It’s been over a month since the Bloggernacle went crazy with the so called injustice that resulted in a Google search for “mormon temple” showing up no positive sources for temples of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints. A number of blogs decided to start making links to positive sites hoping to change that (here, here, here and here to name a few).
It appears all those efforts amounted to nothing. There appears to be no change. Of course, this did not surprise me and should not come as a surprise to anyone else that it doesn’t surprise me. After all, I commented on a number of occasions that it wouldn’t work. Google is smarter than that.
First of all, none of the sites linking to the positive pages are big players. They have very little effect on such a common phrase (490,000 results).
Secondly, the commonly used pages for the positive information had very little content and had poor HTML structure. Both of these qualities have a big effect on search engine placement.
Finally, few, if any, of the participating naccers are temple-oriented.
If we want positive, helpful resources come up for searches of ‘mormon temple’, there need to be content-rich, well-structured sites. With such sites will come links from all over the LDS cybersphere. That is the only way to do it.
Funny. It’s also the best way to do it.
UPDATE (for Kaimi): Google re-indexes every month. It’s been over a month since the Bloggernacle went ahead with the GoogleBombing efforts. If it was going to make a difference, it would have by now. The problem is not that there wasn’t enough time. Read above for the problem (some of it applying to the poor implementation you suggested).
Excellent follow-up. Thanks Kim!
My site is #18 on “Mormon temple,” and there are actually a few related searches that put it into the top 5, such as “lds temple preparation” (#1 and #2), “mormon temple preparation” (#3), or “LDS temple symbolism” (#3).
http://home.uchicago.edu/~spackman/temple and http://home.uchicago.edu/~spackman/templeprep
Ben S.
K.
I think the jury is still out. Google often “sandboxes” sites that suddenly get a big number of new links for 6 months or so. They want to stop people from spamming their way to the top with faked or temporary links. I think we will have to wait to see what happens over a longer period than just six weeks.
The efforts of the Bloggernacle certainly is not anywhere close to being a big number of new links. It’s a drop in the bucket (that’s being generous) compared to true GoogleBombing efforts or true linking initiatives that actually work.
Mark my words. Nothing will be different in six months.
Ohh, I’m not too sure about that.
Part of a real six month campaign would be to work on front page links from every LDS site you know that has a high Google page rank and to pick a site that has good HTML structure and content — even if you have to back door that (I’ve given in and sent in redesigned sites for groups I had an interest in and solved the problem that way).
What you’ve done is the first step, not the final one.
Consider the first search result for the term Adelbert Denaux …
Though http://www.google.com/search?q=Alessia&hl=en&client=firefox-a&rls=org.mozilla:en-US:official_s&lr=lang_en&sa=X&oi=lrtip7 is hindered by the fact that there are two competing celebreties with the name and things using that term get sandboxed a little if they rise too fast (the Alessia links climbed quickly and then got set back a bit when they were sand boxed. But, watch in six months — still, top 30 results up from the original top 40 results).
“Part of a real six month campaign would be to work on front page links from every LDS site you know that has a high Google page rank”
It isn’t about the front page. It’s about the pages that are the highest ranking, which may be the front page in some cases.
Anyhow, that’s beside the point. When I said nothing would change six months from now, it was in references to the efforts of the Bloggernacle from a month and a half ago.
I agree Kim, and rather than trying to gimic higher page rank, maybe lds authors should exert the effort to publish meaningful commentary with links.