This month has a whopping 29 tests! On this webinar, Clint is joined by Dori. They discussed the results of the tests and some applications for the positive results tests we’ve had and some other iterations of the tests that could be made. Clint and Dori also discussed the issues with indexing and what they both use to index pages. Dori also introduces her incoming link networks.
This month, Boryslav focused on testing the duplicate content filter. The tests included what percentage of unique content do you need to pass the duplicate content filter, can you add images to content to pass the filter, can we trick Google to pass the filter with 0% unique content, can you shuffle words, paragraphs, and sentences in paragraphs to make content unique? He also tested in the <address> tag is a strong ranking factor.
Ryan is back with the tests can you get weak on-page factors to index using a unique image and will a silo work more effective on a strong domain? He also tested if the number of clicks from the homepage matter in terms of page structure.
Jo also contributed his test checking if links from Google Docs help in ranking
Our mainstay tester James tests if linking-out to Amazon using a JavaScript generated hyperlink (document.write) help with rank, if link juice passes through a Google site and through a PDF link. He also tested our current relevant topic in the world, Covid-19. He tested if the words “Covid-19” in the page body and in the title can negatively impact rank.
We also have Hunters retests of past tests - if an original image beats a stock image and in png is better than gif.
Clint also tests if Google reads hidden text and a series of tests on schema types (video, FAQ, breadcrumb, article, recipe, product/offer, image, how to, q&a, job posting) and if they help with rank.
Content filled dossier and webinar this month! We hope you enjoy both!
Tests this month
Test 441: Duplicate Content - What Percentage Of Unique Content Do You Need, To Pass The “Duplicate Filter
Test 442: Duplicate Content - Can You Add Images To Content To Avoid The “Duplicate Filter
Test 443: Duplicate Content - Can We Trick Google To Pass The “Duplicate Filter” With 0% Unique Content?
Test 444: Is the Tag A Strong Ranking Factor
Test 445: Duplicate Content - Can We Shuffle Words To Make It Unique?
Test 446: Duplicate Content - Can We Shuffle Paragraphs To Make It Unique?
Test 447: Duplicate Content - Can We Shuffle Sentences in Paragraphs To Make It Unique?
Test 448: Re-Test: Will An Original Image Beat A Stock Image?
Test 449: Re-Test: PNG VS GIF
Test 450: Does Google Read Hidden Text?
Test 451: Do The Number Of Clicks From The Homepage Matter In Terms Of Page Structure?
Test 452: Can You Get Weak On-page Factors To Index Using A Unique Image?
Test 453: Will A Silo Work More Effectively On A Strong Domain?
Test 454: Do Links From Google Docs Help?
Test 455: Does Video Schema Help Rankings?
Test 456: Does FAQ Schema Help Rankings?
Test 457: Does Breadcrumb Schema Help Rankings?
Test 458: Does Article Schema Help Rankings?
Test 459: Does Recipe Schema Help Rankings?
Test 460: Does Product/Offer Schema Help Rankings?
Test 461: Does Image Schema Help Rankings?
Test 462: Does How To Schema Help Rankings?
Test 463: Does Q & A Schema Help Rankings?
Test 464: Does Job Posting Schema Help Rankings?
Test 465: Will Linking-out To Amazon Using A JavaScript Generated Hyperlink (document.write) Help With Rank?
Test 466: Can Link Juice Pass Through A Google Site?
Test 467: Do PDF Links Pass Juice?
Test 468: Will The Words “Covid-19” In The Page Body Negatively Impact Rank?
Test 469: Will The Words “Covid-19” In The Title Negatively Impact Rank?
April 2020 Dossier
Transcription Below:
DORI: Hey, everyone! Dori Friend here with Clint Butler and I'm excited. We've got 29 tests today. That is freaking outrageous and Clint himself did 11 of them. I decided to be on the call for a couple of reasons. I need to practice and 2) I think sometimes it's better when there's a little bit of a conversation. I will try to get the questions injected. We'll see how it goes. In any case, take it away, Clint.
CLINT: Yes, nice having you here. It's lonely talking to myself.
DORI: I thought so and I need to practice. I was on ~ yesterday and he is a freaking pro. He could tell when people weren't paying attention and everything. I got to get a little bit more pro-ness in live ~.
CLINT: As Dori said, we have 29 tests. I was going for 30 but came up one short.
DORI: And I have one in the dashboard. I could have probably written that in Trello or I will save it for next week.
CLINT: Yes, that would be good. We get somewhere else to go for next month so that's good. I think it's ~ because as this current situation goes we want to make sure that we're one giving you something else to think about other than the end of the world.
So, we brought some tests for you and we, Dori and I, will entertain you a little bit and then inform you at the same time. So, without further ado I'll go ahead and start scrolling through here. If anyone can just make sure that you can see the test results, PDF they're fine.
DORI: Yes, I can see it.
CLINT: Okay. So, this is from Boryslav and he did a bunch of these. I cannot get them all grouped up by tester this month just because they all work hand in hand and this is a way back SIA test 40, how much original text is needed. If I copied a webpage word-for-word how much of that would I have to change? I think that test came up with, at least, 50%-51% unique and that helped get past the duplicate filter.
What the duplicate filter is if you do a search and see a little blurb underneath there in the search results saying that there's some duplicate pages or like pages and we're suppressing this that's the filter that Boryslav is trying to get around with his test. In this case, he added how much unique content as to create the test and here's a standard set up that he follows. I won't get too ~ because it gets kind of deep but he did a 70%, 60%, 50%, 40%, 30%, 20%.
Then, he set up another one and looked at it again just to make sure he's getting the consistent results across the board. Then, you can see all the URLs and the keywords that he's – to double-check his stuff.
When you look at the first test, his control pages are 60% unique and it took 60% unique to bust through that filter. Then, 50% unique to bust through here which is consistent with that other test. I think Dori you were here during that time it was like 51%. It was the magic number and here's to get it out of that filter, that duplicate content or related filter, as it were, 50% unique is good enough.
DORI: It does confirm what we did a couple years ago. This was one of our first tests, I believe. We would say, 51% would be your sweet spot but I think if you go a little bit higher than that, up to 60%, you're going to be golden.
CLINT: You are going to be fine, yes. I think on black hat perspectives it kind of brings in a lot of opportunities too especially when you're doing mass pages and stuff and if you're having mass page indexing problems you probably need to spend your stuff better that you get, at least, a 51% you need to create across the board.
Then, you might see an improvement. I say "might" because indexing is busted right now and Search Console is a joke at this point so it's a little bit harder to come up with definitive recommendations at this time, at least, when it comes to indexing. I think I got a pretty good handle on indexing and it's almost laughable how bad it is right now.
DORI: What tools are you using?
CLINT: Right now I do Omega. Then, I also take into account some of the recommendations. If you build S3 website, for example, and you see some mobile error messages and all that stuff I was testing and bouncing through the different things that are wrong with it – the font size, the contrast, there's too many of these, too many of that, the viewport doesn't move or whatever I fixed all of that stuff like one by one. Then, on that sweet spot where Google's looking and then the indexing went back to normal.
The Omega and fixing in that mobile stuff and direct submissions to Search Console works. The downside is we're running into where – we have one client, in particular, they did what everyone else does; they built their website up, kept it in noindex, put it in Google Analytics with Search Console ~ already launched.
Search Console read it while it was still set to noindex on the robots.txt and it's been a month now since they did a validation request and Search Console still hasn't lifted that ~ and won't put his main money pages in the index because way back in March they found a noindex tag on the robots.txt. It's that stuff that gets ~ especially when you're doing with testing.
Test 442: Duplicate Content - Can You Add Images To Content To Avoid The Duplicate Filter?
This is another one. It's a duplicate content test. You set up the same kind of thing. You just wanted to see I'd put the same content on ten pages but when I put unique images on one of them would a unique image get you around the duplicate content filter? It didn't in any way. It didn't even try. So, his image indexed but that was it. It's all he got.
So, that's pretty interesting. I thought I would have expected it to work especially if you do the images with some text and stuff and maybe EXIF, maybe some schema. I'm not sure. I think those three or two or three more tests right there that could go onto that with that duplicate content thing. Especially for you, affiliate folks, that are doing master page stuff or doing reviews etc.
DORI: Yes, I would have expected that to work as well but going back to some another test that we did early on, it was about unique images versus stock images and stock images won. So, another test could be using stock images, something that Google knows to be – to insert to see if we can break through that unique barrier.
CLINT: Yes, that would be a really good one especially – I think we had original versus stock test in the images. Really didn't matter.
DORI: In the beginning it was stock images that won.
CLINT: Yes, I think your point is good though because Google knows the image. Google has already seen the image, it's already classified the image so maybe adding it would do that. I think that would be pretty – it'll be a good test for Boryslav, if you want to continue on this path of beating duplicate content.
Test 443: Duplicate Content - Can We Trick Google To Pass The Duplicate Filter With 0% Unique Content?
Let's see. Next one is can we trick Google to pass a duplicate filter with 0% unique content, which is a little bit interesting. Basically, what he did is – the images are a little bit misleading but, he's got unique text as a 50% unique. It's graphically what it looks like versus not. He took an article then busted out the paragraph so it's not unique. This is not unique.
There's one, two, three, four, five, six pages and he took a paragraph from each one of those and then made a page. So, it's not unique anymore. It's unique to this page maybe that combination but, at the end of the day, those are duplicated paragraphs which if you're using like a plagiarism thing in Grammarly or Copyscape you do that it'll show up as duplicate content.
He wanted to see what would happen and he did set up. He did the search results and it passed, which is really good because if you're a proponent of tools like Menterprise like I am, which is good. That one scrapes the top 10 or 20 whatever you tell it to and turn it into articles. I know that Google's seeing that as unique content and it index so that's pretty interesting, I think.
He couldn't look – or the keyword, based off with some of the stuff here and maybe he can pop into the Slack and explain that a little bit better if anyone has any questions on why he had to go with a text fragment versus the keyword. But I still think that's pretty cool.
DORI: He's on so maybe he'll put it in the question box.
Test 444: Is the < Address > Tag A Strong Ranking Factor?
CLINT: This was a good one. Ted Kubaitis and I have been doing the tag tests - finding HTML tags and seeing which ones work, which ones don't. I think Ted got up to a hundred and I did seven based off of his results and I confirmed and they confirmed. Boryslav, on this one is the address tag and basically how you implement it is you just really wrap text in the address code.
It was pretty simple and one that I would not have expected anything ~. I think maybe the true application of this would be you actually put your address or your NAP, if you're thinking of citations term if you're doing local or if you're affiliate. Maybe there might be a need for that but I'm not really sure how to apply it but at the end of the day the results are clear.
DORI: That is insane.
CLINT: Yes. I don't know why. I would have to look and see how this presents. Like, if I wrap this inside of that on a website what does it look like?
DORI: So, he's wrapping the keyword in the address tag?
CLINT: Yes and all those results are from #1. I think it's clear that it's using it. Now, if we compare that to the other ones how powerful is that? I want to do that. I'll have to rebuild my HTML tags test and compare the top three with this one or maybe some at the top ten because indexing is horrible right now, and see if I can duplicate his results. But I am anticipating that since they all shot up to #1 like that it is going to prove to be pretty good in a leaderboard test. We will see.
If you're going through an affiliate thing right now and you've got a product try to wrap it in the address tag and see what happens. If it happens this fast and then this result maybe there's some launch jacking going on there. Especially if you don't have a lot of composition for that.
What this was is the average. He looked at 4,000 sites and he only found 200 that were using the tag and pretty much everyone that implemented it put it in the body, a part of the HTML. He did say, there's a couple people using it inside of the article tag too which is interesting. I think that's more of a theme or a designer developer thing but you can actually use schema and wrap your article in schema.
Then, probably drop that address in there at the same time. That'd be really cool. That would be a good test for local business owners. If I wrap the page or if I have a page a local address on a local business landing page and I had the schema that addresses the address then I wrapped the address in the schema or in the article with the address tags will that boost the local relevancy up? Another one is if I wrap the address to have the full map and then the link to the map inside of the address tag will that boost the map up?
There's plenty of implications for this test and how to implement it. They could be tested right now.
Dori, any questions on that one?
DORI: No. I just love it. I'm definitely going to be using that.
Test 445: Duplicate Content - Can We Shuffle Words To Make It Unique?
CLINT: Okay, 445. Duplicate content, another one. Can we shuffle words to make it unique? There's control page. It has the exact same words just in a different format. That's all I did. There's control page as the ~ page is just there. It wasn't strong or anything but it beat that duplicate content filter which is pretty much what we're looking for.
Then, he has his other control pages that were underneath there. That's pretty interesting, in and of itself, too especially if you're like me and you get writer's block a lot you go find – you do the curation piece with a tool like phrase. Then, use a tool like quill bot to rewrite it. Will Google see that as unique? The benefit of quill bot is it actually is changing some words in there too.
But if you're just rewriting these things – like, I used to do a text document, I'll find bits and pieces of other articles and put it in an article. Then, open up another text document and open up Dragon Dictate and then read out. I would read this paragraph and then summarize it with Dragon Dictate and write it all out for me. Then, I'll have a 100% unique piece of content that actually sounded really good on topics I had no clue what I was writing about.
So, this is good to see that that is passing the duplicate content filter which is what we're looking for. More like he was looking for #1. You want to make sure that we can get it out of here. That's what it did so I think it's pretty cool.
Test 446: Duplicate Content - Can We Shuffle Paragraphs To Make It Unique?
Let's see. This one is he shuffled the paragraph. Here's what the original page is and he just changed the paragraphs around and then he wanted to see if it would work. We shuffle the page and the other indexes and we click search results on the page. Our page got indexed and filtered out his duplicate. So, the paragraph shuffling did not work. So, right now we know we have to go, at least, sentence level. There's sentence 1 and page shuffling around the sentences.
Then, looked around and they cleared it. So, if you're rewriting an article – let's say, you're going for a freshness play because you're inside of a keyword that needs fresh results according to the search you have to at least get down into sentences to make that unique. Then, you hit the refresh button on your dates and you'll probably see a better result than just changing the dates and you'll definitely see better results versus just changing the paragraphs and you won't have to do as much work when it comes to changing the work.
There's some implications here as well when you're doing mass page sites or mass page builds for your affiliate or lead capture stuff is that you have to spin, at least, at the sentence level. You can do words but you have to spin the sentences as well to get a better result. Then, get out of this filter here.
Dori, any thoughts on these? I know I shot through this fast because they're all pretty much – it's repetitive but new information.
DORI: No real thoughts. I just really love the detail that he went into. I really appreciate these tests, getting to know what level we have to go to to get through the filter.
Test 447: Duplicate Content - Can We Shuffle Sentences in Paragraphs To Make It Unique?
CLINT: Yes, I think that's really good because you could be wasting your time, like when I do manual spinning and rewrites paragraph four times and then I rewrite each sentence and each one of those paragraphs four times. Then, do the words. Maybe I can skip the whole paragraph part right now. Rewriting the paragraphs, I don't have to do it.
I can't just do that but I don't have to do it and if I'm doing the sentences and I'm busting the filter then I'm on golden. Maybe rankings will come into play whether you're messing with the words. That'll be nice also to test things going on if he wants to expand on that.
Test 448: Re-Test: Will An Original Image Beat A Stock Image?
This one is from Hunter. He's retesting the original image versus stock. He did a bunch of these. He did this one. He did pngs versus a couple of others, the reverse ones because Dori likes doing a reverse test. He set some up with stock images and then one with the original. Then, the other way around. Each one get original and one gets stock.
In his test one, the results is the original shot up there and there's the originals. Then, the stock image shot up there in test two. The reason when I wrote this up for Hunter is – and then put it in this way is, at the end of the day, Google was telling us that it really doesn't matter. You can have an original image or you can have a stock image as long as that image is different for what everyone else is using.
You are going to get some credit for it. I would like to guess – I didn't see the images that Hunter used but, I'd like to guess maybe if we put some keywords inside of that image it might even shot to #1 regardless if we use the original or a stock one. It would have jumped up there ~ and I think because all these other images are the same and that's the different one.
Google is like, "all right.". It's not world-takeover level improvement but it's #2 and #3 now. I guess if you're looking for some quick bumps just to show some progress that would be a good thing to do. Just like all the images don't use anything that looks like anything that anyone else has got. Other than that you are pretty much golden.
DORI: For ranking for that keyword that's what I think it's saying that that was different than all the other pages. That's what raised it up.
CLINT: Right. Then, I think about this from an e-commerce or affiliate perspective, if you were Jeff's – let me give away his niche but let's say, you're doing black hat right now and if I have – Dori, Jeff and I are all working in an affiliate market. We're all trotting this one particular black hat we all use the exact same image Google's like, "So what?".
But if Dori adds some stylistic features to it, maybe some keywords that Google ends can read it, image recognition can read it then just flips the hat around and presents that image in a different way Dori will get the boost based off of what we saw in the test because her image is unique to what Jeff and I are using.
So, there's some implications there. Maybe Jeff can chime in on that in his affiliate course. Then, say, if I'm promoting Amazon products, for example, everyone's using the Amazon image am I better off getting some new image for that product versus relying on the one that's on Amazon.
DORI: Right. If you can just flip it it would make it that difference.
CLINT: Right. Eric Lancheres a long long time ago he made that script or the action for Photoshop that you need to find an image ~ the same things really. Just what Dori said, flip it around, change the aspect of it, change some coloring of it a little bit. Then, Google ends will see it as a unique image but you got to get a little bit tricky with that but that's pretty much – that would work too.
DORI: What if he does a compression to convert to a different file type? From the Amazon, it's a PNG image, he'll do it and make it a JPEG. That helps.
Test 449: Re-Test: PNG VS GIF
CLINT: All right. Let's see. This one is PNG versus GIF. Hunter and I were talking – he's our HTML guy and I do a lot of page speed stuff and we're looking at different ways to do these kinds of tests. Gifs look cool, the flash and all that other stuff versus a PNG that just sits there.
In this case, we actually had a faster or a smaller GIF image. In kilobyte size it was smaller versus a PNG and I expected or, honestly, I was hoping that the GIF would win because I think a GIF on what pages would be a little bit more advantageous. So, I think it gave away the results there ~.
This is the page with the GIF in test one before it started out. Test 2, you can see that it dropped and then the PNG shot up. The PNG in test one went to the ~ right off at the beginning. Then, there it stayed, dropped one position and the GIF didn't do anything.
It was disappointing to me but, at the end of the day, if you're using a PNG versus a GIF and you have that selection and from an SEO perspective in the potential boost you get out of it you have better luck with the PNG.
DORI: Jeff said compressionnow.com makes them load quicker. You can go to compressionnow.com for load speed type of thing. I don't know if it would affect this test but that was...
CLINT: I don't know becausethe images are so small anyway. We're using like 1.1 megabytes that our ~ like to put on there.
DORI: Mostly, for the last tests because the compression sometimes changes what Google will see as the image.
CLINT: Well, it changes the entire aspect ratio of the picture, etc. Yes, that's interesting.
There's another test where we did the reverse, in the same way, test 1 and test 2. PNG won which is, to me, a little disheartening because I want to put some cool GIFS on my website. It's not going to hurt me but if I don't see any benefit out of it then why do it?
DORI: Why would you prefer to put a GIF on your page instead of a PNG?
CLINT: Well, I write in the SEO space, and as you well know, there's only so many articles you can write about SEO and doing different perspectives. That's why SIA is so valuable or has always been valuable to me because people are thinking outside of the box a little bit. Say, let's push the buttons and if we mash this like a whack-a-mole what's going to happen versus SEO content?
There's only so many "the top 17 ways to link building" or "the ultimate online checklist" or "on-page checklist". It's only so many ways to present that. My thought behind it was if I start using some gifs and I can spice up the content and make it a little bit more fun to read while trying to come at it from a new angle. SEO, unfortunately, is not ~ reinvent the market kind of thing.
Testing was a reinvention I would think. A lot of people talked about "Oh, I tested that.", which really meant "I changed this on my website and I watched what happened to the rankings" versus a single variable scientific test. So, that was a leap forward for SEO mobile first that became the leap forward for SEO. But you think about those, how are they happening?
Like, once every two or three years you get a new thing and right now I don't see the new thing coming anytime soon. So, it's how you present the basics - onpage and offpage, in a new way and be competitive. That's why I was doing it.
Test 450: Does Google Read Hidden Text?
Does Google read hidden text? Dori, do you remember back in the day when you could hide stuff? Do you remember how we were doing it? You had keyword stuffed text and you would write black text. Then, you would wrap that underneath a black background so what could happen? Google can't see the text but it's still there. Google sees it.
There's other CSS tricks and things to do that process but one I just described is pretty much all we did and everybody and their mothers says, "Oh no, Google is never going to find it. You're never going to rank for it. It's not going to work. Google smart enough to see that. Blah blah blah." This test actually took place when we were having problems figuring out indexing.
You can see that we are getting a little bit closer and we figured out an indexing. Then, things jumped in and out. But even when we were having problems indexing, Dori, check it out. X was hidden, the page still ranked.
DORI: Wow! You know that what was going on in the early 2000s and I thought Google had created a filter for that somehow and they could tell, obviously, that it was going through the industry and it's still stuck with the industry until today. So, this is interesting. Maybe we can possibly keyword stuff using the same color.
CLINT: Yes, I don't know if people are still doing it.
DORI: No, I don't think people are because we got so ingrained that Google could figure it out.
CLINT: Either Bill Hartzer was right five years ago when he told us that the new engineers are deleting the stuff the old engineers have done because they didn't know what they were really looking at so there's that option. Or 2) that was a good PR campaign. Then, the way they were finding it is.
I put in the applications here is if you're in a market that has a lot of competition and people actively go through other people's websites and report them because narc SEO is the only way they can break then you probably don't want to try.
But that said, if you are doing a mass page site or an affiliate site where it's short term thing then I'd, in my opinion, go for it. By the time the launch is over you've already made your money. You can walk away and just delete the page without any real risk. So, there's an opportunity right there too. Or if you just don't care like, "Whatever! I'm going to make all my money from this website. Then, if it burns down that's cool I got 15 more."
DORI: Exactly. I'll just spin the content a little bit at the sentence level.
CLINT: What is cool about this test is Hunter actually put a thousand instances of the keyword. This is lorem ipsum behind there. It's 500 words lorem ipsum with the 4% keyword density. He didn't go crazy. So, I would think that if you look at it in the code, you can see that in the code, it might not stand out to someone who doesn't know any better that much.
It would take them a couple passes through that code to look at it and go, "Wait a minute. This is hidden behind black. I'm not seeing this. It's hidden behind black." Which is pretty interesting to me. I wonder if you did it on the live site put 1% keyword density and some lorem ipsum. Especially within these site than these site ~ there's the block of text like this.
There's a green bar then the image, then green bar and then the image. The designers like that, dividing up the sections now and they're using those color bands. Who is to say, you can't drop some things in there. Go for it.
DORI: Yes, who's to say that you can't? That's a really good idea.
CLINT: It's some of my recommendations for launch jacking and niche jacking. You got sites for that ~ go ahead and knock that out. Especially if you're going to kill – like you do the launch and you're done and you just kill the page. The risk is minimal I would think.
Test 451: Do The Number Of Clicks From The Homepage Matter In Terms Of Page Structure?
Let's see. Test number 451. Do a number of clicks from the homepage matter in terms of page structure? This is from Ryan Hough. Basically, what it is is everyone says that your website/page that you want to rank should be within three clicks of the homepage. I get to the homepage I click to another page and then I land on the money page. He wanted to see if that's the actual thing.
So, he's got the homepage menu in the footer and ~ indexed. The footer page is no longer showing indexed. Menu links are still there, the homepage is still there. There's some things that are a little bit dirty in the test that he acknowledges. One is he had an IFTTT going into some of these and because he did this on his agency site and it's hooked up to IFTTT ring, IFTTT network and may have fried it, which is a little bit interesting to me.
The links and the way that the internal linking – I think this goes along with another test that you did on header versus footer versus sidebar versus in content. I think because of where those internal links are it also messes with this test a little bit too. To me, right now, I would call this inconclusive. It's pretty interesting.
For sure you don't want to have the only page linking to the page you are trying to rank to be a footer link but I think there's some more testing in here and maybe we need to look at this and how it's set up. I figure out some better ways to look at how we judge: is that myth or true? Do I have to be within three or does it have to be in just a structure of some kind to take advantage of the silos, etc.?
DORI: I think that the structure of some kind.
CLINT: Yes, I'm thinking of the structure too. I think you might actually have a better chance of proving this because you'd have access to more sites. I'm not sure that we could do this in a single variable thing way with a testing site Because as he knows, still DA1, it is a brand new page. It may spew some issues like that.
DORI: it says linked pages. The orphan pages links from footer may have a bit of delay.
CLINT: Basically, what he's saying is like those orphan pages – if there's an orphan page sitting there by itself there's nowhere in the structure it's not going to rank very well. Then, depending on where that link is inside of your silo the physical or virtual will increase the rankings of it.
But the test, as it was the hypothesis, was that if the page is three clicks down will it rank higher than one at six clicks down? If you set it up in that way, in my mind, if you're looking at it from ~ match structure a page that has, essentially, six other pages linking to it so it's one after the other after the other silo thing, that six pages would theoretically rank higher than the one that had three.
He's seeing that. It's a little bit different here. It's a mix of where it is and how you link to it. It's like he got two tests going on here. Maybe after you read through that, Dori, you can ~. I know I didn't present it very well.
Test 452: Can You Get Weak On-page Factors To Index Using A Unique Image?
Let's see. Can you get weak on-page factors to index using a unique image? We were talking about the tag things, right? He credited Kyle and Ted of the test ~ these h5, h6s and these are the things that they say don't have any value when compared to the other ones, or they're weak. So, if I put a unique image inside of one of these tags is it going to show up a little bit more? Here's the ones that he picked based off of his runs through Page Optimizer Pro.
So, h5s and Facebook and Twitter titles. Indexed. The title's indexed. At the end of the day, you can get those pages indexed. He says unique images but he's got a unique image wrapped in those tags and those pages indexed versus the weak ones where it didn't.
I don't know the implications of that because really are you going to only just do these things and then who's going to unwrap a unique thing inside of those tags? That's silly to me but it's still interesting information nonetheless. While they are reported as weaker or invaluable then you can assume that they may have some uses especially if you're trying to – again, you're going after that mass page thing where indexing is so hard. You can probably start wrapping some of your images in h5 tags and see what happens. That would be a good test on indexing because you just launched a PBN Network, right?
DORI: Well, I haven't launched it yet. We're still in the process of testing all the PBNs. Then, customizing them so they look different and look nice. But the testing has taken quite a bit of time because of the indexing issue but, at least, we'll be able to say, that all these sites have been vetted. They've either sent sites up or they've sent sites down and believe it or not some of the PBNs that I did buy did have negative reactions and sent sites down. I'm going to be releasing a couple different networks.
One is going to be premium links that actually did the job that you would expect a PBN to do and then also toxic links that I'll release the sites that push sites down to people that are doing reputation management. They'll have to get approved. I'm not going to let people go after their competitors or anything like that so just be a tool for reputation management or some other like revenge. I don't know. It's going to be there.
I'm also putting together a naughty link network that will be for people who have adult sites, gambling, pharma. All the things that you regularly can't post on other PBNs and packages that people don't like those links. There will be three links, three packages, three different types of sites.
CLINT: How are you handling the indexing issue? Did you figure out a way around that or still fighting with it?
DORI: Yes, we were having an indexing issue too. Still fighting with a little bit but I used two different indexers that we put them through and sometimes it works sometimes it doesn't. So, we wait around for them to get indexed then put the test on them. Some of these tests have been going on for a couple months. Then, others we are just ending that up right now.
We've also started doing some 301 redirects to test pages instead of linking. That seems to be a faster way instead of setting up the site Because if they push the site down it's – we'll see how many people want to buy toxic links but, we won't build it as quickly as we build the ones that push the sites up. We're also doing that but we still need indexing so that didn't help that question, did it?
The test pages, I think they made like 2,500 or 5,000 or something like that. We were testing 700 sites. Each one of those had 10 pages so that's 7,000 pages. Sometimes only 5 would get indexed. We'd shoot it to the middle page of those 5 so it would be shorter. Some of them got shot to a whole full 10 pages but some of them where only 5 got indexed.
It's been rough but we've been putting them through two different indexers - speedlinks and – I don't know what the other one is. I'll tell you in a second. When my favorite one is not working, that was bulkindex URL. That one hasn't been working for a couple months now, I think. Speed-links.net and then Instant Link Indexer are the two that we use. I'm going to put Omega on the list since you said you're using Omega.
CLINT: Omega is like BulkIndex URL and then they both went down at the same time because Google changed something. Then, Omega just figured it out. Bulk ~, I guess. I don't know. I never use them.
DORI: I'll try to log in and see if they're accepting. Looks like they are. Let's see here.
CLINT: While you check that out, I want to keep going.
Test 453: Will A Silo Work More Effectively On A Strong Domain?
All right. This one is will a silo work more effectively on the strong domain. If you were watching Josh Bachynski in his show for a while back, two or three months – probably longer than that, he declared that silos didn't work anymore. Pretty much every SEO out there who was still using silos disagreed with him. It was a claim based on what he saw, how he set-up his silo or whatever and his silo didn’t work so the silo is not working.
Nothing wrong with that. It was an opinion and Ryan wanted to test it. I don't know that Ryan actually disapproved of this theory, really. He's got the silo page. The silo went to this page. Then, in his test results there was no change.
Then, this was one of his IFTTT rings. This is ~IFTTT post. This is his silo post and IFTTT post. Then, his target page went up one position. No change. Then, dropped from two to right back – essentially, right back in the middle, in #5 if he did 10, right back to the middle. Two pages dropped.
DORI: Does he have a diagram of how he was doing his silos? Because I just tested this a couple months ago. We tested it a couple different ways and silos did indeed work. I had diagrams of how I was creating the silos.
CLINT: Yes, this is the one ~. You see here, he's got IFTTT network. The problem with the IFTTT – I gotta go fast because we got like 10 more tests but, the problem with the IFTTT setup is if you do it incorrectly you can pretty much toast your site Because you're going to, let's say, you have your website set up and it's got full syndication you're going to republish your content on your entire network.
Depending on how big your network and ~ of the site is versus if you have your feed set up to do the excerpt you can rewrite the excerpt, make it unique content and send it out and build the backlinks that way. Then, there's some other things with interlinking and how I said with the IFTTT thing which is really the difference between getting some benefit out of nothing and he forgot that he had his IFTTT network hooked up so he built the silo.
Then, the IFTTT network fired and sent links to everything, even his target page. That's why in this couple of the images up here have links from his IFTTT network that actually rank for the keyword too, which happens. Which is another reason why you want to build those out to be brand landing pages that result in a conversion.
That being said, he admittedly – if you look at this test, trying to prove Josh's point – the silos don't work. But if we redid it – like Dori said, she did a silo test and they all worked. I still use silos to this day and they work like gangbusters. But you can see if you throw a monkey wrench into it you can actually not see the benefit because now you have linking in there.
What if he looks at this test a couple months – this is April 5th, his last review, he had this up for like a month or so, would those linke juice pushed through? That would be interesting to know.
Test 454: Do Links From Google Docs Help?
This one is. There's an SIA mastermind that Kelly had set up and got the members into. There's a bunch of them testing Google Docs and stuff and this is kind of timely because. Jo did this as well and you want to see if the Google Docs will push rankings across all these tests. You've never seen one of Jo's things. Essentially, blues are controls, yellows are test pages and the goal is to have yellow take up all the positions up here and beat all the controls and we could say ~ good.
What he didn't see is that he ~ moving from everything. So, it could be a couple things. He only let that set for two weeks. We talked about that, three weeks, the 30 days waiting for the link juice to come through. He only let ~ wait for two weeks so could pop up eventually. If ~ didn't stay, where he built any links to the Google Docs. So, 0 + 0 = 0. If you have a Google Doc that has no power, theoretically, why'd you expect it to work.
Everyone's talking about doing Google Docs and Google stacks and stuff. I would like to think that Google may have already done something where it doesn't pass juice right away, especially if it's not a popular blog.
So, those are some factors to go in there and look at that as well. If you're doing a whole bunch of Google Docs and you set them all up, right now, according to this test you're wasting your time.
Test 455: Does Video Schema Help Rankings?
Next one: does video schema help rankings? I'm going to skip all these because we're pressed for time. I did a video, I don't know if you saw it ~ but I did a presentation on all these test results and we put that for SEO Spring Training and we put my presentation on the SIA site and that'll explain all these tests to you much better than what we can do right now. Just because it all ties into something and showing you why you should skip plugins.
I spent an hour making the argument that you're wasting your time at ~ and schema plugins or if you're using Yoast or SEO press to generate your schema because it's all based off – all those plugins are based off of the standard implementation that the Google documents that say this is the bare minimum which, at the end of day, is the bare minimum of what you can do a schema.
All of those plugins are all pitched off for the idea that if you add this schema it will help your rankings, it will help Google better understand. All of these test results and I did video, I did FAQ, breadcrumb, I did article, recipe, product and offer, image schema. All of those did absolutely nothing for ranking, not one. I tested it on 10-test sites with two different pages each and it did nothing for rankings.
HowTo schema actually got a boost because I think what is going on is there's text blocks in there and I got a boost out of some of the howto schema which is good. So, if you're doing howTo schema get on with your stuff because that's working and if you're not doing it you can do it, you should do it. I would go beyond the standard implementation but the standard implementation of howto schema is just fine.
Then, Q&A schema sort of works, right along with the how-to stuff but at the end of the standard implementation will get you into the top 5, if you're lucky. But you need to build this out. Like I said, and I did JobPosting schema too.
In the interest of time, so you're not watching the ~ videos, watch the SEO Spring Training presentation. It's inside of the SIA member’s dashboard and the first part is me going through all of this. Then, the second part is actually showing you what you should be doing instead of just relying on those plugins.
DORI: Yes, I remember. I watched that when you were presenting and it was absolutely the best presentation I'd ever seen on schema. Seriously. I encourage everybody, go watch it.
CLINT: Then, when you get the dossiers and you download these, these will make a whole lot more sense to you, especially because the time it takes to actually present why this document is – the table ~ and why ~. That's all covered.
Test 465: Will Linking-out To Amazon Using A JavaScript Generated Hyperlink (document.write) Help With Rank?
Will linking out to Amazon using a Javascript generated link help with rank? This is actually kind of timely because James did this test then Google actually released a video saying, “Hey, if you are linking using Javascript and you're not doing it right it is not going to be good.” In his test, he pretty much saw that result. It didn't do him any good. So, I'm just going to scroll down here and show you it dropped the page.
DORI: Actually, yes, that's a negative result.
CLINT: If you watch that video and you read the highlights basically this line right here inside of the Java that is messing things up or potentially messing ~ because if you put the links in here in this way Googlebot is looking for this a tag and a.href. It's not clear in the write up, does it have to be a.href alone, separated by itself and stuff?
So, I am anticipating that that may have been why he got the result that he did. He put a link on there and he got some extra stuff, maybe or maybe not messed with the keyword density a little bit because now you got Amazon stuff in there. Because he did another test where just regular normal linking to Amazon actually helped boost the rank ~. Then, when he implemented it this way it dropped it down.
DORI: Are we talking about – he put the link the page that got the link dropped down or the page that the link went to drop down
CLINT: Page that the link is on. It's the implementation of the link, right? So, the page that it’s linking on in normal method – the page in the normal method actually shot up. Then, when he implemented that same link using Javascript it went down. It could be keyword density or it could be that the bot did not recognize the ahref properly and that may have messed up the bot and thus it didn't get credit because the keyword density changed. This is pure speculation on my part of why the page drop down to the bottom.
At the end of the day, if you or your developers are going to do Javascript there's that new video out on linking with Javascript Google that you need to pay strict attention to and test to make sure that you're implementing your Javascript links properly.
Test 466: Can Link Juice Pass Through A Google Site?
James did this test. This one is Google sites. It's pretty much the same set up as always and he's linking ~ through the test page from a Google site. Then, sending links to one set and then not sending links to the other set. This set here has just got a link from the Google site and this set here's got PBNs pointing. Then, that PBN network that he used is actually the one in your SIA, the ones in the SIA member dashboard.
DORI: Yes, they're in our current realm of being – yes, we've tested every site that I have in the PBN Network currently and the new ones.
CLINT: So, he's ~ to one of those, I mean, link directly to this Google site that links to these pages. Then, you can see everything just bounce around. He's got a lot of images here. Bounced around. PBNs shot it up. Kind of filtered out really nicely, filtered out really nicely, I think. The Google Sites ones they were really at the end of the ~ it’s kind of a cheating thing
It's a little hard to make conclusions based off of these things here. Like, why these pages not move but this one did?
DORI: It could be the difference between the PBN metrics. Like what we're testing and some of them are shooting them up some of them are shooting them down.
CLINT: To think these ones started off down here already. So, if you think about it from one perspective, if all five of these (Site As) were here and this one came down could you make the values argument that a Google site is actually hurting you, looking at this data?
Then, on the flip side when you see these two you go up but all these stay up, is it the PBN links or the Google site that did it? Or will I have to say because of the jump as far up as they went it was passing the link through the PBN stuff why didn't ~ here? My guess is, probably, in how this Google site was set up.
DORI: That's interesting because I'm thinking he probably used different sites, different PBN sites, with ten PBN links. We need to know if he used the same site to link –?
CLINT: The way he ~ up, it is the same site. This is Google site A linking ~ and then Google site B linking ~.
DORI: Yes, the same ten that he was linking from, which I don't know how I could possibly do unless – because I don't think I've given them the list. Because when you submit through our dashboard it just randomly posts.
CLINT: Right. Posted 10 different websites. So, we have that. Then, we have to look at the setup here is that he creates five pages on each one of these. Five pages site A and five pages on site B. Then, build 10 links like that or all of these links on this site, five, on the home page, just for clarity. Then, are the links ordered linking out from the Google site?
Could that be an indication? “Oh, you linked out to that site five times, the same domain five times so we're going to give you credit for the first two links that you have and these other pages were not so much.” That could be really interesting. Like, if everyone's using tools and building three links to their website per page, for example, but Google's only giving you two because it's the same domain three times. It'll be pretty interesting to know, I think.
DORI: I think we tested that, and in my experience if you linked it out to different pages in your website you are okay or if you use two different keywords in your links even to the same page you're okay. If you use all three links with the same anchor text to the same page you're duped. They will only count the first one.
CLINT: Yes, and that's the same theory that ~. His was a little bit more narrow, how they only count the link to the URL one time. This one brings an implication that maybe, depending on how you set it up again, if the Google site B is one page, has ten links and then it has these five links going out to each one of these pages and it's in that order he may have stumbled upon Google is filtering it by domain name. If it's set up that way may have stumbled upon “you only get credit for few links”.
DORI: I'm getting now even more confused. So, in the top box he submitted ten links to those pages plus a Google site ~ link from? So, why are they together?
CLINT: So, there's two Google websites. Google site A and Google site B. Google site A links to these five. Google site B links to these five. Google site B got ten PBN links from your network. Then, the result was this. The question that remains is…so, there's five test pages. Google site A is linking each of those five test pages.
I'm going to presume that Google site A has a page on it and those five links to these are set up with URL1, URL2, URL3, URL4, URL5. Google site B linking to the bottom five. I'm going to presume there's one page. Then, I have the Dori Network, ten links pointing at that.so, he's passing the link juice up – it's a buffer page, he's passing the links up through the Google site.
DORI: Oh, he was linking to the Google site on one page. I thought he was linking to the test pages from the PBNs.
CLINT: Now, the implication is – like I said, I don't know the exact structure of his test, but let's say, he did this right here the way I drew it out. The implication is if this order here is the same as the test results order here because these didn't move and that one drop down let's say, all I did is shuffle up one and then those two fell back down, just for the lack of argument let's say, that happened because we can't see the full URLs. We can't verify this. Maybe James will see this video and he'll be able to tell us.
DORI: James is on actually. I can unmute him.
JAMES: Sorry to confuse you on this one.
CLINT: What I was trying to say is if this is the same order that you had those links on the Google site?
JAMES: You have it right. I use the Google site A, Google site B. Same set up, used them as a buffer to pass link juice through one of them and I got the ten links from Dori’s network. Of course, I don't know the exact links so I think that's the issue. It's a bit ~ by that the dash panel.
I don't know what the links were. I just ordered them through the dashboard and they got passed through to the Google site. Then, on to the five pages. I think I need to retest it to be honest here, make it a bit clearer. I'm going to be honest about that.
CLINT: For me, I think it's clear.
DORI: It's clear now. Sometimes simple written out diagrams showing us what's going on, an image is a thousand words. But it's true he's not going to know what PBN links were shooting to this.
CLINT: I don't see that matter. What I think matters is what you ~ is we may have fallen upon. Did you build it – your Google site was one page of Google site?
JAMES: Yes, they both are exactly the same. Just a single page Google site, just an absolute strip back with just lorem ipsum text on, with exactly the same IP.
CLINT: My recommendation is to go back, you know the full URLs and see if these URLs are in the same exact order. If they are in the exact order what that's telling you is that Google is only giving you credit for the first ~ links.
JAMES: I get you and I'm always aware of the order thing. I think I did a test before ~ a buffer blog and I tried to keep the orders the same but I'll definitely check that. I think that's a really good point.
DORI: That's really interesting and that would be really incredible to know.
CLINT: That would be valuable because if you're using tools like I am, like Ranking Factory or whatever building Google Sites and you have all those links to all in the same domains over and over again, Google's only doing the top two what a waste of your time.
JAMES: Exactly.
CLINT: That's going to be the first part of that test, verify that that's the same exact order and if that's the same exact order we repeat it on 10 different sites and try it again and if we see the same thing I think… Ted likes to talk about the discoveries of the year but that’s money right there.
Test 467: Do PDF Links Pass Juice?
Do PDF links pass juice? This is interesting. John Mueller came out and he’s saying that pdfs are going to be nofollow. If you follow the rest of the news nofollow is a hint. It is not a directive anymore. Basically, before it was dofollow or nofollow and you want to get dofollow links because nofollow ~. The thinking was it didn't do any good. I disagree with that completely. It was based off of the URL, the domain, the website was on and you can get nofollows from good domains and still pass juice.
DORI: Yes and we have pages with deindexed sites with nofollow link.
CLINT: And they were passing juice. So, they changed the rules or the public rules and it was nofollow are now hints so essentially dofollow. Then, it had sponsored which we tested and sponsored don't pass ranking power. Then, user-generated content is the other one and I'm not sure that we tested that one. I think we did but I don't have to go back and look but I would anticipate that user-generated content would improve your ranking but not as much as a nofollow or a dofollow.
With that being said, James wanted to go through and test it. What John said is that there's nofollow, that all PDF links are nofollow now. In his results, you see he added the PDF test and he went through here and created it then linked using the PDF to his test page right in the middle. If you go down here, bounced down, bounced down, bounced back up, bounced down, bounce back. It's consistent and he waited a long enough time to see the power from it.
Here, it actually dropped the rankings. The question that still has to be asked is if nofollow passes juice based on the authority of the site where the PDF is at, and would that make a difference. Where was this PDF hosted, is the question. I think if James goes – he's really tedious so he was doing the linking from or linking to sites ~ can see if it was actually being valuable I bet James will be all over testing which PDF and document sharing platforms actually Google trust enough to give you ranking juice through that nofollow.
It may be that the one that James tested this one on, hosting that PDF is if it's not a no-fly zone but Google's like, yes, whatever. People who link there are from spammers versus if he found a different source maybe even a paid Google Apps Google Drive and host the PDF in there would improve it because it's a paid known entity, now I kind of "trust you". That would be really interesting.
At the end of the day, James proved that John was actually telling the truth in this case that yes, PDF links are nofollow; yes, they can hurt you. Now that he's onto something I encouraged him to stretch it out a little bit and check the other PDF sharing places ~.
DORI: This could also. If I was putting pdfs on the toxic sites and linking out from PDF ~ sites that I already know that are toxic.
CLINT: There you go. Then, you couple that with the web 2.0s tests that we got to redo for sure. These ones are good for you, these ones are bad for you. If you can recreate those lists you can probably chop down your link building to maybe 20-30 sites and then use your spam tools like your GSA's or whatever on those 20-30 sites and rank all day long, with some PBNs sprinkled in there too. Do a whole lot less work.
Hopefully, James does but if he doesn't I may have to go and do it just because it's so enlightening, not thinking about that for so long. I just have my old list of places where to go and then ~ test it to see if one would hurt me or not. I think that's something that I need to do.
DORI: Yes, it was like when I started testing the PBNs I thought a good link is a link. It ~ works more valuable than others but I didn't really know how many would be pushing sites down that were actually toxic. It was really enlightening.
CLINT: Which begs the question ~ link sellers granny buddy for that matter if you're not testing your links then how can you – let's say, you use Dori's Network (I'm just going to pick on you because we're talking about you) if you use Dori's network and you don't go anywhere, you don't go up or you don't go down, you bought ten links who is to say you didn't buy five good ones and bad ones if Dori is not testing.
CLINT: That's what I was thinking and being in the SIA now for five years it's like, "Okay. We need to test these." Actually, I have to give it to Matt Diggity too. A couple years ago he said. But he had another way of testing PBNs but it was still like, "Okay. I'm building a new network. I definitely have to test the sites I'm putting in the network."
CLINT: On his thing though. For you, I would anticipate that you would be retesting those continuously to see the patterns versus the way Diggity was teaching it. It was, "I was testing it before I put it in the network." There is no mention of "Three months later I tested it again and now it's a toxic link."
DORI: Yes, we continually do that, at least. The test sites will be up. Then, I'm going to be testing because we're shooting anchor text to them. Is it bad? Can you shoot a URL? There are different variables that I'm going to go forward and test with too, with the sites that are, say, toxic and the ones that are good. Like, good different tests.
Test 468: Will The Words Covid-19 In The Page Body Negatively Impact Rank?
CLINT: Okay. Test 468, this is from James and he tested "Covid-19". You have been watching the news I'm sure and you see the routes of stories where big tech is removing anything that they think is against the big official narrative. They call it, we're getting rid of myths and conspiracy theories etc. But there's been like documented proof that if it's against the official narrative they're taking your crap out.
The most recent example was a viral video, where the doctors were talking about how hospitals are forcing doctors to attribute anything and everything to covid because, at the end of the day, it results money for them and that's to balance out all the financial loss from the elective surgeries, the day clinic, the urgent care clinics and all that other stuff that have to close down because covid.
That's how they turned around. YouTube took the video down and big tech said, "That's a myth. It's not proven scientific fact." disregarding the fact that it was two licensed medical doctors doing the video. James wanted to take that a little bit further and say, would have an ordinary guy - you, me or Dori whatever, we wrote an article and we had covid-19 in there.
Are their filters out there that are hiding? He tested this one in the page body. He went through and you can see there he added it in a couple of spots just to get the trigger off and the page dropped to position nine. There's at #7, #4, #2. Then, back to #7 again, then #3. It's bouncing around but there is no automatic filter ~ looking for covid-19. That's good.
Test 469: Will The Words Covid-19 In The Title Negatively Impact Rank?
In his next test, the text is inside of the title and just put it in the title and just to see what I would do ~. There is the title ~ and it went down. Back to the middle again, down, back to the middle again and just dropped there. At the end of the day, there's also no filter looking in the title tag for that. The speculation that James made is maybe he ~ with the keyword density. I don't think adding the covid-19 news really was significant. ~ caused the bounce.
Really, at the end of the day, the test was is there a filter looking for these things that were going to suck it out of the algo depending on the website and that there's not. For me, I think it's cool that there is no algorithm doing it.
Then, I think it's really damn scary that there are human beings that are tasked with censoring the information that's inside of the Google algorithm and YouTube. Which begs the question – and I'm sure Dori, I don't know if you and I have get into this topic, but if big tech is going to start censoring things, who are the sensors and who decides what gets to go and what does it?
In the case of Google, we know that they are heavily-outsourced or they bring in people from India to ~ all the coding stuff and the Indian people are mainly their call centers. They're mainly their support staff. There are mass workshops over there, mainly their quality editors and stuff and, obviously, have some people from other countries and stuff but I'm picking on India.
At the end of the day, if you think about it, how is an Indian person in a position to say what is what in the United States any more than how is a United States support person to say what is what in India. I think it's really dangerous now that we are. At one point, we're forcing big tech to censor and filter out "fake news" and now they're taking it upon themselves with no guns whatsoever and I think that's dangerous.
Along the lines of James's test, now we know that algorithm ~ they're not doing it. They're doing it manually which to me, tin-foil hat time, that's pretty damn scary. I know you're in California, Dori, where you used to be, your speech being censored all the time.
DORI: No, I believe in free speech. I believe that that's what this country was created on and what people fight for and died for is the ability to have free speech. Although, if they're trying to do it maliciously. That's a tough one for me being very liberal but I still believe it's like instead of stopping people having free speech it's educating people to not try to be malicious, is where I've always thought, if that makes sense.
Like, we all have to rise together. There can't be anybody saying you're wrong. That's my feeling about it so I agree with you. It is dangerous.
CLINT: I pick on you because I'm completely Republican and you're complete Democrats but I will agree with what you said. We have free speech and with free speech comes the understanding that you are going to have to listen to the occasional ~ because even that guy has that voice.
DORI: Yes, and he has the right to have that voice.
CLINT: But I think more people need to be held accountable in a different way now or they are being held accountable different ways based on what they say. It's ~ covid-19, if there's two doctors that make claims – they are medical doctors. I think they're both from California, as a matter of fact, and they did a substantial video that went viral talking about the covid virus from their perspective.
They are doctors, making it from their perspective and where they are. Who was it that signed over the rights to YouTube to censor that? On the devil's advocate side of that argument, if YouTube ~ signed a service agreement we are the platform we can say what goes on and what goes off. We know they're not very good at it, they're not very consistent at it but, at the end of the day, they do own that platform so if they don't want your crap on there they are going to delete it. But it's the way that they presented it, we are doing it as censorship versus it didn't meet our quality standard guidelines.
That's what they used to remove it but, at the end of the day, we were just censoring it. That's what they said actively on the news. They said, we're censoring the stuff. I think it's rough and I think that conversation kind of had to be had and I appreciate you struggling through it with me because of this test. It just shows that right now they're not using AI to fight it or to fight what they consider as fake.
But to me, this seems like a test that you want to keep going forever and see how long it takes for them to actually implement this in their algorithm where anything with covid-19, if it's not on this set of domains then we're determining it to be bad and we're going to filter it out of the search results. That would be nice to see if that kind of restriction was actually ever turn on. If that's the case then I'll go join the ACLU ~ lawyer fighting that fight.
DORI: Yes. When they deindexed all my domains in 2012. They knew that it would deem them invaluable to my customers which it did in that period. Although, it didn't with people that were trying to get ranked on Yahoo. They could care less. We knew that they passed juice so when I started taking them down they're like, "No. Do not take these down."
CLINT: Because they're still ranking stuff?
DORI: Yes, because when I would take them down they would see ranking drops but the thing was at 20,000 sites I couldn't keep them all. I couldn't pay the $12,000 hosting fee for 10 customers.
CLINT: I don't see any questions from the audience. If you have anything.
DORI: I have an indexing update. BulkAdd URL is still not accepting submissions. Mads said that he might be able to help us with indexing so looking forward to hearing about that.
CLINT: Nice. I know Mads just got some cool stuff on his PR Network.
DORI: I think that's a day then, an hour and a half. That was good though. We had some really good tests.
CLINT: A lot of stuff you can get the little brain juices flowing. I want to remind you to check out the two tests from James on a covid thing, just to look at and figure that from that perspective. Check out the schema and watch that video. Again, it's in the SIA members area for you. It is free. I'm going to try to talk to Terry to let me post all of them from the Spring Training. We'll see if he's cool with that.
DORI: I will also want to put out our affiliate course that's going on. It started yesterday. We went a full two hours on it for the first session. It's not too late to get in and as an SIA member you get $99 off. Just use the SIA code for that which I don't have in front of me. But, in any case, it's going to be a good one.
CLINT: ~ Dori in the Slack to get the code. Then, beat up James to check out that test on the links and let's see if we're wasting our time doing more than 500 links from Google Doc when you just need to. That would be a game changer. All right. Thank you. See you later.
DORI: Bye. Thanks Clint!