News & Media
Privacy Implications of Advanced Features
Q: What are the privacy implications of the Advanced Features (the PageRank meter) option on when installing the Google Toolbar? A: Google needs to know the URLs of the pages that you visit in order to display their corresponding PageRank scores. Google states in its Privacy Policy that it doesn’t collect names, email addresses, phone […]
Read MoreLink exchanges bad neighbourhoods?
Q: Are link exchanges considered “bad neighbourhoods?” A: Depends on the link exchange, but I’d steer clear of ALL link exchanges just to be safe.
Read MoreImage alt tags and Google bombing
Q: Are image alt tags useful in Google bombing or is it just text links? A: Text links are, by far, the better option in conveying to Google the context of the page being linked to. Alt tags may have an effect, but it’s small in comparison to text links.
Read MoreLink farming and other animals
Q: You mention that it’s bad to participate in link farms. How does one identify a link farm? A: If you receive an unsolicited email that’s 1) offering to submit your site to thousands of directories and search engines for some amount of money, or 2) asking you to reciprocally link with a site you […]
Read MoreImages as links
Q: If an image is used as the link, does Google consider the alt tag in determining ranking? A: Yes, but the impact on rankings is small.
Read MoreSnippets and page titles
Q: Isn’t the click through rate from Google’s search results highly dependent on the displayed description which you can’t control in Google, but can in other search engines? A: Indeed, a page with a good search listing will get higher clickthrough and the description or “snippet” is an important part of your search listing (although […]
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