Google Is Rolling a PageRank Update Over the Weekend

I wouldn’t be surprised to see Google rolling a PageRank update on April 1st, but it looks like they waited until the weekend to roll it out.

The update looks like a subtle one to me. In fact the homepage of most of my sites didn’t see any PR fluctuation. I discovered the update while browsing through my blog and finding that some recent posts have already gained PR.

What about you, did you see any major PageRank fluctuations on your sites or around the web?

One thing made me happy though: the consistency of the updates. Last one had taken place in January 02/03, so this one is being rolled exactly three months after. I hope Google will finally keep a regular pace with the PageRank updates, as this would give more certainty to webmasters.

Using Google Webmasters Tools Won’t Reveal Anything About Your Site

I am a big fan of Google Webmaster Tools, and one of the messages on the Daily Blog Tips newsletter is about why you should use this tool, and how you can use it efficiently.

Then a couple of days ago I received the following email in response to my advice (I’ll keep the identity of person anonymous for obvious reasons):

I have built many, many websites, and over the last couple of years of testing and re-testing, I have come to find out that my websites do better by NOT letting big G* have complete access to them.

I started out by doing exactly that. Submitting all my websites to big G’s Webmaster tools. Why? Because all the people “In the know” recommended it. Well, guess what? I could never figure out why I could never get my websites higher than the 2nd page.

Then, I read an article by a not so very well known Internet marketer who was making millions. Everyone blew him off and called him crazy. I was fortunate enough to be able to talk to him personally and what he revealed to me was simply amazing.

I decided to give it a try with some of my sites that were not doing very well. I took them out of G* Webmaster tools (there are many other ways of tracking you know) and low and behold. Most of them were on page 3 or worse before. After taking them off G tools, within 2 to 3 weeks, they were on the first page and making money.

The way I see it now, it’s like letting the government into your life. The more they know about you, the worse they make it!

As you can imagine I don’t agree with this argument, and here is why.

When you create an account on Google Webmasters Tools and submit your sites there you are not, by any means, giving Google more or less access to your website. You are not giving them any more information than what they already have by crawling and indexing your site over time.

The only thing they ask is that you confirm the ownership over your site (either by plating a meta tag on the header of your template, or by uploading an HTML file to your server) so that they can show you the information they have about your site, and give you advice to solve problems, should there be any.

In other words, signing up for Google Webmaster Tools won’t affect the information Google has about your site. It will, however, give you the opportunity to discover how Google sees your site, and this information can be very valuable.

Here is a personal example to illustrate the point. A couple of years ago I noticed that most of the pages of this blog started losing its search rankings. I couldn’t figure what was wrong, since I was not doing anything wrong or shady. After a couple of weeks I finally remember to log into the Webmaster Tools, and I found that I had a huge number of “Unreachable” crawling errors. This basically meant that the Google bot was not being able to crawl my pages for some reason. I then discovered there is a wrong setup on my server blocking the bot, and once I fixed that the rankings came right back.

There are many other valuable features and diagnosis tools offered by Google inside the Webmaster Tools. Now does Google offer all of this to webmasters because it is an altruistic company? Not all. Google is just doing what is sound for its business interests. If they help webmasters make their sites as good as possible, it will be easier for Google to crawl them and to sort the information around the web more efficiently (not to mention that better websites will get more traffic, and if they are AdSense users they will make more money both for Google and for themselves).

That is why I don’t buy the “Google is out there to get webmasters” theory.

What the person mentions in the email could even be true, but it would be just a coincidence. Adding or removing your site from the Webmaster Tools should have no effect on its search rankings. It is the same thing when people add or remove AdSense from their websites and search rankings go up or down. People think things are related, but it is just a coincidence.

Anyway this is just my opinion, and given that everyone is entitled to one, feel free to write a comment below with your thoughts on the issue.

Time To Remove the NoFollow from the Feedburner Links?

I believe I was one of the first webmasters around to suggest the usage of thenofollow attribute on the Feedburner links (some three years ago…).

The main reasons for this suggestion were:

1. To avoid leaking PageRank with sitewide external links.
2. To avoid having your Feedburner feed page ranking higher than your blog.
3. To avoid duplicate content issues (since your Feedburner feed page has similar content to your blog).

Many people agreed with me, and if you browse around the blogosphere today you’ll still find many bloggers nofollowing the Feedburner and other subscription links.

A couple of weeks ago, however, I re-analyzed this issue, and came to the conclusion that perhaps it is time to let the nofollow go on these links. How come? Because the three main reasons I listed above no longer exist.

Google confirmed a while ago that using the nofollow attribute won’t “capture” your link juice inside your site. It only will signal to Google that you don’t trust the site on the other hand.

Second, having Feedburner pages ranking higher than the blog used to be a problem a couple of years ago, but it rarely happens these days.

Third, most blogs have migrated to post excerpts on the homepage, so your Feedburber page won’t look like any other page on your site, removing the risk of duplicate content problems. Even if you still display full posts on the homepage Google will certainly know that your Feedburner page is not a duplicate version of your site (after all Google owns Feedburner).

There you go, I don’t see that much of a reason to keep a nofollow attribute on these links anymore. In fact I have dropped it last month already, but only now I got the time to write about it.

What about you, do you still use the nofollow attribute on Feedburner and other sitewide external links? Will you consider removing them?

Google Now Lists the Top 1,000 Websites On The Web

Curious to know what are the largest websites on the web? While there are some lists around, none of them was regarded as accurate, and Google apparently wants to fix this. It just released its own Top 1000 Websites list.

As you can see below, the list shows the category of the website, its number of monthly unique visitors, page views, and whether or not the website accepts advertising.

The announcement was made on the official AdWords blog. In fact this list was developed to help advertisers target big websites that accept ads.

According to Google itself “the list excludes adult sites, ad networks, domains that don’t have publicly visible content or don’t load properly, and certain Google sites,” so keep this in mind.

Here are the blogs I spotted on the list:

• #246 – The Huffington Post – 12 million Uniques
• #434 – Engadget – 8,1 Million Uniques
• #540 – Gizmodo – 6.7 Million Uniques
• #696 – Mashable – 5.6 Million Uniques
• #850 – TechCrunch – 4.7 Million Uniques

If these numbers are accurate they reveal some very interesting data. For example, Mashable is as big as PCWorld, one of the oldest and most established tech publications. Similarly, Engadget is as big as the Washington Post (on the web only, obviously). And The Huffington Post as big as Digg (counting uniques only, not page views).

I was hoping to see Daily Blog Tips around the last positions, but no luck…!

Update: Here is where Google says the numbers are coming from:

Traffic statistics are estimated by combining sample user data from various Google products and services and opt-in direct-measured site-centric data. In addition, site owners may opt-in direct measured Google Analytics traffic statistics to provide a more accurate measure of their site traffic. Sites that have opted-in direct measured Google Analytics data are indicated through the footnote “Google Analytics data shared by publisher”.

Video: How To Get Thousands of Visitors From Google

This is a guest post by Erica Douglass. If you want to guest post on this blog,check out the guidelines here.

It’s easier than ever to get Google to send your blog thousands of visitors a month. Forget complicated terms like “keyword density”–let’s keep it simple. Here’s how, with about five minutes of work, you can get your blog ranked highly in Google for valuable search terms.

Video Highlights:

[0:20] First step: Go to Google and type in “Google keyword tool”. The first result is the Google Keyword Tool.
[0:51] I recommend typing in a question word, like “how”, “how to”, or “what”, followed by a generic word that describes your blog, like “business”.
[1:20] Sort by Global Monthly Search Volume. This is how many people, on average, search for this keyword in a month.
[1:42] Look for keywords that have between 70 and 10,000 searches per month.
[2:00] Important: You should only target one keyphrase with each of your blog posts.
[2:20] Your blog post title and permalink should be this exact keyphrase. Resist the urge to add extra words.
[2:25] Use your selected keyphrase several times in your blog post.
[2:31] Also important: Make sure that when people link to your blog post, they use that exact keyphrase. The best way to do this is to make it the title of your blog post.
[2:48] If you have a WordPress blog, download the free All In One SEO Pack to modify your page title, keywords, and meta description.
[2:57] Your meta description is the sentence or two that appears below your blog post in Google search results.
[3:17] Guest posting, and linking to your blog post in the “blurb” at the end of your guest post, will help your post rank higher in the search engines.
[3:48] Use this simple system to get thousands of visitors to your blog every month!

Have you had good results from using the Google Keyword Tool to rank your blog posts well in the search engines? Let us know in the comments.

About the Author: After selling her online business for $1,100,000.00 at age 26, Erica Douglass “temporarily retired.” She now shows you how to grow your own business to $1,000,000 via her Erica.biz. You can also download her free Blog Success Manifesto — which contains 30 tactical tips to grow your blog faster than you ever have before.

Google Now Displays Complete Backlink Data For Your Website

There is a big change in the Google Webmaster Tools. Historically Google only showed a sample of your backlinks (i.e., 10% or less), so webmasters had no way to know how many backlinks their websites had according to Google.

People argued that this was a measure to prevent people from trying to reverse engineer Google’s search algorithm.

I was reading Search Engine Journal yesterday, however, and I discovered that Google just changed this feature. If you log into your Webmaster Tools account now, under the “Site Analysis” and “Links to your site” section you’ll find the complete backlink data for your website.

I remember that before this change Google was reporting around 500,000 backlinks for DailyBlogTips.com, and now it reports over 5 million (as you can see in the screenshot above). You can also see which pages are getting more links, and even export the whole thing as a spreadsheet.

I think this is an important change for two reasons. First of all it will help webmasters understand where their backlinks are coming from, and how they affect the search rankings of each page. Secondly, this change also signs that Google is becoming more transparent regarding how it indexes and crawls the web.

How To Get Your Site on Google And The Sandbox Effect

Every week I get at least one email from a reader who just created a website or a blog, asking how he should submit his site to Google, how long it will take for the website to appear there and so on.

That is why I decided to write an article on my other website, titled How To Get Your Website On Google.

The information is aimed at beginners, but many of our readers are just starting out, so this might be useful to them. Even if you already have some experience you might learn something, as at the end of the article I explain the “sandbox effect,” which people always get confused about.

Here is a quote:

For example, let’s suppose that you just launched a website called SuperCars.com. You put some content there, get some backlinks, and then you use the “site:” parameter to see if it is indexed. It is. You then search on Google for “super cars,” hoping to find your site there, but it is nowhere to be found, even when you look on the second, third and fourth page of results.

Is there something wrong here? No. This is a perfectly normal pattern, and people call it “the sandbox effect.”

Anyway check it out.