Google Serps Are Watered Down
How is it that an ad-only site with no original content can get in the top 20 of Google SERP’s for keywords that are $10.00 a click? There are ad-only sites that have scraped content and Google AdSense ads that exceed the limit in their terms and conditions. Sites in the paid ad section that are both Google Ads publishers and advertisers are getting juice from Google. These sites have little or no PR and are less than 2 years old, yet they are placing above real websites from real companies.
We have all heard about the Google Sandbox effect. New sites are often kept in a limbo of SERP’s until they have been around for a year or so. If this is the case, how are ad-only sites getting into the top 20? Before I continue, lets look at that term: ad-only site. An ad-only site is a website or web page that has no unique content, it is serving either the maximum amount of ads allowed by Google, or in some cases is spoofing the AdSense spider using scripts that allow for more ad boxes.
Unfortunately there is nothing that we can do except to provide quality content that other sites will want to link to. Hopefully Google will do something about these weak sites that offer nothing to their visitors.
Yahoo Unleashes Slurp 3.0
Yahoo has taken another step to shorten the gap between them and Google by upgrading their primary searchbot Slurp. Slurp is the evolution of the Inktomi spider that Yahoo purchased a few years ago. While nowhere near as impartial as Googlebot, Slurp is still behind Google and ASK, but about equal now to the new Live search from Microsoft.
Is there anything that you need to know as far as SEO goes? Not really. It is the same old story with Yahoo, no real new developments. There is no way they will ever be able to compete with Google unless they let Microsoft’s purchase of Yahoo to go through. The fact is Google has made strides with Universal Search, and Yahoo answered with “Search Assist” a pretty lame response. In fact you have to dig deep to find blog posts in Yahoo’s index.
I did a search for “Data Recovery Services From DTI” the title of a post I wrote a week ago. It is #1 on Google’s blog search, but nowhere in Yahoo. This shows that Yahoo is way behind in new media searches.
If Yahoo is ever going to make a dent in Google’s search empire, they better start paying attention to blogs and other Web 2.0 type sites.
There are some changes that you might have to make to track Slurp’s activities on your site. Visit Yahoo’s search blog for more info. Finally, if your robots.txt file makes specific reference to Slurp you should modify that as well. Read my post SEO robots.txt validation to learn more about that important file.