I started a thread yesterday on SEOchat that detailed some of the frustrations from some clients of mine that have been confused with the large amount of authority related pages taking up the first 10 positions in Google. Essentially dubbed "authority spam". Sites like Amazon, Bizrate, Superpages, Yellowpages, eBay, Switchboard, Barnes and Noble take up the first 5-10 listings of a particular search. The results are so unsatisfactory that you skip to the next page or do a search all over again keeping a mental picture of the last sites you saw. Tracking this behavior is another subject in itself. This thread quickly turned into an excellent discussion relating to authorities, fake authorities, searcher's behavior, and the ways for which to counteract authority domination.
I asked members what methods they used to counteract authority spam. For the most part this is not difficult SEO, it most often requires a few backlinks and some content changes. However for some areas its not that simple. So how do you compete with such giants? EGOL, on of the moderator mentioned buy common stock in the company, work hard, and open an eBay store. The eBay store in particular seems to be working well for several people. SEO_AM comments that his competition is Amazon, .edu, and .gov sites, and that these are NOT the sites that people are not looking for. They are looking for something better.
The discussion turned into a overview of what makes up an authority and their right to be in such positions. Amazon and eBay are mentioned in detail. There are those that claim to be able to create "fake authorities" in the search engines. I would call them more "hubs" than anything, but it is possible. How would you create such a site?
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