Week 3 Results

Time for a recap of the latest results on the SEO Experiment.

Recap: The Second Week ended with the first site - that with absolutely no links, not cached. Site 2 - with normal links, had 8 + pages cached and several pages with PR0 whilst site 3 - linked using target="_blank" had only the home page cached. In that case the home page had a PR0 and the rest were grey barred.

This week: A week of changes!
Day 15 - site 3 was also cached with one of my own blogs (the majority are syndicated articles).

Day 16 - Site 2 lost a page - down to just 7 pages cached, whilst site 3 was up to 5 pages. At this point I thought things were balancing out...

Day 17 - Site 1 appeared again, with it's home page cached; site 2 was back to 8 pages and 3 had 5 pages. I also added new posts across all 3 blogs - all posts similar themes but different writing. Monitoring when these posts appear, but (2) and (3) did show on Google an hour later as being updated.

Day 18 - Was the same as 17.

Day 19 - Site 2 also had an archive page, but this was identified as duplicate content. Site 3 is up to 6 pages cached.

Day 20 - Something strange has happened. I'll leave this until next week when I've had time to watch what else follows....

Basically, after 19 days:
Site 1 - no links - just the home page is appearing.
Site 2 - links - all posts of over a week old appearing (cached about a week ago).
Site 3 - links, but target="_blank" - home and a couple of posts appearing.

There is, at the moment, a difference between the 3 sites. Site 1 is being cached - because of the pings. 2 & 3 are showing a lot more search engine interest, with 2 slightly more interest and better page ranks.

At the moment, it does look like for a new site the target="_blank" does affect the link. Not completely like other ways of blocking the link. But from the results to day 19, I'd much rather be in site 2's position.