RadarFarms Press

Another update by mighty Google-nicknamed “Vince” swept through the Webosphere like a hurricane, despite all assurances by Google that Vince has been just a minor tweak. According to some Search Engine Optimization (SEO) pundits, the whole purpose of Vince was to bump up “big brands” in Search Engine Ranking Positions (SERPs).

According to Google guru, Matt Cutts, that there had been a change, but that he wouldn’t nessecarily consider it an “update” but more of a “simple change”. Matt mentioned that it only affected a small number of queries, and that Google doesn’t really think of websites in terms of “brands”.  Instead, they were looking at factors such as:

- Trust
- Authority
- Reputation
- Pagerank

Matt also gave some advice- that webmasters should basically “do nothing”. We followed his advice and have not done anything other than create a radar dedicated to Vince.

However, since March 2009, we’ve noticed that when the Vince update has been implemented in North America that our Search Engine Rankings (SERs) bumped up for quite a few generic “head” keywords (as opposed to more specific and odd “long tail” keywords).

To illustrate it, we’ve attached keyword searches on Google that led to the site being listed in the SERPs, and the click through rates of such listings for August, 2009 collected through Google Webmaster Tools.

See for instance the sample of generic “head” keywords (1- and 2-word keyphrases), for which we have the top 20 Google Web Search rankings worldwide (in brackets, the total number of results returned by Google for the specific keyword):

kindle deals – 2 (12,000,000)
weels – 2 (286,000)
elken malaysia – 3 (94,600)
megapatch.info – 4 (1,030,000)
hotweels – 5 (1,810,000)
badmintonfreak.com – 5 (16,500)
megapatch – 5 (124,000)
elken – 6 (345,000)
musica de reggaton – 7 (3,620,000)
ginecomastia masculina – 7 (84,200)
mathletics games – 7 (22,600)
mathletics australia – 7 (775,000)
liga pilipinas – 7 (223,000)
livia andrade – 7 (228,000)
jogos ao vivo – 8 (6,100,000)
ricky pointing – 8 (1,990,000)
jogo ao vivo – 8 (6,950,000)
akinator.fr – 9 (112,000)
lojas americans – 9 (1,220,000)
tvfilia – 9 (15,200)
dorismar xxx – 9 (1,580,000)
testes de qi – 9 (2,880,000)
descagar msn – 9 (9,940,000)
wild apricot – 9 (627,000)
lojas americanas – 9 (2,170,000)
bros 2009 – 10 (37,000,000)
danier leather – 10 (68,500)
virtual rugby – 10 (793,000)
hot weels – 10 (29,200,000)
voleibol no brasil – 10 (1,190,000)
yingo 2009 – 10 (874,000)
jogo di futebol – 10 (1,510,000)
diablo 2 latino – 10 (625,000)
danier – 10 (149,000)
www.komplett.no – 10 (19,700,000)
www.youtub.com – 10 (467,000,000)
affordable vegas – 11 (5,280,000)
nova bros – 11 (2,610,000)
dot baires – 11 (4,370,000)
pamela alfaro – 12 (1,350,000)
www.youtobe.com – 12 (2,240,000,000)
dewi persik – 13 (863,000)
kiki fatmala – 13 (3,730,000)
manohara pinot – 13 (743,000)
aura kasih – 14 (6,600,000)
tapetes de barbante – 14 (107,000)
www.yutube.com – 14 (462,000,000)
aurakasih – 15 (1,200,000)
tapete em barbante – 15 (93,700)
ungu – 17 (4,900,000) 

A majority of the above one and two-word keyphrases represent names of Radars posted on our site.

Does it make us a “Big Brand”? Hardly so. We just aggregate the best Web sources on any specific subject. Therefore, Google ranks our Radar Pages so high. We’ve never spent a penny for SEO, per se. We are still naive to think that SERPs by Google should reflect relevance of Web pages. It is working for us, for now, and Vince has just reinforced our naïveté.