Google's Matt Cutt's "Big Daddy" Timeline Is Revealing

One of the more public faces of Google - Matt Cutts - has an interesting blog entry about the timeline of Google's implementation of "Big Daddy", Google's new search structure which has been unrolled over the last few months.

There are some interesting points made in the article which confirm some things that have been "known" for a while and also one or two points which may contradict some commonly held beliefs.

One thing to take note of is that linking is still important but who you link to and who links back to you is far more important than the number of links. In particular, If you are buying links or exchanging links on sites that are not related to real estate you are probably receiving no benefit.

Likewise, if you put links on your site to "spammy" sites and sites not related to real estate - especially if you put these links on your main entry page - you are telling Google that your site is not important and you will find yourself ranked accordingly.

Unfortunately, (for the mortgage industry) Matt does specifically mention a real estate site linking to a mortgage site as a "spammy" link. This may have to do with the industry itself getting a bad rap because of all the email spam from the mortgage and loan industry that we all receive. I personally don't think that there is a problem with linking to mortgage sites but because of Matt's comments I would refrain from doing so on the entry page of a site.

The article seems to be intent of discrediting the practice of exchanging reciprocal links and also link buying and selling. From Matt's comments, I would say that exchanging links with non-real estate sites is not a good thing and likewise buying links on non-real estate sites (which some do when trying to increase their Page Rank).

I think for the most part exchanging links with quality real estate sites where the link you receive in return is on a page that Google includes in it's index is still a good thing. I have written about this in the past and also have given detailed instructions for checking if a link exchange is worthwhile.

The article also mentions that Google has no trouble spidering deep down the directory tree - and that is something that some thought was a problem. Matt says in the article that Page Rank is a much larger factor. That statement basically says that Google still considers Page Rank to be important and that pages with higher Page Rank will be spidered more often.

The belief of most SEO's is that while Page Rank may influence spidering it does not influence that actual rank of a site as it once did. Still, if you can exchange links where your link will reside on a page with good PR - any PR on a links page is probably good nowadays - you will probably gain some real benefits simply because the page will probably be spidered and will probably remain in Google's index.

With this implementation of "Big Daddy", sites that have experienced a big drop or disappearance have likely done so because they have "spammy" links on their own main entry page or many of their link partner's pages have been downgraded or removed from the index because they are of low value.

To rank well in Google requires links from "trusted" sites - which now may be considered to be any links page that is still in Google's index and that has Page Rank. Just as important is to be careful about the quality of the sites that you link to - as that tells Google a lot about the quality of your own site.