SEO – Page Rank Fading – Back to the Future – Content

Pie Graph of Search Market Share - link juice provided for SEOmoz.com

The Static Internet was a simpler place where one could enter, search and find information. Back-Links once regarded in this simpler era, as a vote of confidence in a new an emerging internet have been exploited and abused beyond reasonable validity. Links were the way to Page Rank and too easily acquired in the link free-for-all’s all over the web. The majority of the activity was inorganic and sought out by website operators to self-induce better rankings by trading links, etc. This type of self promotion was beginning to pollute the organic results sought for by the search engines. The original back-link idea was predicated upon end users that enjoyed a particular site would vote for it with a back-link. This old idea was all but destroyed by the linked crazed site owners seeking self promotion and the black hat exploiters. The search engines met this challenge with their own methods to filter out these self generated links and the spam that threatened the user experience of the free search engines. The method Google used for tabulating the old link method was called Page Rank.

Page Rank was a system that attributed value to sites based upon the back-linking and popularity as demonstrated by incoming links vs. outbound links. A mathematical equation was used to discern the Page Rank of a given site. This worked for some time but the inorganic use of back-linking was a continuing cancer of which big search spent a lot of resources to control. Page Rank seemed to be the honest vehicle in a dishonest world by which to deliver organic results to the masses.

Big search worked at filtering the junk out of the rankings. Good, unique and fresh content was rewarded not only by the human experience of organic back-linking, but with a higher PR afforded by the search engines. The sites that were deemed “authoritative” received a higher PR. These along with the blogs and forums were positioned by PR higher than sites with less content. The educational sites and non-profits, the respective “.org” and “.edu” sites received higher PR. This was reflected in the SERPS.

A couple of things began to happen with technology and more folks logging onto broadband connections, etc. A more sophisticated end user began to demand a straight doorway to a more personal experience. Blogs were still popular seemingly to spite PR. The natural inclination of free commerce is always for profit. Big search had its eye on pay-per-click advertising and began to feel threatened by building up PR on some websites. Big search did not want anyone selling back-links to the highest bidder. So as the drive for profit rules, some websites that had gained high PR because of great content, being they forums or blog sites with ever-changing content, started selling their links to lower ranking websites. This would have undermined that natural and organic model that propelled Google to the top and made big search the doorway to the internet. Big search wanted to control this selling of links so it moved to devalue the very things it held high, fresh and changing content. Rich content sites & Blogs were downgraded in PR sometime in early ’07 for fear of link selling. Many great sites were whacked in half. I had a few websites that went from PR4 to PR2 in one swoop.

Something else took place of the old PR method however. The results in the SERPS for Google remained for my regional results, but in the national SERPS that are mixed into the results; my authoritative sites fell against some of the larger sites with less content. This had to do with PR and another type of filter or manipulation by the search engines. The end result was a balance for a while until the black hats began to dominate the Adwords and Adsense programs with spam websites and garbage infiltrated the ranks of the SERPS. For quite some time Google’s own model was threatened by the hijacking of its own money making advertising programs. It took some time for Google to get off the profit taking and clean up its act.

Finally, Google policed its results by dumping paid advertisers in order to keep the world of search organic and honest. This had to be done as real people were getting tired of the experience of searching through the SERPS for what should have appeared on top. Black hat paid advertisers were destroying organic search. Thank you Google, even if it was a little late. (I wrote about this before the dumping of advertisers with great angst.) Google’s competitors started to sound off about the actions they were taking to improve their offerings.

In the current state of Googling, PR is outranked by content. What does this say about PR? PR is just an element of the criteria that is weighed for the real ranking, that of the SERPS. PR has its place as it does rule in many areas of search, but when it comes to content and a regional element, PR is not the deciding factor in getting listed in the SERPS.

Shall we consider PR as a fading element of yesterday’s methodology? I think so. I think we are seeing the reemergence of the human element in social media. PR was built upon skewed backlink math and it is not a real measure of a site’s popularity. Social media sites are inundated with garbage and the search engines are easily filtering out the good from the spam. It seems that big search is set-up to do this in an efficient way. So called “NOFOLLOW” links on sites like Twitter are noticed by Google and position well as referred links. The Google machine sees these links and they get into the results in the SERPS. The Google machine also sees content with its artificial intelligence that above all, will reward the true purveyors of interesting information. Real people are beginning to be harnesses to “tweet,” “dig” or “bookmark” their favorites on these social sites.

Google will continue to regard these sites as very important as they represent a threat to big search. As social media continues, it will refine itself into many doorways for many end users on the internet. Big search has positioning itself to not only harness this new media, but to build its own brand of social media. The networking that is currently in place has big search shaking, but there is hope. Search has realized that because it is so big, more leaches can suck its blood (and yours) and it can fall and be hurt terribly if it does not return to the simple organic results of yesterday.

“A hunger for interactivity will prevail…”

Social Media Growing like a weed - link juice provided for wpsmallbusiness.com

Social sites will also continue to refine, but not for the same reasons big search refines. A hunger for interactivity will prevail as real people can interact with each other. This service is unique to social media while search is a more private deal. Social media has its own limits set by its users as to what is visible and what is held back from the public. This is specifically why the social attempts like Google’s own “Buzz,” where the push for one to open their own personal contacts into the open air will not work. People want to keep some areas of their internet experience private and the mix of social with email contacts will be rejected by the masses. For instance: Just about everyone that has a job would want for their personal ramblings and excesses to be kept from public view.

The mix continues and it seems that big search will either rise to the occasion with a truly human experience that attracts people organically, or a new type of social search will enter to assume some of the traffic and to act as a multi-faceted and different kind of doorway to the internet.

-Bob W