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I am no SE pro, and for all I know I am about to make a fool of myself, but I find the updates are not worth the sewing-machine legs and biting fingernails. Sure results are different but not that different, for us anyway. The key phrases that our site does not do well with are taken care of in a matter of a few days buy optimizing for "freshbot"! I use freshbot to help out with certain pages or key-phrases on our site that do not do well. So far I get better result doing this than optimizing and waiting for the monthly update.
As for PR, I have noticed no difference in how it affects sales, rankings or traffic. PR has gone down a little while sale have increased.
Does anyone else using this technique? Has it worked for you?
Riding the fresh wave - as Brett puts it - works well for sites that have PR high enough to keep freshbot visiting regularly. For my sites in this group, I agree that the update is overblown. PR and fresh content is the key, however.
I also have a few sites in obscure low-PR areas, and for those, the frustration of seeing the fresh listings come and go is real. So I look forward to the monthly updates - I just don't feel compelled to participate in the huge and emotional threads predicting, announcing, tracking, and celebrating or lamenting them. BTDT, got the T-shirt. :)
Jim
Freshbot had been kicking me to the front of the line, but the last couple of times my site was visited I haven't made any forward progress. (I don't have access to my server logs, I'm just assuming that when I see a fresh cache date on my pages that I've been visited by freshbot) Is this assumption wrong?
Anyway, since riding the wave hasn't been working for me the past week, I'm hoping for some upward mobility with the update.
I add a page a day - as per Brett's advice - and that seems to keep her coming back. Some of my pages have featured in Google within days, mid month.
Is this Freshbot? If so, nowt to do with PR.
Cheers,
Suggy
I add a page a day - as per Brett's advice - and that seems to keep her coming back.
I'm starting to think that establishing a regular update is one of the keys to freshbot activity.
I'm wondering what the PR of your pages are.
reneewood,
For some sites, updating the home page "works", and for some it doesn't. If it doesn't mess up the concept of your site too much, you might consider adding an announcements section, and point out the changes and additions to the pages deeper in your site. That might or might not work with your concept of your site, and it might or might not work to get and keep Freshbot's attention. But it might be worth a try.
martinibuster,
I noticed a tracking effect - The more often I updated, the more Freshbot would check. But the frequency of updates did not seem to effect the length of time that my fresh date listing would last - That seemed to depend on PR.
Again, these are my "fuzzy" conclusions drawn from a sample of a very few sites.
Jim
Perhaps things are different for static content.
Added a page on Monday. Today it is listed in Google. Go figure?!
Now I am addicted to writing pages - don't want to break her habbit.
Suggy
No, keep up the good work. It will be interesting to see what happens once your site is fully indexed and has PR. The two sites I mentioned above are mature, stable sites, so your "view" of this from a new-site perspective is undoubtedly different than mine.
Jim
Oh BTW Reneewood, my site is not news worthy either. I just try to write an article a day. Believe me, if I can manage that for my subject matter.....
Cheers,
Suggy
A site of mine with PR4 and excellent SERPs listings for main keywords was updated (some new pages and "what's new on this site" at the homepage) in july 2002. Also a few more incoming links. After next G update it showed PR5, excellent listing as before.
Next update of my site in oct 2002 was a somewhat rebuilt homepage (text was optimized, more keywords, some new deep links) and again some new pages, but no new incoming links AFAIK. After next G update it showed PR6, but listing in SERPs for my keywords (the old ones) was not as good as before. My new keywords showed up in SERPs.
After that only minimal changes were made (e.g. each month short news text like a hint to related fairs). After the dec/jan G update i had again PR5 ... AND again my excellent listing for all keywords.
Since then only minimal changes were made, and G PR and listings were stable.
Conclusions:
1. G likes new stuff (this did we know before)
2. New stuff may improve PR, but not necessarily listing for important keywords in the next G update
3. Listings seem to stabilize over a longer period
4. PR seems not so important - what sells are good listings
What do you think?
<edit>This is not about incoming links - they're very important. - And Suggy: it's about established sites.</edit>
What's an established site?
I have 80+ pages. No PR. But am on page one (sometimes no.1) for about 10 multiple keyword searches. Type in the base keyword, forget it. Add one of the popular qualifiers, I'm there!
Are you telling me that my position is going to deteriorate over time?
as JDMorgan msg #9 said: keep up the good work. And keep contributing ... most of us are still learning.
Established site: site which is in Google index and showing any PR.
Position deteriorating over time: I guess this will not happen. But it may happen that sometimes your PR improves due to changes made, and then comes back to where it has been before.
And i tried to say that your PR sometimes seem to have nothing to do with your listing in SERPs.
Because this concerns established sites it may be a little OT ...
As for PR, I have noticed no difference in how it affects sales, rankings or traffic. PR has gone down a little while sale have increased.
Update is not just about PR, there are other important factors that are calculated once a month too.
I agree, our PR6 site kind of floats in the top 2-3 every update, but this update is crucial for a new site we just launched as well as a few Client sites.
Then it started dropping rather rapidly, and now I don't even know where it is.
A. Is there an easy way of finding your rank if its many pages down?
and
B. Has there been an algorithm change that affected this? The page didn't change greatly any more then usual, rearrangements, minor updates, additions and the like. The site is fairly large with 1000s of pages. It also ranks highly with 100s of keywords (almost always page 1 if the country is part of the keywords searched for)
The nature of the site makes it an ideal candidate for multiply keyword rankings, but hte regional identity is also important.
What can I do to bring it up for the country name again? It's obviously included in all page links and the like.
Thanks
[edited by: killroy at 5:06 pm (utc) on April 2, 2003]
As you can imagine getting a top3 listing for a country name is great for a regionally orinted site
I think Google has been discounting regional sites lately. For some reason, they seem to be favoring sites with a world or national focus. I think this is regrettable and will probably diminish the usefulness of the Google search engine over time.
you say that you have exchanged many quality links for your website... is your links page easily accessible for spiders? that is, do you have a text site map from your homepage connecting to all your other pages and especially to your sitemap? in optimizing past websites, i have had several clients that failed to point to the links page or used a java only link to the links page and similar results occurred to what you are describing, rankings but no pr. make your sitemap as easy to find as possible, and make sure it is linked to all your static pages within the site.
regarding freshbot visiting and the frequency, typically speaking when your website is first found by the freshbot, it will return every few days to check for updates. on each visit if new content is found another visit is scheduled for a few days later, and the process is repeated. kudos to you for keeping up with the visits and the new content additions, if you stop adding new content, chances are freshbot will stop visiting so frequently. good luck keeping up.
As far as backlinks, we have reached a certain amount and have leveled off.
Kilroy,
This gives me 100 at a time:
[google.com...]
Mahlon,
I agree. My "established site" gets a fresh visit every day or two and recieves a nice position each time. I make changes to those pages at least every week. This works well for my main pages, but as others have noted, it doesn't work as well for deeper pages and dynamic inner pages. The monthly dance makes little difference to my position, rank, or sales volume.
(but when our new project's site launches - I'll be as excited as I was for my first dance)
I guess it is sort of covered in Brett's 12 month plan, but I suspect that the value of refreshing page content may be undervalued in this forum. I have also noticed that some SE's have a real taste for fresh content that includes a reference to an upcoming date on the calendar. Keyword/Date can be an effective search phrase for some categories.
I meant nationally, since this is a small country indeed
>>This gives me 100 at a time:
I have that set permanently... what I need is to find my position in a million results, to know if its at position 500 or 5000. Spidering google result pages seems the only way...
The big update is the one that calculates all the linking relationships between sites, anchor texts and how they affect rankings, no?
Yep. I am really careful (perhaps obsessive) about cross linking. I have a vanilla site map linked to every single page and containing a link to every single page. Plus, there's a text link to my links page on ever single page. And, all my pages live in the root.
My links page shows up in Google too when I search my site name. I'm guessing my lack of a PR calc is just about time? Or do I need DMOZ first?
About to up a page for today. So, here's hoping Freshbot comes again!
Cheers,
Steve
sounds like you have it all under control, maybe check back with some of the previoulsy linked sites to make sure they have not slipped in pr. other than that, its a trial and error thing. sorry, thats all i have for ya.
btw... did i mention link exchanges should be with high pr sites? that may be stating the obvious, but a pr of 4 or higher is all i ever exchange with.
