still continuing …

Question: Are subdomains considered entirely separate entities if they have no links from the parent domain. e.g. if widget.example.com has no links from www.example.com, is it on its own in terms of reputation, or will it rank through association alone?

JohnMu: We treat each URL separately. That said, if you have www and non-www versions of your site, I’d recommend setting a preferred domain and setting up a 301 redirect. Also, sometimes it makes sense to add both your www and non-www versions in Webmaster Tools so that links for both versions are known (and shown). Susan recently covered that in a blog post.

Question: Can you tell me how Google decides whether to include video on the first page of the SERPS or not? Views? Links? Age? Relevance? What’s the most important?

Matt Cutts: I think relevance is always the top-level answer, because we want the best information (be it search results, videos, or even ads) to come up highly. And relevance for each property will vary–for ads it might be clickthrough, and for video it might be different signals.

Question: You claim that you can identify original content and RSS scrapers, but still why scrapers are ranking better for certain keywords?

Wysz: We do our best to identify duplicates and identify the best URL for a set of content. There are a couple of ways you can help us out with this. In your content, if you’re providing articles or other information that may be syndicated across other sites, include a full link (not just a relative link) back to your site so you can more easily be identified as the originator of the content. And if you find that a scraper site is spamming Google’s search results, please submit a spam report via Webmaster Tools.

Question: What is the minimum time a webmaster should wait before re-applying for a reconsideration & how does a webmaster know that his request has actually been seen by someone.
Kaspar aka Guglarz: The turnaround time for reviewing reconsideration requests is usually very fast, it actually can be as quick as 24 hours. However, the results of it can kick in after awhile. Please keep in mind that once a site has lost Google’s trust, rebuilding it can take some time. If you have applied for a consideration and received a confirmation via email, give it some time first. If your site is positively Google webmaster compliant, try again after a week or two, if there is no change in the SERP’s. However, please keep in mind that if your site has been hacked cleaning it up AND fixing the server/site can be time intense and needs to be done accurately, in order to prevent the problem from happening again.

Question: Will it make any difference between a shared IP and a dedicated IP on SEO or search results, as opinions are divided on this aspect?

JohnMu: Most of the web is on shared IP addresses, so it doesn’t make much sense for us to give those on dedicated IP addresses any advantages. That said, if your server is struggling with the load of your website, it might make sense to move to a dedicated server that helps to make sure that your users are happy when visiting your website.

Question: If I 301 redirect a well-ranked page to a new domain with the exact same content, will all of the rankings be replaced with the new domain once it has been indexed? How long after indexing can we expect the swap? And is the same thing true for 302s?

Wysz: If you’re moving from one URL to another (even if it’s on a different domain), ranking signals can be passed via a 301. A 302 is used for temporary redirects, so this is less likely to transfer ranking signals.

Question: I have 2 sites, one is domain.com and the other one is domain.au. They share a lot of their content, is there a way to keep the content on both sites without blocking it on either, while ensuring they only show on their respective geo locations?

Maile Ohye: It’s helpful that you have separate TLDs. While you can’t “ensure” that your content shows only to certain geolocation, you can use some of our features to help. Here are more resources in case you missed them:

http://googlewebmastercentral.blogspot.com/2008/08/how-to-start-multilingual-site.html

http://googlewebmastercentral.blogspot.com/2007/10/better-geographic-choices-for.html

http://googlewebmastercentral.blogspot.com/2008/04/where-in-world-is-your-site.html

So for Australia, domain.au will help with targeting and Webmaster Tools will not be needed.
For other areas — say Canada, you can use geolation in Webmaster Tools for canada.domain.com or www.domain.com/ca or www.domain.com/canada.

Question: Duplicate content – www. and non www. – I understand the best practice is to have a perm redirect for the non www to the www. some appear to get away with it and rank high, others dont –
Duplicate content agn – domainname.co.nz and domainname.com?

JohnMu: Doing a redirect or not doing one does not significantly impact your site’s crawling, indexing or ranking in Google. I’d still recommend doing that though – otherwise it can confuse users to see different domain names for the same content. If you have a local (.com.nz) and a global (.com) site, then I would recommend using separate content for them (since there are going to be different users) — but I wouldn’t worry too much about it if you have the same content at the moment.

Question: A site has lost sitelinks. No significant changes were made to site architecture, e.g. menu templates. Overall public PR has actually increased. Suggestions as to how to keep dynamically generated sitelinks? How often are they recalculated?

Nathan J: Sitelinks are dynamically generated – more info.

Question: 1000′s of junks sites are spamming Google index & Googlers still find time to penalize or ban more genuine sites. How do you plan to fight spam in longer term.

Answer: As far as how we fight spam, we can’t reveal too much. Spammers might be reading.

Question: I have been experiencing sudden drop in rankings for my sites. One day it would be on #3 and the other day it would go back to #19 or #26. Any specific reason behind this?

Kaspar aka Guglarz: Most likely, you have been accessing different Data Centers checking your rankings. As Google DC’s are being updated continuously but not all simultaneously, slight variations in the SERPs are possible.

This entry was posted on Monday, November 10th, 2008 at 7:15 am and is filed under Google, Uncategorized. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.