Ranking Experiment

I'm here to eat my hat too. I'm impressed with the rank increase and truly hope it stays or does better for the months to come.

One important suggestion!!!!

Run a side-by-side test so we can have a near-perfect comparison in 3, 6, 12 months.

Pick another charity that was ranking about the same (120 in G?), and assign the same weight and key phrases to this different site.

The hook? - make the ads that link to the new site static instead of rotating. The number of sites would be based on the weight and would be generated randomly.

This will give definitive proof of this topic which virtually everyone is curious about.

 

i think it's important to note that this is an established site we are testing with. all of us expecting these results for new domains might have drastically different results.

 

But proof of what exactly? I think you may have misinterpreted the intent of the "experiment"...

 

I have done a test on a new site for a highly competitive keyword(s).

It does really well on MSN, so-so on yahoo, and doesn't exist on google. YET. But I am keeping 80% of my coop weight thrown at it. Which is about 15,000 points atm.

 

Well the GoogleBowler suggests you can tank your competition sites. Was reading about that on TW (ThreadWatch). You can google for 'googlebowler' and read all about it.

 

i'm not so sure if that's a coop thing ... many (of course) have been struggling with that situation for some time now.

now ... maybe it's a links too fast thing ... or maybe everyone gets in there at first. it's hard to tell ... cause you're not getting prime ranking for anything important without a lot of links.

viscous circle ... G was smart to quarantine new sites ... it keeps even the best guessing.

 

As close to "Proof" as we can get of which type of link performs better over the long haul - rotating or static.


If two similar sites, similarly ranked have the same number of ads from the coop pointing to each (one set of ads that rotate and point to the current test, and another set of ads that are static and point to a separate, but similar site), then we will be able to tell in 3, 6 and 12 months what the effects are.

Of course there are other factors, but if one of them goes from #120 to #5 and the other goes from #120 to #1265, then you can make a strong assumption that the first type worked best.

Even if they go to #5 and #6, we can deduce that static and rotating have similar effects.

 

That wasn't the purpose of this "experiment". It was simply a little test of the extent to which ads from the Coop Ad Network might or might not add to PR and boost Google rankings. In the short run, apparently the answer is yes.

The intent was never to evaluate whether the Coop does this better or worse than any other methods or strategy.

 

Minstrel-

I definitely appreciate your opinion. I'm just trying to add to this thread. Shawn started with...

My suggestion is to make this a more potent experiment and settle a very important point. While it's being done, add in the parallel static link to a similar site. Why?

What if we get back that the experiment goes to #2 . -- Was it the number of connections or some other factor?

What if we get back that the site dropped to #3000 after 2 months - why?

What if the static slowly climbs, and the rotating climbs quickly, but the static stays #5 for a year and the rotating drops, or vica versa.

Having a parallel test -- at this time -- would give crucial information for everyone concerned. And, it cannot wait to be done later - the results would be skewed by time.

In short - we can get half of an answer the way it is set up, but it is far more important to know the full story of why the results act as they do. The parallel study can give that complete answer.

 

vacations is my suggestion

 

I'm pretty sure Shawn is only doing this for a bit of fun to see if the Coop ranks exactly how it is or not. He hasn't shown any interest to change to a different model and test further.

After all, if these results stick, why keep testing. Its certainly interesting and if a Google ranking is also an added benefit, why go through the hoops?

 

I agree. I like the experiment as is to test the coop as is.

If someone wants to go off and independently run a test, fine. But IMO you have to find a site as similar to the one in this experiment and use the exact same anchor text.

Even with that there are too many factors to do a true comparison unless its a huge factor difference (like one is 5th and the other is 500th SERP).

I am extremely pleased with what I am seeing in the coop experiment and will just keep watching the SERP for it for as long as Shawn lets it run.

 

Great thread guys. I've seen it here for weeks and intentionally stayed away. I thought I'd give it time, sit down on a Friday night (beer in hand) and read the entire thread.

So we have concluded that the Coop still works with Google short term (posted 05-06-2005, 08:47 AM), a serp position climb of at least 100 in roughly 3 weeks. That alone is pretty impressive considering we are talking 100% off-page. One can already see the merit, no?

I am very anxious to see if the results in the next few months will be similar to mine. I can appreciate that other sites may tell a different story, but this is a good, generic way of conducting this experiment.

Having never read this thread before and sitting down and inhaling the whole tread in one breath, I think there are noteworthy words of wisdom right here:

I totally agree with Shawns stance in this matter and understand why an experiment of this nature was initiated by him. We now have short term PROOF.

For those that completely jumped over the fence I hope you saw the crow sitting on it on the way over...start eating .

 

The experiment hasn't proved anything we don't already know.

 

Please spare me reading the whole thread, what's the targeted site?

Apart from the effectiveness of the Coop links towards rankings, it will be interesting to see what a "suspect linking pattern" may have on an otherwise "innocent" site.

I use those terms with no pejorative connotation, just for emphasis..;-)

 

Read the thread, otherwise you will just end up with questions that have been answered already

 

Actually I think it has already proven something. Many of us were concerned about the recent disclosure of the Google Patent and how it may effect Coop members. Specifically link churning:

It would seem to me that:

speaks for itself. I am pretty sure that is the point of this experiment.

So ya, we can make at least one conclusion...no short term penalties, in fact a pretty major incline in ranking. The site is flash based so it's pretty well 100% off-page.

 

I am pretty sure that is/was the point, as well.

 

Just goes back around to the point that we already knew the affects of the co-op. Link churning has been around for awhile, and was only made public in the patent. All the info in the patent has been known in one form or another. Google just wanted to make sure they covered their bases since the search wars are heating up and since they're a public company now, they need to make sure they've covered all bases.

At this point, we can conclude what we know that the co-op, with a decent amount of weight, can bump a page to the top 20 fairly easily in about 2 weeks. We're now in the stage where Google "should" (note: I quote this because this is what I have noticed with various terms, though it's not to say with certainty that it will happen) start dropping the page slowly in the serps for the term charity. It won't drop to the point where it was before this experiment, but there will be a slight drop.

But we already knew this would happen, at least those of us who monitor or sites on a somewhat regular basis and have been in the co-op for some time.

And we also already know, based on Googlebombing, that on-page is almost nil with Google considering the "miserable failure" fiasco. It just goes to show that if you pump enough links, you can rank for anything in google. Whether or not churning plays a part remains to be seen.

One thing i think would be fun is if we had a competition like the Nigrtude Ultramarine one since the co-op has definitely grown in size since that competition.

 

OK, found it, now no.10 on G UK.

Was clicking on "similar pages" in my quest, compared to the other sites, it stands out a mile, it'll be interesting watching developments....