Remove Wikipedia from the Organic Listings

Recently Squidoo got hit with the Google authority whacking stick. They were “over ranking” for various terms and Google decided that they should be given less relevance in the search results. And of course as a result they were beaten down in the Google serps. So from Google’s point of view, when a website starts unduly influencing the search engine results, you adjust them so they fall back in line.

What I want to know is what about Wikipedia?!

Wikipedia is literally dominating search rankings across the board, and in more categories than any other single organization. Please understand, I am a Wikipedia fan. I think what they have built is absolutely amazing. They are the role model for what mass collaboration can do. And it’s a great resource. But it’s really grown out of control in the search engine results. They literally show up for everything now (rank position #7 in Google, 4 in Yahoo, 11 & 12 in MSN for “everything”).

The have so much authority that they can rank for whatever they want. And that’s fine and great. But given their size, isn’t it time to start treating them as a special case? Why doesn’t Google just make a special entry at the top of the search results for Wikipedia (like local search results)? They almost always show up anyway. Just add a line at the top of the page: Wikipedia has this to say about everything and they know it all.

Then…

Take them out of the organic listings completely!!!

By giving them their own special listing, if people are looking for more information they can visit Wikipedia. Everyone knows that Wikipedia is a good informational resource. But when they want to buy something why should Wikipedia show up in the search results? By taking Wikipedia out of the normal search engine results, the other people who are actually relevant to what the searcher is looking for are there where they belong.

And incase you were wondering, the Answer to the Ultimate Question about Life, the Universe, and Everything, is 42.

PHP 301 Permanent Redirect

After starting this site, it came time to shut down the predecessor. But, my other site had at least some authority/PR that I wanted to pass along. So I sat down to figure out how 301 redirecting worked. And, it’s some really simple PHP code.

Here is a sample redirect:

<?php
header(“HTTP/1.1 301 Moved Permanently”);
header(“Location: http://www.new-domain.com/new-folder/new-page.html”);
exit();
?>

That’s it!

Google Check No 1

Sweet! Today was a big day!

For the last couple months I’ve been building a couple sites. My small amount of traffic finally built up enough advertising revenue…

Well, I got my first check from Google today! It wasn’t huge, but for someone starting out, just getting your first check is huge! It’s more of a morale booster than anything. It’s like… OMG! This might actually work!

It took 5 months to build up enough with my little low traffic sites. I guess the low traffic problems was pretty much the reason I really started getting into SEO. And it must be working… The second check is coming a lot quicker. Wohoo!

SEO Newbie

Disclaimer: I am NOT a search engine optimization expert! Everything you see here are my musings and should not be taken as professional SEO advice.

Ok with that out of the way, let me explain why this site is here.

This blog / site is really here to help me. To give me an area to take notes about the stuff I am learning and trying. Without giving away the site / project involved, (ie: trying to avoid bad cross links and too much shameless self promotion), I want to experiment with various SEO techniques in a controlled manner. I have 10 small sites to experiment with (they get between 30-200 unique visitors/month). I want to see the effect various techniques can have on a site and on traffic.

By not mentioning the site or keywords involved, I think I can keep these little experiments free of outside influences. But at the same time have the numbers and results open to public debate. The possible side effect being, that people are welcome to give suggestions and comment.