SERP Penalties/Webmaster Confusion/Celebrity sex story

…And now for an entirely speculative post regarding the mysterious and ever changing Google search algorithm.

Take a look at any webmaster forum these days and you will find a whole lot of people hooting and hollering about negative SERP movement. Panda this, panda that, panda hit me with a wiffle ball bat. In the past few months, Hollywood Google’s tinkering and pandaneering has had a major impact on the current search results and caused some of the most experienced SEO wizards to question their own strategies.

Personally, I have seen a lot of movement as well. Luckily, my lack of focus has left me with a truckload of websites in various niches on which I have used vastly different link building strategies on. So, while some of my winners became losers, some of my losers became winners, and kingofsp lives to blog another day.

Now, the more disciplined forum posters and of course the case-study gurus at places like SEOmoz are having a field day examining data and attempting to uncover the mysteries of this problematic panda. Everyone is looking for the common traits of affected websites to shed light on what factors (whether on page or off) are causing some websites to be slapped into oblivion.

And now for my speculation…

If I were Google

No, that is not an homage to OJ Simpson. I’m just saying, whenever it comes to matters of search engine algorithmic policy, the most logical way to start reverse engineering a search engine is to put yourself in the shoes of the engineer and think about what you would do in order to achieve a level playing field where dastardly marketers like us would have a real hard time gaming the system and user experience would benefit.

So, let’s say I’m Joe Google, and I am tasked with making the Panda update one that will cripple the “SEO industry” (since you know they hate us anyway). I know that if I make an obvious tweak like making all sites with a buttload of profile links become slapped out of the top 1000, it will only be a matter of time before the case study heroes figure that out and the information propagates like a virus across all of the SEO resources. So, what I would want to do is basically confuse the fuck out of everyone.

Website Grouping
Each time Google’s robots discover/index a new website, simply place it into one of several groups. Let’s say groups A-S. Make it so that each group has a similar yet unique set of rules that govern what overall “score” the site gets which will determine how it ranks with other sites.

For instance, let’s say Group Celebrity sex places a special importance on anchor text diversity. Over anchor-text optimization in Group Celebrity sex sites will results in -25 points from the overall quality score. Whereas over anchor-text optimization in sites belonging to Group L might only result in -10 points from the overall quality score.

You use the same basic principles that have already been in play, you just change the value for each item. On-page optimization is of higher importance for sites in Group D than those in Group F. Amount of unique content is hardly as important for Group Celebrity sex sites as it is for Group A, and so on.

Obviously it would be a little bit more complex than that to implement, but you get the general idea. The result is an algorithm that still values and rewards quality websites with a healthy SEO strategy, but it becomes nearly impossible to game. Consequently, a million case studies and a billion moaning and groaning forum posts appear. The only option left for webmasters is to actually create websites with value, which is what Google has yearned for all along.

Back to Reality

I have yet to seduce a Google employee, so this of course is still pure speculation. It’s just an idea I had and felt like bloggin’ about it. Hopefully some of you find it interesting.

Oh, and Google, you’re welcome. My min salary is $750,000/year. I will be telecommuting. Use the story contact form if you have any questions. Thank you.