My name is Matthew Bredel and as of March, 2007, I am a full-time, work-at-home internet marketer.
For close to 10 years, I worked for a defense company which was an OK job, but I was so uninspired in life and frankly, I needed some more money. That is when I first discovered internet marketing! Now I admit that I didn't start making thousands in my first couple of months (in fact, I lost my shirt!), but I finally saw the "internet light"...
OK, so I don’t get too nervous about Google Algorithm changes (or Google Dances as they are called). I’ve been Google Slapped silly in the PPC’s and have spent months playing in the Google Sandbox.
When I saw these new Promote and Remove buttons today on my Google organic results, I gotta admit I felt a [...]
OK, so I don’t get too nervous about Google Algorithm changes (or Google Dances as they are called). I’ve been Google Slapped silly in the PPC’s and have spent months playing in the Google Sandbox.
When I saw these new Promote and Remove buttons today on my Google organic results, I gotta admit I felt a slight tingle down my spine.
Uh, oh. Does my countless hours of work trying to SEO my site going to a public poll?
The way this works is that if you felt that a result was more relevent that the one above it, you can move its position up by selecting the Google Promote button.
This will move your result up one spot. If you felt that one of the results was not relevant, you can remove it entirely from the SERP.
The interesting thing about this is that if you promote a website to a top position, you will find that that website will start getting top positions on any result page (SERP) where that website was in the top 10 results.
I suppose it felt good that almost every search that I performed on some of my more focused keywords when Google put me in position number 1, but what does this really mean?
Well, first of all, I assume that the information is cookied to that specific computer. (By just upgrading my position on my computer will not, I don’t think, have any relevance on other people’s results).
That being said, Google is not doing this for fun. They are gathering data. And even if this is just a temporary trial, I know that the actions people take using these Promote and Remove buttons in Google will probably have some impact on SEO and search engine rankings in the future.
Further, this opens a whole new avenue of black hat tactics that scare me quite a bit! Again, I strongly doubt that Google would implement this “rating system” if they were not using it to improve their current algorithm.
Does removing my competitor from search results hurt him organically?
- If I upgrade my own website on 100 different computers across the world, will that help me?
- Or is this just something that Google has thrown out there to *just* aid the individual searcher to improve their own personal tastes and results? (I doubt it).
All I keep thinking about is the wrentch that this new Promote feature may throw into my current SEO strategies. And knowing the black hat tactics that are out there, I am a bit fearful of what SEO will become IF these promote and remove features of Google DO show some correlation to organic search engine rankings.
For now, it is too early to tell what the implications of this will be. It could be gone by tomorrow. But I guarantee that I will be watching it rather closely…
…and yes, I did promote my sites from my rankings and removed my competitors’…just in case!
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[...] on all of their own search results (as Matthew Bredal mentions in his interesting article against the idea) But I’m not sure that is something I will be [...]
November 22nd, 2008 at 9:39 am
Agreed!
November 24th, 2008 at 3:04 pm
I stumbled upon the promote button today and was just totally amazed and excited, confused, and a little worried. After promoting my sites, I Googled what was going on with this and found your video. I am now at a friend’s computer. I tried searching utah wedding photography and utah wedding photographer, the two top search phrases for my market and found that I remained in the same position (page 13 unfortunately) on their computer. It appears that a person can only promote a site when logged in to Google. My questions are the same as yours and I am very curious to see how this all pans out. I’m not going to Remove my competitors, though, because I would hope they wouldn’t do that to me. I don’t think it’s fair (until they start doing it to me!). Can’t wait to see what the developments are with this.
November 25th, 2008 at 5:13 pm
I think a lot of us are trying to figure out what the heck this means. I know what you mean, though, you are almost afraid to do any of it on your own SERP pages (either promote your stuff or remove your competition’s) because you fear what the impact of the “current” listing is going to become! I’m sure in the upcoming weeks we will hear more about this (those SEO-addicts are probably going testing crazy right now trying to figure out its impact…though, my gut feeling is that if this ever DOES have an impact on SEO, it won’t be any time soon…)…cheers…matt
November 25th, 2008 at 6:54 pm
great post!
December 5th, 2008 at 5:22 am
Hi Matthe ,
This is really an important post for us giving us more idea about the new Google algorithm changes, still you need to provide more accurate information.
Could u please let me know more details about this ?
i will have one post on my Blog linking to this post.
Hope you will have no problem .
Regards,
sibani
December 26th, 2008 at 5:21 am
I actually think this is great, but open to abuse. Its about time Google figures out how to make sites rank due to real popularity and not SEO. I am tired of good sites, full of brilliant, acurate information being outranked by some guy who had thousands of $$$$ to pay for an SEO company.
December 28th, 2008 at 6:07 am
Abuse is my biggest fear, but also this could really push the “small”, “new” website out a bit. That is why SEO could never be removed or new sites would never be able to compete any more.
December 28th, 2008 at 8:02 am
This functionality is more for enhancing a personal search experience and convenience than for SEO. It is of course based on cookies for a specific IP address and will nto have any bearing on the overall search position of websites in Google SERP based on individual priorities. Google Chrome does something similar. Promote and remove is more like setting up your yahoo pr google personlaise pages!
January 4th, 2010 at 7:13 am