If you’re one of those kooky SEO’s that doesn’t believe that domain authority/trust is the single most important factor in SEO today, I really think you are either blind, stupid or both. Situations like the Tour De France really highlight the weaknesses in the Google Algo.
The official Google Blog has a post about the Tour De France and how they added one of the uber creepy privacy invading street maps. Let’s say you’ve got a NIMBY like outlook, and are OK with Google invading other people’s privacy, as long as it’s not your own, and actually are interested in the map and the places listed. Lets look at the search listing for each of the stops along the Tour de France. I’m going to omit the accents, because we’ll like most Americans and I’m lazy, and if we don’t have the key on our keyboard it wont get used.
Brest – #1 wikipedia
Plumelec – #1 wikipedia
Auray – #1 wikipedia
Saint-Brieuc – #1 wikipedia
Saint-Malo – #1 wikipedia
Nantes – #1 wikipedia
Cholet – #1 wikipedia
Chateauroux – #1 wikipedia
Aigurande – no wikipedia in top 10
Super-Besse – no wikipedia in top 10
Brioude – #2 wikipedia
Aurillac – #1 wikipedia
Figeac – #1 wikipedia
Toulouse – #1 wikipedia
Bagneres-de-Bigorre – #1 wikipedia
Pau – wikipedia #1
Hautacam – wikipedia #5
Lannemezan – wikipedia #3
Foix – wikipedia #1
Lavelanet – wikipedia #2
Narbonne – wikipedia #1
Nimes – wikipedia #1
Digne-les-Bains – wikipedia #3
Embrun – wikipedia #1
Prato Nevoso – wikipedia #5
Cuneo – wikipedia #2
Jausiers – wikipedia # 6
Embrun – wikipedia # 1
L’Alpe-d’Huez – wikipedia #1
Bourg-d’Oisans – wikipedia #4
Saint-Etienne wikipedia #2
Roanne – wikipedia #1
Montlucon – wikipedia #1
Cerilly – wikipedia #1
Saint-Amand-Montrond – wikipedia #1
Etampes – wikipedia #1
Champs-Elysees – wikipedia #1
Here’s the breakdown for 37 possible KWD’s
25 #1 listings
4 #2 listing
2 #3 listings
1 #4 listing
2 #5 listings
1 #6 listing
2 >#10 listings
I’d say that’s pretty impressive, but wait it gets better. The standard Google answer when any SEO complains about Wikipedia SERP dominance is “Regular users like Wikipedia”. To the Google engineers who want to stand behind that, I propose the following question “Do regular users like completely empty, nearly empty, or almost useless pages?”
If they don’t then why are you serving them as top results for those search queries? Case and point these 13 results below are stubs, unfinished, or completely empty pages, yet Google ranks them, mostly in the #1 spot.
Cerilly
Lannemezan
Jausiers
Cuneo
Plumelec
Figeac
Prato Nevoso
Digne-les-Bains
Lavelanet
Foix
Hautacam
Bagnères-de-Bigorre
Aurillac
These 4 pages, in my opinion, have so little content that they shouldn’t rank for anything.
Saint-Amand-Montrond
Le Bourg-d’Oisans
Embrun, Hautes-Alpes
Saint-Brieuc
So Google still want to stand behind the “Regular users like Wikipedia” answer? Ready for this it’s about to get even more ridiculous for the Google Wikipedia Love Affair …
Compare the Wikipedia page for Lavelanet on Wikipedia with the Page for Lavelanet on Mahalo
The wikipedia page is completely empty, is a pagerank 4, and ranks number 1. The mahalo page which has actual content is nowhere to be found in the SERP’s. HGey Google what ever happened to build pages with great content, is there an algorithmic exemption for wikipedia you forgot to tell us about?
Cerilly on wikiepdia PR3 with ABSOLUTELY NO CONTENT, Cerilly on French travel website with lots of content has zero rankings.
What about Jausiers empty on wikipedia yet sporting a pagerank 4, while a Ski Resort site about Jausiers with actual information gets nothing.
How bout it Google why not put your money and the traffic where you mouth is, and list some actual websites that have the content you say you are looking for, instead of sending everybody to wikipedia, when they are giving you a whole lot of nothing.
Related posts:
- Wikipedia Invades Google News The following screen shot has to be seen to be...
- Wikipedia: The Guide To Complete Idiots I was browsing around Wikipedia and couldn’t help but laugh...
- How to Invalidate Wikipedia Articles Recently Google announced they are experimenting with including Wikipedia in...
{ 16 comments }
hah! when i’m searching for something as a user i don’t use google. their serps are ridiculous! for every search you’ll get the same spammy bullshit: first positions are occupied by google images/news, wikipedia, google maps and youtube. the rest is occupied by outdated but hi-ranked (cause of the domains’ age/trust) sites. and maybe, somewhere on page 2 or 3, i’ll find what i’m looking for.
few days ago i searched for some info about an open air festival here … the serps were just not helpful at all. first 20 positions were occupied by sites that had reports/blogposts about the festival from the year 2001 or so. and the festivals’ own site wasn’t even listed among that top20.
google is crap – i don’t use it anymore. ask ftw!
michael
one of your best google post. domain trust is too high in the algo
>>>What about Jausiers empty on wikipedia yet sporting a pagerank 4, while a Ski Resort site about Jausiers with actual information gets nothing.
FWIW, searching for Jausiers from Austria (France’s neighbor if you don’t count Switzerland) using Google.COM, that snowrental page got #7, 8 right above wikipedia’s #9 spot. And the snow rental page does have PR1.
Michael, *very* telling post, and I’m usually somewhat of a Google apologist. These are laughably bad SERPs…
Well, today when I made a search about some heart stuff, I missed wiki
Don’t bitch about it bub. Put some content there and route the people to someplace you want.
Useless pages get the best C.T.R.
Having trouble with wikipedia admins? Wipe footprints and retry…
Just a single word/phrase on a Wikipedia page can outrank an entire website on any subject, product or service. Edit those phrases out if they bother you!
@leon:
Here’s how I envision the future of Google Search Results. Just enjoy how the results would look as Google keeps buying up sites/goes into content generation with Knol.
About some other types of specific queries, I just wrote an article a few days ago about “1 character queries”… and Wikipedia is leading on quite a lot of queries.
:
This “study” led to some interesting results though
http://www.clement-biger.info/2008/06/27/referencement-des-requetes-a-1-caractere
It seems that Wiki has a powerful “PageRank Internal Linking Stucture”, if I had to put it into a phrase.
For the particular topic you have referenced here, Tour de France, all the locations are related therefore backlinked from/to each other in this sort of evil PageRank sharing power network within Wiki. (I’m assuming this holds true for all compartmentalized related topics.)
Almost 100% of the backlinks to each page you mentioned are from another Wiki page.
I noticed that some of the pages have this “Hidden Reference Bar” towards the bottom of the page that, when opened, reveals a cluster of hundreds of hyperlinks pointing to other related Wiki pages.
Also the “/Special:WhatLinksHere/” pages within Wiki are nothing but lists of hyperlinks!
Behold the power of the “Hyperlink Network.”
Look, I can appreciate a good anti-Wikipedia screed, but a few of the items you specifically said were “empty” Wikipedia pages were quite decked out with at least a half-dozen wiki-links. It’s all about the self-referencing links, baby.
I’ve even done it on a non-Wikipedia wiki that allows so-called “non-notable” people in its directory. Do a Google search for these three women, and you tell me which site comes up at or near the top on all searches: Emily Hatten, Ellie Rountree, Kathryn Van Doren.
Go ahead, try it.
Why isn’t every shameless self-promoter pitching their own page on this new directory?
I nominate you as the Google Ombudsman – though I doubt they will come to the table… but maybe a Wikipedia entry on this topic will get their attention!
Before I start talking about how poor the subject of this post is, I would like to talk about one of the examples you use here: ‘Cerilly’
You talk about how obsurd it is that the Wikipedia page could outrank the French Travel website (www.france-voyage.com/en). Is it so unbeleivable that a page on a such a useful, authority PR9 website might out-rank an absolutely awful, flash based site? I don’t think Google is really doing anyone a dis-service there. In Google France the official tourism information page outranks Wikipedia, probably because it is more useful even though it probably have less ‘authority’ – again, fair enough in my book.
I feel like your blog is just you creating rubbish new ideas for what you think are “weaknesses in the Google algo” so you and your readers can tell yourselves that you aren’t struggling with your work, its just Google being ‘unfair’.
I like getting different opinions from people in the industry, so that I have the full spectrum to base my own on – but the last few post I have read on here have been pretty weak.
“google is crap – i don’t use it anymore. ask ftw!”
ASK FTW? Are you kidding me?
These high authority sites will have an advantage over weaker competitors when it comes to decent rankings – but limited content and high PR is just unfair!
age be the hitter, the algorithm is just blind, believing age factor only is stupid, i also found one site registered at 2000 and there is no page except a blank and site name, but it is ranking in first page for high competitive keyword
Comments on this entry are closed.