What an interesting question. I mean, would it be possible for someone working within Google Italy to manipulate the Googleplex’s search engine systems to the extent that the ranking of certain sites could be manipulated?
As I understand it, Google’s systems are based on cold and complex algorithms. Although these sophisticated formulae perhaps could not be tweaked, one who knows how the algorithims do their stuff could, I suppose, pass information on to certain parties. Certain parties could then use this information to make their sites more Google friendly. What a naughty thought.
Why am I on about this? Good question. Actually, it’s because I was speaking to someone involved in the running of a major Italian website, and this site’s page ranking in Google had fallen. The fall was such that this person intimated that someone somewhere was possibly exerting influence on someone in Google Italy.
Could this really be the case? Well, this is Italy…. And Italians are ‘furbo‘. This post, of course, is pure speculation.
AlexR says
Hi Sean,
Yes, I am referring to the visible PR – I use a Firefox plugin which shows Google PR and Alexa rank incidentally.
Re the Google goodness level, I had heard that sites with plenty of visitors get low page ranks – as a result of doing things that Google frowns upon – such as selling links.
I guess it really depends on whether you rely so much on search engine traffic or whether you have plenty of repeat visitors who never access your site via Google etc. FaceBook would be a good example of this.
For me, page rank is more of a ‘probability’ indicator – in that a site, and its pages, with a high rank are more likely to be found.
Of course being found is only a part of the game – keeping people is more important.
I guess that for advertisers both PR and visits are important – as both raise the chance of an ad being seen.
For well established sites PR is not so important because other marketing methods will come into play – things like viral marketing and brand awareness, and these elements may generate as much, or maybe more, traffic than Google can. Just a thought.
PR needs to be considered in context, and not just on its own.
All the best,
Alex
Sean Carlos says
I assume you’re referring to the publicly visible page rank in the Google toolbar.
As Spitting Image described the FT index in the 1980s, the toolbar rank is green and goes up and down. It is only updated once every 3-4 months, is not what Google uses internally, thus has a tenuous relationship with actual site rankings.
Once school of thought believes that sites which are known to sell “unprotected” links have had their public page rank lowered while suffering no ill effect on actual traffic.
Rajab Bader says
Google Italy is just like the international Google with just some settings to show local results.
SEO for local audience (Italian, UK..etc) is different from general SEO. For example, If we want to rank this blog very well in Google Italy, then we need to either have an Italian domain *.it or have this site hosted in Italy (physically).
Also we’ll need to attract links from Italian sites. We may also need to translate this blog into Italian.
Although Google has recently released their Geographic targeting tool, it is still necessary to apply the above steps in order to insure high rankings.