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I strictly monitored that there are no inbound links for example and the link profile was clean until public TBPR update at least. Once suspicion I have and was not able to confirm and include in my research was that there was a plain link added to that odd page which has PR3 and it shouldn't. That would basically prove the theory that any external link fortifies the importance of the page to the point of higher indexation/caching. Something like internal link + external link = match made in heaven.

In 2008 we performed an experiment which showed some seemingly random behaviour by Google (indexation, caching, pagerank distributiuon).

Today I put the results together and analysed the data we had and got some strange results which hint at a possibility that Google purposely throws in a normal behaviour deviation here and there.

Do you think Google randomises its algorithm to prevent reverse engineering and enable chance discoveries or is it all a big load balancing act which produces quasi-random behaviour?

Do you get PR people to HTML the PR material or is it passed through designers to do that? I'm experiencing some resistance in learning HTML and even using visual editors to include HTML links.

Which online channels do you use for distribution?

Love the idea, have you got an example of engagement strategy / approach?

You mean to include QR code as part of the press release somewhere at the bottom?

Thanks Nicole those are great ideas.

He also said: "We invite and strongly encourage readers to test these themselves."

This is what I am after, personal opinion from people who have either tested or experienced the effect first hand.

Thanks for your input!

It seems like your vote goes towards all links being treated equally regardless of their location/function. Interesting... I have suspicion that there is or should be difference. Why?

Consider this, Google notices 150 sitewide links that always appear. Wouldn't it make sense for Google to treat page-specific links differently to sitewide ones as that would in fact improve their ranking system (e.g. 150 standard links not diluting the importance of a page specific link given through content).

Thoughts?

I just watched this video in which Matt Cutts talks about the ancient 100 links per page limit.

I often encounter websites which have massive navigation (elaborate main menu, side bar, footer, superfooter...etc) in addition to content area based links.

My question is do you think Google passes votes (PageRank and anchor text) differently from template links such as navigation to the ones in the content area, if so have you done any testing to confirm?

Haha... Google hates this. I admit though... it's worth a shot. However starting on a new test site is just a messy temporary measure and spend of valuable time and money when both are limited.

Reporting them to Google will likely only help feed and improve their algorithm and not directly affect the competitor (unless they get audited manually). Turn grey? What is grey is a very grey question... buying links from known sellers and spammy websites as well as spamming yourself is not a long term solution. Doing something clever, that's a different story for as long as you don't push it too far. Gardening actually sounds nice... lol

Seriously though, I can guarantee you that it's possible to beat quantities with quality so keep that creative hat on and work on those link opportunities.

I'm happy to answer specific questions on link building ideas if I get to know a bit more about your situation / industry.

1. Compile a guide on how to deal with toxic materials (links, references and all) and pitch to gov and edu sites for inclusion.

2. Cross promote with industry operators (builders, painters...etc).

3. DIY guides that people will appreciate. How to fix a simple problem or step by step illustration.

You could spit out 10,000 bad content pieces and earn no more rankings than with one extraordinary item per month. Frequency of content update and adding of fresh content affects search engines signals broader (or different) to the one's impacting rankings alone (look up QDF). How content in a technical sense can help is if it earns links and through internal linking. My advice is not to create content if it doesn't make sense to do so, especially if it's of a low quality and empty meaningful sentences, you'll just end up with a low quality site which could trigger Google's new algo filter.

This could only cause problems if you have google_sitemap_users.xml not equal to google_sitemap_seo.xml - hope that's not the case with you.

Absolutely. In fact I realised that I missed the above after posting but my edit did not register. I hope my editing priviledges are not revoked.

Browse to your .htaccess file in WWW directory and open it in editor (if you're using cpanel) or download edit and upload via FTP (safer option). You can do a find and replace on the file like with anything else. If you are unsure of the syntax create a single 301 in cpanel and see how it looks like when you open up the file.

Good luck!

Youtube currently doesn't spend resources on video content analysis - only on a basic level. There are numerous instances of popular videos being recycled and reuploaded by multiple users therefore "fragmenting" video's true view count. That as far as I know is the biggest nuisance you can bump into (much like having two URLs for the same content page). Otherwise it will be fine.

If all you're doing is adding segments before and after than you might want to use YouTube editor to do this: http://www.youtube.com/editor

See potential users don't see your homepage yet. You're bidding for their click among 9 other organic results on that page