Shari Thurow wrote a report on a session at Search Engine Strategies San Jose about search engine patents. The session focused on the merits of mining the patents for SEO gold.

Shari correctly identifies the problem. Patents will contain ideas that are not being put into practice. From a legal perspective, it is to the search engine’s advantage to patent as many concepts as they can. Doing this gives them the opportunity to use these ideas in the future, and limits the ability of other search engines to implement the same idea.

Shari provides some good examples of cases where certain concepts are embedded in patents, but not in use. One example I find interesting is that Google has patented a lot of concepts related to link growth over time. For example, a sudden spike in additional links could be a flag of someone manipulating the system. Or a sudden drop in the rate which a site is accumulating links could mean that it is no longer relevant, or important.

These are interesting ideas, but I don’t think anyone can prove that either of these ideas are actually in use.

We regularly read the latest patents when they come out and figure out what they are pointing at and what they mean. It’s a good exercise, and it does reveal interesting tidbits of information.

But regardless of what any patent says, I can assure you that your basic mission for your site won’t change. Develop great content that people will want to link to, and then let people know about it, so they will link to it. Effective business development and promotional programs remain key tools in your bag.

There is little chance that a search engine patent will ever be released that will make that a bad idea.

del.icio.us tags: search engine optimization seo search engine patents online marketing

Google looks at the age of your domain name as a small factor in your site’s ranking, and as a factor in evaluating how trustworthy it is. The reason they look at it is that spammers tend to look at their sites as throwaways. So they are very likely to buy a domain site (www.black-hat1.com), start getting some revenue from it, and as it gains traffic, they are already get started on the next site (www.black-hat2.com).

When the day comes that their www.black-hat1.com site gets flushed, www.black-hat2.com is already gaining in traffic. This is an effective way for them to stabilize their revenue and traffic, and not get to concerned when one of their sites gets blacklisted. Some people launch a new site every single week.

However, these types of sites don’t tend to stay around for very long. So looking at domain longevity can be a valuable data point for Google to use.

So assuming that you are looking to build your domain as a long term asset that contains lots of value, you can use this situation to your advantage. Just simply operating your site for a long time is helpful. If you have been running the domain for 3 years, 5 years, or more, you already have a little advantage (this assumes that the “theme” of the domain has remained consistent through that timeframe).

The other thing you can do is to register your domain for more than 1 year at a time. Guys who are launching a new site every week are less likely to register their sites for 10 years at a time. It becomes a real expense for them. It’s a small point, but a small expense for you, and a simple one to address, so why not? We need all the advantages we can get.