Thanks for following up Will.

Yes.

In this instance the testing I performed this week and the testing Anil performed in 2008 showed consistent results, and are in alignment with Google's explanation of how their sessions work.

A session begins when a user first visits your site. That session is maintained for 30 minutes even if the user leaves your site and returns to Google. Everything makes sense and synchs perfectly with the results.

If you wish to pursue this any further I can only suggest either repeating the test yourself, or contacting Will or Avinash concerning the prior article. I can only presume there was a misunderstanding in Will's article.

My understanding of how a CDN is configured is it's a back-end server change. The HTML will still appear as mysite.com/image.jpg but when a request for that image is made, your server will tell the user's browser to fetch it from cdn.chicago.akamai.com/mysite.com/image.jpg.

Your server still hosts the image and is the primary source of the image. That image is duplicated on CDN servers throughout the country and world depending on what cdn plan you purchase.

So in short, the images are hosted on mysite.com and images should not be taken out of the mix. You can confirm this by checking well known sites which use Akamai:

cbsnews.com

washingtonpost.com

facebook.com

Google effectively crawls all types of sites from around the world. As long as you offer proper navigation with your site, there shouldn't be any issue.

Your content for each region should have a landing page for that region. mysite.com/jp would be your landing page for Japan, etc. Your landing pages would be treated as your home page for Japanese speakers. You should have links from Japanese companies to the /jp page as if it was your site's home page.

My test results support the first article you shared.

I duplicated Anil's test. I searched three times for the same site only using a long tail phrase with four words. I altered the 4th term each time.

The first phrase showed "1" visit, the other two phrases appeared in the report but showed "0" visits.

The other results were combined. Even though I did bounce on my first visit the Bounce Rate showed 0%. My bounce on the first visit was immediate but the Average Time on Site was 1:12 which is clearly the average of my three visits.

You can easily perform this test and have the results the next day. Choose a key phrase where you perform well in SERPs but is unlikely to be used in a search. Alter the last term a repeat the steps in Anil's test. The next day, check your GA.

Hi Atul.

What you have is common in the SEO world: two different SEOs who offer opposing explanations on the same topic. In this case they cannot both be correct. Some things to consider:

The first article was written by Anil Batra. I have never heard of him, but that's OK! He's probably never heard of me either. He lists his credentials at the top of the page which seem satisfactory.

Anil's article was well presented and he offered a screenshot of his results along with a meaningful description of the test he performed to draw the conclusion he ultimately made. The article was written in April 2008.

The second article was written by Will Critchlow of Distilled. Will has written other articles I have read and I find him to be a credible source of SEO information.

Will's article is also well presented. Will specifically shared he contacted Avinash Kaushik from Google who would be considered an expert on the topic. Will's article was written in Jan 2009.

Personally I would choose to accept Will's response being that it is more recent and I offer higher credibility to his Google contact. BUT, I am also hesitant to discount anyone's ideas, especially when they are well presented such as Anil's article.

The great news: we can easily try a new test and find the answer! It's been over 2 1/2 years since the most recent article. I'll go ahead and try some tests and share the results.

Akamai offers numerous services. Are you referring to their Content Delivery Network? If so, then the CDN will provide faster page load times which is a good user experience. If your site was being penalized for slow load times (only a small percentage of sites fall into this category) then yes, by properly setting up your content on a CDN you can remove the penalty which would improve rankings. Otherwise you would not directly benefit in terms of rankings, but your users will likely find your site more usable, explore more, etc. which could benefit your rankings.

With respect to your site design, I would recommend a single .com site with folders for each country. mysite.com/ru for russia, mysite.com/au for australia, etc. This method will allow you to collect all your domain authority in a single site and can greatly reduce your software and site maintenance expenses.

Legitimate link building can always offer value. All the standard link building metrics apply. What is the DA/PA of the linking site, is the site relevant to yours, what is the anchor text, etc.

If your site sells artwork, clearly anyone in the world might appreciate and buy from your site. If instead you offer local plumbing services, then a link from another country shouldn't hold as much value.

There are over 200 factors evaluated to determine a page's ranking in search results. PA and DA are two factors. What about the content and the other factors?

The algorithms used for the various ccTLDs like Google.de are not the same as .com. For example, Panda has fully been implemented for .com.

I would highly advise adjusting any site that has been penalized or otherwise seen ranking issues in Google.com. The other Google updates will be updated eventually.

Pluralized terms are treated as different words.

When I search for "coin" the wiki article is first. When I search for "coins" that same article is still on the first page but at the bottom. Other pages focused on "coins" have more relevancy due to the identical match.