Matt Cutts, head of the Webspam team at Google, put out a twitter plea for more knowledge about smaller sites last week. Cutts tweeted (pictured below) to ask smaller websites if they feel their site should be ranking better, and if so why.
He included a link to a Google Doc form asking people to explain why they feel a small site should be ranking better. This is a great opportunity for those who may be disgruntled with the current ways smaller sites are ranked in Google, and to air why they feel they are of more relevance to the searcher than those performing well in the search engine results.
It is great to see that the team over at Google are paying more attention to this problem which has seen much disagreement. The trusted brand approach Google has taken on board has seen much criticism as smaller sites feel they are not being treated fairly, especially in comparison to bigger brands. Although it has been expressed that this form is just for the sake of gaining knowledge and feedback, and will not directly affect any sites ranking.
Cutts has openly said that he doesn’t have all the answers to this problem and has asked for more information to help. He said that he wants feedback from “wider circle of folks so we can assess the scope of things”. Many people are a little dubious about this offer as it may shine a light on sites that are being aggressive with their SEO efforts, but most think it cannot hurt to submit reasons for why a smaller site should be performing higher than at the moment.
Search Engine Watch recently reported that there have only been a couple of hundred submissions so far. Perhaps this is not surprising with the uneasy feeling most have been talking about, but we think it is worth taking a few minutes to submit your small site.
If you want to check out the form yourself just head over to the Google Doc here and submit your site with your reasoning behind why it should be performing better.
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