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I have about 15 major clients some are public companies, when I see a new index on www I expect it to stay when it is up for hours on end.
Then poof it is back to old indexes, now come on really.
I remove AddWord keywords that I target on my account for Google AddWords when the keywords are showing under non paid listings due to hard worked optimization campaigns.
After adjusting for the various clients I have Google goes and changes back to a new index, or maybe an old one, or maybe a new one, which the heck is it?
Now my clients are down my back asking what is going on, they are actually loosing money from this.
I think Google needs to make up it's mind, I just asked for credit for all the problems as we are loosing money due to the many changes on the indexes they decide to use, depending on the 1/4 hour.
Google needs to understand this is no joke, but the comments are not there, not in the news not on Webmastersworld etc.
I know Googleguy visits these parts and it is about the time to make a statement to the webmasters.
Please understand the position we are in, is it just me, I can not imagine this is just me having a loss of eyeballs due to the inconsistent Google index?
Please someone tell me what is going on here, this is not a walk in the park these days for clients such as mine.
All best to all!
Hollywood. - :)
the only way out with clients is probably telling them they cannot expect continous listing until well after two months of being spidered in some form.
OK, this index/update may be slightly different time/implementation wise, but the same problem with clients being happy/unhappy will occur with Fresh listings. I guess you should tell your clients incidental listings have to be seen as an exceptional freeby, un unexpected gift when it occurs. For the rest patience or immediate gratification with adwords.
I understand the disclaimer but I do not understand the point of the Adwords if this is how Google will deal with SERPS.
Should I have to change my adwords each and every 1/4 hour, is this the way Google wants to handle Adwords customers? If so I will go over to Overture, as I think this debacle is far from spoken for.
Show me some love.
No harm intended just trying to get a handle on the situation that I have never seen before to this magnitude on a SERP page.
Then again just tell me to shut up, but still I may have to move my clients, they are still sending e-mails at 11pm PST, this is not normal. GG it is a good answer to a degree but I have never seen so many questions from clients before.
~ all best to all, I am trying to stay focued, really, doh, time for another brewsky.
I track manually around 50 common informational queries and all the current current affairs hot topics that get a lot of queries on Google. I have not noticed any degradation in SERPS at all, and in fact many are mush better. I dont search for commercial type queries, but then again when i am looking to buy something i go to Adwords which provides much better listings, or several specialist shopping search engines or directories. I dont beleive that google's methods are compatable with returning good SERPS for the great majority of commercial queries, and were never designed to. On the other hand Adwords is specifically designed for commerce and shopping.
Now if your and Google's objectives co-incide and Google's automated processes recognize it, its great news for you. But Google must continue trying to imporve its results for users to compete effectively.
If you need to guarantee your clients more dependable exposure on the Web, like in any other media, the asnwer is buying exposure - for the web the options are myriad, - advertising on other sites, off-web advertising, adwords, overture, and a mass of PPC engines.
Sorry for repeating myself, as I know ive said this before. Accepting the commercial/business reality faster is likely to avoid more pain.
" Google's TOS is already clear that you may not use the Google service for commercial gain. "
I hadn't heard that one before.
Flipping heckers - I'd better drop my affiliate links and get a job - fast.
No on second thoughts I will continue to bust my nuts and write sites for nothing for the world to see and entertain themselves on - and starve myself to death in the process.
I guess I have been nieve along the way - I must adjust my thinking and realise that every single site on the index makes no money.
Silly me
:)
(lighthearted)
Fiver
You don't have to - however, the great thing with google adwords is that you can change your adwords in real time. I also have some adwords for keywords that "sometimes" also return my site as a free listing / regular search result. It doesn't hurt me and doesn't cost me too much to let the adwords run until a index is stable and the adwords are no longer needed. The good thing with adwords is: you allways have lossless imposure for your sites while that's *not* guaranteed with regular results.
I'd tell my clients: if you want to have a guarantee that your site gets listed for specific searches, buy adwords. Then it's up to you what words you buy for your client's sites and how long they should run. Today you have to concentrate more on sem than seo and it's part of your job (if you do more sem than seo) to change / update your sponsored listings / adwords.
silly you! .. (well you said it!)
[google.com...]
3 or 4 paras down
Ya dont have to get a new job.
I doubt Google will sue you (along with billions of other sites!)
But be sure you have no comeback or basis (legal of otherwise) for complaint should Google listings not provide the commercial exposure you think you deserve..
In fact Google does provide guidelines on how to "optimise" for Google. In no place in that section however does it promise it will help you make commercial gain. That it does, in many cases, is no guarantee that it will continue to.
Neither does it guarantee that if you follow these guidliness you will get better rankings.
In effect, any SEO efforts directly targeting Google for the purposes of making a commercial gain are a violation of its TOS.
That's why each and every of the thousands of posts on WebmasterWorld that complain that Google actions are affecting their business are best ignored as ignorant.
Also look very carefully at GoogleGuys posts. He mainly provides specific hints and guidance on getting a site listed (or delisted ;)) - very rarely, if ever, does he give *specific* guidance on how to get your site better rankings.
[edited by: chiyo at 7:45 am (utc) on May 17, 2003]
I don't want to go OT now, but if you'd sell your service in a package with all necessary sem stuff in mind (calculations), you'd don't have to charge them by the hour.
- keeping sponsored listings uptodate = x hours / week
My hint: your business model needs revising...
..that may be quicker and easier than getting Google's business model revised...
<added>the last sentence is only there because mysitethatusedtobenumberoneacrossalldatacenters.com is no longer listed on www2 and others!</added>
There are many different google datacenters some of them ahve the new index and some of them have the old. Just because google is redirecting you to www-sj.google.com when you are searching on google, does not mean that I would be searching on -sj. As far as I know, less than half the datacenters are on the new index at this time. every time you pull those adwords you are eliminating your exposure to over half the searchers.
Leave your adwords up for now. You and your clients will be happier for it.
For example:
When I search Keywords(A) on Google, I found a good company and I visited it. Few hours(days) later, I want to find it again(I forgot the URL), but it disappeared on Google, I am confused, if I forgot the keyword(A) I used. I don't know what happen. Actually, I am an end user!
I know Google would not want to confuse end users, and I wish Google could provdes stable infomation to end users in a certain period.
why in heaven's name would google want to make it easier for you to reduce your adwords spend?
why in heaven's name would google want to make it easier for you to reduce your adwords spend?
What is this in response to? Was a post removed?
this was in response to Hollywooods snippet in post 1
>>I remove AddWord keywords that I target on my account for Google AddWords when the keywords are showing under non paid listings due to hard worked optimization campaigns. <<
I'm pretty sure Google would prefer Hollywood puts his money into Adwords rather than SEO, no matter how "hard-worked"
Sorry, i can't find one single example for this. This sounds a bit x files like. And if you even forget the keywords you used, how would you find it again even if it would stay #1? That's more a lack of personal memory than google's algo, no!? ;)
<btw>If the found site is sooo great, even joe surfer is able to bookmark it.<btw>
As for users, I guarantee for every time someone loses something they like because the results change and they didn't bookmark it, there is someone who finds an answer they couldn't find before because the results over the long term get better.
But in terms of how Google operates over time, we can't and shouldn't base our livelihood on predicting it. For example (only a hypothetical), what if they decided that no site that sells anything should be listed in their main index, because they decided that their results should be pure information only, and that AdWords should be the only place where sellers were shown?
If users found this more convenient, and Google would make more money doing it that way, they definitely should do it that way. But somehow, this group would try to get a class action lawsuit together because Google made their clients mad at them.
We're not entitled to anything from Google results. We're privileged to know as much as we know now. But there are NO guarantees it'll act like that for any period of time, so DO NOT tell clients you know what to expect from their listings.
Or do tell your clients you know the future, and reap what you sow.
[edited by: Morgan at 7:53 am (utc) on May 17, 2003]
I'm pretty sure Google would prefer Hollywood puts his money into Adwords rather than SEO, no matter how "hard-worked"
Adwords, *I think* is Google's major revenue stream and if not now, will be forecast to be in the future should they lose yahoo or other partners.
As a businessman, would you start up a business where you provided free advertising with no clear revenye stream from paid advertising? As CEO of Google how would you propose to the owners how to make a profit, let alone cover operating expenses.
To me Google's business model is at its simplest level..
1. Attract eyeballs by providing highly useful SERPS as a whole, by filtering the spam and opportnistic SEO that free listings attract, and highlighting informational and objective, non-commercial sites wherever possible. After all, most surveys I know show that most people go to search engines to find information, NOT to shop.
2. Allow people who want reliable commercial or shopping listings to pay for it "on the side" or list/be indexed on Froogle.
3. License your listings to other sites who may want to do similar
4. Continuous development of new services that may be monetized in the future like froogle, news.google etc. etc.
There is nothing inconsistent in providing the best service for users, as well as encouraging advertisiers to use Adwords. Indeed both sets of results are available on each page. And i would argue they provide the best service to users by separating them. If i want to BUY i go to Adwords. IF I want INFORMATION, I go to the main index. Great for users i think
I clearly understand your frustration. However, me personally, i don't have a problem with the current results (i only search using the main google site, not any cryptic datacenter url). I can live with the up's and down's of some results. No big loss no big wwin for me. So i'd say it all depends on your own success / observations - the "current" results can't be discussed as being generally unstable and messed. And the "current" results at sj, fi & co can't be discussed at all.
At this point i should say that I don't think the above is where this is all headed. When all is said and done it will probably just be a rather normal update that we were able to see more of than usual.
But there is also a point where users will feel let down by a search result that consists of mirrors and spammy spam spam spam. So, in the long run it's important Google keep a track of those requests and action them.
Personally I feel they are doing a great job although the update this month has been played out too openly for some and has caused so much stress I'm currently typing this in a hospital bed with a tube attached to my noggin.
Yes, I'm guilty of putting most my eggs in the Google basket, but what else can you do when 80% of all search results come from this Californian?
Google is like a nice horse ride - sometimes it's smooth, you climb some mountains and get some great results, but then you see a snake at update time - it gets spooked and it goes bucking all over the hillside leaving with you a very sore snosavillga.
Good feedback everyone... still reading
