Forum Moderators: Robert Charlton & goodroi
trinorth,
You definitely bring up a good point. Up until very recently our site was a bit of mess navigation wise and it was hard for users to find a lot of the information. That has been corrected as of last week, so it will be a few weeks before I can see how the traffic patterns change, but yes, right now the percentage of our more than 1200 pages that are visited regularly is very small. As a long term strategy, we've always gone with 'build quality content' so we continue to add pages with valuable information pertaining to our industry.
Even though most visitors stay confined to a small portion of the site, shouldn't the other unique content be left as is? It fills smaller niches that pertain to more focused user groups. Our industry is very divided by state so pretty much every informational section we add, has to have state by state breakdowns so it's hard to combine this info into fewer pages.
Also, other than immediate backout rates, can Google track user's paths and time spent on a site if the user doesn't have the Google Toolbar installed? Doesn't this bias rankings towards the behavior of users that have the toolbar installed?
Thanks for giving me something else to consider, it is much appreciated.
[edited by: tedster at 5:31 pm (utc) on Feb. 23, 2007]
The lack of success of many of Google's services like Blogger, Google Video, etc, shows that they don't really know how the Net works. Google is not a webmaster's search engine, it's a programmer's gadgets-producing engine and that's why we're constantly at odds with them.
[edited by: Martin40 at 8:33 pm (utc) on Feb. 26, 2007]
By keeping the serps in everflux, we are unable to prove any connivance and duplicity in manipulating the results to maximize profits. Remember that money doesn't just talk...it swears!
1) Surely this can't last. It smells to me like something they are trying to work out, either doing this on purpose, weeding out decent sites and bringing the rot to the top - perhaps to weed them out... or there is a screw up they are juggling around, trying to fix.
2) If by chance it does go on for... how long? Another few weeks? Or months? Then we need to band together and get some coverage about this, and answers. They are a publicly traded company. If we are all as legit as we say, and this keeps going on for a much longer period of time, then we have something here that we can use the media to help us with... if they don't acknowledge our concerns.
I'm certainly not ready for # 2 yet. I'm just starting new projects, hoping in another 2 weeks we'll be back. But if we're not back in, say, 6 weeks, then I will take this bigger. Because its been 3+ years of work, millions of people I reach and several hundred my site helps more directly. I don't pretend they owe me anything, SERPS are not a "right", but at the same time if I'm following all their rules and helping people with good content (and them sell ads, too), I should at least get a fair shake at this. Or a reason my site is being penalized so.
I have dropped on about 90% of my major keywords for no reason at all. I see sites for competitive keywords that are actually selling links on their pages for the purpose of PR. Also MANY sites using manufactures descriptions and all kinds of scraper sites.
I have lost keywords that I have held the #1 and 2 spot for for years and now I'm not even showing in the top 1,000 results.
I really think this should shake out. I cant believe these results will stick.
I should also add I am starting to see my site come back up in the results for most of the lost keywords now. It not on page one anymore but I still have hope this will turn around in a few days.
Good luck to all.
It just doesn't seem to matter..Google is totally broken. It doesnt' make sense that sites that now appear for one of my main keywords have next to nothing to do with the subject.
And even with other searches. I was looking for something specific to Canada (like "keyword in canada") and got a slew of bad results. Half of them were australian.
I dunno. I think everyone should quit banging their heads against the wall and just hope google fixes what they broke.
Thanks in advance.
[edited by: tedster at 6:02 am (utc) on Feb. 27, 2007]
[edit reason] moved from another location [/edit]
Would be GREAT to have a google site you could submit a site to where it analysed your site and came back with
"Though we can't divulge how our algorythm works, some issues you may wish to look at are:-"
a. Seems you;ve got two <head> tags on your home page?
b. We've noticed quite a few broken links.
c. You are repeating some words a LOT aren't you? Is this natural?
d. There are some large blocks of text... that appear on every page...
Regular reader, but don't post often. One of my sites has been in top positions for years, except for a short period in 2003 during the Florida update.
I added 122 pages last week to what had been a fairly stale site. The site disappeared yesterday for most of my keywords. Until I read this post, I thought that I had triggered a filter. But now I'm not sure. My best advice from past experience would be to wait it out for a few weeks and then to start taking action. It's just that I'm not sure what action!
In every difficulty lies an opportunity!
What you decribe could be caused by a problematic server response the last time Google spidered. Google seems very quick to remove sites for server issues right now -- but the good news is they are also quick to restore those same sites if the issues are cleared up quickly.
What do your logs say was the result of googlebot's request?
How long do they still need to gather the information they need and get back to serious results?
When I last checked it was usual for new pages that had been spidered/indexed to pop up somewhere in the first page of SERPS for 24 hours or so, then jump down and settle a little to their rightful place.
What is happening at the moment, is that new pages will be spidered then indexed, pop up in the top SERPS for about 24 hours then dissapearing completely from the index. In fact, I had google spider an entire directory of around 100 pages, it spidered and indexed them perfectly only for them to dissapear a few days later.
In June 2006 Msndude simply said: "This summer we'll be fighting spam". I wouldn't say he was revealing any indepth details about the algo there, but at least a webmaster knew what was going on. Compare that with Google's
nope, nope, nope, no update, just your average everflux
while the changes are plain to see.
But how much longer, a month, a year?
My best guess is to expect it to be ongoing. I think they will always try to improve the serps and add fresh sites in to the mix. The only way I personally know how to deal with it is to just have a varity of sites that rank for all different kinds of terms. Then when some down in rankings others will go up and things even out over time -- like buying index funds in the stock market.
[edited by: Jane_Doe at 5:13 pm (utc) on Feb. 27, 2007]
I've been going through since december on the google webmaster tools and removing all error. I knocked the http errors down to zero from a few hundred (all 403 errors..So not really anything that should be a problem anyways). Fixed all 404s. Removed abandoned pages that were indexed. Updated robots.txt and validated it.
Basically trying to remove any possible excuse for why they slammed my site. So far, it hasn't seemed to matter so it has to be some other factors.
Give it 90 days to see how the clean html works out, especially if you have a lot of supplemental's that need to be recrawled.
Also, look real hard for duplicate content.
It's been going on since mid-end december,
I believe the first sites were hit on Nov 10th.
Basically trying to remove any possible excuse for why they slammed my site. So far, it hasn't seemed to matter so it has to be some other factors.
That has been my experience, it doesn't look like a penalty. On some key-phrases Google is much like MSN before it's summer update. Constantly changing and bringing new sites to the front. But that started in Januari. The -900 penalties (and such) are probably a different matter.
I keep saying that the're fiddling with PageRank (or some other link related factor that has site-wide implications), because internal pages move up and down along with the homepage, but internal pages that have external IBLs remain fairly stable.
So why are they reducing the PR (or another link related factor) of some sites? It can hardly be a link related penalty, because (as I mentioned before) many link buying and exchanging sites now go top.
I wouldn't compare rankings to stocks, because the stock market isn't subject to an algorithm.
Give it 90 days to see how the clean html works out, especially if you have a lot of supplemental's that need to be recrawled.Also, look real hard for duplicate content.
As Adam Lasnik's post on duplicate content has made clear, Google has not implemented a super strict filter on dup content.
[edited by: Martin40 at 6:29 pm (utc) on Feb. 27, 2007]
I've been trying to sniff out any other instances where there might be dupe content on my site but so far it's come up clean.
Google has just dropped it.
The company I work for has a few low quality sites from abandoned projects that are currently STABLE (What the...) and are performing like a charm even on very competitive keywords. Looking into affiliate programs so at lest we get profit from this surprising ton of traffic.
Not sure how Google interprets the data, but I promise: the most stable sites we have are also those where the bounce rate goes sky high, or users are just frustrated becaue they can't find what they are looking for since there is nothing there interesting to read anyway.
While some of our most user friendly/quality sites are getting hit real bad, not all of them but the most popular of them feel the pain.
Visitors type the domain name more often, especially since last week end because that's the only way they can find the sites.
we all do the same, bookmarking is a pain, better type the same keywords all the time and retrieve the sites you like...not working right now.
That's how I started looking around back a few weeks ago. For me it started when Google said they found a solution for Google bombing.
there are now (especially since last week end):
- More bulk textlink buyers ruling SERP's
- More webmasters looking at Google like if it was MSN (my interpretation)
- More spam: very few filters, build or buy identical links almost overnight and you own your industry big time.
- Page title weight looks as important as for Yahoo (not the example Google should look at)
- the less content the better. Place links pointing to the original content you are inspired from and you will hijack their position most of the time.
- build a blog on blogspot and link to your main site from each page and it will be considered as relevant...
It looks like an algorithm from back a few years ago, soon I will start rebuilding meta keywords and Altavista will be my homepage.
I see websites getting ranked on page 1 with 30 backlinks, all identical, new sites, links from very low quality totally unrelated sites (IMO) and demoting sites with 500 to 2,000 natural and mostly relevant backlinks.
It doesn't make sense to me. But of course even though I monitor the same 100 keywords for months (50 same keywords for 3 years, across multiple industries from IT, travel, SEM to clothing and even real estate) I don't have the big picture.
Yet I might have a good idea of how things are moving. And I can't believe what I am seing.
Quick note: some sites deserve their position and are still there on top most of the time fortunately (but are threathened for sure).
I want the Google I used to love back. If not for profits at least for saving time instead to spending hours everyday NOT finding what I am looking for.
I still can't stand Yahoo...where will I search now if Google sticks with it?
...
Using Microsoft Live Search our articles are consistently listed among top 10. Our articles are well researched and works well according to Google Analytics.
After complaining to Google many times in different ways and without rewriting (de-optimizing) my articles, I finally saw a dramatic improvement for a short period of two days 2007-02-24 and 2007-02-25. However, the next day our articles were kicked down again and buried 200 - 700 positions down, always at the end of results. Now remember that Sweden is a very small country with very little competition compared to USA.
Independent of the results displayed our two top articles were shown as "end of results". This pattern is typical for the "end of results" penalty or -950 penalty. Whatever number of results displayed your article will end up at the last position. Clearly, this is not possible to achieve with an algorithm dependent on very many variables as suggested by Google. It can only be achieved if a penalty flag is put in always sending articles from a site to the last position.
After complaining to Google again, now in a very direct and sincere way, I saw a dramatic improvement half a day later. This was probably related to significant number of visits, 36, from Google to our site during the night.
When you say complaining to Google, do you mean filing a re-inclusion request? Emailing their support? What steps exactly?
Might be worth trying..
Thank you for sharing.
It's important to know how did you contact Google and even more to know what triggers that penalty flag. Any idea?
If it is then it's time for Google to even more seriously considerer rolling back becaue it means that their algo finds irrelevant what a human finds very relevant....that's basically mostly what I currently see anyway (no offence to the few legitimate sites that managed not to be punished)
To be honest I don't see the point of them filtering some sites to that degree, even if this is a test.
If they are after user behavior for automatically detecting what's relevant then the chances for Google to be fooled on niche market (where number of searches is low per keyword) is extremely high.
Oh, forgot to mention that since January and even more since last week end: I see the good old spammy personal page from ATT ranking above our sites.
I did not see such spam for at least 2 years I think.
It's also interesting to see how some RSS feeds rank higher than actual content pages. Actual content pages being demoted and sent over to the supplemental index.
On .com the main producers are replaced with the american ones. Pretty much spot on.
the link to CACHED or SIMILAR pages. It just shows the URL and this is common with all links to keywords that stayed. Why did some links stay and why did they stay without the cached and similar pages option?
We didnt change anything in robots txt or anything having to do with no cached. What exactly is going on?
[edited by: tedster at 3:05 pm (utc) on Feb. 28, 2007]
[edit reason] moved from another location [/edit]
