GoogleGuy appears at the WebMasterWorld forums and talks with members about Google’s constant changes. He can’t tell all of Google’s secrets, but he does offer some crumbs, and the occasional banquet, of search engine optimization wisdom.
What do you think of GoogleGuy?
If you’d like to stay abreast of what he has to say, look no further than the GoogleGuy-Says blog. Mark Carey, who provides “consulting services for web presence management,” reprints GoogleGuy’s posts from WebMasterWorld and rates them according to what he thinks their importance is.
You can even sign up for an email announcement that tells when Mark posts Google quotes he considers to be of high importance.
So here’s what’s been happening so far this week:
In response to a member asking if there would be an update this weekend GoogleGuy said, “I don’t foresee any updates short-term (e.g. not this weekend, as you asked), although I don’t claim to know of everything at Google that could ever affect a search result.”
In a post rated “Importance: Low” GoogleGuy reiterated that, “AdWords/AdSense has no impact (positive or negative) on scoring/ranks.”
On the 22nd, GoogleGuy stated that PR gets dropped when a domain expires, and told a forum member “I wouldn’t bid over one tenth of that price” for an expired domain name the poster was eyeing.
Also on the 22nd GoogleGuy said, in response to questions about an alleged update, “I wouldn’t call this an update, because no new algorithms have been pushed. In an SEO world in which search engines update their index every day, there’s always going to be new data going out.”
Mark, in response to GoogleGuy here, said, “Personally, I find this hard to believe, at least for a small number of query phrases. I have seen sites go from #1 to #100 in one day, in a stable industry. That can’t be explained by ‘new data.'”
So that’s a taste of GoogleGuy for you. It’s a little disorienting to read since it’s pulled out of the context of WebMasterWorld, but it’s fascinating and addictive.
Before you go and spend an hour or two reading his posts though, remember, “I advise people to spend less time on their toolbar PR, rankings, or a single keyword phrase and more time seeing how they do across several search engines, seeing if they can be relevant for diverse phrases, and on looking at their logs to figure out what keywords users are typing to really find the site.”
In other words, don’t obsess over PageRank or Google.
Garrett French is the editor of Murdok’s eBusiness channel. You can talk to him directly at WebProWorld, the eBusiness Community Forum.
