The myths and misconceptions about Google are very much prevalent among us webmasters and in an effort to debunk some of them, Google hosted its third Online Webmaster Chat even last Wednesday where Q&A session was held between Gooooooooglers and webmasters.
Below are some of the interesting questions and answers I’ve chosen in the best of interest of you — my beloved reader. It has indeed given me a different perspective on what SEO is all about.
For more comprehensive Q&A, you can read it further from Google Webmaster Help here.
Live Q&A Session from third Webmaster Chat
How often does your search algorithm change?
We change the algorithms all the time – last year we had over 450 changes.
Are .gov and .edu back links still considered more “link juice” than the common back link?
This is a common misconception. You don’t get any PageRank boost from having an .edu link or .gov link automatically. If you get an .edu link and no one is linking to that .edu page, you’re not going to get any PageRank at all because that .edu page doesn’t have any PageRank
Also, we generally treat all links the same – be it from .gov or .edu or .info sites.
Can my site be penalized if I use rel=”nofollow” too much?
No, you run no risk of an impact on your site’s rankings if you use the attribute.
How many times a year do you update a site PageRanking?
PageRank is re-computed all the time (different PageRanks every day). But we update the toolbar PageRank 3-4 times/year.
In Webmaster Tools, you’ve recently started listing the sites that 404s are coming from. Many of our 404s are from sites that ceased to exist months (sometimes years) ago. How long does Google hold onto 404 errors?
If the crawl error sources do not exist any more, I wouldn’t worry about them — they’ll generally go away on their own over time. Having them there does not negatively impact your site’s crawling, indexing and ranking.
Duplicate content is always penalized by search engines. Then what is the reason that duplicate news content spread across many sub-domains from yahoo.com and many other popular sites does not gets penalized ?
As far as I know, none of the search engines penalize duplicate content — they just ignore the duplicates.
* An online buddy of mine, Brian made an interesting analysis on why Google says I love duplicate content PR9 for digg.com.
Does a page load time play a crucial role in Google Page Ranking? If yes how important is it?
I think the more important issue here is user experience. If your site loads fast, your users will be happy; if it loads slow, users will be less happy. Make your users happy, right?
Does having the domain name for a long period e.g. 5 or 10 years really affects SEO and give high rankings?
A site’s reputation can be a indicator to search engines, but of course, it’s not everything. Having a site for a long period of time can establish credibility with users, and as a search engine we also want to reflect this type of credibility.
Of course, newer domains can also gain users and credibility. It seems like running a good site is a bit like running a reputable business. So yes, if your domain has been credible for years it can help.
If you buy an old domain and put all your content on it in hopes of getting instant rankings, that’s not the best idea.
Does link: gives exactly the number of back links to a site?
The link: operator only shows a sampling of links to a site, so it may not show all of the links that Google knows about.
Does getting a lot of comments in a blog help in being well indexed/ranked by Google?
Having a lot of enthusiastic users commenting on your posts and doing so generating content on your site, certainly does not harm your rankings :-) Furthermore, a large fan base gives the webmaster a bit of independence from search engine traffic, which is the reason why generating original and compelling content in order to nurture a group of committed users is something I would highly recommend to any blogger :-)
Do the verification codes for Webmaster Tools, Analytics, Apps for Domain have to remain intact after the first verification or can you just remove them once it’s done?
I can only speak for Webmaster Tools, but we do recheck for those codes periodically to make sure you are still the site owner. So you’ll want to leave that code in place as long as you want to use Webmaster Tools.
If my website “A”, linking to website “B”, and “B” linking back to “A” – am I going to be penalized? Does linking strategies still work?
Participating in linking schemes to impact ranking is not advised it’s against the webmaster guidelines. The best linking strategy is to create a site with unique content or services that people want to link to. Then publicize it.
Should I be using hyphens instead of underscores in my URLs to improve a page’s rank?
For the time being, I would recommend still using hyphens instead of underscores. If you’re already using underscores and that’s working fine for you and your rankings, it’s not worth switching. But if you’re doing a new site, then I would go with hyphens.
If I have backlinks from porn sites do this affect my PR or anything else ?
Those links might be positively affecting your PageRank (PageRank does not go down from “bad” links like those from adult sites). In general, you don’t have to worry about bad links like that which point to your site which aren’t under your control.
What have you learned today?
Happy Halloween, My Friends!
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Thanks for the info Yan, I’d completely missed it, very useful and clarifies some important things, especially that with the duplicate content. And everyone’s been saying for years how it ruins your rankings. It shows us that we really don’t know anything about SEO :D
At one point, it might have been true. I mean the guy did say there were over 450 changes to the algorythme last year.
Michael Henry´s lastest post..Where I’m at: Free Flu Shot Clinic
Every good interview some of them I’ve proved myself before like exchanging links between two sites.This trick was working long time ago but its no more important than one way links.
@dumex
You bet it is…. gone are days when reciprocal link exchange rules the day…
thanks 4 the info
don_ser´s lastest post..My Highest Google Earning… weeeeeeeh
Hey, this is great info to read! I was thinking that Google didn’t make any comments about SEO, but here they are pretty blunt about do’s and don’ts. It makes it a lot less of a guessing game. I have to piggyback on the duplicate content remark, that was also the biggest surprise for me.
Happy Halloween!
Very nice! There are just so many misconceptions about SEO and how to optimize your website. It seems to me like everyone is an expert and just repeating what they read on whatever forum…In the end if you experiment a bit you’ll figure out that a lot of SEO stuff is misconceptions. Anyway, that article really goes well with the video I posted on my last post!
Ben Tremblay´s lastest post..Cut the crap on SEO
@Ben
I subscribe to theory that if everyone is using the same SEO strategies, the top will be way too overcrowded. It just doesn’t work the way it is. However, you still can’t take away basic SEO from the equation and the rest is about trial and error.
I actually did enjoy reading this post. I wasn’t able to participate in this google webmaster chat but after reading your post, all the questions in my mind are now all answered.
[WORDPRESS HASHCASH] The poster sent us ‘0 which is not a hashcash value.
I am surprised that .edu backlinks aren’t worth more than “regular” links. I thought I’d seen that in action with one of my clients. Guess it was a fluke.
Virtual Impax´s lastest post..80% Discount To Celebrate Successful-Blog’s 3rd Birthday
@Virtual Impact
I’m not too sure why but it just never cross my mind to get an .edu or .gov backlinks. How much is one backlink worth anyway? Keeping in mind the difficulty of getting such links, it’s just not worth my while. Now that Google treats those links like any other links, the chase is officially ended.
or probably the big G is diverting the attention to stop us from gaming the system….it could probably be…
Yan
Thanks some prettyawesome stuff there. I really liked the answer abut the blog commenting. Its sure makes you wonder though. Google sure likes to keep people on their toes whith all the changes they do.
Bruno Auger´s lastest post..Connecting through Social Networking
Thanks, Bruno….. someone recently told me that putting keywords into your comment help to SEO-optimize your page to a certain extent. Well, it does make sense to me…. what do you think?
Thanks Yan, I learned a lot from this post. I know there are a lot more answers to questions I need but with my schedule it is hard to do a lot of surfing. Thanks for putting this out here.
Larry´s lastest post..Advertising Methods Compared
Great info on google! I always wondered about some of these questions and how google handles certain situations.
Andy
andy´s lastest post..Free Christmas Gifts For Everyone!!
I didn’t know the one about getting backlinks from porn sites…interesting :?:
Good post Yan! I had recently been schooled on a bunch of this by a mentor of mine, especially the “no follow links effect page rank” thing.
No follow just effects the amount of rank your page passes on, or “splits” among all the nofollow links on that page.
I also had heard about the duplicate content, and the reciprocal linking, basically that reciprocal links aren’t the ideal links, and duplicate content is only a problem if all your pages contain the same content in an attempt to make it look like you have more pages. They just won’t get indexed/crawled.
Great one man, I loved it.
Normal Joe´s lastest post..JoeCow.com,IMwithJohnCow.com – What do you think? Should I Take Over The Cow Pasture?
Thanks, buddy Joe… I was having the misconception about dupe contents and little did I know that the G just ignores the dupe page and not penalizes the site in general.
Anyway, good to see you buddy… and who is your mentor by the way?
Hi Yan,
I learned that we need to stop worrying about SEO so much and just pump out as much linkable content as we can. ;-)
Cheers,
Jeremy
Jeremy Day´s lastest post..Why Insight Writer Exists…
Yes, Jeremy…. couldn’t agree more this one. The best SEO practice is still writing great contents that people talk about and link to.
That said, we still need to have the basic SEO know-hows..
Yan
Very cool post Yan, I honestly did not learn anything new, but it was nice to reinforce some knowledge.
JR @ Internet Marketing Strategies´s lastest post..Happy Halloween!
Google’s words always need to be read very carefully. For instance.:
“You don’t get any PageRank boost from having an .edu link or .gov link automatically. If you get an .edu link and no one is linking to that .edu page, you’re not going to get any PageRank at all because that .edu page doesn’t have any PageRank”
Note the way they stress PageRank – which is only one of many factors in the Google algorithm. Nothing in this reply rules out the possibility of links from .edu or .gov sites giving a boost beause of some other factor in the algorithm, for example the hypothetical “TrustRank”.
Hey Trevor
Thanks for the visit and leaving a comment. As far as Google is concerned, what’s relevant today might not be as relevant tomorrow. Taking into consideration that it made 450 changes in its algorithm in 365 days.
Nothing in this reply rules out the possibility of links from .edu or .gov sites giving a boost…
It said “We generally treat all links the same – be it from .gov or .edu or .info sites.”…
Yan
Trevor got here before me with what I was going to say.
Google stresses Page Rank whenever they want to put a point across, but what most of us are interested in primarily is search engine placement.
But this is a great post Yan – good to have many of the details (and the occasional Google ’say but don’t say’ ) statements in one place.
Oh yes, and I guess I could link to you now from some of my adults sites if I wanted to…?
Only kidding ;)
LOL,….no don’t kid me……you are most welcome to do so….the higher the PR, the better it is…:)
Good to see you, gal. How are you lately?
Stressed out, burnt out and making brand new blogs daily, lol!
(Which is why even my ‘flagship’ hasn’t been updated in weeks).
Oh yes, and making sure I get the punters to my sites via other avenues as well as the ‘big G’, just in case…. :)
zania´s lastest post..Depression Should Never Be A Topic For Spam
Great stuff Yan. I didn’t know that search engines are not bothered by duplicate content until i read this. This opens up another avenue to expose our content isn’t it?
Wei Liang
Wei Liang | ABloggerBlog´s lastest post..Lesson 15: Forum Marketing
Hey Wei Liang
I think Google is saying that you can have all the dupe contents as many as you want, we just don’t index them. Well, I’m going to experiment this on another niche sites and see what’s the effect.
Yan
Some very interesting stuff indeed. Thanks for this, some of my questions were answered in spades. :)
Dennis Edell´s lastest post..Oct.’08 Post Round-Up for Direct Sales Web Marketing
I read long ago that recip linking is out and one way linking is best. You wont get penalized for doing a recip link in your blogroll, but it just isn’t the best TYPE of backlink.
As for the nofollow thing. They (as in Google) created this attribute back in 2005, and its sole purpose is to shield from the engine (useless content) so i don’t see why using it, would penalize anyone.
They meant for you to use it.
Great round up of the chat. I think the Google Webmaster Blog is a must in every blogger’s RSS feed. They have loads of good info on there.
Hope everyone had a Groovy Halloween!
Missy (from G34 Media)´s lastest post..iPhone Recycling Blog – Latest G34 Media Property
Hey Missy
You are absolutely right. Reciprocal links do not carry as much weight as before.
I reckon what can be easily achieved will have very little effect as Google is smart enough to make it harder for anyone trying to game the system.
There are just too many PHDs working for Google right now so there is little loophole we can manipulate this point of time.
Yan
The answer I really like is in regard to comments and having the number of comments positively affecting rather than hurting one’s blog. And it seems it’s numbers, not necessarily niche, that helps with PR. I wish I’d known about the call; thanks Yan.
Mitch´s lastest post..Guy Kawasaki’s ‘Reality Check’
Yan, funny you mentioned also this “Does getting a lot of comments in a blog help in being well indexed/ranked by Google?” because I woke up with this thought on my mind this morning. I haven’t got comments as yet on this site :( because it’s new however google indexed it real well already. I only contemplated this; What do you think?, does Google take the text from WP Blogs’ coments, and therefore the key words from these comments, to add them in the search index??? Thanks…
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…does Google take the text from WP Blogs’ coments, and therefore the key words from these comments, to add them in the search index
Oh yes, it certainly does. I was having a small chat with one of my online buddy as to whether we should bother to put keywords on our comments. We made a conclusion that since Google will pick up those keywords from the comment section (the big G looks at it as an extension of our content), we should therefore make an effort to put our keywords within it. However, it should done as natural as possible since we are replying to our commenters and not to Google.
Yan
Thank you for replying to my comment Yan. I am glad to learn that Google reads blog comments as part of the content, or as an extension as you put it. So regarding the webmasters’ myth that says “is Google indexing key words from blogs’ comments …”, that is considered to be solved for now! Will have to ask you soon for writing a review for my javascript site to get the right back link/s, but first I must cash up for it in advance though :) and add all the content I plan for. Cheers
Convert´s lastest post..Butter and margarine amounts converter
That actually cleared up a few things for me. Especially the .edu and .gov site question.
I hear people saying that they are getting penalized for dup content, but according to this that does seem to be the case.
Great Post,
Steve
Driveway Sealing´s lastest post..The Best Time To Seal Your Driveway
You bet it is. The one misconception I had was on the dupe contents and as I have said it, I’m going to experiment on it and see if there is truth to it.
Thanks, Steve for your visit. May I ask how did you get to know this site?
Yan
Interesting, but like everything else that Google does, I take it with a pinch of salt. Google does and will always do what Google thinks is best for them and their profitability.
Whilst I like PR for the sake of having a ranking of any sort, it is not something that I actively pursue.
Yes, Sire.. you have your point. Though PR does make a difference in your SERP, it’s only one of the many factors determining your ranking. So too much focus on it isn’t really healthy to a blog.
Actually some of inner pages are still being sandboxed by Google so I rely very little on the big G for traffic at this point of time. In a way, it is affecting my adsense earnings from this blog as we all know it, adsense clicks depend a lot on organic traffic but I’m cool with it. Patience is virtue, right?
Yan
Great share Yan. Some of these are really myths that have been spread around the blogosphere. This would certainly clear the doubts. Learn a few tips from here too.
Wei Liang
Wei Liang | ABloggerBlog´s lastest post..Lesson 15: Forum Marketing
Hi Yan,
Google’s Q&A here really put to rest many of my questions about Google that I thought we’d never get any answers. It’s good that we now don’t have to guess about lots of things we had been doing before. Not sure why such information was not given before. Thanks for sharing this….very insightful.
Peter Lee
Work At Home Ideas´s lastest post..How To Get Free Backlinks From Ebay
I always heard that duplicate content was the devil, but I guess I can stop freaking out about it now. Also, I didn’t know that nofollow didn’t affect your rankings. Nice post with a lot of good information.
Corey Freeman´s lastest post..First of the Month – The Good, The Bad, and the Coming Up!
Me too, Corey…I was having the idea that the big G is going to penalize your whole site and little did I know that it just ignores your dupe pages.
I’m looking forward to the 4th session of chat and see what Google has to say again…
Yan
Thanks for posting this, it is helpful to hear from G once in a while, what G actually “thinks” or does (or at least say they do), instead of everyone just guessing all the time! And it all does always seem to come down to the basic…post lots of interesting, linkable, comment-able content, and you’ll get there…
Yes, Christy….it certainly clears some guessing we have about SEO but as some have commented here, we need to take it with a pinch of salt. Google is making those changes too often we could hardly catch up with.
Thanks for the visit and hope you’ll stick around.
Yan
This is exactly what I needed! Great compilation of myths and misconceptions here Yan.
Oh, and I didn’t know that PR updates daily. Truly some great info to know. :)
Sly from SlyVisions dot Com´s lastest post..3 Reasons Why People Fail To Make Money Online
Thanks for posting Yan! I missed this a few days ago. While Google provided good info, it still leaves me wanting more, but then I guess if we all knew the secrets, we’d be right back where we started, competing for ranking.
J
J´s lastest post..I’LL Tell YOU When to Cross
…I guess if we all knew the secrets,
I don’t think we have the privilege of knowing everything, it just make me wonder if everyone is doing the same thing, wouldn’t it be too crowded at the top?
Anyway, thanks for the visit, J and look forward to seeing more of you here…
Yan
This is what cracks me up with some supposed “SEO Company’s” – We will get everyone a #1 spot in Google – how many #1’s are there? LOL
Dennis Edell´s lastest post..Do You Use eBay to Grow Your OTHER Businesses?
Yikes! All good stuff…..it just reinforces how much there is to learn…..
Great post, this also shows that we should be well-versed with all the guidelines and search algorithms laid and updated by google from time to time. Be updated guys!!!
Great post! Enjoyed reading it. Thanks for sharing the useful information.
Hey Yan,
I’ve someone telling me he has a blog which has nothing but duplicate contents . Actually 90% of the posts are duplicate content and in 3 months with almost no visitors it now has a PR of 1, . If it was being ignored due to duplicate content it wouldn’t have any rank, but it does? In this case Google is rewarding duplicate contents?? Frankly I sense double talk or that Google employees don’t even know the secrets Google is known to keep.
Peter Lee
Work At Home Ideas´s lastest post..Link Love-Links Round Up No. 11
Yan thanks for this post. lot of things are clarified. I had a suspicion that having removing nofollow tag will affect page rank. but it is not like that.
Nihar´s lastest post..October 2008 Blog Traffic & Income statistics
Thanks Yan,
I am encouraged by the confirmation that the longer your domain exists then the more favourable Google regards it. Obviously it would be useless without putting all the other work into it that would establish credibility, but it encourages me to persevere and not quit.
David
I am glad to see others blogging about this. These recent interviews with some staff members of Google have been a great help. thanks for helping to keep us informed.
matt´s lastest post..links for 2008-11-06
I’ve learned that lights of knowledge beats the darkness of myths. As simple as that :)
Hicham´s lastest post..The Butterfly Award
This post clarified the “old domain is better” myth. Good. I guess Google values older domains with good content. Superb post.
Ganesh´s lastest post..Blogs that I Read and Enjoy – Part 2
Love the comment on daily update of PR.
Contrast with the frenzy of posts on many boards about “my new PR” which make all sorts of conclusions about changed SE position and traffic that they are seeing that day-week. Google is saying that nothing changed that week except the displayed PR.
Wow this was very interesting and informative. Alot of good questions were answered here. It would have been cool to be in on this live chat session. Maybe next time.
Gerald Weber´s lastest post..5 Free SEO Tools You’re Probably Not Using Yet
Holy crap!
So Google changes all the time, and isn’t just one set of rules and algorithms. I always thought they stayed the way they were. At least rel=nofollow has no impact one way or another like so many people hype about
EmmaB´s lastest post..Stumped On Colors? Try Color Lovers!
Wow! This was great info. While most of the answers seemed obvious, some of them were truly beneficial. It’s no surprise that Google continuously changes so I am not surprised. Kudos on a well written post.
I think that the famous Google engineer clarified the issue which often confuses webmasters and SEO experts. Now we have an official word from Google that Keywords Meta Tag are not used at all for!