Bias towards old pages a bad thing for Google

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A common idea these days is that Google’s algo favors older pages. To be honest, I’ve witnessed the same thing, so I have no reason to think it’s not happening. The so-called “Sandbox” effect can be argued existentially, so let’s just refer to it as an “aging bias” and leave it at that. Whatever the reason for the bias, whether it’s a natural occurence of PageRank or a symptom of changes internally at Google I can’t say with certainty, but I’m growing to think the idea is a horrible one.

I personally would like to see a more meritorious system where all documents on the internet stood some chance of competing for coveted keyword spots. With the huge emphasis on link popularity, ranking in Google often becomes a game of attrition with the spoils going to the most deep-pocketed and persistent optimizers. This means that it is almost always the professional SEOs who win the highest rankings for themselves or their clients. Like any performance-oriented system, the most talented or ambitious people are rewarded. Herein, you can also see the inherent weakness in this type of plan.

As I stated, the most ambitious and hard-working people are rewarded for their SEO efforts. This does not mean the most qualified web page is always presented in the SERPS. For all of the emphasis lately by Google on what appears to be “anti-SEO” efforts, the link popularity as central tenet of Google issue necessitates the existence of “link developers”, especially in competitive industries.

Has “Big Daddy” moved Google’s algo away from backlinks and more towards on-page optimization?

I can’t say for sure, but maybe there is less emphasis on backlinks. I’ve heard people claim it lately and there are signs it’s true. You can almost be assured that all major search engines (and even some minor ones) are all working on making metrics other than link popularity more important to their algos. Others have tried it before, and none has succeeded. With Google regularly purchasing technology to improve search results, it’s inevitable to think that even more sophisticated ranking mechanisms are being spawned daily. Let’s hope so, because life would get boring if we already knew everything there was to know about SEO.

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