Research Document
(prepared for the)
Council of You Are Called (COYAC)
Background
COYAC comprises a Council of Humble Individuals of Integrity and Purity of Heart who have volunteered their services through their commitment and participation as council nominees to COYAC: them collectively being the democratic caretakers who provide guidance to YouAreCalled.com an Autonomous Body Constituted and Incorporated in God and for God’s purpose to expand His Kingdom on Earth.
This Document’s objective is to tabulate research findings pertaining to the World Wide Web (www); the web, in order to:
- Establish a basis from which to project how the web is likely to evolve over the next 100 years, in respect to ‘search out comes placed in front of searches’, in order to
- Place God’s Dominion powerfully within the webs evolution, and
- Entirely for God’s purpose.
How the research information was chosen
The research information (all of which is attached as an ‘indexed resource’) has been gleaned from the highest Google Search Ranked Website within the ‘link building keyword niche list’ established by taking the:
- Root keyword phrase ‘link building’ and using Google to create the ‘link building keyword niche list’; and
- Sorting that list into the top 20 niche keyword phrases SORTED BY COMPETITORS ; and then
- Sorting that same niche list into the top 20 niche keyword phrases SORTED BY CLICKS PER DAY ; and then
- Taking each webpage that ranked in the number 1 position in a Google Search for each one of those 40 keyword phrases; and from
- Those 40 websites gleaning the information comprising this Research Document.
Why base a 100 year projection from these websites and this niche
Google’s rating algorithms have determined that each of these websites are the Authority site in respect of each one of the 40 niche keyword phrase; and, because Google does at times, apply a human factor over their algorithm results, COYAC must assume Google enforces a degree of human policing; and, because linking is crucial to the Stanford University Patent over which Google has exclusive license rights; then, one must assume that the subject ‘link building’ is close to Google’s heart; and, since Google commands some 80% of the webs search traffic; then, one must conclude that these web pages are an Authority by Google’s evaluation as at December 2009 and are worthy to be used as the foundation of this Research Document.
If you are not exactly sure what ‘link building’ is http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/PageRank provides good background information on Links, PageRank and Google’s history... it is hard to believe that on the 26th September 2009 Google turned 11 years old. For further background see http://www.googleguide.com/google_works.html and http://www.google.com/librariancenter/articles/0512_01.html
The Problem
Back in 2004 when Google was only 6 years old the 11 page MIKE GREHAN REPORT was published below are verbatim paragraphs copied directly out of that report:
MIKE GREHAN REPORT REF 1 Are search engines giving a fair representation of what's actually available on the web? Not really. If pages were judged on the quality and the relevance for ranking, then there would be less search engine bias towards pages which are simply popular by "linkage voting". Unfortunately, quality is subjective so finding a universally acceptable measurement or metric is not going to be easy.
MIKE GREHAN REPORT REF 2 If you're involved in the search marketing industry, particularly on the link building side, then you'll know better than most, that getting links for a large and more visible web site is easier than that of getting links for a start-up or a mom-and-pop type outfit.
MIKE GREHAN REPORT REF 3 I believe you may be very interested to know that the scale of the problem is rapidly getting greater with the bias of a static based "link popularity" algorithm such as PageRank, largely the cause of the problem.
MIKE GREHAN REPORT REF 4 ”Now wait a minute Grehan," I hear you say. "Aren't you the biggest sceptic about PageRank and its role in Google search results?" And the answer is "you bet I am." However, what I want to do with this feature article is to try and highlight how great the bias is for high ranking pages which are fundamentally ordered on link based algorithms, to attract more links. And why I believe (along with many in the research community) it's becoming necessary for search engines to seek a new paradigm. I think it is of benefit to the search marketing community as whole to understand the implications of such concerns by search engines to move away from current methodology as it will certainly have its impact on our industry.
MIKE GREHAN REPORT REF 5 The problem being that Google repeatedly returns "currently popular" pages at the top of the results and ignores newer pages which are not so densely connected. Therefore it is inherently biased against "unknown" pages.
Why the Problem Grows With Time
MIKE GREHAN REPORT REF 6
“[In the 1960s, American psychologist Stanley Milgram, was intrigued by the composition of the web of interpersonal connections that link people into a community. To inform himself more about this, he sent letters to a random selection of people living in Nebraska and Kansas, asking them, in turn, to forward the letters to a stockbroker in Boston. But he didn't give them the address of the stockbroker. Instead he asked them to forward the letter only to someone they knew personally and whom they thought may be 'socially' closer to the stockbroker.
Most of the letters did, in fact, eventually make it to the stockbroker. But the much more startling fact was how quickly they did so. It wasn't a case of hundreds of mailings to reach the final target, but typically, just six or so.]”
MIKE GREHAN REPORT REF 7
“[Erdos discovered that, no matter how many points there might be, a small percentage of randomly placed links is always enough to tie the network together into a more or less completely connected whole. To put this into the internet perspective, the percentage required dwindles as the network gets bigger. For a network of 300 points, there are nearly 50,000 possible links that could run between them.
But if no more than 2% of these are in place, the network will be completely connected. For 1,000 points, the crucial factor is less than 1%. And for 10 million points, it is only 0.00000166.]”
MIKE GREHAN REPORT REF 8
So are the "rich getting richer" insofar as linkage is concerned at search engines? Yes and it's a rapidly worsening factor. The experiment carried out covered data collected over a seven month period. And from that experimental data, they observed that the top 20% of the pages with the highest number of incoming links obtained 70% of the new links after seven months, while the bottom 60% of the pages obtained virtually no incoming links at all during that period.
MIKE GREHAN REPORT REF 9
When search engines constantly return popular pages at the top of the pile, more web users discover those pages and more web users are likely to link to them. This therefore means that currently unpopular pages (as such) are not returned by search engines (regardless of quality) so they are discovered by very few web users. And this, of course, is unfortunate for both the publishers of web pages and the seekers of their information. (Not to mention web marketers!)
How are links created?
To physically create a link from this web page, that you are presently reading, you must access this web page’s source file and physically create a hyperlink within the source code file, save it and then have authority to up load the changes to its host server; and then, wait for the Google robots to crawl the web page (done about every 2 weeks depending on the pages visit popularity and regular update history) in order for Google to Cache (record a copy) the web page changes you have made… it is only Cached web pages that appear in a Google Search giving link recognition. To insert a web page hyperlink code entry and complete the related requirements, whilst it is very easy to do, it does necessitate one to have both authority and knowledge.
Most web page owners have the authority but lack the knowledge and so pass both to their web page designer.
Now a link from this web page to someone else’s web page does not help this webpage at all… it helps the webpage it has linked to. A web page only grows in link popularity by accumulating incoming links … back on the 16th August 2006 a very comprehensive article called ‘101 WAYS TO BUILD LINK POPULARITY’ was published.
Google’s rating algorithms have obviously determined that this is the internet’s link building Bible because:
- It holds 7 out of 20 first positions of the SORTED BY COMPETITORS list, and
- Holds 4 out of 20 first positions of the SORTED BY CLICKS PER DAY list, also
- Whilst the SEO COMPARISON OF THE TOP TWO COMPANIES show that www.verticalmeasures.com uses standard code in respect to the <meta name="description", <meta name="keywords" and <h1 tags: the same can not be said of http://www.seobook.com/archives/001792.shtml in that Google is mentioned within two of its meta tags, its meta keywords are non existent and the description words appearing in the Google search are not what appear in its meta description code.
- Yahoo gives http://www.seobook.com/archives/001792.shtml a poor search ranking for ‘link building’ it actually only appears in position 36 on the 4th page of a Yahoo search… yet holds the #1 position on page #1 in a Google Search. Please take note that ‘link building’ is the highest searched keyword phrase within the ‘link building’ niche a web site holding #1 position for it in a Google Search will receive around 1519 clicks per day from it… ‘link building’ appears in 1,640,000 web pages on the web.
What are Hubs
MIKE GREHAN REPORT REF 10
“[Lada Adamic (Xerox) tested her theories built around an application to examine a repository of web pages crawled by Google. For any given search word, she brought back results to the queries which provided PageRank, text match and link information for each page.
She then identified all the connected clusters and selected the largest one, as it would most likely contain links across sites other than just the common ones. What she discovered was, connected clusters spanning several sites tend to contain the main relevant pages and are rich in "hubs" (pages which contain links to many other good pages). It is then possible to find the centre of the cluster by computing the number of links among all the members of the cluster.
This shows that, rather than presenting a list of documents that contain many sequential entries from the same site, a search engine, using the phenomenon of the "small world" can present just the centre from each cluster. Users can then explore the rest of the cluster on their own.]”
Are search engines evolving?
Search Engines, like Google and Yahoo (there are many), are rated by the users preference defined as, “How easy is it to find what I’m after and how good was my experience?” Google is currently the search engine of preference attracting some 80% of all searches (because of their patent); before Google arrived Yahoo was the search engine of preference.
Obviously the search engine CEO’s are well aware of the problems identified by this Research Document they are possibly having sleepless nights trying to find solutions to remove the Google Crown.
An interesting observation, which may or may not have a bearing on search engine evolution, is the link count discrepancy between Google’s and Yahoo’s link counting tools. To count how many in coming links webpage www.submitedge.com/link-building-solution.html has merely past the below links into your browser:
Google: http://www.google.com/search?hl=en&q=link%3Ahttp%3A%2F%2Fwww.submitedge.com/link-building-solution.html&btnG=Search&aq=f&oq=&aqi=
Yahoo: http://siteexplorer.search.yahoo.com/search?p=http://www.submitedge.com/link-building-solution.html&bwm=i&bwmo=d&bwmf=u
To do other webpage link counts merely substitute the web page address within the code or reuse the tool you will find at the destination. Google’s tool returns a count of 12 links for this example whilst Yahoo’s counts 148. The link counts are recorded on both of the SORTED BY COMPETITORS and SORTED BY CLICKS PER DAY lists. The discrepancy in some instances is thousands… The answer is obviously left to the public’s imagination… as with everything else in question pertaining Google’s rating algorithm… It may however be related to the fact that Google has hundreds of databases, and because the resources are always different between both of these companies then obviously there will always be different results: however please do take note that these link counts always seem to be weighted substantially towards Yahoo?
What are Others Saying
JIM BOYKIN – CONTENT REF 1
“[When will the world wake up that the numbers game has passed the tipping point in Google… search engines are getting smarter with how they analyse sites. My overall thought is that they are working to identify ‘Links within Content and Linking to Content’.]”
JIM BOYKIN – LINK PAGES ARE DEAD REF 1
“[Let me explain my thoughts…..I’m betting that search engines hate pages like the above (please note Jim is referring to within his article see the attached resource) because it’s just so freaking obvious what the intent of these pages are…..so let’s see, If I were an engine, how would I identify these types of page so I can chuck them out of my index so as to not count these links….hum…well any page with the word "link" in the url or the title tag will knock out 95% of them….I’d agree, it might throw out some "real pages" too…but for the sake of cleaning up; those babies will be tossed with the bathwater….now…on the formatting….let’s see….any page which follows this pattern:
Linked Text, line break, 4 to 30 words, new paragraph … Link Text, Line break, 4 to 30 words, new paragraph…, etc…, etc…
Yes, that’ll get rid of whatever was missed in our first filter…and yes, it’ll not count a few "real" pages….but again, might be worth the sacrifice.]”
101 WAYS TO BUILD LINK POPULARITY REF 1
“[Stay away from the link trading hubs and networks. Do not try to get links from pages that list hundreds of off topic link partners. Only seek link exchanges that you would consider pursuing even if search engines did not exist.]”
What Are the Paid Link Building Options Available?
It is reasonably safe to say that every web page floated into cyber space has an objective of selling something whether it is a tangible product, educational to get leads, educational to get links, educational to gain credibility, seeking relationship or a combination of some or all of these.
WEBPAGE MOTIVATION tabulates into these categories each of the webpage’s that hold the number 1 position in respect to each keyword phrase found in the COMBINED TOP 40’s LIST (been the combination of both SORTED BY COMPETITORS and SORTED BY CLICKS PER DAY
Observations Regarding the Problem
A. No God.
B. It is obvious after reading ‘101 WAYS TO BUILD LINK POPULARITY’ that every web page owner must either be prepared to employ someone of extreme competence and integrity to build links for them or invest an enormous amount of time to personally create the skills necessary, and apply those skills diligently… if they hope to see their website being highly ranked by the search engines for any competitive niche keyword; a challenge that will become more difficult with time.
MIKE GREHAN REPORT REF 11 Your business may depend greatly on being able to optimize for search engines. And that's only going to become harder and harder.
C. An individual could never sift through the billions of pages online trying to find the ten best… so, that becomes the job of the search engine… to narrow it down to a smaller number of pages worth looking at. Search engines are for this reason likely to have a very long term role to play… competition between them guarantees that how they go about doing their work will change. The question is… are they able to find a solution to the problem identified by:
MIKE GREHAN REPORT REF 12 But this is also the creator of a very worrisome problem which affects new web pages with low linkage data, regardless of the quality of those pages. Quality and relevance are sometimes at odds with each other. And the ecology of the web may be suffering because of the way search engines are biased towards a page's (link) popularity more than its quality. In short, "currently popular" pages are repeatedly being returned at the top of the results at the major search engines.
D. It is reasonably safe to predict that there will always be a need for some web pages to refer to other web pages; however, the impact of link building to gain search engine ranking means that huge numbers of links of no relevance are the result, within which, search engines have an increased burden to sort… some web pages have links that run into the millions.
Why is there such a large discrepancy between both Yahoo’s and Google’s link identifying tool counts? Could it be more than different databases… we know that not all links are counted by Google.
Is it possible that Google’s algorithm will switch to ranking solely by link relevance in support of Lada Adamic "hubs"… and the thoughts of Jim Boykin… perhaps they have already done so and are highly motivated to cover their actions within the smoke of link number count confusion?
The robots that search engines use to crawl the web indexing pages are numerically literate and have the means to rate relevancy of linked pages by matching and counting duplicated niche number sequences between pages i.e. dog and the similar words used in other dog pages found in the top 10.
To reaffirm the MIKE GREHAN REPORT REF 1 if pages were judged on the quality and the relevance for ranking, then there would be less search engine bias towards pages which are simply popular by "linkage voting"…
The question is how to achieve this without the presence of a human audit that judges quality and niche relevance with in a Godly Integrity Standard.
How the Web is Likely to Evolve over the Next 100 Years
Google’s patent will expire enabling search engines to be on an equal footing. Google has enjoyed immense advantage… today ‘Google it’ means do a web search.
In the absence of another clever patent… one can expect the web to mature within an ever increasing mass of irrelevant webpage backlinks… motivated by each webpage owner’s dream of their page being in the top 10 ahead of the other million niche pages… their motivation will be fueled by the large number of businesses trading off of these webpage owners.
Search engines are not likely to commence a publicity campaign to stop this trend because:
- Most humans are by nature liars… so they will view the search engines motives with suspicion… and the resultant campaign may add fuel to the fire and not diminish the problem.
- The huge growing confusion of backlinks will provide increasing security to search engines by making it increasingly difficult to establish the exact filters set within search engine rating algorithms.
Search Engines will introduce more and more filters into their algorithms to help them see clearly through the pollution… making it easier for them to identify the top ‘10 Niche Hubs’ within a niche… giving searches the opportunity of been dropped into the epicentre of the number 1 Niche Hub to explore that Niche Hub by way of the Hubs own inter links… if they don’t find what they are after they could be dropped into the epicentre of the number 2 Niche Hub… then number 3 Niche Hub…
These Niche Hubs will be seen by search engines as static autonomous foot prints on the web… they would have their own highest visited and their own highest inter niche link supported authority page… the top ranking of these from within each specific Niche Hub would be fortunate to find themselves on a search engine’s favourites list.
This would give users two search options the ‘Niche Hub Epicentre Search’ or the ‘Search Engines Favourites’.
The highest ranked Hub will be the one of relevance and integrity supported by the ‘Searcher’s vote of approval’ measured by traffic volume declaring; “How easy it is to find what I’m after and how good is my experience”
Hubs could be likened to small communities becoming suburbs, towns, cities and countries… having their own social standards, law and citizenship. Presently cyber space is a law unto itself… where who ever draws their six shooter first is the law. One is obliged to admire Google's efforts.
How to Place God’s Dominion Powerfully Within the Webs Evolution.
There exists a perfect opportunity to cause a COYAC Hub to evolve in cyber space by providing Web Page Designers with a free COYAC tool.
The free COYAC tool would go “Exceedingly beyond whatever the user could hope for or imagine” to the extent that the user would feel completely disenfranchised if they no longer had access to the tool.
The free COYAC tool will make their work vastly easier to complete and monitor... it would enhance their success by empowering them to efficiently meet their client (the webpage owner’s) needs… which are a quality on page SEOed webpage of good relevant content that is consistently monitored and managed to help improve it in the rankings.
As a result of the Webpage Designer using the free COYAC tool in the development of their client’s webpage… their client’s webpage will become a citizen of the COYAC Hub causing COYAC to have a mutual interest in monitoring it and encouraging it to gain greater traffic.
The subject matter dealing with the free COYAC tool, how it will be introduced into the market, how it will actually generate revenue to meet COYAC’s management and administration costs… are part of a different Research Document. |