Axandra news archive: 12 February 2007

• Facts of the week
• Search engine news of the week
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Google tries to keep its search results as clean as possible. For that reason, they have a variety of spam filters in their ranking algorithm that try to remove low quality web sites.

If your web site gets caught by one of these filters, it will be very difficult to get high Google rankings. In the next articles, we'll take a look a the 15 most common Google spam filters and we'll tell you how you can get around them.

Google's Sandbox, Google's Trust Rank and Google's domain age filter

These three Google filters all take a look at the age of a web site. Many web sites don't get very old. For that reason, Google implemented a filter that prevents new web sites from getting high rankings for competitive search terms. That filter is called Google's sandbox.

Google's TrustRank filter is closely related to that filter. Web sites with a high TrustRank get high rankings on Google. The TrustRank of a web site is determined by the age of a web site, the quality of inbound links and the contents of a web site.

The domain age filter is another filter that considers the age of your web site. Web sites with old domain names are more likely to get high rankings for competitive keywords on Google.

Further information about the sandbox, Google's TrustRank and domain name filters can be found in these articles:

• Google's SandBox and TrustRank filters and your web site
• How to get out of Google's Sandbox
• Google ranking secrets revealed, part II
• Google ranking secrets revealed, part I

How to get around these filters

It's not easy to get around these filters. As they all consider the age of your web site, you basically have to wait some time until Google releases your web site from the sandbox.

The best thing that you can do is to work on the content of your web site to show Google's web page spider that your web site is a valuable resource for your topic. Make sure that your web pages are relevant to your search terms.

In addition, get good inbound links to increase the TrustRank of your web site. The better the links to your web site, the higher your TrustRank and the higher your web site will rank on Google.

Next week, we're going to take a look at three link filters that Google uses to remove web sites from the search results.

"Statistics are important information. What you can read from the statistics below is that Internet Explorer 6 is the most common browser, XP is the most dominating operating system, and most users are using a display with 1024x768 pixels or more, with a color depth of at least 65K colors."

Editor's note: According to these statistics, Firefox now has a market share of 31%.

Search engine wars: Ask.com moving up

"The expert ranked algorithm is at the core of our search technology and it works differently than any other search engine out there in that it breaks down the Web by topic before determining popularity. So we're not just trying to figure out what site is the most popular, we're trying to figure out what site is the expert on the topic."

Tips on successful site architecture

Google's Vanessa Fox will be speaking on Wednesday at the Successful Site Architecture panel and she offers some tips for building crawlable sites for those who can't attend.

Search engine newslets

• Ask.com Valentine's Day Smart Answers.
• Google to cable operators: Let's collaborate.
• Google takes Sentamu slurs from website.
• Google adds online map, word services to China site.
• An Open Letter to Google from China.
• Media firms say Google benefited from film piracy.
• Yahoo Go 2.0 is now gamma.
• Ask.com, Intuit bringing new data centers to state.
• Skype and Google users can now talk on their mobile for free.
• MIVA reducing work force by 20%.

"Google’s position on net neutrality remains the same: only an open Internet that is free of restrictions will continue to provide the services that consumers demand, including advanced video service."

Google encounters hurdles in selling radio advertising

"Google Audio, as the company’s foray into radio advertising is known, has hit some snags. The two brothers who founded dMarc in 2002 have left Google amid growing speculation by analysts and radio and advertising executives that the Internet giant is finding it harder than expected to muscle its way into the radio business."

Can Google score with in-game ads?

"Google has reportedly looked at acquiring AdScape Media, a small company, founded in Ontario and now based in San Francisco, that specializes in so-called in-game ads."

Inc. magazine mentions ARELIS in an article about links

"ARELIS - software helps companies manage their linking campaigns"
Inc.com, The Daily Resource for Entrepreneurs, January 2007

Do you want to see your web site in this newsletter?

• The top 5 factors for successful web sites in 2007
• The end of Google bombs
• Google's plans for the next weeks
• Will this famous Google SEO guru quit?
• Does Google read your CSS files?
• Official Google statement: How to deal with duplicate content problems
• Happy Holidays
• View all past issues...