Internet Marketing
Marketing With Out The Fluff

Last Tuesday, we discussed the idea of Google potentially making some changes to PageRank and it’s relationship to no-follow – particularly in the context of PageRank sculpting. As a quick refresher, PageRank sculpting is the practice whereby you add no-follow attributes to less important links in order to emphasize links you deem more important.  We used an analogy of a bucket withe holes in it. The holes represented your outbound links.  Your website’s PageRank (link juice) flowed thru the holes.  The fewer holes you had, higher the percentage of your link juice went thru the remaining holes (links). That’s PageRank Sculpting in a nutshell.  Dividing your link authority by a smaller number of links in order to maximize the authority you pass on. At the end of our article, we mentioned that no official word on how Google was going to change the dynamic between no-follow and PageRank, but as of last night, we now know a little more.  Matt Cutts made a post on his blog about the way Google has decided to deal with the issue.  The biggest surprise in the post was actually Matt’s claim that this change went into effect “over a year ago” but nobody noticed. Beyond that, Matt’s explanation of PR Sculpting fit pretty nicely into our analogy.  Matt said “nofollowed links didn’t count toward the denominator when dividing PageRank by the outdegree of the page”.  Which basically means, if you plugged some of the holes in your bucket, the remaining holes received a higher percentage of your link authority.  This statement is also significant because it pretty much (by definition) says unequivocally that Pagerank sculpting ‘worked’ conceptually at least.  But that’s ‘worked’ with an emphasis on the past tense. The change Google implemented ‘over a year ago’ according to Cutts.  Made Google count the outbound links regardless of the no-follow attribute.  To paraphrase Matt in his post, if you have 10 PageRank points on a page with 10 outbound links and you put no-follow on 5 of the links, each of your 5 remaining links would pass just 1 point of PageRank now.  Prior to the change, each of your 5 links without no-follow would pass 2 points apiece.  Now, your PR passing ability is spread out or divided by all of your links – regardless of their no-follow status. Matt does a pretty good job of anticipating several questions that will doubtlessly arise from his post.  I’ll Highlight a couple of the more important points below, but would also urge you to go check out the real thing (like you haven’t already…) Whenever you are linking within your site, don’t use no-follow
   Q: Since PR is divided amongst outbound links, no-follow or not, should I turn off comments on my blog? 
“A: I wouldn’t recommend closing comments in an attempt to “hoard” your PageRank. In the same way that Google trusts sites less when they link to spammy sites or bad neighborhoods, parts of our system encourage links to good sites.”
 So, there you go.  The debate that arose during SMX Advanced as to whether or not Google was changing how they handled no-follow in terms of PR sculpting has now been answered.  The big surprise in all of this is that they apparently changed it all a while back, but at the end of the day it was pretty much the change we were anticipating anyway.  Namely, no-follow links do not pass PR, no-follow links do not pass anchor text value, but no-follow links DO count toward your total of outbound links.  The obvious question this creates I suppose then is: why, then, should we no-follow anything?

As you may know, Google’s Matt Cutts regularly answers user questions in the form of YouTube videos at Google’s Webmaster Central channel . One recent question he took on goes: As far as big brands go, why is it that they seem to do well irregardless of relevance, content or links when analyzing keyword placement in search engine result pages? This is not a new subject. You might recall a thought-provoking blog post from SEOBook author Aaron Wall on the subject a while back. WebProNews spoke with Wall and discussed the issue a little bit further in another article . A little while later, Cutts posted one of his videos, and pretty much disputed the fact that Google gives weight to any sites just because of their brand. In that one, he said they focus more on things like trust, authority, reputation, pagerank, etc. In this latest video, he dismisses the notion in a way that seems a little more concrete, indicating that Google does not rank based on brand. "I would not agree with the premise of you question," he says. He notes that small mom and pops complain that big brands are getting too much weight, while the big brands are complaining that they are not getting enough. Essentially, Google’s position on the matter is that they just try to deliver the pages that are the most useful to the user. If you consider those other words (trust, reputation, pagerank, etc.), it makes sense that big brands would rank higher frequently because the reason they have become big brands is likely that they have built a solid reputation , and people trust them because they know the brand, and this inspires linking, which leads to pagerank . This makes sense to me. Would you agree? Talk about it in the comments .

If you’re responsible for a handful of blogs or sites, and have been wearing holes in a thesaurus to avoid using the same phrase twice, rest easy.  At SMX Advanced, Matt Cutts said some things about duplicate content that should comfort the average blogger or small business owner. Coverage of SMX Advanced continues at WebProNews Videos .  Stay with WebProNews for more updates and videos from the event this week.   Cutts was asked whether a network of co-branded job sites would be penalized for duplicate listings.  He answered, "Within one site, I wouldn’t worry as much about a duplicate content penalty.  We’ll just try to pick the best page." Also, even when scores of sites are involved, the odds are good that there’s no need to worry.  Cutts continued, "If you have the same content on 200 different sites . . . is it typical that we give a duplicate content penalty for that?  No.  Definitely not." For the sake of not giving an incomplete picture, though, we should note (as Cutts did) that Google remains focused on users having a positive experience, and it might be best in the 200-site situation to make PageRank flow to one original domain. Not bad, right?  So again, as long as you’re not doing anything too unusual, don’t worry about leaving your thesaurus or Word’s trusty Shift-F7 combo alone for a while.

Not long ago, another installment of the wacky car race known as the LeMons was held.  Rule-breakers are penalized by being forced to do things like paint Bob Ross landscapes on their hoods and participate in conga lines.  Google’s punishment system isn’t quite as obvious, though, so Matt Cutts discussed the matter at SMX Advanced. Coverage of SMX Advanced continues at WebProNews Videos .  Stay with WebProNews for more updates and videos from the event this week. Cutts started by giving a rather witty answer to the question of “how can you tell if your site is in the penalty box?”  He replied, “One really good way is if it disappears completely from Google.  That’s what we call a leading indicator.” After some laughter subsided, Cutts then shared additional details.  He said, “We make the penalties public where we think it can give the most help.  So if you’re a small mom and pop, and you didn’t even realize (this happens a lot) – I hired a webmaster, and he put some hidden text on the page in 2003, and it was like 3 sentences, and they didn’t know – that’s the sort of thing where you want to tell them [through official channels]. “But if you see a sustained drop in ranks, or if it drops completely out, that’s the sort of thing where . . . there’s lots of forums on the web, including the Google Webmaster Forum, where you can go and ask for some help.” Cutts noted that Google’s employees will often respond with some “very, very blatant hints” about what’s gone wrong on such forums.  And here’s one more important detail: unlike the LeMons judges, Google isn’t trying to toy with anyone.  Cutts said that the only reason all of this isn’t conducted out in the open is because scammers and black hats would use the info to their advantage.

Yesterday Google held its Searchology event and announced a number of new things. The big announcements, which were widely covered included: – Search Options – Google Squared – Richer Snippets – Android Sky Map Application Google’s Matt Cutts pulled some other interesting things from the event that some may have overlooked amidst the whirlwind of Google news. "I noticed several tidbits that I don’t think we’ve ever said in public before," says Cutts. First he mentions Google’s internal code names for spell-check features. These include the normal "Did you mean:" spell check link at the top of the results, but also the mid-page suggestions (codename: Chameleon): And the more aggressive Spellmeleon, which includes a couple results for the corrected query. Cutts says this is for when Google really thinks the user messed up. He also notes that this feature is a tremendous help for is webspam team because it pretty much eliminates the chances of users going on to results that spammers have targeted for typos. Other things Cutts pulled out of Searchology include: – mobile search results are blended between results from the mobile web and results from the regular web. – 1 in 4 searches triggers a universal/blended search result – 40% of searches on any given day are repeat searches for that user (a reason that SearchWiki can be useful) – Links to Jayant Madhavan’s paper on what Google is doing to crawl the deep web – Also links to each slide from the event The event was a big one for Google and Google enthusiasts in terms of items of interest. Google rolls out some new product or feature to a product nearly every day, but at Searchology we got a bunch of stuff to think about.  

Google’s Matt Cutts continues to post helpful videos at Google’s Webmaster Central YouTube channel , in which he answers user questions. The latest question he tackles comes from a guy in Chicago who asks: Does the new canonicalization tag make it safe to add tracking arguments to some of my internal links without fear that Google will split the quality signals between the two addresses? Matt says, "I believe you can do this," but he recommends trying it out on one directory or a small set of URLs at first to make sure it’s completely safe. If you can do something with cookies or your analytics package, Matt says that would be better because as he explains, "Suppose someone copies and pastes a URL…they might copy and paste it differently…and maybe that URL goes away or the tracking code changes…so if you can make the URLs unified. That’s still better, but I believe this sort of thing can still work totally fine with the new canonicalization tag." Basically, Matt just wants you to be cautious and make sure it works for you to avoid any issues. If the Canonicalization tag is something you’re not familiar with, it’s something that Google, Yahoo, and Microsoft announced jointly a while back in an effort to reduce duplicate content. Matt discussed it with WebProNews upon its launch: More WebProNews Videos Matt has also elaborated on the tag in a longer video and slideshow: Matt is frequently posting informative videos to YouTube, which can generally be found here . He is also posting longer ones with presentations from conferences on his blog . These are both good resources for webmasters to bookmark.

Google’s Matt Cutts has really been taking the bull by the horns when it comes to reaching out to the community. He’s posted another answer to a user question (yesterday we looked at his response to one about Google’s spell corrections) via YouTube video. This time the question strikes a pretty timely and relevant topic that WebProNews has discussed a few times in recent memory. That is the relationship between social media and SEO/link building. The question Matt tackles is: Has Google Changed the relevancy it awards to social media sites in the last six months? Matt implies that Google doesn’t look at it like social network links are different from any other links. "We tend to think about links, and whether they’re useful," he says. No surprise there. Why should a link get any more or less weight just because it’s social? Matt does say that he was in a meeting where they were talking about a change that does "slightly different weihgting" for how they do some types of links and anchors and that could have an effect on social media sites, but that was not the intent of the change. So when it comes to the question at hand, he basically says yes, they’ve probably changed the way social sites are weighted, but not for the reason that they are social media sites. "It hasn’t been….’oh let’s change how we think about social media sites,’" he says. It’s all about the user experience, and that shouldn’t come as a shock. Matt says Google’s open to doing what they need to do in this area. More on the relationship between social media and SEO .

On Monday, I did a presentation at LegalTech on a panel called “What is Twitter and How Can I Use It?” along with Kevin O’Keefe & Matthew Homann .  As you can probably tell from the name of the conference, this session was aimed at informing lawyers (and people in the legal profession) on how they could effectively use Twitter.  Here’s my entire PowerPoint presentation: Twitter For Lawyers & Legal Professionals As I have done in the past with another Twitter presentation , I called on users of Twitter to actually show how Twitter works.  By asking these three questions, I got over 135 responses in ~30 minutes: How would you explain Twitter (in 140 characters or less)? What is your *one* MUST have Twitter tool? How could a lawyer or someone in the legal field use Twitter effectively? The answers that I received were all excellent and I’d like to thank the following folks for their help: Jfavreau , LisaBarone , stuntdubl , MarkMayhew , RyanCaldwell , kennyhyder , RuudHein , davidmihm , maxchirkov , brianchappell , kid_disco , robwatts , szetela , aldorella , danperry , toddmintz , MichelleRobbins , amabaie , gregfinn , dedmond29 , Franco_F , 1KrazyKorean , sizzler_chetan , JoannaLord , groovemonkey , shoemoney , timstaines , JadedTLC , lornali , rabeidoh , factive , MattMcGee , jeredh , hol_kinz , saffyre9 , leeodden , LukaIsntLuka , sizzler_chetan , samiwasnt , PatrickPete , Rhea , ImprovingTheWeb , MelWebster , cloudspark , Frozen2Late , mediamanx , timstaines ,  ayb , tonyadam , remarkablogger , webconnoisseur , brianchappell , Matt_Siltala , nicholashomh , Franco_F , LornaHarris , dedmond29 , darkbulb , netmeg , bendunn , danperry , johnfairley , RyanCaldwell ,  TheOtherJeff , GregBoser , ElijahIgnatieff , robwatts , timstaines , maxchirkov , inflatemouse , DavidWallace , jdevalk , AussieWebmaster , DavidBrim , matthewdiehl , Jfavreau , caroladam , danperry , connectionshk , SearchBuzz , matt_mcgowan , dallasdesign , Pamela_Lund , yummyman , branflakez & Ragnell . Twitter is all about participation and interaction – so if you’re looking for good people to follow, I would check out all of these folks above.