Googlebot has been making headlines in most SEO forums lately with a massive crawl - the kind that is usually done before Google makes a major change in its index.

It looks like we may see that major change within a few weeks - Google is reported to have said the future updates will not be as dramatic as last November's "Florida" update but I guess we will soon see.

Who here thinks Google's index is great and doesn't need fixing?

Who here thinks it stinks and any change would be for the better because it can't get much worse?

Who here thinks any changes would be not about improving the index but about driving more hapless webmasters into paying for Adwords?

This seems to be a tactic of Yahoo! who, with most of my clients, will drop a website one day (which is in top 10 position) and then pick it up the next again. It is a constant yoyo.

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Real Estate Website Content | Black Diamond Real Estate | Turner Valley Real Estate | Real Estate Website Developers

Yahoo "learned" that when it bought Inktomi which pioneered the pay for inclusion product and started dropping sites to force people to use it years ago.

Google uses a slight variation which began last November - it doesn't drop sites but makes sure sites with commercial terms will not rank well so you have to purchase Adwords.

Major search engines no longer focus on improving search engine results but in making them just good enough so the majority of searchers still think the results are good and bad enough so those who depend on them for business have to pay. It is a fine line.

I find that with all the Google optimization talked about on the net, spammers show up more and more in the results for searches I do.

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Real Estate Web Design

I read in a SEO forum somewhere that the letters in spam stand for "Sites Positioned Above Me"

Google doesn't want Realtor sites to appear for real estate searches. Their thinking is that a Realtor's site should appear for the Realtor's name and not for real estate searches.

Their algorithm reflects that thinking and as a result their serps are now full of doorway pages and other low value pages simply because any page containing the target keywords that resides on a larger site deemed to be a directory or an "authority" will rank better than 99% or Realtor sites.

Realtors are great customers of Adwords as a result - how nice for Google!

Spam = sites positioned above me... ..I love that

What Doug is saying is true but part of the reason in my humble opinion it is is that the VAST majority of realtors do not see the value or are willing to invest what it takes to get and stay at the top of the search engines. The ones that are willing to continually invest and develop their websites seem to do very well which pretty much dispells all the theories

Keep in mind that good search engine placement is a marathon, not a sprint and requires time, effort and expense that can be far more cost effective than traditional forms of advertising in the long run but you have to be in it with realistic timeframes and expectations when getting started.

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Rich
VTWS Real Estate websites are among the top lead
generating Real Estate Websites in markets across the United States for Realtors and Companies alike.
Real Estate Search Engine Optimization

Bottom line is google got greedy period.
If you can't understand that and the reasons why Mc Donald's is always hiring
End of story and perhaps the end of google

Do you Yahoo? lol

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Web Marketing and Design Since 1995
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North Scottsdale Custom Homes

Fountain Hills Arizona Real Estate

To a large extent it seems that large corporate sites are taking over the web in some industries. In Canada for example, the mls directory, www.mls.ca, is an exceptional site and I think most house shoppers, once they find it, will go there instead of looking for individual sites of realtors.

However, I think the value to realtors having their own site is that once a potential consumer has come to your site and likes it often they will return because of the ease of use.

Also, with people listing their homes lots of them check the exposure of the company's website because they know how important this is in today's market.

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Real Estate Website Content | Black Diamond Real Estate | Turner Valley Real Estate | Real Estate Website Developers

I had real estate websites before MLS.ca (like Realtor.com) existed back in '94 and '95 and did very well. Once there was talk of MLS.ca coming into existence other agents in my office predicted my demise and I must admit that I thought people would go there instead of my sites too. That did not happen - the pie just got bigger and I actually sold more homes as a result.

Buyers are a strange lot as they always think they must be missing something and that there are other homes they are not seeing. Sure they go to MLS.ca first now but they still go to search engines and type in "my city real estate" and fill in the search forms on Realtor's sites just as much as they have in the past.
[rant]
Google is a bigger threat than MLS.ca or Realtor.com ever was. More specifically, Google's crappy listings are the threat - as buyers now go and type in "my city real estate" and do not find what they are looking for in most cases. Just as spam has taken the fun out of email soon the crappy results will lead to buyers using search engines less often when searching for real estate.

Just as the buzz led to Google's success the buzz can also lead to it's "downgrading" as just another search engine. We would all be better off if buyers used Yahoo and MSN instead of Google - perhaps we should remove the "G" word from our vocabulary when talking to buyers and sellers and probably everyone else too and chat up Yahoo and MSN instead. We would all be better off if we did.[/rant]

[This message has been edited by doug (edited 11-07-2004).]

Well at least you can always count on change.
What was "in" yesterday is "out" today. What works today might not work tomorrow.

I thought G was in trouble last year because they pissed off so many webmasters with the FLORIDA update. I think that more people are complaining about them then ever before.

Oh well we'll see.

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Web Marketing and Design Since 1995
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North Scottsdale Custom Homes

Fountain Hills Arizona Real Estate

I have found that the google results for real estate are not very relevant. If you use any major city and search for that cities primary real estate search phrase, what I have found is that out of the top 20 results is you will find about 45% of those results are Agent websites.

This in its self is interesting because as Doug stated google likes the income it generates from Realtors through adwords.

Personally the New MSN search engine is proiducing MORE relevant results for the real estate industry and most other industries I have looked at.

Another key factor I have noticed is that the age of the website is playing a big part in the serps for the top 10. I have seen websites with better on page seo and more indexed backlinks listed on the second page or lower when searching for real estate.

IMHO when MSN launches its new search engine and markets it to the public I think google will see a big dent in their traffic.

I am not complaining about google cause I dont have a top 10 ranking, cause I do but I have seen since the introduction of their IPO results becoming less and less relevant for all industries. I believe this is so because since google now has investors to answer to they must produce a profit margin and adwords is their main incoming producing tool.

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