SearchWinds.com - a credibility-based search engine.
July 26, 2009
I need your help to fix the search engines.
You see, the big engines suffer from a serious problem: they don't take user opinion into consideration.
That's a huge problem, because no machine can come anywhere close to the judgement that a human can make by reading over a page and deciding whether or not it's a good one.
There have been search engines that have tried in the past to allow users to vote on search results, but they all failed miserably.
The reason they have failed is that they counted every vote as equal: whether the voter was a regular joe searcher or a trusted authority figure or a spammer; whether the query was hugely popular or rarely searched for — all votes were equal.
But that's not how real life works, is it?
In the real world, a person's input on what's good or bad depends on the individual's credibility and track record. If a person has proven in the past that their opinions are valuable and trustworthy, then naturally their opinions hold a lot of weight.
On the other hand, if a person has no proven track record, or worse, a poor one, then their opinions won't hold nearly as much weight.
That's how the real world works, and that's how I believe search engines should work, too.
But since the search engines that tried were plagued by spammers because all votes were considered equal, search engines have stopped allowing users to directly influence the search results.
I think this is a HUGE mistake. I think a search engine's BEST asset are the searchers. No machine can judge quality the way a human can. Machines are too easily fooled.
Humans are not so easily fooled. That's why Google pays a large number of human reviewers to pour over their results and find sites that shouldn't be ranking, but that have managed to weasle their way into the top.
You see — algorithms just don't work without human input.
The Credibility Engine
That's why I've created SearchWinds, a new search engine based on the same credibility engine that I built into my instantly popular social-knowledge site, TopDrop.com.
It was a real no-brainer to base a search engine on the same algorithm I use to let users rank tips at TipDrop.
SearchWinds attempts to mimic the trust that people establish over time in the real world by using the credibility engine.
When a user first creates a voting account, they are assigned a credibility rating of 100 — which is the baseline. That gives them a small measure of influence over the search results as they vote for what they feel should rank better (or worse).
However, if a user decides to suggest a page that they feel should be in the results for a query but isn't, then their credibility begins to be put to the test.
When other users vote for the suggested page, then the suggesting user's credibility rises. If they vote against the suggested page, then the suggesting user's credibility falls.
The greater a user's credibility, the more his or her own vote counts towards the credibility of any search result they vote on, and the higher their future submissions initially rank.
The credibility engine greatly reduces the ability of a user to spam the index with junk submissions, because a spammers submissions will quickly get voted down, removing their pages from the search results and decreasing the spammer's credibility.
As the spammer's credibility plummets, his or her future submissions will initially rank further and further down in the results. It doesn't take long before the spammer realizes that they're wasting a lot of time and getting no return for their efforts.
Powered By Bing
When a query is performed for the first time, the initial results are fetched from Bing.com using their developers' API. Only the first 10 results are used.
Bing also has a user account in the SearchWinds system (the username is, of course, bing). All initial query results are credited to that user account.
SearchWinds users can vote on what Bing says should rank for their queries just like they can vote on any user's submissions. As those pages are voted up and down, the Bing user's credibility rises and falls as well.
I think it will be very interesting to see over time how much users agree with Bing's suggested search results.
Powered By YOU
In order for SearchWinds to work well, it's going to need a lot of people searching and voting. That means you! This is your opportunity to help make search what it should be — a spam-free place where the best stuff comes up first. That's hardly a
description of any of the big search engines to date.
So why not go to SearchWinds.com and setup a free account right now? It only takes a few seconds.
Once you've got an account, you can start using SW as your search engine of choice and vote on the results you feel should (or shouldn't) rank.
The submissions you make all link to your user profile, so getting in EARLY and submitting pages and building your credibility offers a great opportunity to really establish yourself as a trusted source of information.
Here's the link:
Together we'll make search great again!
P.S. I've setup a discussion forum for SearchWinds as well. I REALLY want your feedback and input on how to make this new search engine as great as I know it can be.
Please post your thoughts and questions in a comment below.
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Move over Twitter…
July 16, 2009
It all started with Twitter. I love the idea of microblogging. It's a beautiful thing. Twitter makes it easy to post your thoughts and ideas about just about anything in 140 characters or less. Other folks can follow along and read what you have to say.
That's why I love Twitter, but that's also why I don't like it.
You see, it's a great idea, but unfortunately it often ends up that I'm following all of these folks who are posting about what they had for breakfast, or tweet that they're giving their dog a bath, or other ridiculous stuff that I have absolutely no interest in.
Then there are the spammers. Oh my goodness! 100 tweets in a row advertising trash I'm not interested in.
Even when folks aren't spamming, Twitter seriously lacks focus. From one tweet to the next, the sheer volume of subjects is dizzying — and it's rarely related.
That's why I created TipDrop.com. TipDrop is what I call a "social-knowledge" site. Simply put, it's a very focused form of microblogging site.
At TipDrop, a user creates a "tip sheet" focused on a particular subject. The user who created the tip sheet, and other TipDrop users, can post tips to the tip sheet. The users can also vote for or against the tips on the tip sheet. Since 140 characters really isn't enough for a good tip, your tips can be up to 255 characters long.
It's like Twitter meets Wikipedia meets Digg.
For example, let's say I created tip sheet on How to get people to link to your web page (which I have–that link points to it). You can go to that tip sheet to read all of the tips that I and other users have added to get ideas about how to build links to your site. If you like a tip, you vote it up — if you don't like it, you vote it down.
You see the power here? Instead of random bits of noise and nonsense, TipDrop creates tightly focused pages of practical knowledge. It's social-knowledge.
To make it even better, TipDrop is driven by what I'm calling a "credibility engine." Everything in the system is given a "credibility" score: users, tip sheets and tips. The more users vote for a tip, the higher the credibility of the tip, the tip sheet and the tip-writing user. The more users that vote against the tip, the lower the credibility of those three things.
The best (read: most credible) tips appear on top of the tip sheet. Once a tip falls below a credibility score of 1, it disappears off the list.
The more credibility a user gains, the higher up the list his tips appear when he first writes them. Of course, those tips are then subject to users voting them up or down. Also, the higher a user's credibility, the more power his votes up or down command.
What this does is encourage high-quality tips from users who are trying to establish themselves as experts in their field. Each tip is linked back to its author's own account page, where a timeline of the user's tips appear, as well as a list of the user's tip sheets.
The credibility engine also helps prevent spam and junk from coming into the system. Spammers' tips will quickly get voted down, reducing the credibility of not only the tips, but the spammer's account. That way, when they try to submit more spam, their spammy tips will have virtually no credibility, appear at the bottom of the tip sheet, and after just a vote or two disappear entirely.
Of course, the creator of a tip sheet has the ability to delete tips they feel are inappropriate. So the tip sheet owner maintains control that way as well.
Unlike Twitter, TipDrop also encourages you to have links on your account page. You can have up to 10 links appear on the right sidebar of your account pages. And since all of the tip sheets you create appear with your account profile and links on them, you are rewarded for making your tip sheets popular by having other people visit your links.
On top of that, the site is monetized with AdSense ads. In your user settings you can put your AdSense Publisher ID and have 75% of all ad impressions and clicks from your account pages and tip sheets credited to your own AdSense account. I believe that users should receive a monetary incentive to create great content, and that's just another way I make that happen for TipDrop.com users.
TipDrop is a great way to get your email list to build link-bait lists of information on just about anything. Think about it: create a tip sheet on the best ways to lose 10 lbs, have other users add their own tips, and monetize it from the AdSense ads plus links down the sidebar to weight-loss products you promote! Build your credibility up with enough great tips and you'll soon be an established authority in your niche.
The site is now in beta, and I encourage you to go take 30 seconds to sign up for a free account (that's really all it takes — it's super-fast and easy). Perhaps start by adding your own tips to my tip sheet on how to get people to link to your web page?
Check the Site Links down the right sidebar of the home page for links to the TipDrop blog and forum as well. I'm very interested in hearing your suggestions and thoughts on how to make the system better.
Click here to go to TipDrop.com now.
And be sure to post your thoughts and questions in a comment below.
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Build a "link pyramid" to rank your sites in Google.
July 3, 2009
Google's algorithm is all about ranking sites that are "naturally" popular. That means that, although you can sum up how to rank your site in Google in four words ("Get lots of links"), you need to make sure that your site's link structure is as "natural" as possible (in Google's eyes, anyway).
To do this, you want to construct what I call a "link pyramid" for your site. This pyramid is a 3-level structure of links: 1) your base links, 2) your mid-range links and 3) your highest quality links.
Now, before going into detail about the pyramid, let me outline what Google looks for in every link you have to your site. The more of these qualities each link possesses, the higher value Google places on it when ranking your site.
- Geographic Diversity. If all of your links come from web sites whose servers are all in Podunk, Texas, Google is going to see that as being very suspicious. It's easy to know the relative geographic location of any web site, and Google incorporates that data into their algorithm. So you want to get links from web sites that reside all over the web if at all possible.
- Link Text Variety. If every single link to your web site all has the exact same link text, Google will devalue your links and not rank your site. In case you're not sure what I mean by "link text", that's the (typically) blue, underlined words in a link (e.g. my blog has the link text "my blog").
- Steady growth. If your brand new site goes from having zero links aimed at it to having two thousand links the next week, Google is not going to rank your site very well. Your site will often rank well for a few days, but it will then fall out of the rankings. That's because Google will see your sudden link surge as a brief moment of popularity, but once that popularity passes, so will your rankings. You want to grow your links slow and steady, increasing the rate of growth as your site establishes a broader link base.
Okay, so now you know what attributes each link aimed at your site needs to have. Now let's talk about each of the three levels of your site's link pyramid.
Base Links
The foundation of your link pyramid are your base links. As with an actual pyramid, the foundation is the largest part of this virtual structure. You need more base links than any other kind of link.
Base links are, for lack of better words, lower quality links. Links from things like lesser article sites, social bookmarking sites, blog comments, links from deep inner pages, etc.
It's important that you have a lot of these kinds of links, because Google's algorithm thinks that this is "natural." After all, how likely is it that a web site will have a bunch of super-high-quality links from major web sites and not have magnitudes more links from "lesser" sites? So you want to make sure your link pyramid has a solid foundation of these kinds of links.
Mid-Grade Links
The next level of our link pyramid are your mid-grade links. These are links from web sites that have more authority than the sites mentioned previously, but still may not be top-notch sites. The kind of sites that usually reuse EzineArticles content often fall into this category, as do links from mini-sites and sales letter sites.
Mid-grade sites have a fair amount of links aimed at them in their own right, and so Google sees links coming from them as being more individually valuable than the base links. Of course, that means that you don't need as many links from these kinds of sites as you do from the base link sites.
Nor should you have more links from these kinds of sites than the base link sites. Remember, it's all about looking "natural" in Google's eyes.
Highest-Quality Links
For most long-tail keywords (keywords with less competition in the search engines), you don't even need the top level in your link pyramid. You can usually rank just fine with the base links and mid-grade links. I have numerous sites ranking quite well for many nice keywords without any top-quality links.
However, when you're aiming higher, you need to collect higher quality links. By "higher quality", I mean links from sites that already have a lot of links aimed at them. In Google's eyes, site with a lot of links aimed at them have "authority", and anyone these "authority sites" link to must also be important.
The great thing about links from authority sites is that a few links can make a big difference. So while these links are more difficult to acquire, you don't need nearly as many of them to rank well for your keywords. I've brought sites from page two for my keywords in Google to page one with just a dozen or two links of this kind (and I'm talking about some fairly competitive keywords).
Just For Emphasis
Again, because I can't emphasize this enough, it's important that your link pyramid look natural to Google. That means having a large number of base links, a lesser number of mid-grade links, and a few top-quality links.
Of course, some of your links will blur the lines between the levels of your link pyramid. Perhaps they're not quite "base links", but not really reaching the point of being considered "mid-grade", etc. That's okay. That's "natural", too, and will only help you in your ranking efforts.
The best rankings I achieve I achieve by gathering all three kinds of links at the same time. Of course, I get more base links than I'm getting mid-grade links, and just a few top-quality links at a time. This is the "natural" growth pattern of a popular site, and it's what Google likes to see.
My Personal Link Pyramid System
I've achieved top rankings in markets ranging from patio furniture to music downloads to local real estate listings and more. I accomplish this by taking advantage of my link networks:
- 1WayLinks.net - I use this network to create the foundation of solid base links that give my sites sure footing in Google's rankings.
- 3WayLinks.net - To get a smaller set of about 250 mid-grade links, I always put my sites into the 3WayLinks network.
- MyWayLinks.net - When 1WL plus 3WL isn't enough to break my site onto page one of Google, then I use my not-so-secret weapon: MyWayLinks. Google loves the links from this network, and I've used it to push my sites into top rankings for more difficult keywords.
You see, I designed all three of those link networks. That means that all of the links coming from them are the kind of links Google is looking for. They all have the geographic diversity, link text diversity and steady growth rates that launch sites to top rankings as quickly as possible (without rising too fast only to fall back down again).
Right now I'm offering a trial rate of only $7 a month for the first month of each of the three link networks. That means you could sign up to all three for only $21 for your first month. See if those networks work for you as well as they're working for me and thousands of other web sites.
Remember, though, a little patience is in order here: it usually takes two to three months for a brand-new site to see real traction in Google's rankings. However, if your site already has some links established, you'll often see results faster than that.
(Incidentally, this was my first post ever written from my new MacBook. I'm trying to become more Mac-savvy.)
Please post your thoughts and questions in a comment below.
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Like what you see? Then subscribe to Marketing Insiders and reap big benefits! By subscribing to my free Marketing Insiders email list, you will regularly receive special member-only insider information, discounts and freebies. You will also be notified when new articles are posted here at the blog. It's absolutely free to subscribe, and you can leave the list at any time. For subscribing today, I will give you a valuable free gift as well! |
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Jonathan Leger has been earning his living online full-time since the fall of 2004. He regularly posts advice about search engine optimization (his current passion), AdSense and Internet Marketing. 
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