Google’s policies and ranking algorithms are the unseen hand that shapes the web. Much in the same way that the US Gov’s subsidization of corn and tariff on foreign sugar has the effect of inundating American food with High-Fructose Corn Syrup, seemingly inconsequential decisions at Google ripple through the web in the form of widely perpetrated bad-design trends.

This article will break down the first of two trends, identify examples of sites that use this, analyze why it’s used, and give ideas on how to reverse it.

The Awkward Link

What is it?
The awkward link is a result of two concepts: 1. Google’s usage of anchor text in deciding rankings, and 2. Long-Tail user search trends that can be generalized into pattern form. See below for example:

Example of 'awkwardly-long' link spam perpetuated by Google's ranking algorithm

Notice how many times ‘restaurants’ is repeated? And then ‘cheap’ as well! Instead of thinking about the on-site experience, the designers of this site architected the links to match up with common local search patterns.

Why does it happen?

Heres how this link-puke usually comes about:

1. A company spots a search trend in a particular vertical: e.g.  ’[RESTAURANT/NIGHTLIFE/BAR/PUB] in [NEIGHBOURHOOD]‘
2. Ranking for one of these searches, ‘restaurants in east village’ for example, will bring in very little traffic on its own, so they have to go after thousands of these combinations.
3. They automate this process by gathering a big list of variations on ‘restaurant’ and a big list of neighborhoods, combining the two and printing them out over and over again.
4. When someone types in ‘cheap bars in south camden’, they’ve got a crappy ad-filled (see below) landing page ranking just for that term!

Who uses it?

Awkward link-puke is the meta-keywords field of 2010, everyone is going crazy with it.  Basically, if you’re not a recognizable brand, you have a lot of content and you want to get it ranked, you gotta use awkward links, here is a quick list:

Local Info Sites:

• Foodbuzz.com
• ViewLondon.co.uk
• SuperPages.com
• InsiderPages.com

Celebrity:

• FanPix.net – Don’t ask me how I found this

Jobs:

• Yahoo HotJobs – YAHOO?
• Indeed.com – Not as bad as others

Also susceptible to link puke: Real Estate, Online Dating, and more drop a link in the comments if you have any good examples.

Why is it bad?

It’s bad for user experience.  It demonstrates the fundamental mismatch in how a user navigates a site, and how a Search Engine indexes a site:

A user has the advantage of context: they can start on the homepage, click ‘Manhattan’ then ‘Restaurants’, then ‘Cheap’, then ‘Chinese’ and they know they are in ‘Cheap Chinese Restaurants in Manhattan’.

A Search Engine is constrained to relatively simple rules, their bots prefer to see a link that says: ‘Cheap Chinese Restaurants in Manhattan’ because it is more specific. They don’t care that it’s stuffed into a bank of 100 similarly long links.

How to reverse the trend

Smarter content recognition, and better use of ‘user satisfaction’ metrics.

Search Engines crawlers already claim to do a certain amount of smart content recognition. Google decides that certain pages and links are important enough to highlight in sitelinks, Yahoo has said that they would discount a link down in the footer, and Microsoft has published research that attempts to isolate the unique content on a page. But they need to kick things into overdrive.  Crawlers need to get beyond the page, and think about the site as a whole like a user would.  In the meantime though, why not just tweak the PageRank algorithm to falloff quickly after 500 words of anchor text.  Right now outgoing PageRank is calculated based on the number of links, why not factor in the total amount of anchor text on the page as well?

When I hit one of the sites listed above, stuffed with link-puke and sneaky ads, I immediately hit my back button and click another result. Google is technically able to record this ‘dissatisfaction’ action, but my habits may not reflect those of the masses. Either way, Google doesn’t seem to be using this information well, given the amount of crap in search results.

Conclusion

Until Search Engine’s make changes to their ranking algorithm, usage of awkward links will continue to grow. Actually, the business benefit of this technique is only growing right now, given the trend towards longer, more detailed searches.

1. Learning through examples.
2. Exposing unethical SEO to bring more attention to it, and stop it.
3. Fostering discussion of SEO techniques (cause we all know there’s not nearly enough SEO discussion)
4. Determining what works, what doesn’t.

“You better not publish my secret SEO Techniques!” – If you find yourself saying this, and you’re not making money by doing things you wouldn’t tell your mum, then post a comment here and we can discuss.