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fishyking
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Posted: Fri Oct 10, 2003 2:39 pm
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Google uses it for AdWords... I don't think they use it for normal SERPs, since SERPs are rarely tracked, and it's my understanding that they do it to check the quality of the SERPs and modify the algo according to the data they gather, not to push down or up a single site.
Of course, I may be wrong. Are there any sources we can use to further investigate this subject? |
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Charlie
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Posted: Fri Oct 10, 2003 3:57 pm
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Hello again.
Whether Google uses it for their free listings or not, I think the important point to remember here is that good rankings with no click throughs are of little use to us.
Even if I could stay at the top of the SEs without having any traffic, I'm not sure I'd be very thrilled about it - with the possible exception of bragging rights. 
The important thing is to work on getting as much targeted traffic as possible. Irrespective of ranking, I think good titles and descriptions are the thing to strive for, to maximise whatever positions we can manage to grab - paid or otherwise.
Just my opinion,
Charlie.
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Posted: Fri Oct 10, 2003 4:13 pm
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Fishyking,
Google was experimenting with the feature in regular results, and I know they are using it, and changing positions, in Adwords. I am trying to find the information I based this upon. Will post it when I find it.
Google does place some part of the algo on relevancy when backclicks are used, or did. Whether they do it currently, I am unsure. Their toolbar now offers a beta feature to "vote" for sites, which seems to support their interest in having viewer actions help determine relevancy, which was the point I tried to convey in my prior post. Relevancy is no longer just in the hands of the webmaster trying to score high, IMHO, it is becoming a relevancy tool of searchers instead.
As far as other sources, I found an information chart posted at SearchEngineWorld.com here:
http://www.searchengineworld.com/misc/features.htm
Scroll down to the "click through counts boost ranking" and you will see that Hotbot, MSN, Lycos and ICQit use this technology.
Excite was starting to use it (noted in comments below chart) in 1999.
Debs |
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Larry Chamberlain
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Posted: Fri Oct 10, 2003 11:42 pm
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Hi Debs,
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Ok, now using the Headline block and only inserting your keyphrase ... the engines won't frown, and neither will your visitors. The keyphrase is on target for both of them, just in most cases, it really doesn't say much.
For instance, if you have keyphrases that are only a little different from each other for various pages on your site, your visitors can get confused thinking they were there before and not go into the content of the 2nd page.
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Thanks very much for your good advice once again Debs.
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SEO is definitely a neverending story lol
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It certainly is 
All the best.
Larry Chamberlain.
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Debs
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Posted: Fri Oct 10, 2003 11:55 pm
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You are welcome Larry, glad to be able to help.
Debs
*hangs head in shame for not logging in earlier and not realizing it!*
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Sean Burns
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Posted: Sat Oct 11, 2003 3:38 am
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Hi all
Google almost certainly doesn't use click thru counts in it's algorithm. They generally don't track clicks at all but have been known to do it occasionally from some of their data centers. This is purely to gauge visitor satisfaction and it doesn't relate to specific sites - just to their results in general (as mentioned earlier).
The only SE that does use click tracking for sure is Teoma. They were formerly known as DirectHit which was purely a click tracking based SE. It's not a big part of Teoma's algo but it's there.
That list is really out of date so I wouldn't base any decisions on it. It still mentions SEs like Excite and Infoseek that don't really exist anymore - they are meta search engines.
Also, it says Google doesn't index alt text - they do if the image is linked, the Robots Metatag - they do, and invisible text isn't spam - it is.
Cheers
Sean Burns |
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Debs
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Posted: Sat Oct 11, 2003 9:23 am
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Sean, thanks for the update.
Debs
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Charlie
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Posted: Sat Oct 11, 2003 10:20 am
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| Sean Burns wrote: | | Google almost certainly doesn't use click thru counts in it's algorithm. They generally don't track clicks at all but have been known to do it occasionally from some of their data centers. This is purely to gauge visitor satisfaction and it doesn't relate to specific sites - just to their results in general (as mentioned earlier). |
Thanks for your post.
This just highlights for me how careful you have to be when it comes to taking SE advice. If you combine "a little knowledge is a dangerous thing" with the dynamic nature of SE algos month by month, I am very wary of passing second hand info along in this forum.
I try to keep informed via Planet Ocean and WebMaster Forum (or at least certain people's posts). Where do you suggest people go for good SEO advice, Sean?
Thanks,
Charlie.
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Sean Burns
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Posted: Sun Oct 12, 2003 6:54 am
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Hi Charlie
I don't think it matters too much where you get your information from. What matters is whether you can look at it objectively and make up your own mind as to whether it's correct or not.
For example, people often talk about things like keyword density. If you look at the results on Google it's pretty easy to see that keyword density is not very important. Many pages can make the top 10 without the keyword appearing at all on their pages and many others only mention it once or twice. So, this tells you that other factors are far more important.
You can also use Google's advanced search function to test a lot of things. For example, if you do an all in anchor search, you can see that the results are extremely similar to a normal search. This shows that anchor text is an extremely important part of the algorithm.
So, get advice from wherever you can but make sure you test everything out for yourself.
Hope this helps.
Cheers
Sean Burns |
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Charlie
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Posted: Sun Oct 12, 2003 11:04 am
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| Sean Burns wrote: | | I don't think it matters too much where you get your information from. What matters is whether you can look at it objectively and make up your own mind as to whether it's correct or not. |
Nicely put.
If you've got the time or the inclination, maybe you'd like to add to some of the more "philosophical" (or is that less practical?) threads in this forum.
| Sean Burns wrote: | For example, people often talk about things like keyword density. If you look at the results on Google it's pretty easy to see that keyword density is not very important. Many pages can make the top 10 without the keyword appearing at all on their pages and many others only mention it once or twice. So, this tells you that other factors are far more important.
You can also use Google's advanced search function to test a lot of things. For example, if you do an all in anchor search, you can see that the results are extremely similar to a normal search. This shows that anchor text is an extremely important part of the algorithm. |
Questions about keyword density often crop up in this forum, tending to suggest that keyword density is still given artificially high priority by many people.
Hopefully that anchor search method makes the point.
All the best,
Charlie.
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Debs
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Posted: Sun Oct 12, 2003 11:21 am
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It makes the point about Google, but other engines still place emphasis on it. Just like metatags, Google doesn't use the keywords metatags, but I include it anyway because other engines do.
Debs
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Sean Burns
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Posted: Mon Oct 13, 2003 6:29 am
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Hi all
Things like keyword density only become important when the factors that are given more weight aren't in play. As soon as a keyword or phrase becomes competitive, keyword density will not have much of an effect.
AltaVista does seem to favor it more than other SEs which is one of the reasons why AV is full of spam - it's too easy to manipulate. It was important to Inktomi but they've basically completely changed their algorithm to be more like Google's. Same with AllTheWeb.
I agree on the meta tags point. Inktomi is the only search engine that still uses meta keywords and it has almost no effect on rankings but things can change. Its easier to spend the 15 seconds adding them to each new page now than to go through and add them later. I still use them myself but only include the one keyword or phrase that I'm targeting.
Cheers
Sean Burns |
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Charlie
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Posted: Mon Oct 13, 2003 11:06 am
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| Sean Burns wrote: | | AltaVista does seem to favor it more than other SEs which is one of the reasons why AV is full of spam - it's too easy to manipulate. It was important to Inktomi but they've basically completely changed their algorithm to be more like Google's. Same with AllTheWeb. |
Let's face it, Google has proved very popular with searchers recently, due of course to the results it comes up with. (AV has dropped for exactly the same reason.)
Search engines live or die by popularity with searchers, so it's little wonder that the other engines are moving increasingly towards Google's highly successful model. This is speeding up the decline in importance of keyword density (and other "on page" factors) from an SEO point of view.
Just the way I see it,
Charlie.
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Debs
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Posted: Mon Oct 13, 2003 11:16 am
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| Quote: | This is speeding up the decline in importance of keyword density (and other "on page" factors) from an SEO point of view.
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I agree the decline of keyword density and other SEO factors are being reduced, and particulary by what Charlie mentioned ... the other SE's moving toward Google's model.
I agree that some "on page" factors are declining in importance but not all. Google still relies on page content matches to some degree or they wouldn't show in Google descriptions. Am I wrong here?
Also, I think overuse of certain "on page" factors are very important because their overuse can get you penalized. I think "on page" factors will still carry a lot of weight in the future ... the future question is ... will they help you, or could they penalize you?
My 2 cents,
Debs
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Charlie
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Posted: Mon Oct 13, 2003 11:35 am
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| Debs wrote: | | Google still relies on page content matches to some degree or they wouldn't show in Google descriptions. Am I wrong here? |
Google has to get the description from somewhere, especially if you're not listed in DMOZ.
Looking at many of the descriptions out there, either Google's not very good at picking appropriate text from a page, or (more likely) off-page factors such as linking are the driving force behind top rankings.
As further evidence, do you remember those experiments at "Google bombing" a while ago?
Basically, people created 1000s of links to wonderfulwidgets.com (this is an example only) each with the anchor text "bloody awful widgets" (or words to that effect). Basically, wonderfulwidgets.com ended up top of the pops for a phrase that certainly did not appear on the page! 
| Debs wrote: | | Also, I think overuse of certain "on page" factors are very important because their overuse can get you penalized. I think "on page" factors will still carry a lot of weight in the future ... the future question is ... will they help you, or could they penalize you? |
Fair point, at least for now...
But surely if on-page factors decline further in importance, eventually there will be no need to penalise extreme cases, as they won't make any difference to the rankings anyway.
All the best,
Charlie.
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