Three days ago I announced my marketing blog challenge and analyzed www.webinknow.com because I thought it would be interesting to compare my rankings with someone else. David Meerman Scott responded with a post about my challenge and he immediately realized that by doing so he would tweak his ranking for the term marketing blog.
Since I don’t have a tool that can check first 1000 results I had to do it manually. While doing my painful research I’ve discovered that David’s blog moved from position 551 to 243 for marketing blog which is good for him but not so good for me. My marketing blog is nowhere near top 1000 yet but I guess it is ok because I don’t have a lot of incoming links, my domain name is new and it doesn’t contain any of my key words.
Why did I say “stupid things” in the title? Because I think that the age of domain and some other factors like PR shouldn’t matter to search engines that much. I believe that quality of information (content) should be much more appreciated by search engines.
In my case, I have category named Marketing Blog Challenge, my blog is focused on the same Marketing Blog Challenge and blog marketing in general, I wrote an article about werebu.com marketing blog challenge and my site is ranked 35 in Google for these three words and David’s marketing blog is number one. You can say that I’m jealous but I’m not, really, I’m just pissed at Google’s ranking algorithm right now. People, it is mine marketing blog challenge; I deserve to be number one! 
Enough for today, thank you for your time.
I have to disagree with you. I like the fact that Google plays senority with domain names. If sucks for you right now, but if you stay with it than it will pay off and you will be singing a different tune. I will agree to an extent about PR, but it’s not that heavily weighed in Google’s algorithm, so don’t focus on PR.
I’m interested to see where you’ll end up. I use googlerankings.com to check results up to 1000. you’ll need a google api key. It is slow but its fairly accurate.
Nice blog.
Maybe you are right Jordan, will see what will happend in the future.
I’m also interested where will I end up, hopefully near top 5
Thanks for being interested in my marketing blog challenge.
Sasha, When I started my blog in late 2004 I was in exactly the same position that you are now. In the beginning I got no traffic, just a bunch of cobwebs and dust.
Keep it up. You’ll do great because you have the passion and you post often.
This experiment is fun for me too. I didn’t realize that with only one post (and the link from you) I could improve my SEO for a phrase like “marketing blog” so much.
Take care, David
Hi David,
it is fun for me too. I think you’ll be happy to know that I’m writing “About me” page which will be available under “Author” page.
I hope that I will do great but it is anoying to see that you are nowhere near your goal… well, I must get back to work.
Thank you for your comments guys.
[...] I think that old domains carry too much weight. I bloged about it yesterday. Here is the link if you want to read: Marketing Blog Challenge – stupid things p.l.u.r. __________________ Marketing Blog [...]
Search results should be about relevance of content….not who could afford an old domain name. It plays into the whole “consolidation of influence by those who have money/power to buy old domains” not “relevant search results based on relevance of the website.” Sorry, but I am another who disagrees with Google awarding older domains relevance.
You’ve made a point about biying old domains. If you can afford to buy an old domain and to buy couple of strong links then SEO is a game for you…. of coarse this doesn’t mean that you can in to top 10 for a term like “marketing blog” just like that but with enough money and common sense you (or I) could do that to….
Cheers
The SEO game sounds like a super competitive one to get into. I want to get started in it, but man, I don’t know how I can compete on price.
It is not always the money, most of the time I have problem with the time itself, better say the lack of time….
S.