Are large property portals going to continue to dominate Google's search results?
-
We are having a discussion (potential argument) in our office around whether large portals (namely property portals) have longevity in Google's search.
Argument 1:
Google's rise in local search and rewarding strong brand names rather than keyword driven domain names will devalue property portals with keyword rich domain names. Property portals are essentially duplicating content on smaller individually owned property websites, therefore in time Google will devalue property portals.**Argument 2: **
Property portals have more property stock listed on their websites so therefore Google will reward them by ranking these websites higher than the smaller real estate agencies with niche stock in their areas that they operate in. The property portals that already are already in a dominate position already carry authority and their own sense of branding, therefore it's difficult for Google to ignore them. If we assume that Google is looking into user behaviour as a ranking factor, then this will help portals as they have more stock which means higher engagement on the website.I'd love to read the moz community thoughts and opinions on this. I reckon it's a worthy debate..
-
Sorry you didn't get much of a response to this question Neil. I'm closing it down since it was so long ago.
Craig
Got a burning SEO question?
Subscribe to Moz Pro to gain full access to Q&A, answer questions, and ask your own.
Browse Questions
Explore more categories
-
Moz Tools
Chat with the community about the Moz tools.
-
SEO Tactics
Discuss the SEO process with fellow marketers
-
Community
Discuss industry events, jobs, and news!
-
Digital Marketing
Chat about tactics outside of SEO
-
Research & Trends
Dive into research and trends in the search industry.
-
Support
Connect on product support and feature requests.
Related Questions
-
YELP: Legit, or is it wearing Prada's with a black hat?
Should I stop recommending clients to be in yelp? http://finance.yahoo.com/news/yelps-newest-weapon-against-fake-100101689.html
Industry News | | Chenzo0 -
Convert Oganic ranking into Local Search Results
Hi, Right now, my website appears in top 5 results in organic SERPs, but I noticed that my business has gradually started going down, as my local results have been replaced by organic search results. Initially I used to rank in local results, but now, I appear in organic results so the no. of calls/day have decreased significantly. Now, I again want to appear in local search results instead of organic results. Please advice what should I do to remove my listing from organic search results and improve position in local search results PFA the screenshots for both the results for your better understanding. I look forward to hearing from you. Regards, qHKAt.png 0cPOp.png
Industry News | | Visiblics0 -
How to go about removing bad/irrelevent links?
We have been made aware of a series of irrelevant links on some rather dodgy sites. http://www.designerdogstop.com/level-static/http://www.bestfirepits.net/some-of-the-best-vacations-for-families/2010/05/05/ http://whatcigarsdoismoke.com/cigar-lighters/cigarette-cigar-2/ http://dollfuss.org/build-bear-hawaii/ Absolute rubbish im sure you will agree. These links must surely be causing our link profile some damage. They are currently wordpress sites with no means of contacting the authors. What ways and means are there of removing these negative pages and links? Cheers all, any help appreciated.
Industry News | | TimHolmes0 -
SEO Conferences - Which One(s) do you Attend ?
I have been in SEO since over 10 years now. And have been attending Pubcon since 2004 in Las Vegas. I think I have only missed 1. This year, I have been thinking of which conferences to attend and here are the options. I am looking for 1st hand experiences from people who have attended multiple conferences to kinda do a comparison. Here are the upcoming conferences by date. I am only listing the US Conferences. SES New York March 19-23* BlueGlass Los Angeles April 23-24* SMX Advanced Seattle Jun. 5-6* MozCon July 25 - July 27* SES San Francisco August 13-17* SMX New York | Oct. 2-4, 2012* Pubcon Las Vegas October 16 - 19* SES Chicago November 12-16* SMX Social Media Marketing Las Vegas | Dec. 5-6 Please let me know what conferences you have attended in the past and which ones of these people here are planning to attend ?
Industry News | | NakulGoyal1 -
Chrome blocked sites used by Googles Panda update
Google's Panda update said it used Chrome users blocked sites lists as a benchmark for what they now term poor quality content. They said the Panda update effectively took about 85% of them out of the search results. This got me thinking, it would be very nice to discover what are the exact sites they don't like. Does anyone know if there is an archive of what these sites might be? Or if none exists, maybe if people could share their Chrome blocked sites on here we might get an idea?
Industry News | | SpecialCase0 -
Will Search Engines implement timestamps?
We continuously receive comments on our partners' websites which are obviously spam from a third world country trying to build backlinks that some SEO firm outsourced. Out of curiosity, and what I've added to my prayers at night is for the search engines to apply an algorithm update to discredit comments posted under a certain time frame to help identify spam, and these garbage practices. Do you think something like this would happen? My most important thought is...how can we compete with companies that are doing these practices trying to get that quick buck? Look, we want to play the game with the highest ethics and morals and not "cheat" the system because we know a "work around". Thoughts...
Industry News | | cyberlicious0 -
Does it make sense to go after broad search with less competition vs. narrow search with very high competition?
We are in the process of analyzing our current site structure, on-page optimization and keywords to form a new strategy around our site. What we are finding with the keyword research we’ve done thus far is keywords that are shorter-tail have less competition, but far more searches than some of the long-tail keywords. For purposes of illustration I will give an example. Let's say we sell Wedding Cakes and the keyword string “Garden Wedding” has approximately 246,000 monthly local searches and medium competition, but “Garden Wedding Cakes” only has 880 searches and very high competition. We believe that if we create a very effective landing page for "Garden Wedding" with all kinds of great content surrounding "Garden Wedding" that we have a much better chance of ranking on page 1 than if we were to go after the term "Garden Wedding Cakes". Furthermore, the volume of search far exceeds the "Garden Wedding Cakes" and hopefully will reach a much larger audience. However, because "Garden Wedding" is such a broad term, we are concerned that we don't necessarily understand what folks are searching for vs, when someone types in "Garden Wedding Cakes" we know they are looking for a cake. Here are the questions we have: Targeting broader terms with higher search, has anyone implemented this type of strategy? We think in the long run, this will help us with exposure, but also with help our targeted page of "Garden Wedding Cakes" rank higher (if we can earn a great PR for the page "Garden Wedding". Would we run the risk of creating a higher bounce rate with this strategy for people who are looking specifically for Garden Wedding items/supplies, etc.. Is this a major concern? Could we monetize the effort put into new, rich content surrounding Garden Weddings, when we are in the business to sell Wedding Cakes? Any insight that one can provide would be greatly appreciated.
Industry News | | UrbanityStudios0 -
What is the best method for getting pure Javascript/Ajax pages Indeded by Google for SEO?
I am in the process of researching this further, and wanted to share some of what I have found below. Anyone who can confirm or deny these assumptions or add some insight would be appreciated. Option: 1 If you're starting from scratch, a good approach is to build your site's structure and navigation using only HTML. Then, once you have the site's pages, links, and content in place, you can spice up the appearance and interface with AJAX. Googlebot will be happy looking at the HTML, while users with modern browsers can enjoy your AJAX bonuses. You can use Hijax to help ajax and html links coexist. You can use Meta NoFollow tags etc to prevent the crawlers from accessing the javascript versions of the page. Currently, webmasters create a "parallel universe" of content. Users of JavaScript-enabled browsers will see content that is created dynamically, whereas users of non-JavaScript-enabled browsers as well as crawlers will see content that is static and created offline. In current practice, "progressive enhancement" in the form of Hijax-links are often used. Option: 2
Industry News | | webbroi
In order to make your AJAX application crawlable, your site needs to abide by a new agreement. This agreement rests on the following: The site adopts the AJAX crawling scheme. For each URL that has dynamically produced content, your server provides an HTML snapshot, which is the content a user (with a browser) sees. Often, such URLs will be AJAX URLs, that is, URLs containing a hash fragment, for example www.example.com/index.html#key=value, where #key=value is the hash fragment. An HTML snapshot is all the content that appears on the page after the JavaScript has been executed. The search engine indexes the HTML snapshot and serves your original AJAX URLs in search results. In order to make this work, the application must use a specific syntax in the AJAX URLs (let's call them "pretty URLs;" you'll see why in the following sections). The search engine crawler will temporarily modify these "pretty URLs" into "ugly URLs" and request those from your server. This request of an "ugly URL" indicates to the server that it should not return the regular web page it would give to a browser, but instead an HTML snapshot. When the crawler has obtained the content for the modified ugly URL, it indexes its content, then displays the original pretty URL in the search results. In other words, end users will always see the pretty URL containing a hash fragment. The following diagram summarizes the agreement:
See more in the....... Getting Started Guide. Make sure you avoid this:
http://www.google.com/support/webmasters/bin/answer.py?answer=66355
Here is a few example Pages that have mostly Javascrip/AJAX : http://catchfree.com/listen-to-music#&tab=top-free-apps-tab https://www.pivotaltracker.com/public_projects This is what the spiders see: view-source:http://catchfree.com/listen-to-music#&tab=top-free-apps-tab This is the best resources I have found regarding Google and Javascript http://code.google.com/web/ajaxcrawling/ - This is step by step instructions.
http://www.google.com/support/webmasters/bin/answer.py?answer=81766
http://www.seomoz.org/blog/how-to-allow-google-to-crawl-ajax-content
Some additional Resources: http://googlewebmastercentral.blogspot.com/2009/10/proposal-for-making-ajax-crawlable.html
http://www.seomoz.org/blog/how-to-allow-google-to-crawl-ajax-content
http://www.google.com/support/webmasters/bin/answer.py?answer=357690