> William "Chops" Westfield mac.com> writes: > > > I don't think this is google being bought, I think it's just sites > > that have learned how to manipulate the search engines. > > It is not 'sites' it is a specialized skill that requires > full time work. And pay proportional to that. With the > exception of gifted and lucky admins who get the job done the > vast majority of the 'high rankers' were 'optimized'. > Unfortunately a lot of 'optimizers' are hoaxes and there is > no easy way to tell them apart. I just read recently that a > firm hired an optimizer and that resulted in the entire site > being 'optimized' into Google Hell for some time, losing > millions of hits over weeks and months. > > Peter P. That would be the diamond guy (Forbes.com). Tough luck, buddy, you gambled and lost. Sorry, but the people complaining are the very ones who whould like to pay Google money (after all, they pay the SEO scammers). The fact the SEOs and not Google get the cash kinda knocks a hole in your argument. Google make it clear how to get to the top. Lots of content, lots of text, name your pages properly (i.e. not Page1, Page2 etc), update regularly, attract links, don't swap links, don't do stupid tricks (like the diamond guy) and so on. Wouters blink-a-led page is a perfect example of how to do it right. It gets updated, simple layout, the content, title & page name are all 'blink-a-led', lots of links to it, no 1 point high white text, no 'Playboy' in the meta-tags and so on. That's Googles 'big secret' - don't be an arsehole. Complaining that companies like eBay or Amazon get 2-day old pages highly ranked while yours is at the bottom misses the point. People WANT ebay, Amazon etc to show up on top. A month old eBay is almost worthless. They are highly popular sites, update extremely often and - get this - people click those links in their search results. If you want to be ranked high, then get popular. To get popular, get a reason. Think of it this way, if I type "US President" into Google, I'll get pages about George Bush, which is what I expect. After the 2008 elections, I want to see results about the new President. This is despite nearly every "US President" link on the 'net pointing to George Bush. Google will rapidly promote links to the new person, based on web sites it considers authorities. These will be 'high turnover' sites, primarily news based. Once they stop talking about Bush, those old links will drop in the rankings, and THAT'S WHAT I WANT. A straight 'popularity' contest, (most links wins) means George Bush will top the ranking for years, DO NOT WANT. Wouters site shows up quite a lot in Google searches, and that's because he has gained a good reputation, i.e. he's an authority. While Wouter is the 'blink-a-led' guy, he's not the 'flash-a-led' guy. If Google ever figures out that flash & blink are the same thing, then he'll probably rank high on that search too. It wouldn't hurt if he changed 'blink' to 'flash' a couple of times. Since that page is a high ranking one, it should rank fairly high for all its terms. It's work a try, it would be interesting to see what happens. Anyhoo, sorry folks, it means you need to pull you finger out, sit down, shut up and get to work. Tony -- http://www.piclist.com PIC/SX FAQ & list archive View/change your membership options at http://mailman.mit.edu/mailman/listinfo/piclist