November
2, 2005
In This Issue:
1. Google's Senioritis
2. In the News - NYT on Google, Mac WebDev Toolkit
3. More News Headlines
4. This Week's Q&A - More on "click here"
5. Wrapping It Up
_________________
Google's Senioritis
I think it was 8 months ago or so that we mentioned
in Net Gains that Google had just become an officially
accredited domain registrar -- not because they
want to sell domain registrations, but because
they want access to the database of every domain
name. And I think it was 5-6 months ago that we
talked about a search patent Google had applied
for, where one of the clues about their algorithm
was the use of domain-related data to determine
ranking.
And I think we're really seeing the effect of
those things now, because it is getting more and
more difficult for new / young web sites to rank
well in Google. It seems with every new client
or prospect I've spoken to in the past few weeks,
I have to warn them that it will probably be a
good 9 months or so before they can expect to
compete with older sites in Google's organic SERPs.
Does Google really prefer older web sites and
older domains? There's plenty of evidence. Here's
some I've come up with:
- On a search for [digital cameras], the two
youngest sites in the top ten were built in
2000 and 2002.
- On a search for [kennewick real estate],
seven of the top ten sites are from 2000 or
earlier. Only one is newer than 2003.
- On a search for [sony psp], a new product
that should bring up some of the newer fan/review
sites, only one site in the first ten are
newer than 2000, and that's an official site
which launched this year.
My evidence is far from conclusive, and there
are always exceptions to every rule or trend.
But observations are that Google has a real case
of senioritis, and that older, established pages/domains
are winning in Google's SERPs over newer, less-established
pages. In addition to noticing this with client
sites and SERPs, what compelled me to write about
it this week is a similar post that recently appeared
on the Link Building Blog. I'm not the only one
noticing this, and I suspect if you've launched
a site in the last year or two, you've noticed
it, too.
So what do you do about it? One, be patient. Two,
buy AdWords if you need immediate visibility on
Google. Three, don't put all your eggs into the
Google basket -- there are other search engines
and ways to get quality traffic to your site.
And did I mention be patient?
Link Building Blog: Google
Loves Seniors
_________________
In The News
NY Times covers Google
The NY Times last weekend ran a big feature on
Google, which included any number of pretty interesting
nuggets about G's current and future plans. It's
heavy on the advertising side, not the organic
search side, but still worth a read. They drop
the hint, for example, that they'd like to apply
their advertising smarts to TV. And don't miss
the part where they explain how AdWords works
at the server level: "For every page that
Google shows, more than 100 computers evaluate
more than a million variables to choose the advertisements
in its database to display - and they do it in
milliseconds. The computers look at the amount
bid and the budget of the advertiser, but they
also consider the user - such as his or her location,
which they try to infer by analyzing the user's
Internet connections - as well as the time of
day and myriad other factors Google has tracked
and analyzed from its experience with advertisements."
NY Times: Google
Wants to Dominate Madison Avenue, Too (reg.
required)
Mac Web Development
Finally following through on something I wanted
to do a couple months ago: There's a new article
on our web site for Mac web developers. It's called
"Macintosh Web Developer's Toolkit",
and I welcome Mac users to reply with corrections
or suggestions for things I've left out. You'll
probably read that and think, "He should've
mentioned this program I love!" I'd love
to hear that kind of feedback, so fire away. PC
users - at the bottom of the article is a link
to a recent similar article for Windows users.
Macintosh
Web Developer's Toolkit
_________________
More News Headlines
Here are a few news headlines worth your time
to read. These are just some of the headlines
we've posted to OWTweb.com in recent days.
Online
SEO information: trick or treat?
October 31, 2005 - ClickZ.com
The
treat beats the trick: two SEO myths dispelled
Web 2.0 marketing
October 31, 2005 - ClickZ.com
Six marketing rules for online's newest ecosystem.
Google
may try TV ad sales; 'Dream On', say media buyers
October 28, 2005 - Marketing Vox
More headlines: http://www.owtweb.com/news/
_________________
This Week's Q&A
Not so much a Q&A this week, but something
from the mailbag nonetheless. Greg M. took exception
to the discussion in Net Gains #76 where I suggested
that using links that say "click here"
is a sign of amateur web design. It's difficult
to reproduce the email conversation exactly, what
with several links being exchanged, but here's
a bit of the discussion we had.
GREG:
Web design theorists have been telling us since
the dawn of time (about 1993) not to "click
here". But let's look at a semi-random real-world
sampling. I believe all of these would be considered
"professional web sites": walmart.com
- "click here" appears 11,900 times;
gm.com - "click here" appears 237 times;
cnn.com - "click here" appears 632,000
times; macys.com - "click here" appears
892 times; And finally - owt.com - "click
here" appears 40 times.
In fact, in my quick survey, I did not find *any*
major web sites that did not make liberal use
of "click here". Although this, like
any other device, can be overused or used in an
amateurish way, it is very often the clearest
way to tell a user what to do.
MATT:
I looked at the Macy's link, too ... from the
Google snippets, I see things like:
To access your Macy's Credit Card account, click
here.
Click here to pay your bill online with Checkfree™.
For more information on Coremetrics privacy policy,
click here.
And I stand by my belief that they'd be much better
served by doing it differently. That looks unprofessional
to me. Your opinion may differ.
FWIW, the last line of my original piece in the
newsletter made mention of something about how
there are times you can't avoid it, or it just
makes sense to say "click here" -- but
that 99 times out of 100 you shouldn't need to,
and you can make a better link without it. Maybe
I shouldn't have deleted that ending.
Anyway, I respect your opinion, but disagree that
"click here" is "very often the
clearest way" to link.
GREG:
Actually, I try to avoid it myself. But like some
of my own pet peeves (why does everyone pronounce
"sherbet" as if there was an "r"
in the second syllable?) it has become part of
the popular usage and I don't think everyone else
will be changing the way they do things. I agree
that "click here" is overused though,
and that designers should consider other alternatives
before using it.
(Thanks for the good discussion, Greg, and I'm
with you 100% on that "sherbet" thing.)
(Have a question? Email questions@owtweb.com)
_________________
Wrapping it Up
That's it for this week. I hope business is treating
you well. Please send in any questions we can
help with - the email address is above!
Thanks for reading,
Matt McGee
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