It turns out that the folks at Google changed the location of some of the files that online tools use to figure out PageRank.  Whew!  We just need to wait for the websites and tools that provide PageRank to be updated. Then we can see what’s what.

People use hidden text to add keywords to their page that Google, and other search engines, will pick up but that people can’t see.  This is typically done by putting the keywords in a font color that matches the background color of the page.  Search engines can see this text, but it’s not viewable by website visitors.

Why would people do such a thing?  To a large extent working with keywords is about repetition.  The keywords should be in the URL, in the text, in the text bolded, included in a link, used in H1 text and so on.  It’s a lot of work to use the keyword phrase so many times and write compelling copy.  Some people take a shortcut and just repeat the keyword in invisible text.

I once watched a customer’s competitor use this tactic.  The competitor site soared in the search engines.  It worked extremely well for about a month.  Then Google must have noticed the hidden text.  His site wasn’t listed in the search engine at all.  His site was still up, but he was excommunicated from Google.

Don’t let this happen to you!  Just say no to hidden text.

Google is always striving to bring people better search results.   So from time to time they change the way they calculate search results by changing their search algorithm.   It’s like they’re updating the internal software that runs the search engine.  But that means that people who are number one for a search term right now may not be number one once the new algorithm, codenamed Caffeine, rolls out.  On the other hand, if you’ve been frustrated because you can’t attain the number one spot for a certain keyword phrase your troubles may be over.

Are you interested in seeing how your site will do when Caffeine launches?  You can take it for a test drive at http://www2.sandbox.google.com.

What Is Google Web History?

Google gives the following definition of Web History.

You know that great web site you saw online and now can’t find? From now on, you can. With Web History, you can view and search across the full text of the pages you’ve visited, including Google searches, web pages, images, videos and news stories. You can also manage your web activity and remove items from your web history at any time.

How Do I See Non-Personalized Google Results

If you’re interested in viewing non-personalized Google results log out of your Google account before submitting a query.

If you’re curious you can see your history by going to http://www.google.com/history/

A googleganger is someone with your name. You’ll discover your googleganger by entering your name into Google (this is known as “googling yourself”) and seeing the other people share your name.

One college student owes a surprise visit from her mother to her googleganger. “I know about the porn,” her mother announced. It turned out that Mom had googled her daughter and a bunch of porn sites came up. Imagine the mother’s relief when she discovered her daughter wasn’t involved in porn, it was just someone else with the same name.

Google yourself. You never know what you may find.

PageRank relies on the uniquely democratic nature of the web by using its vast link structure as an indicator of an individual page’s value. In essence, Google interprets a link from page A to page B as a vote, by page A, for page B. But, Google looks at considerably more than the sheer volume of votes, or links a page receives; for example, it also analyzes the page that casts the vote. Votes cast by pages that are themselves “important” weigh more heavily and help to make other pages “important.” Using these and other factors, Google provides its views on pages’ relative importance.

The result of all this is that each website can be assigned a number from 1 to 10. 10 is the highest popularity rank a website can recieve. It’s important to note that these are NOT ten equal steps. Google PR is set up like the eathquake Richter Scale. Each level is progressivly harder to reach.

Here are some examples of Google PageRank:

• http://www.google.com – 10
• http://www.litquotes.com – 5
• http://www.skipmcgrath.com – 5
• http://www.abcnews.com – 8
• http://www.seattletimes.com – 7
• http://www.myspace.com – 8
• http://www.livingstonenterprise.com – 4
• http://www.usps.com – 8

So what’s the rank of your website? If you have the Google Toolbar you can see it there. There are also websites that give you that information. I use this website when looking up Google PageRank:

• http://www.mygooglepagerank.com/

A client of mine went through this recently. Everything was fine and then one day Google didn’t list their site. It wasn’t as though they dropped in the listings. Suddenly they were nowhere to be found on two thirds of their keyword phrases.

What did we do? We waited out the storm. In a couple of weeks almost everything was back to normal. Within a month things were fine on all keyword phrases.

I think what happened to my client is that Google changed their algorithm. Sometimes it takes a little while for search results to get straightened out after a programming change. However the reality is that I’ll never know exactly what happened.

Google doesn’t reveal much about their system. It makes sense. They don’t want other search engines to copy their technology. They don’t want websites to abuse the system. So they don’t say exactly how the system works. The other side of the coin is that they don’t tell you what you did wrong when you drop into Google Hell.