The Google Promote Button and SEO
Google must sit around plotting ways to make search engine optimizers sweat. They’re like the Skull and Bones of the Internet: you don’t exactly how or why they do things, but they’re all powerful. That was the reaction of SEO’s to Google’s new promote button that shows up next to links in search results. It started with curiosity and then turned into apprehension. You can just hit “promote” and the site automatically goes to the top of the page?
Voila! Instant page rank! The age of search engine optimization is over! Well, not quite: the Google promote button is meant to be a personal button, a way to ensure that sites you like stay at the top of your search results. It does not mean a credit card affiliate can type “credit card” in Google, click their site, and think that this further optimizes the site for that search term. If anything, it’s just a way for webmasters to get a little ego boost seeing their results at the top of the page.
Or is it? Does the promote button have any SEO value? What if 100 people all click the promote button for a site or a site’s internal page. Will that improve the page’s search engine rank? By the same token, is this going to create webmaster wars where people are removing and promoting sites at will? If that’s the case, it’s a pretty worrisome development. There are already nefarious Digg providers who promise to create hundreds of Diggs for a page by using a cadre of contract workers – a development that could destroy the usefulness of Digg. By the same token, the Google promote button could take down SEO.
But it’s not time to get that paranoid yet (even if I did begin this post with a reference to Skull and Bones). Google’s not dumb: they knew this was an issue when they implemented the feature. And Google likes content-based results because it inspires more people to click on Adsense ads, giving Google revenue. If you’re searching for “Stereo” and the first ten results are articles about stereos – you might be more inclined to click the ad for an actual store. Google doesn’t want to curtail this process.
But like all things with Google, it’s still a bit of a mystery about how this will affect the SERPs and SEO. Currently, the promote and remove buttons are per-user: they’re not really a Digg tool or a web-wide Hot or Not tool. They’re just a way to organize your search results. But in the world of black hat SEO, if there’s a way to exploit this feature, it will be done. It’s early yet, so time will tell, but my bet is this remaining in its current per-user form: it better.
December 8th, 2008 at 9:42 pm
Hmmm I don’t see the Google promote button when I do a search. Am I totally missing something?
December 25th, 2008 at 2:21 pm
I dont think it will be good if google keep this feature for per user basis. It would be better if certain percentage of ranking decide by public. Now a days it is not possible to obtain bulk ads clicks from narrow ips and hence google wont allow in this case.
December 29th, 2008 at 2:03 pm
Do you know if there’s a way to reverse the “Promote”. Like a good little site owner, I thought it would help me out in the page ranking. But now I can’t get a good sense of where I’m actually coming up in the ranks.
Now I’m afraid if I press “REMOVE”, I’m going to hurt my ranking. Oh Google you wicked little temptress.
January 2nd, 2009 at 7:09 pm
[...] this is hardly news to many of you out there. We covered Google’s Promote Feature in early [...]
January 8th, 2009 at 1:37 pm
You must login to google to see promote button and when you log out all your promoted sites are gone until you log back in..so maybe this is just like a bookmark feature?
January 11th, 2009 at 11:22 am
Very interesting feature. Have not seen it in local google sites, e.g. google.com.ua, so I think this is some kind of test feature.
I believe that in future this button will affect search rankings slightly to improve search results for all users.
January 19th, 2009 at 12:39 am
[...] Notice how it says on the left that 1 person (me) gave that link a thumbs up. This seems to have pretty big implications for Search Engine Optimization. It means that if hundreds of people promote something, Google might take that as a way to deal [...]
January 27th, 2009 at 4:23 am
Yeah I’ve seen these google promote and remove buttons. I’m not to sure on the whole thing yet. Google always tries to improve things but I’m unsure on how effective this will be. Like you said how does this effect SEO and pagerank. How will people abuse this feature and benefit from it. I know like you said Google for sure has thought about this and probably already have a secure plan in process. But I too am kind of weary on this. I can see maybe the promote button as Google always wants to show the best content as well as link popularity.
I think we’ll have to wait longer for us to all see how this all works out. It might be good, it might not be, but with anything in life people most always reject change. This is different for sure but who knows maybe it might help us on SEO and pagerank. Time will tell!
Lets hope for the best.
February 3rd, 2009 at 9:29 am
[...] this is hardly news to many of you out there. We covered Google’s Promote Feature in early [...]
February 5th, 2009 at 12:27 am
I must say it is nice to see your site at the top. Even if it only on your own search page.
Gregg
February 27th, 2009 at 2:10 am
Me too still confused about this promote and remove option in the goole search result. Need to explorer this options.
Cheers,
Sourav M
April 4th, 2009 at 4:28 pm
Great, I love any type of Adwords educational information. Your site has been bookmarked.
April 9th, 2009 at 11:09 pm
If you use the promote button, your searches are remembered. Fine, but every time you try to see if your page ranking has increased, you will find your materials at the top of the pile, and the offenders having been removed.
You are no longer rooted in reality. ALTHOUGH, the Wiki search has this function, and notes if you are the first to make the choice, so obviously, they are paying attention
See what real designers are up to: http://twitter.com/tyler_dockery
April 15th, 2009 at 1:38 pm
Hmmm, I can only guess why Google have done that;
consider this scenario:
A Client Hire SEOs to get their global network to promote this client’s site and request that they also Demote competitor sites, this then becomes a vicious costly cycle where client begin to realize that it is just cheaper to advertise with google than hire SEOs to constantly maintain better position. If this is the case it would seem that Google simply added this feature to render SEOs ineffective and therefore increase their ad revenues. One would think this to be very dumb, as it could render the Google Search Engine ineffective and opens the field for Google competitor to take advantage of this weakness. Who knows?
One thing is for sure, people are now open to speculations if Google is more concerned about making revenues than helping people find quickly what they are intending to search for – which is what made them succeed in the first place. Beets me!
June 3rd, 2009 at 8:48 pm
I cannot believe this will have ANY affect on SERP. It will only affect your desktop and what choices you prefer to see, in my opinion.
July 17th, 2009 at 2:20 am
I hope it does have some effect on ranking. The better google reflects true content the better the world.
July 23rd, 2009 at 6:37 am
[...] this is hardly news to many of you out there. We covered Google’s Promote Feature in early [...]
August 2nd, 2009 at 2:15 pm
Its an interesting function and i supppose over time it allows the user to cusotmize their seach experience and filter out much of the junk that gets thrown up by google.
August 28th, 2009 at 2:26 pm
Gerald- you have to be logged into Google to see it. I wonder what part this had in the recent caffeine-induced changes to the algorithm?
October 8th, 2009 at 4:39 pm
It should be interesting to see what happens, honestly if they were going to be smart about it, it wouldn’t effect SEO rankings AT all. Hopefully this is the case. It is nice to have when you find ones you like. IT definitely remembers between sessions.
November 20th, 2009 at 10:52 am
I see it as a bookmark not as a SEO tool . Also it is silly to think that this will change something in page rank. What makes you think that google will implement this Button and forget about Google Adwords ?
Also remember Google see internet as an online shop, where pple cand find the best option of what they look for.This button dont give : relevance, trust ….to a site
December 23rd, 2009 at 4:01 am
Bummed, you took me for a ride, I thought I was getting free promotion by clicking that button for my site, I guess I kinda knew it wouldnt do much, still a new website… atleast us small guys can dream a big dream
January 4th, 2010 at 12:46 pm
Stunning input about google. I’m honestly dumbfounded that that has not been said before.
January 8th, 2010 at 3:16 am
[...] are a couple of attempts at using the crowd to add context to content: Google’s Promote button, Digg, Twitter lists just to name a few. It’s easy to see that these tools don’t [...]
January 13th, 2010 at 11:31 pm
Thanks for the really clear explanation. Gotta love Google for letting us type any question and finding posts like yours (and mine on other subjects)!
January 14th, 2010 at 3:37 am
I think it can't increase page rank but could improve site importance
January 18th, 2010 at 4:59 pm
I've always wondered if just clicking the results had any effect on ranking. This new would be valuable if they could somehow keep it to one vote per IP. We all know there is a big opportunity for abuse and doing so would prevent that. Maybe they can implement a captcha or something like it.
January 19th, 2010 at 5:46 pm
Google always invents "little tricks", come on, i would be to easy if hittin this button would mean that you would get higher on google …
January 31st, 2010 at 9:32 am
I've wondered if this button would make any difference with SEO,