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Why are these sites doing so well in Google?
Scott Karp has a question for Darren Rowse about his digital camera site asking:
So, what, you may ask, is wrong with this? Well, maybe nothing. Maybe Darrens site has done the best job aggregating the best camera reviews on the web. Maybe Darrens site delivers the highest possible value for anyone in Australia interested in digital camears. If thats the case, the maybe it deserves to rank #1 on Google.
But nothing about the site gives me the feeling that its a high quality editorial site. And the problem here, and its implications for SEO, is really about gut feelings about whether theres an imbalance of value between publisher and consumer.
This is an interesting trend where writers, bloggers, diggers, editors and publishers are waking up to ask “Why are these sites doing so well in Google“?
As it becomes less easy to game search engines with raw link power people will be forced to market themselves in traditional ways. This is when SEO and publishers are on an equal playing field BUT until then, search engine optimization has the advantage.
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February 13th, 2007 at 1:08 am
the whole ‘quality’ rush was good buzz fodder, but it’s still a bit ahead of its time. link power wins because google is still using link authority as the primary ranking factor, and darren’s sites have plenty of link authority.
February 13th, 2007 at 7:40 am
Yessir!
I spent an hour digging around in Darren’s stuff last night and it gave me a chuckle, wish I had such robust linkage from the “make money blogging” dreamers. ;)
February 14th, 2007 at 1:53 pm
His analysis is faulty (links matter most? Sorry — that dog don’t hunt). And what about those “unknown” referrals — how do they justify his conclusion that the site gets nothing but search engine traffic.
It’s good to question why a site might hit the top of search results but whining is not good analysis.
February 18th, 2007 at 5:56 pm
I’ve been fascinated by Darren’s camera site for a while. From what I can tell it is one of his biggest earners. Big enough that he hires people to post content for it.
I’m not surprised it ranks well. He’s taking well written content and optimizing it. He’s also aggregating many sources making his site seem bigger and a more relevant source of information than any of the individual sites he’s grabbing content from.
The formula seems simple enough that I’ve often thought of copying it. The only problem is that I think I’d be so bored out of my tree that the site would eventually die from inactivity :-)