Wednesday 13 June 2007

The future for viral linking

I'm somewhat embarrased to reveal that I've overshot the mark somewhat in getting my Technorati 'Authority' rank raised. Greg Stratz took part in a link project hosted by JaKelDaily - this was a scheme where you could have three URL's posted on numerous blogs with varying PR's. Greg submitted an interview that I did for him, and was kind enough to sacrifice one of his links and use mine instead. My 'Authority' was immediately raised from 23 to 53!! This is a scheme which will be growing under Jasons careful nuturing...

I noted that the ranking was slipping over the next few days, and then I got involved in the Viral Link going on over at Founders Cafe , based on an idea put forward from Andy Coates . This one seems to have immediately boosted me by about 10 authority points and will no doubt build as the idea catches on. The viral links in this matrix are growing daily and need frequent updating, the rankings should really grow as long as everyone hosting the matrix is updating it.


This brings me to question of how Google might treat this type of viral linking in the future.
My measure of popularity is Technorati since it is easy to gauge results, however my real aim is to make the site more favourable to google to gain google page rank (this in turn should open up more paid post opportunities). Whilst these schemes undoubtedly boost rankings now, I am not sure that Google will see this as a natural organic form of validation of a site or blog, so my gut-feeling is that they may change their ranking formulae to take account of it. The upshot of this wil be that bloggers and webmasters will still need to be thinking about 'valid' linking techniques and good content in the long-run if they want to climb the Google rankings. Having said that, you could argue that you are just reproducing a valid mini-directory, but I have a feeling that if you participate in a number of similar schemes with no doubt a high number of the same participants, you could be seen as a link-spammer.

I feel that a lot of the social/community link sites such as Technorati will be happy to allow the schemes to run, so as far as that goes, they will be successful. If gaining Techorati authority is the end, rather than the means to an end, then the viral link will be valuable. My initial feelings are that this is just too easy for Google to 'like' it. What do you think?

4 comments:

J said...

As one who has seen their technorati ranking explode from single digits to over 50 in a few days as a result of this viral scheme, I do agree that it all seems a little too easy for Google. I'm not sure what their technological solution to this might be, but I can see them taking this into account when they next calculate PR. Incidentally, when will that be?

jay said...

I think it must be about a month, but I'm going on hearsay...

stratz said...

Meh I think we will be safe this time but next time around they will do somethign about it.

jay said...

I saw somewhere that TECH were going to filter it out in the future... so I wouldn't be surprised to see some changes - M4H is up to 150 now, which is just crazy - Livewyre is up to 66 (from 7....!) and I have ONLY used the viral scheme there, so hopefully not ALL of my 127 ranking points gained on M4H are due to the viral scheme and therefore I should retain quite a lot of those points.