Tuesday, January 29, 2008

Understanding Google Domain Age Filter

When you launch a website, you are entering a world that is as populated as the world that we exist in. Maybe it’s even more populated than the real world. The worst part is that every webmaster who launches a website wants to be at the number one spot in Google search engine results.

Now this makes the job extremely difficult for Google to go through each one of these websites and rank them on the basis of their content and SEO techniques. A lot of webmasters want to hit it big early and hence they choose spam techniques to get to the top really fast.

So Google introduced a set of filters to counter spamming and create a search results page that has only quality websites in it. The Google domain age filter works on the policy that if your domain has been around for a few years, then the chances that you are a spam website are negligible. This is why google gives older domains a much better ranking than newer ones.

Can you get around it?

Does it mean that it will take a few years before your domain name gets some credibility? Not really, say experts.

  • Buying old domain names is one way to get around this. If there is a domain that has been bought and parked at a domain parking service, then it will have good credibility at Google.


  • Another work around is to buy the domain name early. If you are planning to start a few websites next year or so, then start now and book the domain names. Now tell google about them so that they start the evaluation process right away.


  • Also if and when you are buying an older domain name, please does not change the WHOIS information or you risk losing all the benefits of buying an old domain name.


And keep in mind that this is only half the war won. There are a set of other filters that you have to combat in order to get high rankings.

Thursday, January 24, 2008

Understanding the Google Trust Rank Filter

Google Filters - Google Trust Rank Filter

If you thought that a well detailed SEO program is enough to get you a top rank in the search results pages, then you are misinformed. The information that you have is only partially correct.

The complete information is that you need to follow this program routinely for almost one year to get out of the google sandbox and get into the google trust rank filter. Both these are a set of filters used by Google, which avoid new websites from gaining an undue advantage by using spamming techniques.

Some websites create thousands of back links at once using spamming techniques and dummy web pages to gain a high back link structure. This makes it possible to gain a high page rank the moment the website is launched defeating the very purpose of a search engine.

Hence the arrival of google trust rank filter might have actually benefited the web users but it has made life difficult for webmasters.

The Google trust rank

In order to get a good trust rank with google, you have to get quality in bound links to your website. Now this is not that easy to achieve and may even take years.

If you lose patience and resort to spamming, then you are out of the trust rank and into the sand box. Consider them to be the two sides of a coin that work in tandem. As the name suggests, the google trust rank filter is all about creating trust. Keep working on your web promotion using ethical practices and over a period of time as google gets to know your website better, your ranking will improve on the search results page.

Can you beat it?

This has been one of the most widely discussed things on the internet. Can you really beat the google filters? My advice would be to try and stick to legitimate SEO practices rather than trying to beat the filter and get into the sand box filter again.

Wednesday, January 23, 2008

Google SandBox Filter

Can you beat the google sand box filter?

Search engines have become far more equipped today to beat spammers at their own game. There was a time when websites used mass spamming techniques to reach the top of search engine results soon after their launch.

As a result, most of the top websites were beaten by the spammers and the quality of search engine results suffered.

Soon google allegedly came out with the sand box filter. The sandbox filter is considered to be a conscious effort on the part of google to prevent spamming websites from achieving a high ranking.

According to experts the google sand box filter is like a probationary time zone which may last for up to 3 months or even more. In this time period, the website may perform extremely poorly in organic search results. It is used to gauge the trust metrics of the website. This metrics will play an important part in deciding the future of the website in search results.

Different theories

There have been different theories surrounding the google sand box filter. Some say that the filter is aimed at postponing or ageing the back linking process.

Back links are crucial in giving the website a high page ranking. When the effectiveness of these back links are reduced, the website performs weakly until google ascertains the trustworthiness of the links.

However, off late many SEO experts have started to question the theories that support the existence of the google sand box filter.

Another theory says that the google sand box filter only affects English language websites. This means that any website with the .gov domain will not be affected.

The final word

The bottom line is that if you wish to achieve a top ranking in google search results, you will have to work for it by building quality trustworthy back links. You simply cannot follow spamming techniques to ensure that you reach the top.

Tuesday, January 22, 2008

Google Filters

The existence of Google filters

Google has simply come into existence and spun the virtual world around. It can now be called the central axis around which half of the virtual world revolves. Hence it is extremely crucial that you understand the way it functions. This is mandatory not only for the webmaster but also for the average netizen looking for information.

Google employs a set of algorithms to scan a webpage and bring up its search results. These algorithms are constantly updated every now and then to make them more effective and efficient in bringing up the results.

Also, the success of a webpage in the World Wide Web very well depends on its position on the search results page. Search engine optimization or SEO techniques were introduced to help a webpage rank better on search engine results pages.

But then Google incorporated these filters into their algorithms and once again, the rules changed.

What are Google filters?

There are almost hundreds of factors and variables that are programmed into a google algorithm and this makes it very difficult to identify if filters are used.

Filters are some rules that the search engines will follow to avoid unhealthy SEO practices.

For example, if you have built thousands of back links using an auto link creation program, then it is considered to be spamming by Google and the search engine will avoid the webpage altogether.

Similarly, the sandbox effect or the over optimization filter which is said to remove the pages that are crammed with keywords and the H1 and H2 tags are some of the examples.

The links filter which is associated with the links.htm page is almost certain to exist, say experts.

How to Avoid Google filters?

If you take all of the filters into account when optimizing your website, then SEO techniques become all the more difficult. But the best part is that SEO experts have started to introduce more and more methods to avoid these so called Google filters.