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When the 2048 game came out, I quickly hacked up a 2 player version and placed it under the Instapainting.com domain for SEO purposes. Does this really

by TekMol 10y ago

When the 2048 game came out, I quickly hacked up a 2 player version and placed it under the Instapainting.com domain for SEO purposes. Does this really work? Does Google think you are a better site for ordering paintings because you host a game? I tend to think Google is smarter by now. In fact, I would expect that Google almost exclusively relies on real user behaviour these days.

chrischen 10y ago
I'm fairly certain it worked. It's more like the page gets lots of link, thus lots of clout, and I link to Instapainting from that page, which means I transfer some of that clout. And Google can't classify Instapainting.com as a "photo to painting" site. It just knows it's a site that contains some content. Since Yahoo.com would get better rankings even with disparate topics under the domain.
- TekMol 10y ago
  What makes you certain? I am fairly certain that the world's best search engine is not falling for that. How can we decide who is right?
  - chrischen 10y ago
    I don't think it's necessarily tricking google. Again, the page has clout, and not everyone can simply make a popular page. By associating Instapainting with that page, it's saying Instapainting knows that guy who made that popular game, so Instapainting should have more visibility too.
  - n0us 10y ago
    What makes you certain that the world's best search engine is not falling for that?
  - danso 10y ago
    Uh, what experiences have you had that make you think otherwise? Google is the greatest information-finding service invented but it can still surface poor results. But in this case, I don't think Google was necessarily "fooled". The developer happened to be multitalented enough to create a game that was popular. Assuming that the traffic it receives was legitimate (which I imagine Google can know based on Google Analytics), how is that not a signal that the domain belongs to someone of more notability than just some random domain? The problem would be if Google used that signal as the sole determiner of whether Instapainting.com was a place to find good paintings. But there's no indication that that is the case, just that clout gained from the popular game may have helped Instapainting overall be seen as a legit domain, generally.
    - hilop 10y ago
      The problem is thst people use infographics that get a lot of links, to get SEO juice for the rest of their site thst is utter garbage. Ideally, Google wouldn't credit one part of the site that is lower quality than the other part.
      - pbhjpbhj 10y ago
        >Ideally, Google wouldn't credit one part of the site that is lower quality than the other part. // Site authority presumably wouldn't be a thing if it didn't produce good results. Sites that allow crappy content will tend to have more crappy content and so a page on such a site is less likely to be what someone is searching for; as long as that stands then site authority will still be useful and shouldn't - IMO - be discounted completely.
      - AJ007 10y ago
        They may temporarily bump a site up based on new "authoritative" incoming links and then make judgements from a combination of user time on site/bounces back to search results and clicking on more results and additional pages. Longer term there is definitely manual human review looking for "spam."
- tim333 10y ago
  >Google can't classify Instapainting.com as a "photo to painting" site I was at a talk yesterday where the speaker from Google was saying that while pagerank is the number one input they use for search results, AI style machine learning algorithms are now number 3 so don't be so sure they don't pick up on that.
  - AlexCoventry 10y ago
    Do you know whether the talk's likely to show up online?
wyldfire 10y ago
But "real users" went to their website. That gives them more value in Google's eyes than websites that no one ever visits.
swalsh 10y ago
I mean, there's a lot more to ranking than that... but yeah, that helps to raise your domain authority. It's just one part of the equation, though, and generally speaking, Google does a decent job of detecting black hat techniques and penalizing for them. Probably 3/4 of the blog articles out there are written for SEO purposes.
aaron987 10y ago
I came here to ask about that too. From what I've heard elsewhere, it sounds like Google is smart enough to figure out if you are posting unrelated content just for SEO purposes, and that engaging in such practices is a good way to get Google-smacked.

by TekMol 10y ago

chrischen 10y ago

I'm fairly certain it worked. It's more like the page gets lots of link, thus lots of clout, and I link to Instapainting from that page, which means I transfer some of that clout. And Google can't classify Instapainting.com as a "photo to painting" site. It just knows it's a site that contains some content. Since Yahoo.com would get better rankings even with disparate topics under the domain.

TekMol 10y ago
What makes you certain? I am fairly certain that the world's best search engine is not falling for that. How can we decide who is right?
- chrischen 10y ago
  I don't think it's necessarily tricking google. Again, the page has clout, and not everyone can simply make a popular page. By associating Instapainting with that page, it's saying Instapainting knows that guy who made that popular game, so Instapainting should have more visibility too.
- n0us 10y ago
  What makes you certain that the world's best search engine is not falling for that?
- danso 10y ago
  Uh, what experiences have you had that make you think otherwise? Google is the greatest information-finding service invented but it can still surface poor results. But in this case, I don't think Google was necessarily "fooled". The developer happened to be multitalented enough to create a game that was popular. Assuming that the traffic it receives was legitimate (which I imagine Google can know based on Google Analytics), how is that not a signal that the domain belongs to someone of more notability than just some random domain? The problem would be if Google used that signal as the sole determiner of whether Instapainting.com was a place to find good paintings. But there's no indication that that is the case, just that clout gained from the popular game may have helped Instapainting overall be seen as a legit domain, generally.
  - hilop 10y ago
    The problem is thst people use infographics that get a lot of links, to get SEO juice for the rest of their site thst is utter garbage. Ideally, Google wouldn't credit one part of the site that is lower quality than the other part.
    - pbhjpbhj 10y ago
      >Ideally, Google wouldn't credit one part of the site that is lower quality than the other part. // Site authority presumably wouldn't be a thing if it didn't produce good results. Sites that allow crappy content will tend to have more crappy content and so a page on such a site is less likely to be what someone is searching for; as long as that stands then site authority will still be useful and shouldn't - IMO - be discounted completely.
    - AJ007 10y ago
      They may temporarily bump a site up based on new "authoritative" incoming links and then make judgements from a combination of user time on site/bounces back to search results and clicking on more results and additional pages. Longer term there is definitely manual human review looking for "spam."
tim333 10y ago
>Google can't classify Instapainting.com as a "photo to painting" site I was at a talk yesterday where the speaker from Google was saying that while pagerank is the number one input they use for search results, AI style machine learning algorithms are now number 3 so don't be so sure they don't pick up on that.
- AlexCoventry 10y ago
  Do you know whether the talk's likely to show up online?

wyldfire 10y ago

But "real users" went to their website. That gives them more value in Google's eyes than websites that no one ever visits.

swalsh 10y ago

I mean, there's a lot more to ranking than that... but yeah, that helps to raise your domain authority. It's just one part of the equation, though, and generally speaking, Google does a decent job of detecting black hat techniques and penalizing for them. Probably 3/4 of the blog articles out there are written for SEO purposes.

aaron987 10y ago

I came here to ask about that too. From what I've heard elsewhere, it sounds like Google is smart enough to figure out if you are posting unrelated content just for SEO purposes, and that engaging in such practices is a good way to get Google-smacked.