Fun Video from Friday the 13th 2007

[Dan-Petrovic]

I just bumped into this video and found it immensely entertaining:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jeiu8afEOOg

(horrors of a world without Yahoo! Link Data)

What were you up to at the time this video was recorded?

[StalkerB]

Ha ha. Brilliant.

I would like to see Whiteboard Fridays go back to this format. The more thumping horror-techno and flickering images the better!

[EGOL]

lol... I remember that one.

Actually, I am glad that people can still get link data.  It diverts my competitors from what is really important. 

[Dan-Petrovic]

But there is one problem EGOL, not all SEO people are creative. Extraordinary content and assets could be staring you in the face, but if your Goggles are tuned to technical settings you will miss the most obvious opportunities out there.

[EGOL]

I agree with you, Dejan.

But I believe that Google is moving more and more away from links.  As that happens link assets will depreciate.  I want my competitors to invest heavily in depreciating assets.

[Dan-Petrovic]

Ah, here's an interesting topic. Do you think Google will use social media for cross-referencing their signals and validating rankings or any additional hints?

[EGOL]

I have believed since 2005 that links are depreciating assets and stopped linkbuilding completely at about that time.

Today I think that google is moving to social media signals, visitor actions, and site quality metrics.  These are very difficult or impossible for SEOs to monitor.  As google moves to these more invisible signals for ranking websites the ability of SEOs and others to  manipulate their rankings decreases.

Matt Cutts, in a video, said that they are using social signals in the rankings and every new signal that is added has the potential do depreciate the value of links.

[Dan-Petrovic]

From my testing (and I do a fair bit of that) I conclude that links still outweigh every other signal. Though it would make perfect sense that newly introduced hints steal a bit of link graph's glory until it's put in a fair place with everything else. I notice Matt Cutts still talks about links a great deal in his videos which confirms my view that links are still going strong.

What puzzles me is how strongly they treat exact anchor text, when in natural world we rarely see it happen, it's usually click here, or read more or just plain website address. This is the area I believe needs fixing sooner than others.

Back to the original topic... once links stop being a super-signal content and function will rule.