Is Google's Page Rank a Fixed Game?

Google's Page Rank^TM is part of the algorithm that the huge search engine uses to define an website's importance in a specific search. The rank is based on a score from 0 to 10 where zero in the lowest score and 10 is the highest. You can see the rough/rounded page rank in Google's toolbar. Lately there have been some issues that gave me pause, hinting to me that there may be an unfair human element that can manually change the Page Rank^TM for a specific website.

Why is this so important? It has been my experience that the rank a site gets from Google can greatly affect their position in the search results. For the small "Mom & Pop" shops this can mean a a difference of a few hundred or a few thousand a month. For the larger etailers this can mean 100's of 1,000's of dollars. Imagine that a site was not given the correct placement just because someone at Google changed the rank for their or a competing site. To give you an idea of the magnitude that this can have, I used to consult on a website that was selling around $20,000 per day. Now at some point this site was removed from the Google index for a few days. During those days, I think that they were selling less then 10% of what they were before they were removed.

OK, so where is my proof? A few days ago I visited the "Google Store"; the first thing that caught my eye was the fact that it had a rank of 9 out of 10. Out of curiosity I did a search on Google to see how many sites were linking to this store. Google listed 19 incoming links. How can this create such a high score? I have no idea. I also spoke with Eric Melin at SpiderSplat Consulting, Inc., and he too did not have a clue as to how this was possible unless Google was manipulating their rank. Before writing this I double checked the rank and number of links. The rank has now increased to 10 with about 12,000 incoming links. Not to sneeze at 12,000 links, but just to give you an idea according to Google there are 2,890,000 incoming links to www.google.com give it a rank of 10. So how can 12,000 links also give a 10? If it were that easy, there would be quite a few more sites with a 10.

OK, but it is their own tool, so shouldn't they be allowed to do what they want with it? I am not going to even try to give a legal opinion in this, but keep in mind that they are now a publicly traded company. However, they are the biggest search engine, and ethically I believe that they should not be able to give their e-commerce store an un-natural boost. Their store should be ranked just like everyone else's.

Ticketmaster Rant - Should we have to pay extra for online purchases?

• As a web surfer, I feel cheated when a website asks me to pay an additional fee just because I wanted to buy from them through their website.
• As an online consultant, I always tell my clients to remove as many charges from the site as possible. Remove the shipping charges if possible.

After all, why should a customer have to pay more just because they chose to use the website instead of going to the retailer's brick & mortar store? Don't online purchase save the retailers huge amounts of money? After all, they do not have to have an attractive store, with associates to help the customer - they just need to be online and answer any phone calls.

Many retailers agree with this and offer special website promotions, all in an effort to get you to buy through their website. The most common promotion is free shipping. Unfortunately, not all online retailers agree with this philosophy.

A little while ago I visited the Ticketmaster website to get tickets for my wife and her mother for a show. After selecting the date and the type of tickets, we were shown the prices and fees associated with them. One such fee was a $2.50 per order fee - I am not sure what that was about, but no big deal, I was planning on spending about $200 with them, so what is $2.50 between customer and store? I then noticed another fee of $10.50 per ticket that they labeled as a convenience charge. What the heck is that?!? After some digging around, I found that they said it was a fee that we (the customer, not the website) are charged for having the convenience of buying the tickets from my home on the web instead of waiting in a physical line at the box office.

Well, my office is just a 3 minute walk from the box office. So for the $10.50 per ticket, I will take my convenience and wait in line during my lunch break and never buy a thing from Ticketmaster.

Yet another..."How to choose the right Search Engine Optimization Company" article

Working in a consulting company, we constantly hear from our clients “but I heard that you can do this” or “I was told not to do that”. We are a Search Engine Marketing company, in other words we help companies market their products and services through the internet and search engines. When we are in the first stages of contact with potential clients there are many questions that arise. More than anything we have to convince them that we can produce the results in an ethical manner. The reason for this is that “the Search Engine Optimization (S.E.O.) industry has been given "a black eye through their (...) attempts to unfairly manipulate search engine results" as stated by Google. There are quite a few very good and reputable S.E.O. consultants and companies. However, there are also a number of "unethical SEOs" (Google) that have hurt the general reputation of the industry.” (Cohen 2003)

In our case, we try to increase the client’s website visibility in the Search Engines by analyzing which elements of top sites help achieve those top results. There are many ways to try and cheat the system, to get short term results and then long term damage. In the article I wrote at there are some questions that we encourage potential clients to ask us and our competitors before making a final decision. Among these questions are:
Are there any types of products or services that we will not promote? Are we active in the online media community and forums? Can we give them any examples and/or references?( SEO Consultants).

By asking us these questions, potential customers can get a better sense of the type of service we offer. We do not promote any type of pornographic sites or sites with illegal content or items. In other words, we will not promote any site that you may be embarrassed to show your parents or grandparents. We are active in numerous online forums, both individually and as a company, and participate in professional conferences when possible. Potential customers that do not want to ask these questions can end up hurting their business if they choose an un-reputable SEO company.

One SEO company’s unethical practices that have received center stage during the last few weeks is Traffic Power. Apparently that will do anything to get the client, without regard to the long-term affects of their actions on their clients. I could do into a bunch of technical jargon about doorway pages and cloaking. Instead I will use the example of plagiarism. In an effort to create additional pages for their clients for the purpose of search engine optimization Traffic Power seems to have plagiarized other people’s content including copying content from the New York Times (www.trafficpowersucks.com). Why would they do this? Despite the fact that Traffic Power is paid by their clients for creating these content pages, they prefer to save their (Traffic Power’s) money by just copying someone else’s content.

Choosing the right online marketing company can make the difference between multiplying a company’s sales by 100’s of percents or getting the site penalized and banned from the search engines and opening you up to various law suits. Anybody can claim to be the best, or to get you super results. However, how many companies take the long-term view to grow your business with you? When hiring a consultant or consulting company, which do you think is better: A company that wants to invoice you for a few months, or a company that wants to work for you for a few years? Which of the two will truly look out for your best interests?


The same basic principles can be used when one has to hire any consultant. Don’t just assume that because their salesperson, often titled “Sales Manager” or “VP of Marketing”, knows how to talk eloquently and make promises. Ask as many relevant questions and you need. Don’t automatically assume that what they say is true, check it. In other words, think critically.


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References
Google.com, (n.d.). Google Information for Webmasters: Search Engine Optimizers. Retrieved on February 17, 2003, from http://www.google.com/webmasters/seo.html

SEO Consultants, (n.d.). Choosing a Search Engine Optimization Company. Retrieved on February 17, 2003, from http://www.seoconsultants.com, http://www.seoconsultants.com/which-seo-to-choose.htm

Cohen, A (2003). How to Choose the Right Search Engine Optimization Company. Retrieved Thursday October 21, 2004, from http://www.alon-cohen.com/articles/how-to-choose-the-right-search-engine-optimization-company.asp

Traffic Power Sucks (n.d.). Plagiarism? Retrieved Thursday October 21, 2004, from http://www.trafficpowersucks.com/stolen.htm