My Cottage Holiday Free Listing

[Garri]

Normally I would say the page rank is nonsense but just noticed that our Hotel Haiku site is 4/10. Bizarre! Especially as site is barely a year old and has absolutely no SEO. Why no SEO? Couldn't be arsed!

[charles cawley]

I agree with you. By itself google page rank is not much use unless you compare a wide spread. A rank of 1 compared to a rank of 4 certainly could indicate something.

Rankings need to be taken as a bunch. If, for instance, you just took our Alexa Rank it makes us look pretty good indeed. If we were that good I would be delighted.

I think this was caused by an early burst of major (and a waste of money) facebook ad spending in 2010.

Anyway, our traffic activity according to Alexa looks excellent and outstrips some other quite significant sites.

You need to take several indicators to get a rough guide to a web site credibility. However I have no doubt whatsoever that a web rank of 2 compared to, say, a rank of 5 is a clear indication that the former has a long way to go before it is a major influencer on the internet.

I suppose, what I am trying to say, is that myholidaycottage appears to be much less of an apparent threat if a bad review appears, than many other review sites. It appears to be run or partly based in The Isle of Man.

[MyCottageHoliday]

Am I understanding this correctly, that this site allows anyone to post a review about any holiday cottage they've stayed in and the owner is not informed unless they have chosen to register on the site?

Hi, following this thread with interest too....I was beginning to assume that's the deal. You register as a paying advertiser £245* per month !!!!! which gives you right to reply, or you list FOC, but have no right to respond to a negative review.

*If Garri is not being ironic over the price, the £245 totally blows it out of the water as far as I'm concerned.

I am reluctant to post on this thread because that seems to offend but I think I have the right to respond to this.

Cottage owners are welcome to add their cottages at no charge - nada- nothing - zip. They always have been. we briefly looked at allowing cottage owners to generate more exposure on the site by buying a premium of some kind but never actually implemented it.

If you add your own property (free of charge) you then receive a notification if a review is added. You also have the right to respond to a review and you can add reviews from your own guest book. All of this is explained in some detail on the site.

We have hundreds of cottage owners and many smaller agents using the site to generate impartial reviews for their properties. You'll see (if you can be bothered to read the site) that many very credible owners are delighted to work with us (at no cost) and believe that impartial reviews help them market their properties.

I'm not here promoting MyCottageHoliday - I don't care if you add your property or not because I'm not making money if you do or don't - but I do care about ill informed opinion that demeans a site that many sensible and informed people regard as having a very positive role to play in the self-catering industry in the UK. http://www.mycottageholiday.co.uk/dont_ ... or_it.html

I won't contribute to this thread again but I'm happy to respond to any enquiries or concerns raised with me directly.

One last point for you to reflect on. Anyone can leave a comment anywhere on the internet about your property. The may well have done so already. Our point is that on MyCottageHoliday - if you have added your own property details, at no charge, you'll know it has happened and you'll have a right to reply. And as one of the contributors to this thread has found (although chosen not to mention) in circumstances where a review is disputed, we'll remove it as soon as we are told and will investigate the matter. In most circumstances we are able to put reviewer and owner together to resolve their differences. Please tell me how this can be a bad thing.

[MyCottageHoliday]

I suppose, what I am trying to say, is that myholidaycottage appears to be much less of an apparent threat if a bad review appears, than many other review sites. It appears to be run or partly based in The Isle of Man.

It's MyCottageHoliday and we're based (and run) entirely from Kent in the UK.

And as for page rank - I have worked in the web industry for 15 years and can assure you that if one wanted to - and we don't - one could manipulate the page rank in any way we liked. There is an entire industry (called search engine optimisation) built around massaging the relative page rank of a site within Google.

[Garri]

I know the secret of getting a good page rank very quickly, for no money and without any SEO tactics (black or white): create something truly remarkable that people will want to talk about and link to for free!

[charles cawley]

"I have worked in the web industry for 15 years and can assure you that if one wanted to - and we don't - one could manipulate the page rank in any way we liked. There is an entire industry (called search engine optimisation) built around massaging the relative page rank of a site within Google."

If you are saying you can manipulate google rank easily... you could make vast money in SEO immediately. And yet you feel making big money is not the aim?

How come all the Indian and other SEO fraudsters dont clue on to this easy manipulation you mention and make vast sums of money the 'easy' way? We have a rank of three... so you are saying you could transform that to 5 or 6 and fool Google? Is all the hard work millions of people do to get links and present sites right the work of fools?

People who claim they can fool Google are either incredibly competent and exceptionally gifted risk takers or they are mistaken.

What you say, if you are referring to Google page ranking, should be justified... it flies against the experience of millions of people. If you can manipulate Google page rank... and it does have some major relevance to search results... why on earth don't you do this now? And is there eany evidence of being high up on page rankings for a wide variety of searches?

As for the Isle of Man. I apologise, your web site address is, in fact, registered:

BB Property Limited (Registrant)
12 Newlands Road
Tunbridge Wells
Kent
TN4 9AT
United Kingdom

www.bb-property.co.uk is also recorded as being registered at the same address recorded as a Sole Trader under the name of BBMP with Beverley Brown as the registrant.


As for "15 years in the industry"... I set up the aggregator site Logisticsnews.com in 1998 and sold it to the Americans (who messed it up) in 2006. It made profits for 5 years. You can see some of its history from Waybackmachine; it was crude but quite effective:

Please do not assume we are wet behind the ears. If I am wrong, then please correct me with sound evidence. Web ranking is not the be all and end all. But to imply that a difference between a rank of 2 and a rank of, say 5, could well be meaningless is quite a claim.

Like it or not, your site appears to have a long way long way before it matches the influence of many others. The impact of a bad review on Trip Advisor could be many many times more serious. The Google Page Rank of Trip advisor is: 7/10 where yours is 2/10. Of course, if this is a misperception, you could easily do a little bit of SEO work to raise your Google Page rank accordingly whch would be a good step to mending what you might feel is an unfair perception... which I and many other misguided people may be labouring under. As you can "manipulate page rank in any way we like" why not go for, say, a Google Page rank of 6? That would be very impressive.

The registered address was found from http://webwhois.nic.uk/cgi-bin/whois.cg ... mit=Lookup

You can find this sort of information out from www.nominet.org.uk

WaybackMachine: http://wayback.archive.org/web/*/http:/ ... csnews.com http://www.archive.org/web/web.php

[gam]

You can indeed fake a PageRank though that's not really manipulating it because it's not genuine (and Google will eventually detect it and punish you).

Keeping the details sketchy (as this is not a good thing at all), the way it is done is by 301 redirecting to a legitimate high PagRank page in another domain (doesn't need to be owned by you), then post a link to the domain you want to get a high PageRank with. You might also attempt some php cloaking. Next time Google updates (every 3 month or so) you'll then get much the same PageRank as the page/site you've redirected to.

The important thing to note however is that the page will not actually be indexed by Google as it is redirecting to another site so it is only of use to unscrupulous SEO companies who are selling or trading links. Another reason to avoid many people/companies making SEO promises. There are various fake PageRank checkers available.

So, yes you can fake a PageRank but no, you can't manipulate a true PageRank other than by the accepted and mostly legitimate methods.

[salmoncottage]

We live in an age where people will scandal, gossip and slander others to raise themselves up onto a pedestal of false superiority and this seems to be more important to certain individuals rather than honest criticism or informed opinion based on past experience. Most social networking sites and some newspapers are riddled with this infantile and mind numbing pap, which usually ends in the collapse of the monster (the news of the screws is an example).
Anyone daring to enter into this type of media for profit or not better have the right intentions backed up with a very thick skin.

[charles cawley]

Trying to fool google is a dangerous and self-defeating game.

Page Rank is a good indicator for this reason.

The likes of www.jcpenney.com and www.bmw.com found this out at a very high cost:

http://searchengineland.com/new-york-ti ... ogle-64529

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/4685750.stm

It may be possible to give a very short term impression of a high page rank... but any business thinking of staying around for more than a few days should not dream of trying this sort of thing.

You cannot manipulate long term google page rankings without paying a very high price for trying to get clever with Google.

Edit. Sorry Gam... this was a bit strong. The info you gave I had heard about, but was not certain about whether it was true.

[Garri]

You cannot manipulate long term google page rankings without paying a very high price for trying to get clever with Google.

Yes, and those who try it deserve to be relieved of their cash!

[gam]

Edit. Sorry Gam... this was a bit strong. The info you gave I had heard about, but was not certain about whether it was true.

No problem but for a moment I thought you were having a go at me. My post was solely to clear up any confusion/misunderstanding.

For the avoidance of doubt and in case I didn't make it clear enough in the earlier post. I am absolutely not suggesting that trying to fool Google will end up any way other than a disaster.

The problem is that some website owners get sucked in by SEO companies using what are known as "black" SEO methods. When Google detects this they punish the SEO's site but they don't care as they have or can get plenty more - and they have the punters cash. The trouble is that Google will also punish the website owner that has bought these services. Using unknown SEO companies and/or buying/trading links is a risky business.

[charles cawley]

Hear hear.

[kendalcottages]

When Google detects this they punish the SEO's site...

Surely that should read "the SEO's client's site..."

[charles cawley]

I think gam was talking about frequently quite innocent people buying and being advised by SEO people who should know better... selling them dreams.

[gam]

Surely that should read "the SEO's client's site..."

No, sorry, the comment wasn't very clear. I meant the SEO owned site being used for the process I outlined above. Those guys have dozens and dozens of sites they use for this sort of thing. As they get discovered they get flagged by Google, demoted or removed from Google's index and links followed and client sites noted. The clients may then get a demotion (often 10 or even 30 pages) which effectively destroys all organic search results. This can go on for some months. At the very least they'd lose their inflated PageRank and that would trigger a rapid demotion.

So, I meant the sites the "bad" SEO guys have used to fake PageRank and other similar nefarious activities, not their main site.