Axandra news archive: 14 November 2006

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Linking to other web sites can hurt your rankings if you link to the wrong web sites. Links to web spammers or "bad neighborhoods" on the web can have a negative effect on your rankings on Google and other search engines.

A Google official has recently commented on bad neighborhood links and how they affect your web site rankings on Google.

What are bad neighborhood links?

It seems that Google doesn't like the following type of web sites:

• free for all links pages (FFA)
• link farms (automated linking schemes with lots of unrelated links)
• known web spammers

Linking to that type of site can have a negative effect on your Google rankings.

Is there an official Google statement about bad neighborhood links?

In a discussion in a webmaster forum, Google's Adam Lasnik has recently clarified what Google looks for in regards to bad neighborhood penalties:

1. There is no relation between outbound links and Google's supplemental index.
   
   "It’s unlikely that your outbound linking is causing your pages to be listed in the supplemental, rather than main index."
   
   
2. Google looks for bad neighborhood linking patterns
   
   "Also, be assured that we’re not looking to penalize folks for a 'bad' link here and there. Rather, our algorithms are tuned to look for patterns of 'egregious' linking behavior… both on individual sites and in the aggregate."
   
   
3. You should check the links on your web site
   
   "It's certainly in your users' interest that you regularly audit outgoing links on your site (especially prominent ones) to ensure that you're not losing folks' trust by sending them to inappropriate places or 404 pages.
   
   Sure, it's great to keep Google happy, but it's usually more important (long term) to have your users be return visitors."

What does this mean to your web site?

Google looks for linking patterns. That means that it probably won't hurt your site if you link to a bad web site by mistake. Use a tool like ARELIS to find good related web sites with which you can exchange links.

Many links to 404 error pages might cause ranking problems. For that reason, it's a good idea to check the links on your web site every now and then.

"They were commenting on the misconception that having multiple sites hosted on the same IP address will in some way affect the PageRanks of those sites.

There is no PageRank difference whatsoever between these two cases (virtual hosting vs. a dedicated IP). [...] Links to virtually hosted domains are treated the same as links to domains on dedicated IP addresses."

Lycos seeks rebirth as "virtual living room"

"Having missed much of the explosive growth of its rivals Google Inc. and Yahoo Inc., Lycos, now part of the second largest Korean Internet portal Daum Communications Corp. will launch a high-speed Internet video channel this week and let viewers watch movies simultaneously across the Internet and discuss them."

"Eric Schmidt, chief executive officer of Google, sat in the hot seat at the keynote session for the Web 2.0 Summit on Tuesday. He was asked to explain moves such as the YouTube acquisition, the company's employment strategy, and their 'office suite,' which he does not like to call an office suite."

Search engine newslets

• Google, YouTube deal closes at $1.775 billion.
• Google introduces customized home pages for groups.
• Sprinko.com is a new search engine.
• Click fraud lawsuits.
• Google’s Marissa Mayer: Speed wins.
• Is adCenter a Googlebeater?
• Making media with Yahoo! Video.
• Yahoo updates Yahoo! Bookmarks.
• Microsoft, Ask & Fox on Google At Web 2.0.
• Smart Answers lead to smart voting.
• The baby billionaires of Silicon Valley.
• Like.com is a visual shopping search engine.
• CometQuery is a new search engine that wants to challenge Google.
• Take a look at the Google, Yahoo, MSN acquisition chart.

"The landing page quality score doesn't actually exist. You don't need to improve the quality score of your landing page, you simply need to bid more. In order to line their pockets, Google has changed the algorithms before the holiday season so that bid price is way more important that clickthrough rate. After the holidays, quality score will be important again."

Related articles:

• Adwords Quality Update II = Price Gouging Round II
  
  
• Lack of Editorial Transparency a Nagging Concern with AdWords in a Quality Score World

Behavioural ads on the rise

"Termed ‘behavioural advertisement’, the exercise helps advertisers roughly know the proportion of users – based on particular keyword searches – who are interested in certain market segments, as well as the demographic breakdown of these users."

"Google: mate or menace? That is the burning question of the week — heck, probably of the year — for ye olde media companies."

IBP & ARELIS 9.5 beta test

We're working on a new version of ARELIS and IBP. You can be among the first to test the new version.

The new version has much improved keyword management and keyword suggestion tools, as well as several minor improvements. All known bugs have been fixed in the new version.

If you're comfortable testing pre-release versions that are not intended for daily work, you should download the test version. We value your feedback on the preview version so that we can make the final release as powerful as possible.

The new version will be a free update for registered users of the current versions.

Get top 10 rankings on Google

IBP's Top 10 Web Page Optimizer and IBP's Top 10 Inbound Link Optimizer help you to get your web site to the top of the search results. Get more visitors, more customers and more sales. Ordering the full IBP version is 100% risk-free. If you don't like the full version, you'll get your money back.

Back to table of contents - Visit Axandra.com

• Dynamically created pages and Google's new way to deal with them
• Google's -30 penalty
• Google's Sandbox and Google's TrustRank and your web site
• The right click distance can improve your search engine rankings
• How Google's latest PageRank update affects your web site
• Six reasons why search engines ignore your web pages
• How to get out of Google's supplemental results
• View all past issues...