This Week in Links - Week Ending July 30
Is Google Planning to Kill SEO?
Bravo to Econsultancy for winning link-baiter of the week with this story. Econsultancy claims that “If a recent patent comes to fruition, it seems the big G may have plans to undo all your hard work in favour of their own know-how.” Back in 2004, Google filed a patent, which was recently granted, for something called ‘Enhanced Document Browser with Auto-generated Linkage.’ It seemed to me a rather broad description with multiple applications so I followed the link to the USPTO website to read the abstract.
The abstract states: “Additional documents are automatically located that are relevant to an original document, such as a document being read by a user, and also potentially relevant to personal information of the user. The additional documents may be located based on descriptive information that includes personal information of the user and content information of the document being read. The additional documents, or links to the additional documents, may be incorporated into the document being read. In some implementations, the additional documents may be presented in-line with the document being read, such as through an in-link link or text snippet. The user can thus be efficiently presented with additional information that is relevant to the original document being read.”
Huh? Kill SEO? My less histrionic interpretation would bet on Google implementing this in a way that would show users an overlay of related personalized content and information similar to what Google Maps does with local business information today. Or Google Adsense… Then again, that’s one possibility and only one personal interpretation. Remember, just because the patent was recently granted doesn’t mean Google hasn’t already implemented the technology described therein.
Near the end of the article the writer says: “On the other hand, it {could be} a dynamically generated, personalized link builder that works based on personal user preference, surely the Holy Grail of SEO.” Ahhh, so the shoe drops. Maybe SEO will live to see another day…
So what have we learned? This is a great example of how link-baiting can quickly build a large number of inbound links to your site (although I’m unsure of the success of this particular story). Just take care not to take too much liberty with the plot line.
Google Dynamic Linking
David Harry from SEO Dojo offers a more reasoned analysis of the newly awarded patent to Google on dynamically generated links.
Phase One Link Building Strategies
Greg Shuey writes an encouraging article for budding link builders on where to find that low-hanging fruit. He outlines five easy steps that range from internal linking of resources to directories and link reclamation (404 pages).
4 Ways Link Builders Should Use Twitter
Interesting article on using Twitter as an alternative to traditional link building activities. Not only can social media sites like Twitter help you find link building opportunities but also help identify hot trends and what’s going on in your particular niche in the online world. With a large enough following and the potential of retweets, site owners can garner significant traffic from links on Twitter even though they are nofollow.
Tags: link building, Linker, linking strategies, natural links, SEO Link Building, social links
Hey there, my ears were burning so I thought I’d drop in (ok, it was my buzz monitoring actually, lol). It really was hard to say one way or the other what was up with this one. It was originally filed in 04 (as you noted) and then re-filed again earlier this year. Was there problems with the verbage? Or are they looking to dig it out of the mothballs? Hard to really say (as with most patents).
And really, unless they actually implement via toolbar or something, it would be on their own properties and hard to really notice, since we’d all be seeing a different page, with different links, (if used on their own properties).
Either way, I figured it was a juicy tidbit that might just get a few (toin foil wearing) folks attention… hehe… know what I mean?
Thanks for keeping some perspective on it, always the best route with patent analysis/reporting.
Hi - guilty as charged as far as link-baiting is concerned.
[...] does bug me because others do pick up on the story from there (such as this one) and then the crap spreads. The lack of accreditation doesn’t bug me nearly as much as the [...]
I completely agree with you that lack of proper attribution & stealing content deserves a public flogging. However, you’ve left out a bit of context here… I not only gave you full attribution but linked to your original story and your personal site… that’s TWO links telling users who wrote the story and where to find it. In fact, the point of my blog post was to call out Econsultancy for their link-bating histrionics and used your story as the sober-analysis-counter-balance. I encourage your readers to visit the Eightfold Logic blog and judge for themselves. This dog doesn’t bark. That being said, I hope you will continue to cover our stories.