gil reich panda

GODZILLA, SNUFFLEUPAGUS, AND THE FUTURE OF SEARCH SUCCESS

PLUS, PANDA & BEYOND

Gil Reich (@GilR)Managing Greatness

Most Radical Transformation Ever (?)

Gil Reich, Managing Greatness. @GilR

Google can make major changes tomorrow. But their general direction seems clear.

Gil Reich, Managing Greatness. @GilR

Gil Reich, Managing Greatness. @GilR

Gil Reich, Managing Greatness. @GilR

Gil Reich, Managing Greatness. @GilR

Gil Reich, Managing Greatness. @GilR

Gil Reich, Managing Greatness. @GilR

Gil Reich, Managing Greatness. @GilR

It’s easier to detect social spam than link spam ~@VanessaFox

Snuffy or Godzilla?

Gil Reich, Managing Greatness. @GilR

Google sees itself as Snuffleupagus; its critics see it as Godzilla ~@JeffJarvis

2001: The Australia Strategy

Gil Reich, Managing Greatness. @GilR

2012: Nowhere to Hide

Gil Reich, Managing Greatness. @GilR

Not Your Mother’s SERPs

Gil Reich, Managing Greatness. @GilR

What people once called search and SEO are dead. Search will increasingly involve social, local, personalization, video, etc.

Quality & Spam

Gil Reich, Managing Greatness. @GilR

The people are represented by two separate yet equally important groups.

Gil Reich, Managing Greatness. @GilR

The Thin Content Problem

Amit: We got a lot of good fresh content, and some not so good.

Matt: It was like, “What’s the bare minimum that I can do that’s not spam?”  It sort of fell between our respective groups.

Gil Reich, Managing Greatness. @GilR

The Hole in Google’s Defense

Gil Reich, Managing Greatness. @GilR

Google’s Blind Spot (BP)

Pages: Mass produced Highly targeted Not spam

Sites: Trusted

Gil Reich, Managing Greatness. @GilR

Google’s Response

Panda Publisher Pollution Penalty Starts using signals previously

considered too spammable: User behavior Social profile

Penalty and Ranking Factor Site-wide (like a Penalty) Ranking Factor (like incoming links

…) Updated Infrequently (like PageRank)

Gil Reich, Managing Greatness. @GilR

It’s a floor wax and a dessert topping! ~Chevy Chase

Gil Reich, Managing Greatness. @GilR

Penalties: Before & AfterBefore After

Gil Reich, Managing Greatness. @GilR

Panda vs Demand Media

Document Classifier

Gil Reich, Managing Greatness. @GilR

IRSWikipediaNew York Times

ScrapersThin Content

Pogo-Sticking

Gil Reich, Managing Greatness. @GilR

… the number of times that other search results are selected after a particular search result is selected … may be used to improve search result ranking …

-- Yahoo! Patent

Pogo Sticking

Gil Reich, Managing Greatness. @GilR

Gil Reich, Managing Greatness. @GilR

It’s too hard now to fake a natural footprint well enough to fool Google ~@GregBoser

Gil Reich, Managing Greatness. @GilR

Don’t Rank Where You Can’t Deliver

Gil Reich, Managing Greatness. @GilR

Fix or Kill Your Worst Pages

Gil Reich, Managing Greatness. @GilR

Link Out

Better the user find the right site from you than by asking Google again.

Gil Reich, Managing Greatness. @GilR

Get Social

In May 2010 I said that we weren’t using Social Signals. Now we are. ~@MattCutts

SEO = Web Strategy

Gil Reich, Managing Greatness. @GilR

 The job of SEO has been upgraded from SEO to web strategist. Virtually everything you do on the Internet with your website can impact SEO today. That is especially true following Panda.

-- Rand Fishkin

Gil Reich, Managing Greatness. @GilR

Google’s Timeless Problem

 "Junk results" often wash out any results that a user is interested in …

the number of documents … has been increasing by many orders of magnitude.

People are still only willing to look at the first few tens of results.

-- Larry Page, 1998

SUMMARY

Gil Reich, Managing Greatness. @GilR

Panda …

Google corrected a key blind spot Penalties can be subtle & sitewide,

and are not just for spam Users hating some pages can now

hurt your whole site Google now considers all signals that

it can measure

Gil Reich, Managing Greatness. @GilR

Plus …

Build your social profiles Build relationships Engage others

Gil Reich, Managing Greatness. @GilR

… and Beyond

Harder to fake natural than to be natural

Harder to spam in the age of social Focus on relationships and reputation SEO inseparable from web strategy

Gil Reich, Managing Greatness. @GilR

If You Missed Anything …