Latest Google Update Spreads a Quiet Panic Amongst Some Internet Marketers

With the amount of content on the internet growing by the second it is inevitable that the search engines will need to make constant adjustments as to how they find the most relevant results. As the biggest player in search engine land, the changes at Google tend to be the most closely watched. The most recent update, being trialled first in the U.S. before being rolled out the rest of the world has caused more consternation than most as it is specifically aimed at rooting out poor quality sites so as to give the user a better experience and give better quality and more relevant results.

Some site that are considered as "content farms" have been hit particularly hard, so inevitably this has caused a certain amount of debate by these sites as to how to ensure that they retain their hard earned traffic. Ezine Articles is considering putting limitations on certain topics, e.g. "get your ex back", "reverse phone lookup", etc. Whilst over at Squidoo they are clamping down on duplicate content, so whereas previously you get away with copying and pasting entire articles or even Amazon customer reviews, it seems that if you do so you are likely to have your lens locked.

This raises the whole issue of whether duplicate content is bad or not. When I first started looking into these issues a couple of years ago it seemed that the general consensus was that duplicate content was a bad thing. And then Google quashed that by announcing that actually it is fine provided that you do not produce duplicate content on your own site. Now it seems that a degree of duplicate content is seen as a bad thing, although to be honest I am still not completely clear.

Of course the search engines have to change with the times and constantly evolve. So if this means that some of the poorer (particularly automated) content falls to the bottom then this can only be a  good thing. However, it will only make attempts at making money at internet marketing more difficult.

Squidoo Alternatives #2 - Knol

Continuing my series of alternatives to Squidoo, here is my review of Knol. When Knol was launched by Google in mid 2007 there were comparisons with both Squidoo and Wikipedia. The site allows you to post your own content to a web page known as a Knol (unit of knowledge). The content can be about pretty much anything, although for some reason there are a large number of Knols about medical issues. In truth, Knol is quite different from either Wikipedia or Squidoo. Unlike Wikipedia, Google does not take any editorial control over what you post and although you can allow other people to add to your Knol, it is not compulsory.

Unlike Squidoo (or HubPages) there are no modules to help you construct your page. What you have is pretty much a blank page. For users of other Google products, such as Blogger or Page Creator, the interface will feel very familiar. The interface does allow you to incorporate pictures, YouTube videos, spreadsheets, calendar, Picassa Web Slideshow and more. The interface does feel quite basic though.

As it is a Google product, you have the opportunity to incorporate Adsense ads so that your Knols can earn you a little money. You can however, also add whatever affiliate or referral links you like.

As you can incorporate links in your Knol, you can obviously include links to your own website or blog, BUT initially your links within your Knols will be "no-follow" so will not contribute towards your page ranking. In order for your links to become "do-follow" you have to establish yourself as a trusted author on Knol. This is what Google has to say about it:

"When Knol launched we began with all pages marked with a blanket "nofollow" directive. This means that Google and other search engines would not crawl outbound links from knols, and those links would not flow PageRank to the pages to which they point. The advice Google provides webmasters is to make links "nofollow" if they represent untrusted or low quality user contributed content.

We are now at a point where we "trust" a certain fraction of authors and a certain proportion of user contributed links, and so we now use a "follow" directive for links within such knols.

Not all links are "follow". Some links will permanently remain rel="nofollow", including:

• Links found within comments
• Our automatically generated links to "similar content on the web".
• Brand new pages and recently-added authors are liable to remain "nofollow" for a period of time.
  

Beyond that, the rules determining which links and pages use "follow" vs "nofollow" will change over time as we adjust our policies to find the right balance for users and search engines."

So, in conclusion, Knol is easy to use and there are opportunities to make some money, although in the absence of easy to use affiliate modules, you will need to to be a bit more imaginative. However, in order to gain any page rank benefit from links to your site/blog then you will need to put some time in to establish yourself as a "trusted author".

My Blog has Reached PR1!

There has been quite a bit a movement in Google rankings over the last few days, some up, some down. After many frustrating months of being stuck on PR0, Extra Cash Challenge has finally reached PR1! I had already set myself the challenge of both of my blogs reaching PR2 by the end of 2009, so this one is some of the way there already. My other blog, A Smallholder's Diary seems to be firmly stuck on PR0 for the moment, so some more work to do there to get that one off the mark. This is the older of the two blogs by a couple of months, so that might have something to do with it.

Google Page Creator Sites to be Migrated to Google Sites

My website was created using Google Page Creator. I did this primarily because it is free and easy to use, and includes free web hosting. However, as I became more competent and ambitious I did become frustrated with GPC's limitations.

However, I have just read that Page Creator is going to be migrated over to Google Sites. I'm not sure as yet how my site will be affected. Looking at Google Sites it looks much more flexible and has many more features so the migration may be a good thing. Hopefully this may alleviate some of the frustrations I have had with Page Creator. Google Sites also includes free web hosting which is always a plus - although web hosting is like anything else; you get what you pay for!

I had intended to add more sections to my site and tweak the format, but now I think I will leave any major work until the migration takes place as Google Sites might give me some opportunities to make some positive changes. So I will put all the various changes I had planned on hold for now. There are a few updates I need to put in and one of the pages has a glitch that needs sorting, so I will see to those over the next few days.

You can read more about Google Sites here.