Here is a recap of what happened in the search forums today, through the eyes of the Search Engine Roundtable and other search forums on the web.
Search Engine Roundtable Stories:
Should I Dump My Reciprocal Link Partners?
Back in the day when reciprocal linking was useful, some webmasters were trigger happy and aimed to link to everything that would link back, even if there was no relevancy from site to site. Over the past few years, many of those reciprocal links were not as reciprocal as they used to be, as other webmasters became savvier and realized there was likely no value in these links. With this being the case, a webmaster
Tanked Rankings after Title Tag Adjustment
A WebmasterWorld forum member decided to experiment with his title tags and made some slight adjustments. Consequently, he noticed a 65% decrease in traffic. Is this the end for him? It’s possible, as one forum member says: Unless you are a super trusted authority site (ie you can throw up a page on a long tail and rank Top 3 in an hour), then Google is very cranky about title changes lately. The particular forum
Google Algorithm Altered: Less Emphasis Placed on Anchor Text
Patrick Altoft blogged a recent finding that Google seems to have changed its algorithm and placed less emphasis on anchor text (versus on-site optimization). His theory (which is purely from observations at this point) is that Google is altering the algorithm because anchor text is currently the ranking algorithm’s biggest flaw. There are a variety of reasons for this but Patrick specifically notes that the “best” link (as deemed by Google) for anchor text may
Google PageRank Update Observed
Just a few days ago, forum members across multiple forums started observing a new Google PageRank update. Forum members believe that Google is lifting PageRank penalties on sites that sold links, but I beg to differ. It looks like a PR penalty lifting. At least this happened to one of my sites which sold links. No change on my white hat sites. (Maybe that guy was just lucky.) Others have confirmed that the PageRank penalty
Other Great Search Forum Threads:
Google Video Hijacks the Link for a Craigs List item, WebmasterWorld
33 Website Success Metrics Instead of Rankings, Google PageRank and Traffic, Sphinn
Adsense down and I’m frustrated, DigitalPoint Forums
Anyone else click others sites "Just for the heck of it"??, DigitalPoint Forums
Kwippy, The Twitter-killer, Cre8asite Forums
Matt Cutts on Big Sites and Black Hats – SEOspace – Organic Search Engine Marketing with a B2B Twist, Sphinn
SEOmoz Expert Seminar 2008 Recap, Sphinn
Can the sitemap help with redirects 301?, Google Groups
Searching for Common Industry Words, Search Engine Watch Forums
