This proves once again how what supposed to be a fair and useful website quality measurement tool became one of the most manipulative tools in the internet history, both by the PR chasers / dealers and Google itself.

Have fun and enjoy your tiny greeny!

Thinking that yet another update will be in place anytime soon, you may see websites jumping all the way around, you may get different results for the same search term within a few minutes, etc… This is normal and it’s called “Google Dance”. What I would like to bring to your attention is not the above “phenomenon” but something else that makes me think if the “G” guys are really serious in what they are doing.

Doing a simple search for the term “educating” will obviously get you to a page with the most relevant 10 results for the word “educating”. Apart from these 10 results you will probably see the Adsense bar on the right hand side where people pay to get listed for specific search terms and on top of all the results you will see the 3 most relevant images for the search term you just entered.

Well…surprise, surprise…searching for “educating” will bring a cartoon with a lady teaching kids about umbrellas (very relevant, isn’t it?), an image with a couple of children in the classroom and guess what… a porn picture! I thought it might be a sort of temporary glitch so I have refreshed the page, close it, opened a new one for about an hour. The same picture appeared on the top of all searches right by the paid advertisement of direct.gov.uk , the main UK educational portal!

I obviously took a screen shot, you may want to check it below. Not trying to be funny or to criticise Google but think this way…how many people, how many children search for “educating” every day? I also seriously doubt the British Government will be too happy to see their educational paid ad alongside a porn picture.

Well done, Google! Keep up the good work! (click on photo to enlarge)

Google’s client base is down 6.4% from the last quarter while the last 12 months results show an 8.5% overall decline.

MSN’s client base dropped an unbelievable 20% from the last quarter which proves once again that the things are not going quite in the right direction for them. The 12 months graphics show an 6.7% decline.

Yahoo is the only one from the three leading search engines reporting a slight 0.003% increase in their client base over the second quarter of the year. Also the last 12 months graphics are another reason to smile as they are 9.8% up.

There is a way to do it and that is by posting something thoughtful. Now, the most common question that comes to mind is “How do I post something so meaningful that even when I insert my link, the blog owner would just ignore it regardless of my limited knowledge in that field?” It is simple… Go to the forums and ask questions or just lurk around reading people’s posts. This would give you an idea of what to write on and how to write it.

Remember that forums are a complete goldmine because this is where you have everyone interested in a particular topic. There aren’t so many time wasters there. The second option you might have is do a quick search on the topic, look for what no one has previously said, and say it. Avoid stupid one-liners like “nicely said,  You can visit my website for blah blah blah” and you will find your links left on the blogs and forums.

Also in terms of relevance to your site niche and content, it would be much better to look for related resources. If you have for example a medical website, try to find medical related blogs and forums. There is a word saying that “any clean link is a good link”, agree with that but apart from the general backlinks you build, you will need backlinks related to your niche. Avoid the low quality, spammy websites and don’t post in there - the last thing you want are backlinks coming from untrusted sources as all these will create a bad neighbourhood  around your website…

The website is managed by GamingAlerts Ltd., which is probably the best gambling info provider in the UK at the moment.