Google Theories Are Like Opinions
January 24, 2007 – 7:31 amIf you're new here, you may want to subscribe to my RSS feed. Thanks for visiting!
Google theories are opinions…that’s why everyone has one. Unless you actually work for Google, all you can do is guess what’s happening in their index. I’ve watched their index in amazement in January, as I’ve seen many old pages come and go, seemingly at random. Every time they shift, you can analyse what’s happening and make educated guesses. But chances are, you won’t be 100% correct. And what happens when you see a drop in rankings, you make no moves to “change” anything and the rankings come back? A situation like that can be completely confusing.
Whenever Google updates, speculation runs rampant
Lately, I’ve been looking forward to the theories that are espoused whenever Google updates. Some of the theories are so logically sounds, that they seem completely true. That is, until you realize that the person proposing the theory has no way of proving his assertions. The only one that can ever shed light on updates is Google employees, and they will rarely, if ever, do so.
Trust, and then Verify
So if we decide we’ve discovered the secret for recent changes in Google, what can we do? We can act like any good scientist and try to not jump to conclusions. It’s almost impossible to completely isolate variables in Google search, but you should be able to limit any experiments you do down to one major change. This is still no guarantee of anything, as a co-incidence might still rear its’ ugly head and ruin everything.
You know as much as anyone
Therein is a very comforting thought. If no one knows exactly what’s going on with Google, it means your knowledge is right on par with everyone else! People can act sure, but it doesn’t mean they’d stake their lives on their claim. All anyone can do is guess and then test. If you keep on trying, you’ll end up succeeding in the end.
What is your current favorite Google theory?
(I personally am obsessed about “old data” that Google keeps using that screws me over)
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5 Responses to “Google Theories Are Like Opinions”
My theory with Google is that they are smarter than any of us. Google receives over 1 million applicants each year and only hires 5,000. In other words, Google hires the top 0.5% of its applicants. That collective consciousness is why Google is so smart. They are so ridiculously smart, that no one person or group will ever figure them out (at SEO). There are so many Adsense scammers, but the smartest way to make money with Google is to simply invest in their stock.
By Nate on Jan 25, 2007
The Google Game and that is what it is.
The Big problem is we are all playing the Game but none of us know All the rules. Imagine a football game where someone decided to change the rules but did not tell the players. All The players would be running around trying to figure out the new rules.
Thats what we all do everyday Google make a change and everyone has an opinion on why and what to do about it.
Sometimes I think Google makes changes just to see how we will react and to see how high we will jump. IMHO
By Bill on Jan 25, 2007
No doubt, Bill. That’s why I spend about 60-70% of the day looking for NON-GOOGLE traffic these days.
They CANNOT be more than half of a website’s traffic in total, or that site is in a lot of trouble.
By Darren McLaughlin on Jan 26, 2007
Darren,
Do you buy traffic?
By Bill on Jan 27, 2007
Nope, never do.
By Darren McLaughlin on Jan 29, 2007