Here is a recap of what happened in the search forums today, through the eyes of the Search Engine Squaretable and other search forums on the web....
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There's very few questions Google has not been able to answer and, equally, there have been very few loopholes that SEOs have not been able to exploit. However, hot on the heels of techcrunch, I have discovered that the latest update from developers in Australia threatens to change all that.
Google's new MATE technology is designed to view relevancy as an entirely self consistent timeline, rendering link building a thing of the past. It simply wont be possible to exploit the rate of change of inbound links pointing to a site as it's relevancy will have already been historically determined.
So what is an SEO to do? The only possible way around this will be to implant 'site suggestions' within cache of sites linking to you. Archive.org would do well to be on hacker watch.
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Here is a recap of what happened in the search forums today, through the eyes of the Search Engine Roundtable and other search forums on the web....
More: continued here
Adam Audette wrote a brilliant piece on the fundamentals of link building on his blog, and he's right on the money. His core message is that links reflect value, so your linking strategy should focus on finding that valuable link...
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For the past two weeks our industry has been debating the need for standards, many of the regular blogs have weighed in as have most of the major players in our space. The discussion has been heated at times and while the idea has gotten the attention there definitely has not been any accord.
At the end of February, Chris Boggs and I started an exchange on the topic. We had suggested prior to this that there was a need for standard definitions of the various measurement terms and while this may be a peripheral part of the discussion is could have been a good starting point.
In the past week Jill Whalen of High Rankings outlined why we should not or cannot standardize search marketing, stating "Industry market forces and the search engines themselves will eventually dictate what best practices are and are not."
Jill I have to disagree with the statement - never let the fox guard the hen house. The search engines should not dictate our standards - they set their rules and we work with and around them. We work for the client not the engines. You mention that but use it to say no standards... that last point supports not letting the engines set them more than there is no need.
Lisa Barone of Bruce Clay makes the argument that there is a "need to outline what SEO is and what it means to optimize a Web site. We need to establish best practices, what the risk is for abandoning them, and what all these different terms that we throw around actually mean."
From these two articles we have seen many people weigh in with some interesting comments.
Kalena Jordan, a fellow Aussie and founder of Search Engine College, has been very vocal recently on anything about standards. Her blog Ask Kalena came out against the recently launched SEMCompare that gathers user reviews of search firms - "trouble with a capital T" - but she does offer an alternative. "Creating standards is not going to get rid of shoddy SEOs or make them switch hats. Education and publicity has always been the solution".
Kalena while I agree that education is important for maturing our industry, I think your response encompasses where we are right now. We see the issue differently. There are really many parallel areas and some of the discussion has been about definitions which do need to be standardized and then behaviors which may not need a standard given the creativity of our industry.
The ever controversial Michael Martinez of SEO Theory suggests we need to drop the term search engine optimization altogether. Come on Mike we know we are not optimizing search engines but rather the sites the engines rank and include in their databases.
But I do agree with your opinion that "skepticism is important while laying the groundwork for further study by all."
Kim Krause of Cre8asite Forum brings up an interesting question for the topic. "Just out of curiosity, who would enforce standards? How would they be enforced? Are they intended to be?"
Kim I don't think there is a need to police standards, more to outline them so customers can have an idea of what to look for as well as new people in our space have an idea of where to start.
Okay I left many comments and commentators out but hopefully this brings the major views together. Without some guidelines we leave our industry in the "Wild Web" stage that has been there from the beginning when porn and spam was the major effective marketing areas.
We have come a long way... in my opinion it is time to become more structured and accessible.
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Douglas Merrill, Google CIO and VP of engineering, has accepted a new gig: president of digital at struggling EMI Music, home of the Beatles and former home of Radiohead.
So who's Douglas Merrill?
As Caroline McCarthy of The Social noted in this very funny exhange: "Doug Merrill is leaving Google." "Doug who?" "The Google exec who looks liike Ethan from Lost." "Ohhhh."
As only the second senior executive to leave Google, Merrill and his departure won't cause a panic in the Googleplex Facebook COO Sheryl Sandberg was the first senior exec to leave Google. As the former VP global sales and operations, Sandberg, who left last month, is tackling a major problem that Google's largest social search competitor hasn't solved: monetization.
Not that EMI doesn't have problems of its own. Widespread piracy has taken its toll on sales and the company's future appears to hinge on offering free music downloads supported by ad revenue with all-you-can-eat iTunes.
Will EMI be able to retain its top talent? That may be a tougher challenge than Google faces.
When Ms. Sandberg left, we noted that Google has a deep bench:
While Ms. Sandberg will be missed at Google, the company boasts a strong executive bench.
Today in The New York Times, Miguel Helft reports Google told him:
???We have a deep bench and work hard to grow leaders within the company,??? Google said in a statement to The New York Times. ???We are attracting immensely talented people around the world, every day.???
Google has long been hiring at a fast and furious pace with its pick of rising stars in a range of industries.
The supposition that Google faces attacks on the mothership by former employees is considered by many in the industry as absurd at best. If anything, the strong relationships and ex-Googler ties with current Google executives make alliances more likely than the forging of an axis of "Do No Evil" enemies.
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So, if you haven't noticed, today was April 1st. You know, April Fool's Day. Some of our little pranks were funny, while others were expected. Perhaps we should pull more pranks during the year when you guys least expect it....
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