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My question:
Each site has about 200-300 pages and every one has a footer (very visible) with a link to all the other 11 sites/external-domains, i would not assume that this would be a problem but now i have recently found this forum and see the word crosslinking floating around, could this be the reason for my sudden drop in ranking?
thanks
colin
If you really did receive a penalty it's unlikely making changes to your pages will help you now. You could try writing to Google if your position doesn't change to let them know you've reformatted your site, but they generally don't take penalties off for quite a few months.
I'd wager you didn't receive a penalty, but that google tweaked their algorithm to ignore clumps of links which are at the bottom of a page and without any descriptive text. The guy with 80 sites is unable to gain decent positions regardless of his pagerank, and I think that's the reason. By the way, he's not in the hotel industry :)
Just to reply to Frejung, I really do think the internet hotel reservations sector is creaking under the weight of junk domains. I can't really agree that some sites are "real" reservations sites and other aren't, but there is definately an excess of domains. We aren't saints either, mainly becuase we maintain a backup domain in case we get dropped for some reason, but there are limits to fair play...
>google tweaked their algorithm to ignore clumps of links which are at the bottom of a page and without any descriptive text.
While I see no evidence for such a tweak, I'd also fail to see how this could be of importance here. Colin says he has 11 sites, which are interlinked in a footer. That's not clumps of links, that's what Yahoo does, what Lycos does, AOL - you name them. In other words that's web standard practise.
I think something is afoot. Maybe not exactly this, but you get the picture...
You are obviously an affiliate. Your every comment tell sme this. And it is amazing. All the people that asked me for the URL's of these Spam sites by sticky mail were only interested in one thing, copying their html (so I stopped giving this info). Here is what you said prefixed with a >
> and they find a hotel and book a reservation, what's the problem?
If the first 3 pages of search returns are giving the same choice, then that is the problem.
> What exactly is a "real" reservations site, anyway?
A real reservations site is where someone has taken the time and trouble to offer only hotels they have visited. As opposed to an affilaite site which offers the hotels that are available, which tend to be only the very large and often very poor hotels.
> Instead of complaining about spam, spend time working on your site.
Oh please. Because I visit each hotel, take my own phoographs and do my own reviews. How much time do you think I have left? And, if a Spammer produces multiple sites (as these guys have) that dominate the search returns, what is the point of working on unless I get rid of the Spam?
> look at what they're doing and emulate it. If you can't beat them, join them! If you have good content
What they are doing is not providing good content. They make generic pages with generic information on them that no-one reads. Why do I want to denegrate my site with that. Adding real content is not so easy.
And, at the end of the day, I have no problem with these Spammers as long as they keep to having one site, not NINE sites that are the same. If they have one site, people will come onto their site, see other sites, and never go back to their generic little offering. But when they (and another group of Spammers) dominate the search returns, people end up believing there is nothing else on the menu.
If it were a real penalty, you would probably be doing a lot worse than page 6.
There are a lot of things that can explain what happened to you. Other than an algo change, you might have lost an important incoming link to one of your sites, or it might have lost it's PR. With your sites heavily crosslinked, it could really have an effect if you were to lose a high PageRank link to one of your sites.
If you got hit on duplicate content, I'm not sure how it would affect your PR distribution. Does the page lose the PR before or after the calculations. When you surf your sites with the toolbar do you have any pages that are showing up as PR0 that shouldn't be?
The fact that you are on page 6 says that you are still alive and in the game. If you are careful, you can get back up to page 1, but it will take some work.
I have someone now to do this. So maybe I can get back to traveling again soon, which is how I started.
My side issue over content is that I do not consider xxxx country's culture more pertenant to a site's content then room number recommendations (yes, of course, if I stay somewhere, I try and get the best room, and then note it down), full descriptions, extra (tour) pages, and area advice. I have other sites for that (culture). My main issue is that these Spammers build multiple sites, to bury other sites (because people would not give their sites a second glance if they had real choice again).
But that is what it will probably come down to, all for the sake of Google. Instead of linking to my information site for these things, I will probably have to have a generic, meaningless page like the Spammers through up, and then put a link to the information site for "additonal" information. And to be candid, that makes me sick.
But, where Google says "build web sites for people, not for search engines", they have created a beast that does not allow this. I believe they used to be a lot better at killing Spam then they are now.
We make all our own pictures too. You can easily build a site to pad out the SERPs using images of the hotels you can find on the internet, but if you want to build real quality, you do it all from scratch.
We actually don't sell hotels as our core business but get a lot of people who buy through us anyway. When we first set up we had a link to Travelnow on our site because we couldn't be bothered to sell directly, and I was appalled at the conversion rate. We'd get about 1 booking per 1000 referrals. That's why we do it ourselves now. We've more than quadrupled the hotel revenues by doing this.
By the way you never did answer Gordon's question about your business sector....
I work with sites in several areas, among those travel sites. I've worked with small sites and with rather huge sites. So I have seen the struggle from both ends.
Travel is one of the most competitive sectors on the web. To make it in that sector with sites built to last is a fulltime job for a pro. Hence my point about shooting photos yourself.
IMO to make it against the big boys with a travel site you need to carve out a niche and try to dominate that niche. It takes a lot of work, but it does work.
There's no sense whatsoever in staring at the competition. Quick cheap sites come and go. For every site which eventually gets dropped by the engines ten new are in the queue.
However, you do need to worry about those guys with 20 sites each because they clutter up the SERPS (with crap) and bury your content pages which gererally have lower pagerank. You are exactly right that for every 10 sites that get removed, 10 more are waiting, but if you ignore them, they eventually have so many results on the page that the decent sites are relegated to invisibility. I notice that GoogleGuy rarely discourages spam reports. I think that's because he believes that, left undealt with, duplicate content sites will spoil the SERPs.
However, you do need to worry about those guys with 20 sites each because they clutter up the SERPS (with crap) and bury your content pages which gererally have lower pagerank
I would not be suprised if Google soon starts treating those farm's 20 interlinks as site internal links.
Just a thought game:
How likely or natural is it, that for a given tourist search query with good adwords spending, the results 1,2,3,6,7,12 and 17 from the first two SERP pages, all link to each other as a large percentage of total external links?
Heini:
Counting on search engines to eventually do your job of beating the competition doesn't sound like a winning strategy to me.
It's worked so far. The duplicate sites got slaughtered when Yahoo dropped the directory and took Google results on the same day. I'm betting something like that will wipe them out again this year too.
I don't expect anyone to come and help me, but at least the problem is highlighted on this forum. From what I've seen, most issues, even trivial ones, brought up here eventually get dealt with at the Googleplex. Last month I posted a Google bomb thread that barely got noticed, but the problem was dealt with in the update. I wouldn't underestimate the value of good travel SERPS to Google. They make a fortune from travel related advertising. It's in their interest to get those SERPs as clean as possible.
Interesting thought, VP. And a very good idea. Hey, GG, you heard that?
Look, Slyguy, I certainly agree that a good part of the relationship with SE reps being members, or at least readers, here is for them to have an ear to the ground.
There is an open communication channel, which we all can benefit from.
But it would totally devalue the community here, if we were used as a shortcut to the Google helpdesk. Not that you would be doing that, just want to make that clear to prevent any lurkers to get a completely wrong idea what WebmasterWorld is about.
I know what you're saying, but I think most intelligent people are able to discern the wheat from the chaff, and there are plenty of smart people at Google. This travel related cross-linking issue is a real problem and not just a competition gripe. That's the main reason I brought it up. Sorry if you feel it lowers the tone of the forum.
And the problem is hardly confined to Travel. Real estate and pharmaceuticals are equally bad. To be honest, I don't study the net much outside my business area, so I'm sure there are dozens of other areas which are equally problematic.
Thanks again. Yes, you are right about that. And I hope the need for me to report sites (Ps GG, if you are watching, those Spam sites are still there :-() will diminish as either search engines improve their algo's / criteria. And more people go back to the good old directories for generic searches - sorry, but a search engine pales in comparison with the human touch - but now the directories all offer search engine returns first (and foremost) - brilliant.
I know, when I want to search for a more generic term to go to a directory, and a more specific term to a search engine. It is a shame DMOZ and Google can't get together and have Google offer directory results first for generic terms, and search engine results first for specific search terms.
What do you think. Should I make a bid for Google and DMOZ? I could call it Goomoz - sounds good huh? :-)
