DISQUS

Chris Cree · 2 years ago

Hey Andy, the link to your initial Google Blog Search patent analysis post takes me to a "Nothing Found" page.

The thing that struck me from Alister's post was the reminder that Google is looking through their customer's emails and chats. Big Brother seems to be getting closer and closer the more technology we use.

I'll leave the SEO analysis to you guys who are passionate about it. Thanks for boiling this one down for the rest of us, though.

AndyBeard · 2 years ago

Thanks for the heads up, I knew I had kept the URLs as a series, 1, 2, 3, but the date on the first one was in March which caught me out - I was wondering why I didn't see a ping.

I suppose I need to find a decent historical posts plugin, but am worried about becoming comfortable with something that then doesn't work under 2.2 (whenever)

I know that many people looked on the "big brother" aspect of Alister's post as being significant, and I noticed when Wendy submitted to Digg, she cleverly played on that.

I wasn't in a position to filter all 60+ links to Daren based on whether they were saying people should increase their blogrolls. I had been worried about it, saw it in some of the snippets, clicked through to a couple, and thought I had to post something linking through.

Chris Cree · 2 years ago

No worries on the link.

I'm one of the guys who is running the Top Commentors plugin. You were kind enough to warn me of the SEO down side.

For me the plugin is more about reader recognition and community building and I've been willing to take the SEO hit. Perhaps it is because I still don't understand that end of it yet.

Took me a while to find Rob Watts' hacked version of Top Commentors (the link is deep in the comments). Do you consider that a good solution to that issue?

If so I'll switch it over the weekend.

AndyBeard · 2 years ago

I wrote a list a while back that has effectively the same result, by just using logic as to which page to display it on.

The plugin is buried a little in the comments, I might encourage him to post about it, but I want to stick it on my sidebar first.

If you also use his Tumbleweed plugin, that is one of many alternatives to increasing the number of internal links.

I will be adding that as well, and the 3rd plugin for showing posts you might have missed.

I also use dynamic growing links on my single pages which get all the comments. The number of tags increases with each comment left to even things out a little on popular posts.

robwatts · 2 years ago

I'm working on it now as we speak. I think it might also be cool to have an option to shorten or lengthen the reference points for internal pages too. Currently juggling whether rewarding my own comments is a goer or not ;)

The link that is currently here just contains the standard rel=nofollow and add ons.

I'll probably blog on it later or over the weekend.

p.s loving the reply to comment option here Andy

Chris Cree · 2 years ago

Hey Andy, the link to your initial Google Blog Search patent analysis post takes me to a "Nothing Found" page.

The thing that struck me from Alister's post was the reminder that Google is looking through their customer's emails and chats. Big Brother seems to be getting closer and closer the more technology we use.

I'll leave the SEO analysis to you guys who are passionate about it. Thanks for boiling this one down for the rest of us, though.

AndyBeard · 2 years ago

Thanks for the heads up, I knew I had kept the URLs as a series, 1, 2, 3, but the date on the first one was in March which caught me out - I was wondering why I didn't see a ping.

I suppose I need to find a decent historical posts plugin, but am worried about becoming comfortable with something that then doesn't work under 2.2 (whenever)

I know that many people looked on the "big brother" aspect of Alister's post as being significant, and I noticed when Wendy submitted to Digg, she cleverly played on that.

I wasn't in a position to filter all 60+ links to Daren based on whether they were saying people should increase their blogrolls. I had been worried about it, saw it in some of the snippets, clicked through to a couple, and thought I had to post something linking through.

Chris Cree · 2 years ago

No worries on the link.

I'm one of the guys who is running the Top Commentors plugin. You were kind enough to warn me of the SEO down side.

For me the plugin is more about reader recognition and community building and I've been willing to take the SEO hit. Perhaps it is because I still don't understand that end of it yet.

Took me a while to find Rob Watts' hacked version of Top Commentors (the link is deep in the comments). Do you consider that a good solution to that issue?

If so I'll switch it over the weekend.

AndyBeard · 2 years ago

I wrote a list a while back that has effectively the same result, by just using logic as to which page to display it on.

The plugin is buried a little in the comments, I might encourage him to post about it, but I want to stick it on my sidebar first.

If you also use his Tumbleweed plugin, that is one of many alternatives to increasing the number of internal links.

I will be adding that as well, and the 3rd plugin for showing posts you might have missed.

I also use dynamic growing links on my single pages which get all the comments. The number of tags increases with each comment left to even things out a little on popular posts.

robwatts · 2 years ago

I'm working on it now as we speak. I think it might also be cool to have an option to shorten or lengthen the reference points for internal pages too. Currently juggling whether rewarding my own comments is a goer or not ;)

The link that is currently here just contains the standard rel=nofollow and add ons.

I'll probably blog on it later or over the weekend.

p.s loving the reply to comment option here Andy

Chris Cree · 2 years ago

Thanks, Andy (and Rob). I may go ahead and install the current version and check back later for an improved version.

Chris Cree · 2 years ago

Thanks, Andy (and Rob). I may go ahead and install the current version and check back later for an improved version.

Court · 2 years ago

Even though I hate when my pages get placed in the supplemental index, I agree that they are good for search quality. You can still get some traffic from pages that are in there as well, and it's not as hard to get pages out of there as people think.

Court · 2 years ago

Even though I hate when my pages get placed in the supplemental index, I agree that they are good for search quality. You can still get some traffic from pages that are in there as well, and it's not as hard to get pages out of there as people think.

Meg · 2 years ago

Hi Andy

Interesting write up.

I noticed that a lot of people attributed that article to Darren - it must be really frustrating. As you say, so many bloggers don't take the time to do a just little bit of research. I've discovered that myself this week.

Do you think the fact that Alister's post has received 600+ diggs has any influence on where the posts rank (I know you previously stated that it wouldn't count)? Or is it purely the number of people that linked to the post?

Also interested in why you were so confident that you would "outrank" Alister's post (and you know I'm not being snippy here - just curious)!

AndyBeard · 2 years ago

Hi Meg, I know you are not being snippy on these things. I didn't actually claim I expected to outrank Alister's post on Darren's blog.

All things being equal (which they never seem to be), I should always outrank Techcrunch or Problogger when discussing something like Blogsearch, but there are other factors, as you can see by the fact that Alister's blogsearch post on Problogger.net is still outranking my post with an almost identical title (though it does have more words in it)

All things aren't equal and there are lots of factors which would mean that a post on Darren's blog would rank higher, despite Darren not using things like tagging.

1. Pagerank - Darren's toolbar pagerank is 7, my toolbar pagerank is 5 - those are 3 months out of date, so Darren might be approaching PR8 now, and I might be approaching PR6, but that is impossible to accurately predict.
2. Links - without doubt Alister's post generated a lot of links - Google seem to see these faster than for the main index, although that doesn't mean they give a weighting immediately.
3. Maybe I am wrong on Digg - It is my belief it isn't used as a ranking factor, but it gives a huge amount of traffic which might be a factor. I don't post how many views my posts get, but whilst that post did get more views than Alisters got Diggs, due to some solid SU traffic, I would estimate Alisters post was seen by 20x the number of people, both on site and in feeds.

4. I referenced Alister's post and his was written 1 day before my own, thus in part, I am making Alister relevant. Whilst all the other blogs are falling away, I had existing historical relevance, thus that link might be the most powerful link that Alister's post received on this subject.

On a fairly recent post on Tony Hung's blog about A-listers, RObert Scoble mentioed that he could probably rank for Lawnmowers.
He probably could, especially if he got some links to make him relevant.

It has been a few days since the original posts, and longevity ranking is kicking in. Lots of blogs have dropped and are being replaced by newer posts commenting on Alister's.
The Lisa's post on the Bruce Clay blog has also disappeared.

Nothing can be equal, but certainly for Blogsearch I am fairly confident that I can rank consistently high for topics I discuss.

Did you notice I didn't use "Blogsearch" in the title of this post? It didn't appear in the search results for "Blogsearch" at all, because the title really is the biggest factor currently.

We will see how the longevity goes...

Meg · 2 years ago

Hi Andy

Interesting write up.

I noticed that a lot of people attributed that article to Darren - it must be really frustrating. As you say, so many bloggers don't take the time to do a just little bit of research. I've discovered that myself this week.

Do you think the fact that Alister's post has received 600+ diggs has any influence on where the posts rank (I know you previously stated that it wouldn't count)? Or is it purely the number of people that linked to the post?

Also interested in why you were so confident that you would "outrank" Alister's post (and you know I'm not being snippy here - just curious)!

AndyBeard · 2 years ago

Hi Meg, I know you are not being snippy on these things. I didn't actually claim I expected to outrank Alister's post on Darren's blog.

All things being equal (which they never seem to be), I should always outrank Techcrunch or Problogger when discussing something like Blogsearch, but there are other factors, as you can see by the fact that Alister's blogsearch post on Problogger.net is still outranking my post with an almost identical title (though it does have more words in it)

All things aren't equal and there are lots of factors which would mean that a post on Darren's blog would rank higher, despite Darren not using things like tagging.

1. Pagerank - Darren's toolbar pagerank is 7, my toolbar pagerank is 5 - those are 3 months out of date, so Darren might be approaching PR8 now, and I might be approaching PR6, but that is impossible to accurately predict.
2. Links - without doubt Alister's post generated a lot of links - Google seem to see these faster than for the main index, although that doesn't mean they give a weighting immediately.
3. Maybe I am wrong on Digg - It is my belief it isn't used as a ranking factor, but it gives a huge amount of traffic which might be a factor. I don't post how many views my posts get, but whilst that post did get more views than Alisters got Diggs, due to some solid SU traffic, I would estimate Alisters post was seen by 20x the number of people, both on site and in feeds.

4. I referenced Alister's post and his was written 1 day before my own, thus in part, I am making Alister relevant. Whilst all the other blogs are falling away, I had existing historical relevance, thus that link might be the most powerful link that Alister's post received on this subject.

On a fairly recent post on Tony Hung's blog about A-listers, RObert Scoble mentioed that he could probably rank for Lawnmowers.
He probably could, especially if he got some links to make him relevant.

It has been a few days since the original posts, and longevity ranking is kicking in. Lots of blogs have dropped and are being replaced by newer posts commenting on Alister's.
The Lisa's post on the Bruce Clay blog has also disappeared.

Nothing can be equal, but certainly for Blogsearch I am fairly confident that I can rank consistently high for topics I discuss.

Did you notice I didn't use "Blogsearch" in the title of this post? It didn't appear in the search results for "Blogsearch" at all, because the title really is the biggest factor currently.

We will see how the longevity goes...

Meg · 2 years ago

Hi Andy,

It does appear that a lot of weight is placed on the title - a lesson for us all to pay close attention to the title. I noticed this post appears at #4 on blogsearch for "blog search" (one more recent, two dated.)

AndyBeard · 2 years ago

The one that is more recent is a comment on Robert Scoble's blog - comments do seem to sometimes encourage posts to be relisted, though I am not sure of exactly the mechanism.

The 2 more dated posts are on Google's official blogs. It is hard to rank against Google, even if they don't have all the words in the title.

Meg · 2 years ago

Hi Andy,

It does appear that a lot of weight is placed on the title - a lesson for us all to pay close attention to the title. I noticed this post appears at #4 on blogsearch for "blog search" (one more recent, two dated.)

AndyBeard · 2 years ago

The one that is more recent is a comment on Robert Scoble's blog - comments do seem to sometimes encourage posts to be relisted, though I am not sure of exactly the mechanism.

The 2 more dated posts are on Google's official blogs. It is hard to rank against Google, even if they don't have all the words in the title.

svend · 2 years ago

thanks for the great info. I don't know much about blogging yet, but I find a lot of your articles very helpful in explaining the fundamentals. I use it as a reference to answer my many questions.

svend · 2 years ago

thanks for the great info. I don't know much about blogging yet, but I find a lot of your articles very helpful in explaining the fundamentals. I use it as a reference to answer my many questions.