rank has dropped for one of my clients. When I check the separate datacenters I find that it is about split between two separate scores. This means that the update is still in progress and I still have hope that I can get the client’s overall Page Rank back to where it was and then continue to move forward with it.

Does this new Google Page Rank updated include the new Class C link detector? I am not really sure yet. I know they are planning on discounting a lot backlinks that were all on the same Class C IP address sometime in the near future and this may be the beginnings of that. Because I work for a firm that develops multiple projects we host on a couple of servers, we should feel the impact of the Class C regulator but surprisingly, my company has not seen a drop in Page Rank. We have new pages on the site that have been there about a month and they still have not been assigned a Page Rank yet. I am expecting their new Page Ranks to display within the next week or so and I will have a better view into what is going on.

How will this impact your website? For most site’s that have a very SEO friendly structure and have implemented white hat SEO tactics in the past for the external link structure, you should not see too many negative impacts. The sites that need to be worried are those that are tied into any types of link farms, or link networks because that is what Google is trying to get smarter at being able to identify and discount. There are multiple new tactics for gaining high volumes of credible links which I plan on writing about in the next couple of weeks.

If you did see a hit in your backlinks or Page Rank, don’t fret, there are still options you can take to get back in the game. As with any search engine optimization, it takes time but doing it the right way is going to guarantee you long term success.

I will be starting a new SEO tutorial that will contain multiple sessions on how to design a white hat or ethical search engine optimization strategy from beginning to end. This will be your opportunity to learn a lot but you have to start at the beginning and I would recommend you subscribe to this feed here to be sure you receive the sessions as they come out. Click here for this feed.