Of Aging Delay and Other Legends

noreply@blogger.com (Vincenzo) — Fri, 24 Feb 2006 16:40:00 +0000

Here's my thought about the mythical Google's Aging Delay/sandbox effect: like all myths, it uses imagination to explain phenomena that are usally not easy to understand. And, like all myths, it can be a nice story for long and cold nights, but it is absolutely not true!!!
There's not such thing as an algorithm that delays on purpose your new site's rankings in Google or in any other search engine. The problem is way more complex (... or simple, depends on where you stand on this issue!) than blaming search engines.
As somebody put it: "All products take time to introduce…“time” almost solely depends on resources expended in the given time it takes to expend them. That doesn’t equate to an “Aging Delay” superimposed by an SE!"

In other words: if you are trying to optimize your brand new site, be aware that it may take time to get the results you want, mainly because you are engaging in a complex marketing task. It always takes time to make your new product/service visible on the market, even if your market is the “real time” Web. As in the real world, web-marketing processes take time, resources and know-how. The more of the latter two, the less of the former ... and vice versa! But, please-please-pretty-please, don't blame search engines if your site doesn't show up in the rankings as soon as you expect!
This is my point: there are no algorithms that are designed to delay your new site's rankings because of its age. There are A LOT of algorithms, though, that - weighing a gazillion of different parameters - will decide if your site is worth to be ranked high enough, and they start humming and crunching since your site's first cry.

I designed and optimized dozens of websites: some of them got ranked for the most important keywords in 2 weeks, others in 4 months and others NEVER showed up for any relevant keyword. And guess what? It has NEVER been about some search engine's evil algorithm, but it has ALWAYS been about my experience, my know-how, the competition, the client, the available resources and all the other good old things that always make a difference in - you know - the other world, the real one!

I really don't know who started this whole “Aging Delay” thingy, but here are two things I'm pretty sure about: first, there are a lot of people in Mountain View, Ca that laugh out loud every time the words "aging" and "delay" come up in the same sentence; second, before you hire an SEO consultant, ask him/her about the whole aging delay issue. If they tell you that it is a real thing, and they seem pretty sure and dogmatic about it ... well, it's up to you ... if you believe the legend, embrace it!!!!

Synergies for an Optimized Web

Of Aging Delay and Other Legends