Common Craft Blog
Google Rankings and a Novel Weblog Idea
By leelefever on January 22, 2004 - 11:49am
Scott Allen, whom some of you may know from Online Business Networking contacted me recently about a recent experience in using a Weblog to achieve high Google rankings. (See Related: Case Study)
Scott lives in Houston, site of the 2004 Super Bowl. He and his friends realized that they could make money by renting their houses for Super Bowl weekend. The problem was how to promote the rentals.
They did research and found that the listing companies wanted hundreds of dollars for a listing, so he looked for other ways to promote their homes. He figured high Google search rankings would help.
To this end, he created a weblog (www.super-bowl-rentals.com), which made it very easy to update the site regularly and upload pictures, etc. Three days and $8 after starting the weblog, Scott’s site showed up at the #2 position in a Google search for “Super Bowl rentalsâ€. (UPDATE: See 1st comment from Scott)
There are a couple of confounding points about this success…
- Scott’s page has a Google PageRank of 0/10
- He has few incoming links (<5)
- The sites below his in the rankings have more incoming links and higher PageRank.
Scott and I tried to figure out what caused his site to get the high rankings without the benefit of the tried-and-true methods. Here’s what we came up with…
Google looked at his site and saw that it:
- Is updated more often than others
- Contains consistent keywords (Super Bowl vs. Superbowl)
- Contains higher keyword density
- Uses keyword placement more effectively (keywords as headers)
I think this goes to show that keywords can be the trump card over PageRank, in some cases.
Google Rankings and a Novel Weblog Idea
Fickle, fickle Google...
As of today, it slipped to #25.
It also turns out that, as I expected, there's a whole lot more sellers than buyers. I have had dozens of requests from people to list their houses for rent, but not one inquiry from a potential renter.
Still, hardly a total failure. As least my friends and I know that we gave it a shot -- that's always better than regrets -- plus I ended up with some interesting lessons.
I'm wondering if it's even remotely possible that Google gives some sort of temporary favoritism to a brand new site. That's what DirectHit used to do, the logic being that since their algorithm was based on what people actually selected in response to certain searches, new sites would need an opportunity to get in the running.
I've not even heard any rumors to this effect, so it's pure conjecture, but it would explain the behavior. It's also technology that exists and Google would certainly be capable of implementing.
Ah well, we don't get to look inside that black box...
Google Rankings and a Novel Weblog Idea
Interesting Scott- thanks for the update. I'd be interested in testing the hypothesis that Google may give temporary preference to new sites...
Google Rankings and a Novel Weblog Idea
Yes. You might want to read up about freshbot.
Google spiders regularly updated sites more frequently. New sites often pop in the top ten, then disappear almost as quickly. In order to maintain placement over time, other factors, such as link popularity, come into play.