Don’t try to trick the Google Bots

In February, Google unleashed ‘Panda’, the most recent of the Google Algorithm changes, designed to punish content farms for pushing key word text for the sole purpose of increasing revenue on Google Ads.  Now, the search engine giant is looking at more Google algorithm changes by potentially punishing, or at least downgrading, companies that have keyword domains.

Google Algorithm Changes | Keyword domains

Keyword domains are those domains that have the keyword of their website as their domain name.  A site like www.widgetforsale.com would sell obviously sell widgets and the keyword for this company would be widgets.

Google doesn’t like this.  Google CEO Eric Schmidt in 2008 called the Internet a cesspool, and said that “brands are the solution … brands are how you sort out the cesspool.”

What the proposed Google algorithm changes suggest is that Google rewards companies for branding themselves based on quality content rather than by rewarding a domain simply by the domain name.  For example, if you would have Googled the term ‘credit cards’ in 2008, then the top results would have been companies with the words ‘credit cards’ somewhere in the domain name.  Now, 8 out of the top 10 results for ‘credit cards’ would be branded bank names, such as visa.com.

Google Algorithm Changes | Why reward Branding?

Mark Jackson of Vizion Interactive says since the 2009 Google Algorithm changes called the Vince Update  that Google has been trying to move up more “trusted” (i.e., “big brand”) websites and move out less trusted (affiliate) websites.

“Would you, as a searcher, want to find a 10 page website ranking highly for some research that you’re conducting? To me, the intent of your search is to find a website of substance, authority, popularity and a quality user-experience. Focus on these things for long-term success.”

Google Algorithm Changes | Ultimate goal?

Matt Cutts, Google’s principal engineer, told the San Jose Mercury News that Google is “looking forward through the rest of the year at other changes we can make to try to improve search quality. Ultimately, Google wants to reward high quality content sites and punish low quality content farms.  More from Mr. Cutts:

“Now if you’re still on the fence, let me just give you a bit of color, that we have looked at the rankings and the weights that we give to keyword domains, and some people have complained that we’re giving a little too much weight for keywords in domains,” Cutts said. “And so we have been thinking about adjusting that mix a little bit and sort of turning the knob down within the algorithm, so that given two different domains it wouldn’t necessarily help you as much to have a domain with a bunch of keywords in it.”

Google Algorithm Changes | How should I build a site?

“Successful search engine optimization is not just about building for what’s worked in the past, or what might work today, but focusing instead on ‘if I were Google’ and building towards that,” Jackson said. “While a keyword rich domain may still be counted — it does show a degree of ‘focus’ on that topic/keyword, obviously — how much should it count, really? http://blog.searchenginewatch.com/110316-150000

When in doubt, think about what Google wants.  Google wants researches to be able to search for to information and receive quality results within the first page.  Google wants to avoid people searching for information and having to sort through pages of spam in order to find content.  If your goal is developing a website for the simple purpose of spamming keywords to drive traffic for Ads revenue, then these Google algorithm changes will negatively impact your business.