Google Shifts SERPS And Loosens Authority Noose
February 23, 2007 – 7:06 amIf you're new here, you may want to subscribe to my RSS feed. Thanks for visiting!
There appears to be a very major shakeup in the last 48 hours or so. It looks like Google has decided to lighten up a bit on “link weighting” and “Authority” status. I’ve mentioned before that Google has been loving .edu links a bit too much lately. At one point in this last few weeks, the venerable search term “Buy Viagara” (you know you want to little man!) was dominated by 10 out of 10 .edu hacked websites.
Today I see one .edu remaining. Does this mean that Google has decided to lighten up a bit on “top-level authority”, age, and other “link-weighting factors” that they’ve introduced in recent months. Yes, for now, it appears they have. Personally, I hope it’s permanent, because I feel like Google has been completely wrong-headed in the direction they’ve chosen to go in the last 6 months or so.
Google was built on inclusivity, not exclusivity, so why change now?
It can’t be because of scalability or banwidth costs, they have more money than the richest King. This whole concept of “good links” and “bad links” and the amount of pickiness and pettiness they’ve been building into their algo is a bit much. Why not just let new pages in the index and see how they perform? We know Google is incorporating more “personalized search” results, as well as tracking user feedback, so it wouldn’t be that unusual to allow sites to compete.
With the recent emphasis on age and authority before youth and beauty, Google has been moving away from the “mandate” there were given by web surfers to index the world’s information. We’ll see if the current changes stay. I doubt they will in their entirety, but at least it means there’s some recognition that a DOT EDU isn’t the be all and end all of SEO.
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5 Responses to “Google Shifts SERPS And Loosens Authority Noose”
Very good call… the concept of .edu links being worth more doesn’t make much sense…. when you consider that most .edu links will be from a student’s page. That isn’t particularly authoritative, is it?
By Leroy Brown on Feb 24, 2007
Authority sites allways have some overt or hidden commercial agenda, or some political mission. Non-authority sites sometiems have unbiased information, and often prove to be more valuable.
By Knut Holt on Feb 26, 2007
hmm….so for the cost of 1 unit registration at a community college I can get a webpage from a .edu site? nice!!!!
By Adventures In Money Making on Feb 26, 2007
yep, there is and has been way too much emphasis on edu links. Thats why the viagra spammers exploit it. I think they should turn the “trust” down on that.
By Michael Goldberg on Feb 27, 2007
Thanks for the comments, guys. I agree with all of you.
All you need is one corrupt webmasters (or an army of SEO hacker types) and a .EDU can be turned into a real hootenanny in no time at all
Personally, I only rarely recall reading very good info on .EDU websites. .GOVs tend to contain impressive content, but not all .EDUs.
By Darren McLaughlin on Feb 27, 2007