Google Poker Search Engine Optimization

Google is by far the most popular search engine on the planet. When it first was established, Google became the preeminent search destination by being a high quality product that people liked using because it worked. These days the main reason Google is the number one search engine is because their competition is not that good. In a real sense Google is the "Moe" of search engines -- a stooge but the smartest of the Three Stooges.

Google is mediocre, but not because its results are consistently of mediocre quality. In fact, this is very much what it is not. In reality Google is a mix of dead-on accurate results and significant, plainly inept errors. Google's "950 penalty", where certain pages are penalized to a ghetto close to the very last results displayed, is inconsistently and bizarrely applied. Since about September 22, 2005, many of the highest quality poker information sites have at one point or another been hit with 950 penalties, not because these pages were spammy or low quality, but because they were "too good", too strong or too relevant.

An additional flaw of Google is not great at handling of theme or topic. In this case the theme would be "poker", plus related concepts like card games and gambling. A link to a poker site from a poker site should be viewed as considerably more valuable than a link to a poker site from random junk. But sadly "a link is a link" is too close to true. This leads to some very below average quality sites managing to rank well for a wide variety of terms.

Google Search Engine

Google and Poker Industry Searches