Adam Lasnik, Google search evangelist
Myth #8: PageRank is the critical measure of a site's success
Reality
PageRank was a rather defining aspect of early Google search. Today, however -- while PageRank still plays a role -- we use more than 200 signals in ranking search results. This means that webmasters who focus primarily on PageRank are missing the bigger picture and overlooking aspects of their website that they have more control over. Of particular note, PageRank is focused on the issue of a page's importance, whereas a larger component in determining search results is relevance. We aim to deliver results that are relevant to the query typed into the search box, the area where the person is searching from and, in many cases, even each person's own demonstrated interests, based upon search history.
At the core, though, what generally makes a site successful is original and compelling content and tools. For a given set of pages, PageRank may fluctuate, and rankings do shift as the internet evolves. But in the end, what's most important is consistently happy users: people who bookmark and share your site, who understand and respect your brand and who can confidently and seamlessly make that purchase.
Myth #9: Accessibility doesn't really matter
Reality
Too many webmasters have thought of accessibility as an afterthought, as a "nice to add" feature for the blind or for a hypothetically small number of people on dial-up or super old computers. However, folks browsing the web on an iPhone can't do anything on a site that has all its content and navigation in Flash. Business folks wanting to make purchases on the go using a low-bandwidth connection may find many of today's multimedia-heavy sites simply unusable. And, especially relevant to your page's ranking in search results, Googlebot cannot understand the meaning of photos or videos.
Site accessibility -- by users on a wide variety of browsers and connections and by search engine bots -- should be one of the first things webmasters focus on. If users can't effectively use your site, you lose business. And if Googlebot can't access or understand your site, you lose traffic.
Here are a couple of best practices: Make the bulk of your content and navigation text-based, optionally adding multimedia to spice things up. Next, test your site using mobile phone browsers and ideally even a text-based browser such as Lynx. We have more details in our official Webmaster Central blog, here and here.
Myth #10: Google has an adversarial relationship with webmasters and publishers
Reality
We view webmasters as our allies, and that's not just pie-in-the-sky idealism. Helping webmasters get great content into Google benefits everyone -- the webmasters, Google and our millions of users. That's why we created Webmaster Central, which features a collection of powerful webmaster tools, our official webmaster blog, a forum featuring Googler and non-Googler search experts and help documentation in more than two dozen languages.
We are, of course, a bit constrained in what we can disclose about the subtleties of our ranking algorithms and such, largely to protect against unscrupulous folks who attempt to deceive both Google and our users. I was a webmaster myself for many years, so believe me, I know that can be frustrating. However, we've been sharing an increasing amount of information with site owners over the last few years, providing insights into how Googlebot sees a site's pages, what keywords these pages most commonly show up for in our search results and so on.
Of greater importance, though, we've been supporting more two-way communication. We have a message center in our Webmaster Tools where we can, for instance, let webmasters know that their site has been hacked. And we have dozens of experienced Googlers from our Search Quality team who spend a lot of time reading and posting in our Webmaster Help groups and attending conferences around the world, answering questions and building up communities of search experts.
Michael Estrin is associate editor at iMedia Connection.
