Forum Moderators: Robert Charlton & goodroi
So what's up with the Google? Something big is going on?
It would appear we are in for an old style Google shake up. From what I've seen listed on a variety of blogs a number of long standing sites listed on the first page have been delisted or dumped way back.
I've had one site online since 1997 that had a lock on the top spot for my keywords on and off for four years on Google just go "poof", all that's left of it is two obscure pages I haven't changed since about 2001 ;~)
So far I've received nothing in the way of messages on webmaster tools, and my site went missing in action after March 16TH. I'm just going to wait it out to see if the old girl gets relisted. I've gone over the whole thing and there's nothing on the site that breaks any Google guidelines unless there is something new in the algo.
Anyone else going to sit it out before going off the deep end to once agin ask " what does Google Want?"
[edited by: tedster at 8:36 pm (utc) on April 1, 2008]
Interesting. I think I'll quit watching for a while before I get an ulcer :)
Maybe I'm losing my mind.... I was watching it do it on google.com and google.co.uk. I have sites in both places in the same industry and they were bouncing all over the place. Now it seems to have gelled up. Maybe it's moved on to a different DC now.
This is one funky dance! Let's call it the Elaine! :-}
p/g
i like it!
"like a dry heave set to music"
Its been a good day :)
the Elaine.. "like a dry heave set to music"I like it too! (and love the analogy)
If I do a search on www.google.com, I'll come up #1 for many terms, which tells me that Google is watching what I search for. Probably a cookie or something, and it's probably something that's been covered in another thread. If I check the datacenters, I'm not #1 for those terms.
The idea that Google is giving lower-ranking sites a shot at the first page is an interesting one. That would explain some of the sites that have come out of nowhere.
I see a visitor on raw logs come from one search string, try it myself, and, poof, nowhere.
I am thinking there may well be a geo component involved.
PNW here. In one niche I am seeing many of the "new and odd" returns coming from west coast - including BC! The BC sites are ones that I have never seen rank in the top 50, and would only seem to have relevance if one takes into account our location.
Great time of year for that too.
I think I'll go back t watching the grass grow...
Now every other click or so is moving around pages in positions 2-8.
The usual rules of thumb apply: you probably won't get a personal reply, but I'll try to get someone to check out reports that get sent in. There shouldn't be much difference between data centers, so I'm curious to find out what queries people seem to be seeing different results on.
Thanks for chiming in.
How about different data ceneters displaying much different page numbers (up to 30% difference) for site: operator? should that be reported too using "dewey" ?
I've had one site online since 1997 that had a lock on the top spot for my keywords on and off for four years on Google just go "poof", all that's left of it is two obscure pages I haven't changed since about 2001 ;~)
This sort of nonsense has been coming from Google for years and they just seem to get worse. They are currently sending traffic to pages that have been 404'd for over a year. I tend to agree with the other threads that are going on about how Google is just on an all out war with natural rankings and SEOs because relevant natural results really damage their bottom line. They spend more time making their PPC results relevant.
Made the decision about a year ago to push for a No.1 ranking on Yahoo/MSN (who might still become the same thing) and to push for more referral traffic. Glad I did, I'm not part of those "99% of my traffic disappeared last night" anymore. This huge swinging update has barely affected the majority of my sites.
So Google has several sets of search rankings and shows them randomly each time a search is made.
Here in the UK rankings seem to change every 2-3 days rather than every search. As far as I can tell, there are six different results/algorithms that have been rotating for the past month or so.
Still a few too many "shopping" type of sites for my liking but at least my traffic seems to be stabilising...at the moment.
There seem to be far fewer indented results with the SERPs going direct to the correct pages.
Someone mentioned naming this updated Elaine. I think it's perfect. Google's thumbs are in the air and it's legs are kicking all over.
I banished the thought when I did a quick calculation as to how much revenue such a plan would have cost Google if these same banned sites had hundreds of adsense adds suddenly removed from circulation. Ah well, the joy of SEO, it's seldom boring and is always changing.....
Lovejoy
I've sent in several spam/feedback reports on this, but nothing's changed. Since these sites are useless for users in Canada and the US I'm not sure why Google brought them back.
Just wanted to bring it to your attention!
This is more like the old Google dances. Doesn't seem like everflux though.
I banished the thought when I did a quick calculation as to how much revenue such a plan would have cost Google if these same banned sites had hundreds of adsense adds suddenly removed from circulation
The made-for-adsense spam sites are all ranking just fine. Google's efforts are to fight good SEO, not bad SEO as bad SEO generally has to rely on Adsense for revenue. Good SEOs work on sites that can actually move to an Adwords model should their rankings be snatched away. That's why they had the big clamp down on paid links - people were paying to boost their natural rankings which had a better ROI than Adwords.
I might sound harsh on Google so just in case people think I'm ranting because I've been dropped, I haven't. My rankings are just fine and on the variant datacenters I show increases for nearly all my sites. I did lose a couple of places last month after removing Adsense from some of the inner pages of a site but that's it.
We had this No.1 spot since years with loads of selfproduced, expensive, exclusive content that has earned tons of organic inbound links from odp, yahoo etc.
Of course it is acceptable that other real content sites may take over that spot, fair enough. But now a few bucks for a domain and some freehost are enough to sink some of the top media brands.
Perhaps time to say bye to content production.
Such stuff leaves now the ultimate content and authority site with even wiki inbound + loads of related relevant inbounds behind.
The nice thing is, that i know the story behind that newly successful site which had been somewhere well deserved around 100 before due to loads of errors and not much relevant info.
From a Google point of view: The owner of that new top 10 site spends a lot on adwords.
Would be great to see this among Google case studies :-)
[edited by: night707 at 9:19 pm (utc) on April 2, 2008]
[edited by: tedster at 9:14 pm (utc) on April 2, 2008]
"Elaine, the pain! The pain, Elaine!"
- Lyrics to a Korean karaoke video w/English chorus
