The Myth of Relevancy

[John Scott]

I received a question by email about our Contextual Links service.

If there is any possibility that our link will be placed on a site that is not related … I'm really not that interested.

My response:


Let me first go on a rant about “related” and then answer your question.

My blog, which I rarely update, is www.internet-marketing-blog.com

It is supposedly about Internet marketing. However, as most blogs are, I tend to write about and link to sites about other topics. Example: http://www.internet-marketing-blog.c...ijin-in-japan/

Google likes to get people to think that sites are about certain topics, and only certain topics. I think it’s BS myself. Digg, for example, covers pretty much every topic under the sun. And it is legit. The more tightly restricted a blog is, the more it has a tendency to be NOT legit. In my experience, and I have a lot of it, the best blogs are actually personal blogs. Take Matt Cutts blog for example. He blogs about SEO, Google, employment, travel, music, TV, food, technology, etc.

When I get links for my own sites, I tell my staff to get them from personal blogs, because those are the most legit, blogs. Legit blogs have organic link popularity. They have organic link popularity from a number of legit sources on a number of topics.

And when I ask for relevance I ask for it in the form of my keywords in the title of the blog post. If I am targeting “best widgets”, I want “widgets” in the blog post title.

And you know what? Within days of placing those organic-appearing links, my pages are moving up in the SERPs. In fact, with as little as 5 blog links, I’ve moved pages into the top five on Google for competitive keywords, above other sites that are buying site wide links with the exact anchor text of the terms I am targeting.

It shocked even me to see that non-topical blogs ( personal blogs) had that much pull in the SERPs. It is SEO like we did it 4 years ago, except that instead of buying site wide links or footer links for hundreds of dollars a month, we are spending $20 a pop and getting better results. Remember, I am no stranger to link buying. At one time I was spending $10,000 per month renting links on a monthly basis, and had several PR8’s because of it.

In my opinion, the Google algorithm is less about affirmative elements such as relevancy – relevancy being a figment of Google’s imagination – and more about link filtering. For example, footer links. You can test that by placing a link in the footer of a page to page A, and placing a link above the fold/content to page “B” with the same anchor text. I can assure you, all things being equal, page “B” will get the link juice.

Google’s relevancy is about as real as Ted Kennedy’s integrity. Same goes for “neighborhoods”. Well, maybe that is not entirely accurate. I should just say that relevancy doesn’t play as big a role in the algorithm as they would like you to believe.

To prove my point, do a search for “Britney Spears Naked”. Within a day or two of Peter Da Vanzo posting this blog post - http://blog.v7n.com/2006/12/04/britney-spears-naked/ - it was ranked at #3 for that search term. We are not actively targeting that search term. We haven’t bought a single link to that page, nor have we asked for a single link for that page, but we rank #6 and #7 for that search term, which by the way drives a huge amount of traffic.

Other sites are actually relevant to that search term. They are buying links, spamming links and trying their best to get ranked for that search term, but Google , in their infinite wisdom, has decided that v7n has two pages that are relevant enough to be ranked in the top ten for that search term.

Is v7n relevant to that search term? Forget v7n, is the subdomain blog.v7n.com relevant to that search term? No! Not unless Google and Pay Per Click and all that is somehow related to Britney Spears being nude.

If Google had the slightest idea what relevancy was, v7n wouldn’t be anywhere for the search term Britney Spears naked.

Having said that, if you really, really want links on only employment related blogs and no personal blogs, you can specify that in your order and we will honor that request.

[Ferre]

That's handy to know. Thanks.

[manageyourlinks]

good read john. thanks for the informative post.

[DSB]

Good post.
I think it's v important though to do a little reasearch into which links the site in question already associate themselves with.

i.e.
1. Have they build up their own popularity quickly by getting lots of dodgey sites to link to them?
2. Are they willing to 'prostitute' the sale of links to any site?

Sure, a few links to other industries and sites of interest have no chance of being ranked negatively by search engines, but it it important to be a little bit wary or who links to you and where you buy links (if that is part of your strategy)

[Carter]

Yeah, John. I really appreciate that info - because I have been wondering who to do link exchanges with on my sites. I hear loads about relevence, but when I google some stuff often I end up with crap that has nothing to do with the topic I am trying to find. Think I might just work on building higher PR backlinks - and saving up for your contextual links thing

P.S. you have a typo in your first link

[solidghost]

ahem....so does it mean that I can link from any site?

[mhmdkhamis]

good information john thank u

[referencement]

- I think that webpage rank well for many raisons:
- 7v have a high page rank
- the url of the webpage contain the term(which I discovered it just this week)
- many times the query term appears in a webpage
- anchor text of interne link from 7v

[John Scott]

Originally Posted by referencement

- I think that webpage rank well for many raisons:
- 7v have a high page rank
- the url of the webpage contain the term(which I discovered it just this week)
- many times the query term appears in a webpage
- anchor text of interne link from 7v

You missed the main reason. Domain trust. Not so much about PageRank, but about trust established by links and age.

[Manish Pandey]

Right on target! The trust worthiness of any site in the eyes of google

[Johan007]

Sure it will not do any harm to link to unrelated sites but the patent is real and it will become a matter of time for sites linking to same topic sites are given a little boost as part of "site trust". How much boost will become a variable that each SE may use.

[JoJo]

Perhaps it is how G 'computes' relevancy that allows this ranking.

Now, we all know that PR goes down as well as up.....probability is that 'trust' can vary in the same way!

(you mean v7n has not mentioned Britney (or Paris) any place else...doubt it )

[John Scott]

you mean v7n has not mentioned Britney (or Paris) any place else...doubt it

Even if we have other mentions of it, we are in no way or by any stretch of the imagination relevant to Britney Spears.

[JoJo]

dont get me entirely wrong - i'm not literally disagreeing with you - but the way we (mortals) decide on relevancy is not quite the same as how a search engine goes about it.

By the mere mention of a phrase you establish a 'relationship' to that phrase - at least this is how an engine could/would see it.
And, combined with the things that we know the search engines have a particular liking for eg title,link text,TRUST etc is what provides an engine with its form of relevancy.

This kind of result/ranking shouldn't come as too much of a surprise - overall results are better than they were, no doubt are and still will be improved upon.

However it does beg another question - as to, if this phrase is as vigorously pursued as you stated, whether the other sites are doing their jobs quite as well

[John Scott]

By the mere mention of a phrase you establish a 'relationship' to that phrase - at least this is how an engine could/would see it.

I do not agree. None of the patents I've bothered to read based any sort of relevancy on mere mentions of the word.

Most patents dealing with relevancy establish relevancy by either re-ranking the top X number of results for a keyword by analyzing the interlinking of those sites, or by establishing neighborhoods and and analyzing interlinking there.

If a mere mention of a word established relevancy it would be very, very impractical.

And, combined with the things that we know the search engines have a particular liking for eg title,link text,TRUST etc is what provides an engine with its form of relevancy.

Which isn't very relevant, and that is my point.

[JoJo]

Originally Posted by John Scott

I do not agree. None of the patents I've bothered to read based any sort of relevancy on mere mentions of the word.

That isn't quite what I mean't and I did say 'combined' with other factors.

(a bit like this:
'And when I ask for relevance I ask for it in the form of my keywords in the title of the blog post. If I am targeting “best widgets”, I want “widgets” in the blog post title.' )

and lets face it if G returned truly (humanly) relevant results all the time then a lot of us would be out of a job.

[sitetutor]

Originally Posted by John Scott

You missed the main reason. Domain trust. Not so much about PageRank, but about trust established by links and age.

Exactamundo.

[IndigoBlack]

Thank you for this John. As strange as this may sound, I did a blog post on Planet M&M's newest attraction which is to create an M&M in your own image. My blog post is titled Become and M&M on my personal site and guess what? It is #1 with MSN outranking even the company website. I thought that was very, very strange but it kind of makes sense in a weird way now that I've read your post.

[ninjashoes]

Originally Posted by Johan007

Sure it will not do any harm to link to unrelated sites but the patent is real and it will become a matter of time for sites linking to same topic sites are given a little boost as part of "site trust". How much boost will become a variable that each SE may use.

You mean they will analyze your links on account of the linkings pages meta description or something?