GPWA Times Magazine - Issue30 - October 2014

COVER STORY simplest this could be information regard- ing associated products and services. It’s unlikely that any site worth its salt won’t already have pages set up like this. An excellent user journey and experience are at the heart of most operator and af- filiate sites in the iGaming space. But thin landing pages that don’t have a relation- ship with the rest of the site are likely to gain a low rating. Another development that has relevance in this area is that the search giant wants sites to have contact information if they are to gain a high rating. This is of par- ticular relevance to affiliates, and moving forward it is clear that the inclusion of just a valid e-mail address for contact some- where on the site is an important credibil- ity signal. Affiliates, spam and cloaking Either raters found them confusing, or Google believes references to affiliates, spam and cloaking are unwarranted be- cause it has all those issues in hand from an algorithmic perspective. Whatever the reason, they made an ap- pearance in former guides and now no lon- ger get a mention. Putting affiliates aside, in recent years the Panda and Penguin up- dates have certainly given Google the up- per hand in the fight against webspam. Techniques like cloaking are still used in particular SERPs, but this is a minor- ity tactic now and the number of its pro- ponents is dwindling. The same cannot be said for spam, which of course takes many guises, so the fact that any mention has been removed is an interesting one. It perhaps underlines Google’s determina- tion to aggressively prosecute spam via its webspam team. In terms of affiliate sites, Google previ- ously mentioned that thin affiliate sites should be given a low quality rating. That guidelines around thin affiliate sites have been removed again shows that the com- pany is confident its Panda algorithm has a handle on the situation. How reputable are you? The reputation of sites has been given prominence in the new guidelines, with raters encouraged to give a poor rating to those sites that have a negative reputation. This could be based on fraudulent or ma- licious behavior, or simply a slew of poor ratings from customers. This update to the guidelines does bring into sharp focus the possibility of reputa- tional information being used as a signal when ranking sites. It raises the possibility that if you’ve not paid out customers or affiliates and come into criticism online you could be in trouble in the future. We know that the search engine’s semantic understanding only grows with time, so it would not be hugely surprising to see this development come about. So what do we know? For a company that clearly places a sig- nificant emphasis on keeping its secrets intact, it is no coincidence that each new edition of the Search Quality Rating Guidelines finds its way into the pub- lic domain. Some of the elements contained within the guidelines and discussed above are areas that the company will struggle to address algorithmically for some time. Reputation, for instance, will be difficult (but not impossible) to assess, as will the areas covered by the E-A-T acronym. These guidelines are a great indication of which way Google would like the search engine to go, regardless of what is techni- cally possible. From an SEO perspective it gives us a very clear impression of what is required to rank successfully in the years to come. And if future-proofing your search strategy is a priority, the guide- lines are certainly worth a read. You can take a look at the guide for your- self here: http://gpwa.org/372 . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Joel Turner is the head of content strategy at search and social media marketing agency Blueclaw. A trained journalist, he was formerly the director of a boutique online PR and social media agency and has worked on a huge variety of marketing projects across offline and online channels. He brings his background in PR and digital to bear in helping clients develop innovative search and social media strategies that integrate creativity and the latest technology with communications know-how. This update . . . raises the possibility that if you’ve not paid out customers or affiliates and come into criticism online you could be in trouble in the future. Google is ready to E-A-T