I read an interesting article over today at SEOmoz where randfish claims that footer links may be “devalued by search engines automatically” and furthermore that “Yahoo! says they may devalue footer links” and suggests that “Google might do this (or go further) as well.”

This is very alarming and can effect the rankings of many websites who rely on footer links to improve their rankings as well as webmasters who use footer links as a means of navigation (like we do in this site).  Footer text links serve an important role in web design and lots of times will give a website that rounded out feel.  Also, footer links are very helpful and beneficial for navigation with pda/phone/handheld devices that cannot render a full size page correctly, or pages that are specifically made for these devices.  Furthermore, people who are using text based browsers on terminals such as lynx or links also rely on such links for navigation purposes.

The ramifications of such a strategy is sure to shake up the SEO world and we here at Barlam Enterprises will definitely be evaluating our current link structure for our sites as well as our clients such as Alaskan Northern Lights, distributor of light therapy products.

While Yahoo only claims a small share of the search engine market place, only time will tell if and when the big G will implement these ideas.  However, when or if they do, you can be assured many more will take notice than currently are.

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It was announced yesterday by MarketWatch that “the approval ratings for President George W. Bush have hit a new low, as only 25% of Americans like the way the nation’s 43rd chief executive has performed, according to the most recent survey from Gallup Poll.”

As readers of this site know, we often like to explore current SEO tactics as they apply to current events and after reading this article I was curious.  I decided to check out the President’s web site and noticed that its Google PageRank also dropped from a 10/10 to a 9/10.  It appears Google has also lost hope for the current administration as well!

What can be made of this new evaluation by the Google gods bots?  Has Google moved over to support the Dem’s and condemn the GOP?  Unlikely, as Barack Obama and John McCain both now support a PageRank of 8/10 (an increase from 7/10 last reporting period) so no favortism appears present there.  Perhaps it is much like the general sentiment of the American public…  that we would just like a change or shift in power to a new leader with a different set of policies.  A set of policies that can hopefully propel us out of this cesspool that the Bush administration drowned us in the past 8 years.

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As many SEO experts know, links play a huge part in search engine optimization results.  It is especially inbound links with “dofollow” flags that are of the most importance.

Google has often been hush on the issue but it appears they are finally addressing the relevance of all types of links during a 4 day online blog seminar entitled “link week” written by Maile Ohye, Developer Programs Tech Lead.

Maile plans to cover the following during link week:

Day 2: Internal links (links within your site)
Day 3: Outbound links (sites you link to)
Day 4: Inbound links (sites linking to you)

You can view the blog here:

http://googlewebmastercentral.blogspot.com/2008/10/links-information-straight-from-source.html

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On September 9th, 2008, Google crawler bots did what they always do.  They crawled sites world wide looking for relevant information to index in its plethora of portals and sites that it operates.  But on this date, Google bots picked up one story that it wasn’t supposed to.  An archived story that happened to appear on the South Florida Sun Sentinel’s site, that a curious user happened to stumble upon at 1:30AM.  A time when the site has very low traffic, which happened to boost this specific article to the Sun’s “Popular Stories” section and then onto the “Most Viewed Articles” section on their front page.  That single visit in the early hours of Sunday morning caused all hell to break loose!  The article that was moved onto the first page was indeed an article from 2002 in which United Airlines (UAL) filed for chapter 11 bankruptcy.

There was another problem.  The article wasn’t dated, and appeared to Google bots as a valid breaking news story since it was posted to a new url!

At 1:37am, an automated Google bot crawled through the paper’s site for new stories and spotted the link.

Google says its program scanned the piece and, seeing there was no 2002 dateline, indexed the article for inclusion on its news pages.

Three minutes and two seconds later, Google News readers started viewing the story on the Sun Sentinel’s web site.

What ensued next was sheer madness.  A Florida investment firm spotted the news story on the site, and submitted it to Bloomberg financial information network.  A financial news network monitored constantly by investment managers and stock traders worldwide!

A Bloomberg News staffer found the bankruptcy story on the Sun Sentinel site and, at 11:07a.m., posted a headline about the bankruptcy.

Investors then dumped UAL stock at a huge rate, triggering panic and automatic stop losses.  The stock shedded more than 75% of its value and plunged from $12 per share to $3 per share until trading was halted.

Trading resumed later that day after the mess was sorted out and determined that a false bankruptsy news story was to blame.  Shares climbed back up to $11 from $3 later in the day, but there are many who are now looking at large losses due to this blunder.

The SEC is investigating, but who is to blame?  We are in an instant informational age and sometimes it can cause true anarchy.  A somewhat scary thought…

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