swirt
Forum founder. Former Owner.
- Joined
- May 17, 2008
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Enough already. Some industry designers are getting innkeepers all whipped up into a panic about posting new content to their websites EVERY day. They are citing that Caffeine requires it. I suggest they switched to some nice decaf tea for a while because the panic they are creating is misguided.
Caffeine was an update back in June 2010 of the method in which google INDEXES new content. It was a way for Google to more rapidly add blog posts and tweets and other rapidly occurring content growth into their index. It was not a major shift in the way Google RANKS sites. It was not a major shift toward favoring the freshest of sites. Yes Google has made a few changes to the ranking algorythm to make it so it may weave in a news item or some other rapidly occuring info into search results but those rarely impact the major searches for our industry.
Google is not looking at all your home pages and lining them up in order of freshness date. If you were at #3 and the #4 B&B made a change to their website, it will not cause them to jump to number 3 just because of the date. If they jump to #3 it is because they made a change that made their content a better match for the search.
People are being whipped into a panic and they are making daily changes to their home pages and in the process ruining some of the great content they already had in place and are actually sliding down rather than jumping up.
There was a shift a few months ago that gave a slight edge to directories, but that has recently been dialed back a bit and has nothing to do with Caffeine.
Misguided attempts at fresh content
Caffeine was an update back in June 2010 of the method in which google INDEXES new content. It was a way for Google to more rapidly add blog posts and tweets and other rapidly occurring content growth into their index. It was not a major shift in the way Google RANKS sites. It was not a major shift toward favoring the freshest of sites. Yes Google has made a few changes to the ranking algorythm to make it so it may weave in a news item or some other rapidly occuring info into search results but those rarely impact the major searches for our industry.
Google is not looking at all your home pages and lining them up in order of freshness date. If you were at #3 and the #4 B&B made a change to their website, it will not cause them to jump to number 3 just because of the date. If they jump to #3 it is because they made a change that made their content a better match for the search.
People are being whipped into a panic and they are making daily changes to their home pages and in the process ruining some of the great content they already had in place and are actually sliding down rather than jumping up.
There was a shift a few months ago that gave a slight edge to directories, but that has recently been dialed back a bit and has nothing to do with Caffeine.
Misguided attempts at fresh content
- Adding syndicated weather updates from weather.com to your home page. This is content from a secondary source and Google will see it as such. It is not "fresh content."
- Adding blog feeds or tweet feeds to your home page. Again this is secondary source content and either will not be seen by google, or may water down the things you are already ranking well for.
- Updating the menu daily. Will only alter your chanced of showing up for pear cobbler one day and dutch babies the next. Not a lasting content change to help you.
- Poetry quotes of the day - again may help you show up for Robert Frost one day and Walt Whitman the next