What is Google Not Saying?

Recently, Google addressed concerns with the concept of link bombing (also know as Googlebombing) with adjustments to how they rank irrelevant results for useless queries. This, of course, sent the social networks within the SEO community buzzing with one of two major responses:
1. What about the collateral damage?
2. What about our pointless tests of SEO ability?

So, while others whine about what it means to their useless SEO practices, or consider what they will do with their free time, I was looking into what Google wasn’t saying.

Based upon my analysis of the result, I came up with three things that could be going on:
1. Google lowered the value of a text link if the text did not relate to the content of the site linked to. (useless text link)
2. Google lowered the value of a link from a domain that is not contextually related to the text used to link to another site. (authority)
3. Google lowered the value of a link from a domain that is not contextually related to the site linked to. (different vertical)

Each of these three results are important and the results are dramatically different. At first glance each appear to be fundamentally similar, however, each return dramatically different results.

Using the “miserable failure” context, let’s analyze the differences:
1. Text link from Joe Blow’s blog to the President’s biography. The President’s biography has no relation to failures or miserable anything.
2. Text link from Joe Blow’s blog to the President’s biography. Joe’s blog is not about failures or miserable anything.
3. Text link from Joe Blow’s blog to the President’s biography. Joe’s blog has little, or no relation to politics.

Each of these means (ends justify the means) would dramatically change the way websites are ranked:
1. This is what appears to be in place at this time. It would be relatively easy to implement and would not dramatically adjust rankings across the board.
2. This would mean that if Google doesn’t consider your website as directly related to the text in the link, then you have no authority to link to a website for that subject matter. This would be more difficult to implement through an algorithmic adjustment, but could change organic rankings in a more dramatic fashion.
3. This would mean that if Google doesn’t consider your website as related to the topic of the website that you link to, your link has no value. This would, once again, be more difficult to implement, and could dramatically change the organic rankings for all websites. Even to the degree of the “Florida Update.”

This speculation could be more dramatic than it should be, however, it does point to practices that you should employ in your link building strategy. Seek links from relevant websites with relevant text in the link.

I would love to hear from you. What are your thoughts and how do you think it will affect organic rankings?