Another Monday....

[Kamikaze]

I just lost more pages today. Looks like the Monday I saw last time. How is everyone else doing?

[Ricardo]

Kamikaze, the same is for me... dropped from number 2 to number 7... I hope they forget to do the update next monday :)

[bigjohnt]

oh, the pain....

dropped from 13 to past 100 one one term
dropped from 43<yuk> to more than one hundre, same site, different term...

[Mike_Mackin]

Must of us know who the players are for a given keyword or phrase.
They show up in the top 10 to 30 most everywhere.

How in the heck can AV decide that this Monday these site are almost all at 90+

<---------beer

[Marcia]

First rant ever:

I never rant, but today is a good day to start. I've always liked AV, and they've been very good to me. I've got one single page that's holding steady at #1,3,3 and 8 on 4 separate phrases. My own index page fluctuates between #3 and #8, the graphics page at #1. Another site I fiddled with is 1 out of almost 3 mill. There are several more that I'm as happy as a pig in slop about. I don't resubmit unless there's a major change or a page is added. They don't bother me, I don't bother them. If I do some tweaking, I submit just the tweaked page.

I looked at results for one site that was doing very well, and it's dropped wayyy down. No changes, no resubmission. BUT I hunted around, and it seems the lady has identical items, identical text on a multitude of different sites all over the place.

That site has done fairly well across the board, and has taken an across-the-board slide (except for Google so far). I do believe she added yet another page to the collection in the last week or two.

It's got me concerned because I can't think of a thing to make any improvements with (except more links which are coming later this month)- and I suspect it might not be a good idea to resubmit, either.

Can those duplications cause a severe drop, or an eventual ban?

(Apology - I understand these things happen, even getting totally dumped - I'm just concerned that efforts are being sabotaged by someone's "helping" )

Edited by: Marcia

[bigjohnt]

from 13 to sub one hundred...eeww
from 43 <yuk> to sub one hundred...double eeeww..
same site different terms.
AV does it again.. Altatomi? InkVista?
Maybe I better sleep on it.

[seth_wilde]

At least their indexing times are more consistant now, huh? :)

[bigjohnt]

There is a light on the horizon.. the site in quesiton is at EXACTLY the position it was in before the meteoric rise. Coincidence? I think not. Old DB.. I think YES <--- hopeful :) )

Note: I checkced the same site/terms this morning and they were where they should have been, holding steady at 13 and 43. As of 2pm... dead weight.

[Kamikaze]

Thanks for all the great input guys. Now my second question is, for those who are getting dropped, are you guys' pages cloaked?
And most of you talked about being dropped in terms of ranks. I completely got wiped and one of my site got un-indexed. YUCK!!! Anyone in the same boat?

[Ricardo]

Kamikaze, I've been dropped only a few positions, not too much, fortunately I'm still on the top ten. Regarding cloacking, I've never investigated it, just the real pages without any trick :)

[roscoepico]

Marcia,
To answer your question, the answer is yes, Altavista does have the ability to detect duplicate pages and will in fact drop a page if the text on all of the pages is similar. My suggestion to you @ a bare mininum is to make sure all the titles and descriptions on your pages are unique. From there you will want to make sure text in the body is unique. Lastly, I have read and someone please correct me if I am wrong, that AV also looks for similarities in the linking structure on your pages and if too many similarities are found then you will be flagged for a review of some sort.

[2_much]

Roscoe,

What do you mean by linking structure? Number of incoming/outgoing links, link text...
Location of links in a page?

I've heard this statement before but do not understand what it means. I'd appreciate it if you could clarify what this means.

Thanks!
2M

[Marcia]

roscoe, this is what has me concerned. Those other pages have nothing whatsoever to do with me. I just do the domain site. The client has done those, which is her choice, but if, as you say,

"if too many similarities are found then you will be flagged for a review of some sort"

then the concern is even more serious. I'm perfectly aware that sites drop down, and get bumped out altogether - I've had it happen. Make some changes and/or resubmit. I realize that there are any number of possible reasons, and that it's to be expected, but this is a different issue.

The product(s) are identical, with identical descriptions, and of course the company name is the same, so this case is different.

It's more than a matter of working on rankings. If there's any potential for me to be cast in a suspicious light, that's anything but acceptable, and I'll take steps to remedy the situation or remove myself from it - just in case. Better safe than sorry. And I won't resubmit.

Thanks!

[mark roach]

Bigjohnt wrote

>>There is a light on the horizon.. the site in quesiton is at >>EXACTLY the position it was in before the meteoric rise. >>Coincidence? I think not. Old DB.. I think YES

I have gone from 3 to 30 on one of my major phrases, I was at about 30 before the big rise. I don't think it is the old DB though, I have 8 more pages listed than last week. Could be an old (non-themes) algo.

[Brett_Tabke]

separate topic; but on dupe pages, it has been my experience that the 2nd one found always takes the hit and the first one is mostly left alone.

[qianxing]

I've had a bunch of my pages dropped completely in the last week from AltaVista. No cloaking or anything on these pages. In my case, it was entire domains that were dropped. If I had been relying on AV, it would have really sucked. It was enough to catch my attention, though.

qianxing

[Marcia]

Thanks for that info Brett - so if a pre-existing page is found it will stay, and the newer page (mine) will get nuked. Now I know for future reference to ask if there are pre-existing pages, so I won't have any surprises. Very valuable lesson to have learned.

This is what I just discovered - so I am no longer concerned with anything that happened this week: the page that was #3 or #6 with the 4 word search term that's used a lot is now #25, with the old page title= not the one that was showing up higher (the current title, on there for weeks). Also, truncating the first word, the 3 word phrase, also used, is # 30 - also with the old title. None of the dupe pages show up higher than the page I did, in addition to there being a LOT of irrelevant sites higher up - today, anyway.

What had been found was a bunch of pre-existing pages with duplicate products and descriptions - under a search for the company name.

I have no doubt that there was a shuffling, because this is just like a result from some time in early July, when this site was first submitted. Except that the Christmas page, submitted in August, is still #2 for that subdirectory.

Mark said:

"I have gone from 3 to 30 on one of my major phrases, I was at about 30 before the big rise. I don't think it is the old DB though, I have 8 more pages listed than last week."

About the same scenario Mark, except that I only added 1 page. I somehow don't think this is a week to stress over dropping out or down - it seems to have dropped back - kind of something like Groundhog Day.

[Marcia]

"are you guys' pages cloaked?"

No cloaking for me Kamikaze, that would be like putting a toddler at the controls of a 747. But I'm reading - even "snooping" a little. :)

[Brett_Tabke]

I was torn away and don't have documentation and have not waded through logs for last week.

Did AV update last monday?

[mark_roach]

I think it did, My page which was at 30 last month, has lost a few more spots and is now in the mid 30s. On the plus side, I had a massive crawl from scooter yesterday (18000+ pages), my 1st ever deep crawl after a year of waiting. So heres hoping for a good update in a couple of weeks.

[redzone]

Brett,
Update didn't look like it stuck until late in the week. Ditto on the deep crawling.. We're seeing the other Scooter user agent coming back for second helpings... :)

[cyberbear]

AV never updated me until Nov17th. Well maybe they will keep to their Monday schedule and I will get some more pages in. Yippee.

[Josk]

Interesting, earlier in the week I lost places, and now shoing significant (50% o'sites) gains.

Interesting...