SEO Blog

One last lesson learned from last week’s Pagerank devaluation targeting sites that buy or sell links… WHITE HAT SEO works.

We assumed our clients were going to be safe during the Pagerank update because Metamend does not perform any SEO techniques that violate Google’s Webmaster Guidelines.  We are pleased to confirm that none of Metamend’s clients or websites have seen any fluctuations in Pagerank or in actual search engine placements during the update.

We are watching to see if this is the start of a larger algorithm update. In previous years, Google has introduced significant algorithm updates in late October or early November however at this time we see nothing to indicate bigger changes might be coming down the pipe from the Googleplex.

Just over three years after Google’s famous August 2004 IPO, shares in the search firm have surged past $700/share trading earlier today at $704.79.

In the past six weeks alone, Google’s market value has increased by more than 30% as share prices rose from $600 to $700 on news of Google’s Q3 results and plans to enter the social networking scene.

Google, which is now worth more than Cisco Systems and Berkshire Hathaway Inc. is the Silicon Valley’s most valuable publicly held company.

It seems that MSN has been aggressively increasing the size of its index over the last month or so. We’ve been seeing massive increases in competing pages across many hundreds of search phrases. Sometimes with well over a 10 times increase in competition.

Conversely, Google seems to be doing the opposite and reducing the amount of competing pages. As an example here’s some data for the search phrase “search engine optimization”.

October 2007 - Google: 19,800,000 MSN: 41,644,219
September 2007 - Google: 38,200,000 MSN: 2,200,250

It seems that Google is refining its index to produce more relevant results; Is MSN bloating its index or just trying to play catch up? For those who have also picked this up, please share your thoughts.

There are still a number of lessons to be learned from last week’s targeted Pagerank update. To recap, six months or so ago, Google said it would lower the value of the Pagerank assigned to sites that broker in bought and/or sold links. Last Wednesday the search engine followed up on the threat by significantly devaluing the visible Pagerank assigned to such websites. Caught in the ruckus were a large number of websites which had either stopped the practice or had never even participated in it. Google has since restored the visible Pagerank value to many of those sites that would be considered innocent bystanders.

There are a few lessons we in the SEO/SEM industry can and should learn from last week’s October surprise, the least of which is that Google has the right to treat any website reference delivered to its users any way it wishes.

The most important lesson drawn from last week is that of diversification. Putting all of the eggs in one basket is rarely seen as a smart move in any endeavor.
As Debra Mastaler wrote a column in yesterday’s Search Engine Land, “Is it Time to Change Your Linking Attitude?“,