I’m probably a SEO novice compared to most of the people who tune in to your blog but I’m trying to become more adept at optimizing sites. I’ve noticed a couple of sites like http://www.nj-divorce-law.com and http://www.bagoliefriedman.com that seem to be doing heavy spamming on the home page to achieve their rank, but I’ve also seen some really old sites that seem to rank well even though they have virtually no information on them at all. I’ve read the guidelines on Google but would love any further insight you can share about the process. Thank you very much.

I’m about to register some domains.
I was thinking to purchase .info domains. Is there any difference between .info and .com or other extentions for that matter.
Some says .com is favoured by the SEs.
It is also said that .info domains are a lot less expensive to purchase and used by spammers and scrapers. It creats a “bad neibhorhood” in the eyes of the SEs.
If a site has excellent content, inbound links and onpage optimization, would it not rank well with search engines?
Any comments from BIG Daddy’s perspective will be appreciated.
Lak

If the dust ever settles from Big Daddy, I hope Google considers the dramatic effect their tinkering can do to the World Economy and the personal economies of millions of web masters. I for one had trusted Google and helped make it popular by word of mouth and bragging about it all over online for the past four years…

Owning a website is a tough business. If your at the top the money pours in and everything is great. If you’re at the bottom and the phones barely ring then your sad and maybe sliding to financial extinction. Then there is the middle! This is where Google gives all of us hope that maybe just one day…Well you get the picture. Ok, so where am I going with this? It’s being in the middle that I want to comment on. Google is an amazing engine that continues growing larger and stronger each day, by constantly looking for ways to beat those who try to deceive them. I do agree that there are some websites in almost every category at the top that deserve to be there, but for those of us in the middle who strive each day to improve, enhance, and better our sites yet see other sites ahead of us for months or even years that clearly should not be there…well, it becomes discouraging.

Example: I am in the Travel business in Costa Rica (Central America) and I see about 12 sites everyday that constantly out position us. These sites are super low in content, optimized mostly for only 1 main page that shows up under many different areas of travel, the seo’s/owners many times use anonimizer software’s that steal other sites content and traffic and make their sites appear much larger than they are. These same site seo’s/owners often own multiple websites and pump up one site off of another and many times offer to “Optimize” others sites for a reduced fee so that they are in control of the site and can give their own site links yet the site owner there optimizing for never have an idea that this is going on.

Now on the other side for those of us in the middle such as myself, I have personally spent thousands of hours writing original text, have thousands of original photos, try desperately not to cheat nor do anything against the guidelines of Google in anyway, have a fully functional customer friendly site with no outbound links at all and each page that I have (about 6000) are as full of important information on the subject that your searching for that can be found on the internet today.

Not only is my site the most user friendly and informative but if you click on xxghb then you get xxghb….NEVER anything but what you’re searching for. I am writing this to express my concern not only about others that try to beat the system but for those of us who try to follow the system to the “T”.

Matt, here are my three suggestions that hopefully you might pass on to the right people at Google besides yourself.

1. Authority Websites are USELESS! I do not even want Google to give mine any brownie points due to age or how long it has been online. This “Age” of the site thing is not important at all. Maybe the original owner sold it, or he died and his son took it over. Maybe it was once a site devoted to “white Hat” techniques but the guys wife ran off with his best friend and now he is pissed off and out to screw the world. Besides that why should we even try if we thought that mattered? Should a new site of only 1 year old not be able to beat a 10 year old site? Of course it should…if its better, has more original information and is more useful.

2. The principle URL names are not important AT ALL! Example if someone types in the key phrase Nicaragua…why should the URL http://www.nicaragua.com be in the 1st position? Does anyone ever personally look at these? Man…Type in Costa Rica and see what comes up then go check out my site and you will turn the corner on 2 wheels trying to get to Googles spider to make a change. Just because someone was smart enough along time ago or has recently purchased a URL name trying to fool Google into moving them to the top that should not work,,,but it does. This is NO GOOD.

3. Set up a procedure where that the top 20 positions of each “main” search term and “sub” search term per category are looked at by a person on a Editorial Basis (like DMOZ) , not a machine.
Example: Costa Rica (Main Category)
Costa Rica Resorts (Sub Category)
Costa Rica Hotels (Sub Category)
Costa Rica Car Rental (Sub Category)
Use the top 100 searches, and have the editors report to Google their findings. By this it should help Google to know more of what’s actually “On the Ground”. I would be glad to volunteer for this to help get rid of the spammers, anonimizers and trickery.

Lastly, I have invested hundreds of thousands in our system to be the best, the most informative and everything I have is on the up & up. I know that you guys have plenty of knowledge and do not need my help but please remember that many of us here in the trenches everyday day are trying to do the right thing and we respect what Google is all about.

Thank You Matt
Costaricaseo

P.S. I have a heart filled apology to give to you from someone who is serious troubled over a blog they left you if you ever would like to hear about it. I will not post it here but you have my email from this post if you’re interested.

First excuse my english, I´m Spanish and not speak very good

Thanks for the blog and all information and guidelines that you tell us.

I have a cuestion that I think is very common but I never seen a explication abaut it

My bussines has a webpage about diferent information and products, but the products and information mybe diferents for diferents countries in de world. If the visitor is from Spain the content of the page is oriented to him baut if the visitor is form Mexico the information and products are diferents.

In our domain we have a redirection for each country, so if you are spanish your visit will not be redirect, but if you are from Mexico your visit will be redirect to other domain name because the products are diferents for each country (This is made for Google, for example if I visit google.com I will be redirect for google.es)

Can this be cosider like cloacking or spamming or another bad practice even the content is diferent?

How can I do this and to be calm that I am making well?

I am very interested in to be sure that I do not make bad practices baut I am very interested in show diferent contents for each country.

Thanks Matt

Again, the link is:

http://www.eyesitesolutions.com/matt-cutts-seo-song/

Thanks for the feed back but I don’t think it is host crowding. I found a post GG did in 2003 that is very similar to what is happening the only difference being the page replacing the index page has no links going to it. Here is that post I found:
—-
Report #2: for the other report: I see the index page, just indented under the other subpage result. I noticed a large amount of links to the subpage, so I’m not surprised it shows atop the index page in this case. In some cases (e.g. an ODP entry points to a subpage instead of the root page), the subpage can have more pagerank than the index page.
—–
The difference here is the subpage has less PR and no links and the index page has been demoted in every possible way. Glitch, Penalty ? at this point I’ve signed up for sitemaps and hope that will straighten it out.