Dreamy Google Sitemaps & a Page Strength Tool
Matt Cutts is looking for feedback on improving Google Sitemaps.
I'm expecting some creative answers here. I'll phrase it more generally: Forget XML files or even what Sitemaps looks like currently. What info would you want as a webmaster?
If you could design your dream webmaster or site owner console on Google, what would it look like?
Rand announced the launch of his page strength tool, which aims to be more accurate than Google's PageRank. The one downside to the tool is that there is a delay most all the data sources (for example I think my SEO for Firefox page is ranking at #10 in Google for SEO right now, but the page strength tool shows it as being at 3.5), but it is probably quite a bit more accurate than PageRank alone is.
Also interesting that on one front Google is requesting to look for ways to share as much data as they can with you while on other fronts they make external tools and ideas necessary and valuable because they are unwilling to share data they once shared. Thus markets which were once fairly open are getting more and more abstract. It happened with PageRank and SEO and now it is happening with AdWords too.
Comments
I think seomoz.org is great. I love it how it givese feedback on a number of different feilds. The problem with it is that it ranks sites on some stupid factors. For example "Position at Google for first four words of title tag on target URL"
The reason this is stupid is because some domains might have solely their domain name on the the title, and if their domain name is not a competive term than it would be easy to rank for that term.
Another problem is that seomoz.org lists the age factor of expired domains as not available.
Overall I think the best tool out their is by far google's page rank, which bases everything solely on links. I do like the tool though.
I think the tool is probably better than SEO for Firefox because SEO for firefox tends to have a lot of mix ups. One time I had 157 .gov links on my domain, one time my age was from 1997.
Well anyhow new tools are always good to have.
I think that seomoz.org is more for knowing how you rank as compared to what you want to rank for, while google page rank is more for letting you know how you rank in terms of links. Certainly one way to improve google's page rank tool is by offering the ability to rank in .5 intervals
i.e. 1.5
Also, another thing that would be nice is if this tool would not need to be updated every half a year like google's page rank tool. Perhaps this ideal pagerank tool would not need to update and would simply view/factor in the links you have every time you use the tool.
SEOMOZ.org was a nice tool, but it was not what we needed.
After reviewing the SEOMOZ tool I have come to the conclusion that page rank alone is much more accurate, and that in addition I have have come to the conclusion that page rank is a much more complex and advanced, and really a much better tool than SEOMOZ.
How can you say that SEOMOZ is more accurate than google page rank when the SEOMOZ tool factors in google page rank?
SEOMOZ is a nice tool. The waiting it takes for a search is well worth it as I would rather have consistency than mixed up results such as that are seen in SEO for Firefox.
In addition all 3 tools are different.
Hi Aaron - Matt from SEOmoz here.
Keep in mind that the pagestrength tool cannot take into account where you rank for highly competitive terms. Although your SEO for firefox ranks #10 for SEO at google, the tool has no way of determining what competitive keywords you rank for.
Also, although a pagestrength of 3.5 seems like a low score - compare it to the google pagerank which is currently a 0 for that page and will remain that way indefinitely. Your SEO for firefox tool launched only a week ago and your score has already gone up. As yahoo's link numbers go up over the next few weeks so will the pagestrength of that page.
What makes you think that Aaron's SEO for Firefox tool will remain a page rank 0 in google. Google just updates their page rank every 6 months which is why his SEO for Firefox page will indefinitely go up in google page rank on the nex page rank update.
Perhaps "indefinitely" was not the right choice of words, but 6 months is still a damn long time to wait for an update.
Hell ya, 6 months is a damn long time. Thats why the world needs a tool like google's page rank tool except 2 improvements:
1)no need to wait for page rank updates
2).5 interval scores for more exact results
Has anyone noticed that Aaron stopped posting comments to what other people say for the past few days???
Ya know what I hate. I hate people who say that "I don't beleive in google page rank"
Like what is there not to beleive in?
Page rank just measures how important your site is in terms of links. Obviously just because you have a high page rank does not neccarily mean that you will rank for some competetive terms. Perhaps what they should be saying is that I do not beleive that getting "qualtiy" links is important for ranking well in google, in which case they would usually be wrong.
The one thing page rank does not do is tell you if you have links that are related to the keywords you are trying to rank for. Well... I mean, I suppose that's what Matt's SEOMOZ tool does.
Yes,
I will agree. SEOMOZ’s page strength tool is more near to reality. I have tested my site with PR5 just few days before the PR update. It was showing me page strength 3. And now it is really of PR3 for that site.
SEOMOZ’s page strength tool is excellent tool, i never seen this much of information on other tool.
Really very good tool.
With respect to sitemaps, I'd enjoy seeing all the terms people use to search for my site... not merely the top 20. It would also be nice if it showed me trending for each term, not unlike how analytics does for the top 5. Lastly I'd enjoy seeing CTR for my search terms. It's one thing to know what number I am for a given keyword, but it's more helpful to see what the customer thinks of my copy, communicated by CTR.
Sorry... I didn't realize until I'd hit submit that sitemap comments were intended for the thread at threadwatch.
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