Playing With Links

Overnight a lot more pages have appeared in the Google listings for two of the blogs in the target="_blank". Interesting to note that the site 2 is quicker at getting from cached to listed than site 3, but has less pages listed. I expect that over the week it will catch up, and maybe overtake. Site 1 remains at only the home page.

But this is showing how important links are to search engines. Over on the other experiment, with anchor text, although it is a lot newer and I'll be reporting on only the 2nd week tomorrow, the expected results are starting to show through. This contradicts what people are currently saying, but does agree with my theory about the most recent Google changes.

This is quite fascinating to me. It could mean that Google is working towards the death of the links directory, which would not be a surprise. The sites that list well will be those with a lot of natural links in, not those that SEO 'experts' have spammed lots of link directories for (and I won't miss those emails...). That's heading towards what Google would probably like to see, but it could also spell the end of the internet entrepreneur creating his own small site and getting to the top of the rankings. Only the big companies with massive exposure will get the natural links in still.

I suppose it reflects what is happening on the high street. The big players get all of the customers, the small players are being pushed away. It will be a shame if the internet becomes dominated by just the big sites.