Business Management Consultant - Stuntdubl Search and Marketing Consulting

Firstly, it’s a Trustbox, not a Sandbox. “Trust filters” seem to be a large portion of what has most SEO’s in a frenzy over search engine’s currently. There are pros and cons to the trustbox for folks on both sides of the fence, and the best thing you can do no matter which side of the game you are on is understand what the filters mean and the reprocussions that they will create in the future.

So what is search engine trust?

For the purpose of keeping things simple, I would identify a site’s trust by 3 different simple criteria:

• Website Age - (most importantly the first time it was indexed)
• Total # of backlinks and the overall age of those links
• Total “trustscore” of other backlinks (How many .edu’s, .gov’s, high ACTUAL PR links, etc.)

Aaron just released an amazing SEO extension for firefox that gives some great insights to these areas.

Most trust criteria revolve around some dependence on age, which is actually a pretty good signal of quality. From things folks at Google have said in the past, the trustbox (or sandbox if you must) was the unintentional effect of some other filters that were implemented. Realizing that age was a great signal all the way around to defend against the overdependency on links, they’ve went buckwild with age variables ever since.

I’m sure there are plenty of other things that effect trust, but these are most likely tops on the list. Think age related to just about any of the search ranking factors and it could (or probably is) being used.

Just how important is being trusted right now?

I figured it was about time for a rant on the trust of domains (mainly in Google), and when I spent some time on a recent roadtrip listening to some excellent Strikepoint podcasts, I really knew it was time. DaveN has some fantastic commentary on just how important trust is in ranking in google these days. I’m not sure exactly which episode it was (I listened to three or four and they were all very insightful), but Dave, Mikkel, or JasonD talk about 85% of search rankings these days being attributed to trust, and about 15% being onpage, and it is painfully true. With a few links to a highly trusted domain, and some body copy a site can rank for just about anything whether it is topically related or not.

There are examples everywhere on the web of just how critical trust is right now to top rankings. Don’t get me wrong…trust is a very good thing, and a great signal of quality, but depending almost solely on it is not the solution, as depending nearly solely on links was not the best solution.

Two or three years ago:
SEO = Content + high PR links

Created: a micro-economy of link buying solely for google rankings

Now
SEO = Crusty trusted domain + content

Will create: use your imagination.

Why the Overdependence on Trust Will Again Change the Web

The search engines are probably the most important aspect of the web. There are BILLIONS of pages of information available, but if you can’t find any of them, it makes instant access a WHOLE lot more difficult. The internet without search would be the equivalent of a library that was just a big pile of books that sometimes had a few similar books near each other.

“…the meaning of a link has been transformed from a reference to a vote.” - Bill Slawski, from his interview with Aaron.

“A link is a vote” has transformed the face of the web both for good and bad. It’s easy for SE’s to place all the blame on “spammers”, but to assume that there will be no manipulation with monetary stakes so high is somewhat naive as well. As long as the rewards are high, and the barrier to entry is low, there will be search engine spam. In addition to spam, there will always be folks who have a higher risk thresh hold for the potential of higher rewards. As everyone realized the value of a link more and more, it changed how every webmaster thought about the world wide web. The more motivated people were by money, the more extensive lengths they were willing to go for obtaining links that have their own inherent monetary value.

The over dependency on trust is the very same thing. It is going to cause trust to be abused in the very same way links were. We are already seeing the proliferation of subdomain spam, and after that is remedied there will still be the issue of hosting advertising space on a website.

One of the extremely big problems with trust filters is that they don’t seem to be retroactive…meaning that sites that were around and trusted BEFORE a particular filter was established can basically get away with murder (and they do).

The Trust Knob is Way too High…Please Turn it Back

One of the really great things about the web is that it has evened up the playing field for the little guys. The barrier to entry is constantly being raised, but for this unique window of opportunity, everyone has been given the opportunity to potentially start a successful online business if they are ambitious enough and spend time doing the right things.

Hey Google, remember when YOU were the little guy starting up in a garage ten years or so ago. Why not make the window of opportunity for little guys last just a little bit longer, and dial the trust thing back a bit eh? The trust knob has restored the balance of power right back into the hands of the big guys who can now do whatever they want with their “trusted domains” and be back in the index in days or never get removed at all. Why not give Joe’s ultra amazing toothpaste (the company with very little marketing budget because they spend their money making an amazing product) a chance to rank high for “toothpaste” for just a little bit longer instead of HELPING companies who’ve been spending millions of dollars on their “brand” instead of their product for the last decade or more?

Setting the barrier to entry so high just begs for abuse of the system. If SEO’s know that they can’t rank a new site for two years…why the hell would they bother to register a new domain…or take on a client with a brand new site? They are going to look for workarounds…and we all know what the workarounds are. The variations of these workarounds mutate and evolve to cause a whole new host of problems.

Please Google…turn the knob back before you make the problems even worse. The solution may be good in the short term, but you were great once because you helped the little guys that were hungry and cared about their customers. Focus on HELPING those people again and you will create great SERPS for your users and have to worry less about fighting spammers. Trust is a great signal of quality, but by moving so heavily to this model you are going to created the same problems that you did with the over dependency on link popularity.

Obligatory required reading on the Trustbox

• Trustrank Algo from Aaron
• Trustrank at Wikipedia
• Trustrank and the company you keep
• Google trustbox
• Trustrank + sandbox = trustbox

I am constantly baffled by Google’s insistence that there is such a low level of human discretion and editorial control in their organic search result determination. Isn’t the decision to leave editorial control up to a silicon based form of intelligence even SOME level of editorial control to begin with? Determining which forms of user data from the toolbar and other sources must certainly qualify as a certain level of editorial control based on human bias. There is nothing inherently wrong with human bias, and it becomes less of a bias if the views and decisions are directly expressed. I think Yahoo is a bit more open about their level of editorial control, but not really much. I really hope that the transparency of these decisions improves with both engines over time. Insight to this process would help to MEET those guidelines and stay within less ambiguous confines of the terms of service.

I am constantly questioned by clients or prospects on the “ethics” of search engine marketing. Three examples that tend to be recurring:
-Is it okay to create a page for every state?
-Can we create two sites to rank for the same terms?
-Can we use a domain for every one of our twenty niches?

I think these are all fairly valid questions of a business owner who is hungry for market share. I have seen instances where any of these three have worked, and I have seen instances where they have all caused problems. My answers generally sway towards the same theories of creating quality content and focusing on the user, but the subject itself leads me on a philosophical tangent into the ethics of editorial control and the search engines.

It only matters if someone sees it (no one complains until it ranks)

The number one spam fighter (other than Matt Cutts) is competitors who can’t compete. If you ever get the chance to listen to people talk to Matt at a conference you will understand this. EVERYONE whines about their competitor’s unethical tactics (among other things), and then goes and tries to get them banned. Leaving the irony of this aside, it is a testament to the fact that you are not a target until you are over the radar. No one cares if you have 8 sites in the top 10 for “fuzzy and furry alpha widgets in podunk”. The will care, however, if you have 3 of the top 5 sites for 10 different variations on “home loan” terms or other phrases with many competitors all trying to rank for the same SERPS. I’m sure Matt (and the rest of the engineering team) have become quite adept at siphoning out the intentions of a site, but the rest of the evaluation team may not have the same level of insights, and create “hand ban collateral damage”.

This is still a working theory, as the search engines will generally not even confess to DOING hand edits, it is still pretty uncharted territory, and most of this is pure speculation. I must also state that I have personally never had a client site banned. Any client that wants to push the envelope with tactics is made aware of the risks ahead of time. This being said, I have SEEN plenty of banned websites. They are often prospects shopping around for an SEO who they think may be able to get them out of the doghouse.

With all three of the above mentioned questions here is my usual answer:
Is it okay to create a page for every state?
Yes. Provided that you create at least SOME unique content for each page. You cannot just change the state name and expect it will work. Even if you DO manage to get by duplicate content filters, you will have to face quality control review if you start to rank for all of the “statename + keyword” variations. If you have only minimal content, your pseudo-directory will not last for long even if you do attain top rankings.

Can we create two sites to rank for the same terms?
Yes, but it will be twice as much work, and double the risk. I would strongly recommend putting all the effort in ONE site to start with. If you do wish to go the multiple site route, the two sites should remain completely separate, and association should be kept to an absolute minimum. Retail site owners often have multiple websites selling the same products under different names. Obviously competitors don’t like this, and are willing to report them for “spamming”. You can see where this would be a very fine line full of ambiguity for a quality control rep. THIS is a judgment call. There will NEVER be hard and fast guidelines for this type of activity, and if there is, we most likely will never know about them.

Can we use a domain for every one of our twenty niches?
Yes. You can also just use subdomains, or subdirectories. If you interlink your sites, the search engines will associate them together anyhow. If you interlink your sites, and rank too well, you may have problems upon manual review. I would stick to one site, a nice subdirectory layout, and a strategy to drive deeplinks into each of the twenty areas.

So as you can see, the answer is generally “yes, but…”. This conveys the level of risk involved, and helps to open the eyes of the prospect or client that it really is about the user…whether that user be a search engine quality control rep, or a prospective customer, the site should reflect what it advertises, and should have a unique value proposition or in the case of retail, at LEAST be honest and true to how it is portrayed. Saavy internet users can smell something afoul from a mile away.

Hand Ban Collateral Damage
After several discussions with Jim on prospect sites that were banned, I’ve come to the conclusion that some of the quality control reps are not as educated as others. There is not much consistency with hand bannings that I have seen. The best insights we’ve had into the mind of a quality control rep was the information released from searchbistro on eval.google.com.

Hand bannings are a tough pill to swallow. Several people a month contact me asking about problems with their rankings, and there are often sites I would potentially attribute to a hand penalty - some of which I would argue are not worthy of completely losing their rankings (though I certainly may be missing something) . This is a much tougher adversary than the algorithmic filters, and the penalties for failure last MUCH longer. It hurts to NEVER have a site rank well or have it drop briefly from glory during an algorithm update, it REALLY hurts when you get a site to rank well only to have it get wacked after a short period of time with the knowledge that it will probably NEVER return to its’ former status.

Inside the mind of a quality control rep.
This post is not designed to try to psychoanalyze Matt Cutts or Tim Mayer. It is is designed to better understand the “little cuttlings” all over the world that rate sites with only a fraction of Matt or Tim’s knowledge and understanding of the internet. They are basing their conclusions on a limited amount of understanding (comparatively to most SEO’s and engineers). Imagine teaching your brother, sister, or cousin how to evaluate a “quality” website. I’m not sure of the education requirements necessary to be a quality rater, but I’m guessing it’s not engineer level. This gives a substantial amount of power to the “average user” (which is probably quite logical, but a bit unnerving at the same time).

Open Questions to the Search Engines on Behalf of SEO’s

So the question becomes, what type of quality control guidelines are these raters given? The documents posted at search bistro gave a bit of insight into this process. I’m a bit reluctant to repost some of the documentation here, as I am not a huge fan of controversy even though the links are nice. My personal question is…wouldn’t it make sense to make this information publically available? Wouldn’t it aid search engine marketers to make sites that are more quality oriented? Perhaps more examples of what constitutes “quality value add”, as well as more extensive examples of sites that would fall into the “penalized/ not-penalized” categories in ambiguous areas may be of benefit. I think there has been too much emphasis placed on fighting spam vs. encouraging quality. As with most things, encouragement is a more positive long term approach in my humble opinion. I think Matt tries to do this on his blog on occasion, and I’m sure these types of discussions will be brought up on Tim and Jeremy Z’s new show on Webmasterradio.fm. While this post may sound negative, it is fact just the opposite. I certainly appreciate the valient efforts of the SE reps to appease the blood thirsty lynch mob of crazed webmasters and SEO. The purpose is to encourage their efforts and voice concern in an area with very little communication. There are certainly attempts being made, and I hope this post will contribute to encouraging discussion in pursuit of those efforts.

I really hope that both search engines (and MSN even perhaps one day) will embrace the webmasters that help provide them with their mountains of content, rather than just catering to the media moguls with the advertising dollars. There are still glimmers of hope that the SE’s are really here to HELP webmasters and SEO’s, but there are still lots of examples (at least in my mind) of opportunities that they have missed. Helping us to better understand the manual review process, will help the SE’s to introduce the concept to the rest of the world that they are afraid of exposing it to. We are your link between the Mountain View ivory towers and the “general public”. We understand your need for keeping the results “untainted”, but just how long do you think you can maintain the appearance that there isn’t editorial control in the organic search results? Isn’t the decision to keep the editorial decisions as algorithmic as possible a editorial decision in and of itself?

If you have examples or questions about any site that you think may have incurred a manual penalty, feel free to e-mail it to me for research purposes (it will stay completely anonymous). You also may want to give the anatomy of a successful reinclusion request, or the guide to filters, penalties, and bannings a look.

Related reading:

• Vi*gra and handjobs from WG
• Does google filter directories?
• SE communications with SEO’s
• Google testing notification of banning to webmasters

Disclaimer: I’ve never engaged in any of these practices, nor will I ever engage in these practices. I don’t think anyone else should either. They are unethical, and downright wrong. Even the mob knows that wars are “bad for business”. The Google TOS state there is “almost nothing” a competitor can do to harm your rankings. I’d just like to be prepared for not being that low percentage statistic.

The purpose of this post is also to demonstrate that you shouldn’t place the fate of your business in the hands of your natural search engine rankings alone. Be prepared to hedge your bets with alternative traffic sources if something like these were to ever happend to you. Don’t believe everything that you hear from a search engine rep.

Don’t be OVERLY paranoid, just an open-minded skeptic. Be prepared, enjoy the ride, and start a good PPC campaign. Even exceptional SEO’s don’t have control over all the circumstantial variables - a good SEO just uses as many of those variables to their advantage as possible, very similar to the way a sports bettor knows all the angles in a game.

I would imagine Google’s view on the subject goes something like this - You’re not ever gonna stop ALL the evil folks, so just let them gun for each other in industries like pharmaceuticals, travel, mortgages, loans, and real estate where we’ll just hand edit the top results. Of course this would be “off the record”, and eventually all their base will belong to us anyways. I think the search engines are all working quite hard in this area to keep the collateral damage of fighting spammers low.

Things Your Competitor Can do to Tank Your Rank

• Google Bowling
• Google Washing - more googlewashing
• 302 hijack
• Blog *ahem* signing on your behalf
• Get you a crappy Yahoo directory listing?
• Get you a crappy DMOZ directory listing (or keep submitting so they never get listed)
• Send out a couple hundred thousand link requests on your behalf

More reading:

• Why does G lie to SEO’s?

Disclaimer reiterated: I have never done any of this, and don’t think that you should either. The idea is to be prepared for unscrupulous competitors.

“You’re not a true SEO until you’ve been banned at least once!”" - not sure who gets original credit for this one…most likely Boser, Oilman or perhaps Jake.

Anyone who has pushed the bleeding edge of search engine optimization has had a site go greybar, or just totally tank from the SERPs. It really sucks. Sometimes it’s worth a reinclusion request, and sometimes it’s best to keep walking and never look back. Bannings are a very interesting phenomena that don’t get discussed often except by those who are proud to be blackhat. Fortunately, it’s not a problem I’ve had to deal with for personal sites, but I seem to have been getting requests for consulting from a lot of folks who managed to get themselves banned lately, and I wanted to put together some information on the subject. I would like to try to open up a discussion for a few of my own pressing questions including:

• How can you tell when your site has been banned?
• When is it a ban? Filter? Penalty? When is it just poor optimization or the sandbox?
• What percentage of bannings are hand bans vs. algorithmic collateral damage?
• Will the search engines admit to doing hand editing for quality control?
• How can you best prevent a site from incurring the wrath of a banning while still pushing the bleeding edge of search engine optimization?
• What are the best practices for reinclusion if your important or branded domain gets popped

(more…)

Okay, I *DO* really understand *why* Google feels the need to bold face lie to SEO’s, but this post is more about wondering if it is really beneficial. As SEO’s, we all secretly understand that the big G regards us about as highly as the bubonic plague or typhoid fever. We are the parasites in their eyes that feed suckling from their golden juicy teet. Sergey Brin was once quoted (in Wired I believe) as saying something to the effect of regarding SEO’s about the same way that a mother bear regarded someone poking at her cub with a stick. So we understand WHY Google feels the need to lie to us, but is it really beneficial? Have the pre-IPO idealistic folks who started an exciting and innovative company really fallen into the realm of search copy-cat mediocrity and disinformation to maintain the status quo? (more…)

Another post on the death of SEO and how the game will change. Speak in heuristics and personalization, not algorithms and optimization. Think conversion and sales not traffic and rankings. Pagerank was flawed and the flaws are being remedied. The question is…how long has Trustrank been playing a role, and how will the increasing role of TR impact SEO? (more…)

There were two EXCELLENT resources released in the world of SEO this past week. Aaron Walls “Link Harvester” tool, and Barry’s Search relevancy challenge. I’ve decided to rant on both and why I think these are both big strides for the search community. Firstly, the popularity of both will just continue to snowball because of the way they are built. Both are giving back to the community which will benefit them immensely in the long run.

Quickly getting off on another tangent, I think this is the mistake that SEO inc, has made in not reaching out to the community for support, but rather threating with C & D’s. It really is a shame the way that the SEO community has jumped all over SEO Inc. and kicked them while they were down IMHO, but they responded in the wrong way by threatening rather than reaching out to the community for support. I would imagine this is a very resilient company and it will be interesting to see if they improve in the future or continue the downhill slide.

Aaron of SEObook has done a very cool thing. He’s released a tool for folks everywhere to improve their knowledge of SEO that is immensely useful and made it free. His new Link Harvester tool is guaranteed to please link mongers everywhere. There are two excellent factors to this tool: 1. It is open source. Aaron has released the source code which will most likely lead to fantastic upgraded versions of the tool. 2. He uses the Yahoo API rather than scraping. This allows it to be open source, and cooperates in return with the engine that continues to solicit the opinions of SEO’s rather than try to constantly combat them.

Since Yahoo has opted to continue to show backlinks appropriately it is highly useful. It would be very easy of them to go the route of Google and only show a random sampling. Google has spent the last year and a half or so trying to confuse and compete with the SEO community rather than embrace it and continue to focus on relevancy. Google views SEO’s as the enemy…Yahoo sees them as potential advocates and early adopters. In my opinion, this has been of detriment to Google, and Yahoo has reaped the benefit of honest opinions from SEO’s and internet marketing because of their willingness to cooperate rather than compete with SEO’s for clients. We will see the effect that this has had on relevance with Barry’s white label relevance test. We have to remember that both G, Y, MSN, and others have a responsibility primarily to shareholders and no longer just to users (although pleasing users generally pleases shareholders). Google’s release of campaign negative sites is a great example. I’m hardly a tech geek, but I would imagine this wasn’t a HUGE feat for the great minds at Google to pulloff. It was only, however, when advertisers started to pull their ads from the content network that this finally got done. I applaud G for DOING it, but you really have to question a bit of why it took this long. I’m sure folks in the know have been suggesting this for quite sometime. One of the most interesting theories I’ve heard on why Google ALLOWS shitty adsense scraper sites is to pollute the other engines with trash. While I like to not put much stock in tinfoil hat theories too often, G *is* now a large corporation, and they DO make money off the ads while hurting their competitor’s product. DMOZ clones and scraped sites became extremely prolific with the introduction and potential profit from adsense. We will most likely only see a decline in these when the mainstream media starts catching on, and then all the blame will be deftly pointed at the “filthy spammers” that constantly try to game the search engines.

Tags: Google, Search Engine Optimization, Yahoo, Link Development