Does Using Google Bookmarks Influence Search Engine Ranking

WOW!!!!

Man, Garry, this post is awesome. You touch on so much stuff that definitely is important for us to look at.

I must admit, when I first started out on blogger, I signed up with Payperpost, I didn’t know it was a violation of Google’s terms! I didn’t use them on my official blog, as I didn’t want to dilute the value I try to provide to my readers.

It would only make sense for Google to implement and use the data from their bookmarking system in exactly the way you describe. Are you sure you don’t work for their “research and development” team?

In all seriousness, I can see this, or a derivative of it slowly making it’s way into the Google ranking system.

I love it! ……Now…off to start using Google bookmarks instead of plan ole firefox!

I already file and group all my stuff, may as well get it ready for the future!

see ya

I think Google already includes toolbar feedback in their algorithm. This provides them all the information they need to know about your surfing habits.

Who doesn’t use a Google toolbar?

I don’t use a Google toolbar…….but I could really honestly care less about my PR or the PR of any other page for that matter.

I think it all boils down to what most SEO “experts” already tell you, create content that people will link to and you’ll do just fine. Sure there are some things that you can do to help better your site rank in Google, but I really think that all this hype around SEO heading downhill lately is bogus.

If your site is a business and you are looking to make money, you can have the first ranking in Google. Sure you’ll probably get a lot of traffic, but if your site can’t convert all that traffic means nothing. Of course it helps being #1 but if your trying to make money you need to be focusing on how to get your visitors to actually buy something on your site or click your links so that you make money.

Like everybody always suggests….would you rather have 20 people who visit your site and buy something, or would you rather have 2000 people visit your site and buy nothing?

The same goes for non-businesses as well. If people don’t like your site they won’t come back to it or wont recommend it to somebody else. No matter what Google thinks of your site. And in fact if people do like your site and link to you, then Google will give you more credit, so really it’s mostly about writing content that people will like.

I know how to design a website that validates and uses correct formatting and clean code and blah blah blah…..but like I said before, your content is what matters.

We all read this blog because Garry writes interesting content that we want to read. We don’t read it because he ranks for whatever keywords on whatever pages in Google.

No matter what Google does (or MSN or Yahoo) there are those that will find ways to game the system. And they will make lots of $. Eventually their site will get banned and then they create another one. The sad thing is those that get caught in the crossfire, honest people that didn’t know better. Even sadder though is that those that did no better, don’t lose sleep at night.

Jarret put it very well. Create good content and they will come. I want to go get to the top using honest methods. I don’t mind that it may take longer. I’m a believer in what comes around goes around.

Garry, thanks for the indepth post. I believe a fairer method would be a rotating system of ranking. Then you may be able to do away with some of the gaming. Of course they always find a way. You can have hundreds of sites that have great information and “deserve” to be number 1, or 2, or 3, etc., but because they don’t have this or that, they aren’t. It is interesting to note that there have been posts on other SEO type forums about wild swings in Google rankings, especially for highly competitive terms. Maybe some of that is going on already.

Is my name better, now?

BTW, my site is finally live and I have signed up for Google Adsense. I’ll keep you posted.

I need to get more organized that is for sure, and Google bookmarks could be agood place to start.

I think for Google to survive it will have to adopt such methods. I am unsure how it will affect the average webmaster like me but I am willing to try and keep up an see if I can provide the relevant content that Google wants.

I guess their main concern will be getting rid of the may sites out there which are stealing or purely republishing content with absolutely no added value.

It’s also important to note that Google will have to involve themselves involved heavily in the Social Networks to keep these foot prints accurate. So much information and trends are being passed around that way in this day and age.

That’s a truly interesting post, Garry. I do believe, however, that without great content and a “call to action” website whatever Google may or may not do now and in the future is not all that important to your results. Google loves great fresh content so you just can’t get around that. Not that you should try.

Sure SEO and social bookmarking are major parts of the traffic game but as Jarret states above it’s what that traffic does once on site that is the make or break factor for a web business. 5,000 visitors a day who come and go without doing anything will hardly make you wealthy or even solvent. If that’s the case perhaps a web site redesign and a review of the sources of your traffic should be a top priority.

In fact, I believe that too much “passing by” traffic is harmful to a site and to your network of sites. For example, Google probably rewards a site network that gets a decent CTR on Adsense ads by showing higher payoff ads over your network. If a high percentage of your traffic comes from a few sites with a low CTR your total network CTR will be brought down and your sites across your network will get low paying ads shown on them.

I’m pretty sure this is the case as I recently converted a high traffic site (article directory) with low quality traffic to a blog. Within a few days my network CTR took a big jump up and the CPM more than doubled. It seems making improvements or shutting down weak performing sites in a network is important as well. Sometimes less means more.

Which brings me to your new SEOAdMax Wordpress theme. I downloaded it and set it up late last night so you definitely cost me some sleep. Looks like it will be well worth it though. Looks great and for sure is worthy of its name. The placement of the ads should be very effective. I’ll be working on content over the next few days.

Thanks for the theme, Garry. I know that it must represent a lot of work. But hey, you are becoming famous so keep it up. Good luck in beating up the cow team.

Hi Garry,

Really an eye-opener post Garry. Good insight into the underworld of SEO and Google cheating. I know this stuff is going on but I am too busy keeping my business on track to keep tabs on any of the skullduggery that goes on.

I have had different jobs and been in various programs and there are always those that take the shortcut and try to cheat the system from Unemployment Insurance to MLM Admins. Every facet of life they are there but I ignore all that and keep on my path because in the end there is nothing I can do about it. Through posts like this you are bringing some of the culprits out of the shadows and where your site is well recognized and I image the Google “police” will eventually read articles as this as well and put new anti-cheat methods in place.

You probably think I got my head buried in the sand but this is the first time I have heard of iGoogle and when I leave here I gotta’ check it out. Thanks

I don’t think that Google would come into an agreement with Yahoo! over their bookmarking system since they already have crawled pages on del.icio.us
All they would need to do is have a modified Google bot for del.icio.us and other bookmarking sites which they could run their algorithms on to give them the data that they wanted.

But yes, I agree with the post that bookmarks would be an effective way of measuring a sites popularity. But also users browsing habits. Like how long people spend on a page, what the bounce rate is. The can tweak the SERP’s every once in a while to provide other results from the other pages and compare the statistics to sites that are ranked #1. I heard or read some “SEO Scammer” say that this was “Content Refeshness” or “content deserves freshness” something like that.

From your post above:

I believe that Google will eventually thwart additional efforts against Internet users who attempt to mastermind their system by creating fictitious identities, or rather false digital fingerprints, which would then be used for the purpose of exploiting Google’s revised algorithm.

Doesn’t having multiple profiles on the various social networks sort of fit the category of “gaming the system”? It would seem like you are creating multiple digital fingerprints. How is Google supposed to know which one is the “real” Garry?

As I begin to have more than one site, do you believe it is okay to have a profile custom tailored for each niche?

Also, did you have a falling out with Text-link-Ads? I was reading an old post and you referenced loving Text-Link-Ads (back in 07 sometime? I only ask because I’ve seen other blogs use them and was curious if it was a good program to add. And same with Pay-Per-Post type services.

Another interesting post Garry.

I’m in time luck so I’ll reduce all to the minimum.

The search engine systems will continue to be gamed, it’s in human nature to try to crack systems and find a shortcut. Though I think you don’t need to create fictitious identities, label are there to categorize and to be filtered, so you can assign a label (for example let’s say “a”) to all sites you have submitted only for the SEO. Anytime you see that label you know you have to pass over.

Your digitalfingerprint concept is interesting, altough i think it isn’t good for rank your sites better. I try to explain the concept better.

I’m of the opinion that the search results should be the same for me and for you if both are searching for the same keyphrase. What I think could be personalized (and Google could use your fingerprint for) is to provide ASIDE customized ADS. I think Google is already doing something like this, because it happens to me that when i surf the net i get sometimes Adsense Ads which have NO relevancy with the page on which they are displayed, but they have with the pages I’ve visited recently.

Finally, at the cost to be tedious, I repeat a concept which I can’t stress enough: if you want to rank well, concentrate on gaining oneway backlinks (…of course given good content).

ciao
alexander

ok Gary as this is an insightful post i have some beef with aa few of your points that you hit… im not drilling you down or anything just adding my two cents to your discussions (this by the way is good for your seo as it ads to your content )

1st. google cannot ever add the weight of their bookmarking service for one main reason…..not everybody uses google bookmarks. i know that was just an idea you had but, im here to say that i dont think that would ever happen. imagine if your great site was on page 10 of the serps and a new 1 day old wordpress.com blog (within the same niche) with one post was on page one just because they added their blog to google bookmarks?? so that wouldnt work.

2nd. Hmm as far as the seo you said that should only be used professionally on sites to make it more user friendly. and this is true. But come on, properly utilizing seo on blogs can make one very wealthy. im sure you know this being and affiliate marketer yourself. theres no way anybody can make money without utilizing some good seo secrets that the average blogger doesnt know about. theres a different between between blackhat and whitehat seo….and from my own personal experience you can still rank high in the serps using strictly white hat seo, although some may still consider your site unethical…heres an example.

i own self hosted wordpress blogs maybe 3 that i really work on, i chase rss subscribers and all the other “blogging BS”. a great design, and multiple post a week. and i rank high in the serps from alot of my search terms.
now i also have a ton of free blogger blogs, these are mainly my money making blogs. umm without giving to much info i use a ton of whitehat seo tactics that will push my blogs to the top of the serps. i really dont use blackhat, i have before but not really. now on those blogger blogs, i will (legally) do everything i can to rank for my longtail keywords, which automatically ranks me for my main keywords, now on some of these sites you definitely will find some poorly written content, without spellcheck, and alot of bold letters, and other white hat seo tactics. the point of those blogs are to get people to the site and help them locate a great business (my adsense ads) that pertains to what they were initially searching for. i guess im the middle man.

my point is that you should specify to your readers that they can do seo themselves and still rank extremely well even without the use of blackhat. you should also clarify the difference between blackhat and white hat, your readers want to make money to and there are many ways for them to do so. and using seo is one good way to help them make that money.

like i said im not really dissing you, im just all about giving people what they need. im not a guru mmo. i make money using bans, blogger blogs, and wordpress blogs, i dont do affiliate marketing. but i do know alot about how to get my sites to the top of google, regardless of the niche or competition. and im sure your readers want to know the same.

here are a few things i do that have helped me….
use a keyword density of 5%-10%
put keywords in domain name, post titles, first paragraph and last paragraph
use bold, italics, underline, and red letters to show search engines whats most important on your blog.
if your blog is based on one niche or keyword add a link to each post to your homepage using your keyword as the anchor text.
CONTENT IS NOT KING—-but backlinks are. i promise i can outrank a well written post with a sloppy post using all ebonics with multiple backlinks.
dont worry about readers-they just use your bandwidht you want buyers, someone whose going to come to your site and buy something or click an ad…this is how you make money not by getting a billion rss subscribers.

well that was just a few basic tips, i dont think any of that was bad seo methods yet it will help you make money…stuff like that should be clarified….thanks gary

Hi Garry,

If you are concerned about Google Chrome sending privacy related info - private data to Google servers, please note that Google Chrome is a fully open source application. You can ask a fellow programmer to look into the code to check if there is any such thing.

I really liked your post. Especially the part about Google co-ordinating with del.icio.us, to check if the deductions they made from privately bookmarked pages are accurate or not, is a simple solution.

Thanks.