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Some probably believed that the ice age was the beginning of winter and that things would turn around again in the spring. Some probably realized that something was terribly wrong. Some others found a way to either adapt,remain and survive and others still decided that migration was the best idea and aimed for equatorial regions and,hopefully,warmer weather.
Google has gone through some massive changes lately. For all I know they may still be working on the upgrade. I've read a lot of the comments in the various topics concerning updates,backlinks and PR. The truth is,nobody knows for sure what is going on and what to expect. Google has a HUGE share of the search market. It's not like "Joey's Little Search Engine" had a glitch. If Google hurls it gets on everybody. The effect of their upgrade is having a HUGE effect on ecommerce.
Prepare for an "ice age". If it's just an "early or a long winter" then you'll still be ok for having prepared for the worst. What I'm saying is that,regardless of previous success with Google,a longer-term solution for your site is called for. Find ways to work around the obstacles in your way and attain the positions that you want in the index anyway.
There's still traffic in other search engines. Don't depend on Google for all of your traffic. Link and banner exchanges can also get you more traffic. There are also offline alteratives to driving traffic to your site. Print your url on everything that your business has printed like cards and letterhead. Feature it in your multimedia (print,radio and television) ads as well. Buy ads on the sides of busses and on the roofs of cabs. Billboards may work as well. I've met too many people who flatly REFUSE to do ANY offline promotion. They insist on relying on internet-only promotional techniques. Oops! Their domains expired already.
There are lots of ways to drive traffic to your site. Find them and you'll survive. Sit around waiting for Google to "get fixed" and you may just freeze or starve waiting.
Integrity
Google's complex, automated methods make human tampering with our results extremely difficult. And though we do run relevant ads above and next to our results, Google does not sell placement within the results themselves (i.e., no one can buy a higher PageRank). A Google search is an easy, honest and objective way to find high-quality websites with information relevant to your search.
Arnett also mentioned that directories aren't performing as well.
Yahoo charges an arm and a leg for a business directory inclusion and wants an annual fee for renewal. All this so that the free web results are displayed over the paid listing. High-Quality service? You bet.
DMOZ has a few million pages in its directory and refuses to index a lot of commercial pages. Searches at DMOZ often return server busy errors and NO RESULTS. Great.
My point here is that Yahoo and DMOZ have appointed THEMSELVES the authority of what gets listed and what doesn't. Just who in H*LL do these people think they are? The last time I checked the Constitution EVERYONE has a right to publish what they like as long as it is legal.
These people are worse than Sohu. They deliver low quality results that don't serve the interest of the web searcher and insist that they are protecting the interests of all. Who asked to be protected? I didn't. I can decide what I want to click on and what I don't.
In a free society the few don't have the right to dictate to the many. For that matter the many don't get to dictate to the few. Don't want your kids seeing certain content? Tweak the internet content options in IE. Not enough? Buy client based internet content protection software. Leave the 1st amendment and everyone else alone. I wrote Congressman Steve Largent and his pandering democratic buddy about that a couple of years ago when they were advocating web censorship. Not only have they shut up but I've never heard back from them either. So much for my tax dollars at work.
The ice age is definitely coming. It's going to be worse that I thought...Make more lemonade.
Want one? : )
"Ignore it and keep building," was and is still the buzzword. I don't have a mega site like you other guys. Since early July my traffic has tripled from approx 1700 visitors per week...it keeps rising daily. PR? I haven't checked it in a week or so.
Thanks Webmasterworld!
1 www.google.com 49.5%
2 search.yahoo.com 22.9%
3 search.msn.com 10.9%
4 www.google.ca 5.6%
5 aolsearch.aol.com 3.2%
My point here is that Yahoo and DMOZ have appointed THEMSELVES the authority of what gets listed and what doesn't. Just who in H*LL do these people think they are? The last time I checked the Constitution EVERYONE has a right to publish what they like as long as it is legal.
You're trolling on purpose, right? The 'last time I checked' the Constitution dictates your rights in respect to the government and the commons, not your rights within other people's domains.
You MAY publish whatever you like as long as it legal. However, you can only publish it in places to where you have access, or permission to publish it. You do not, and should not, have automatic permission to throw entries into Yahoo or the Open Directory.
My point here is that Yahoo and DMOZ have appointed THEMSELVES the authority of what gets listed and what doesn't.
The last time I checked the Constitution EVERYONE has a right to publish what they like as long as it is legal.That still doesn't mean anything about anyone else listing it.
No. I call the advertiser and advise them that they are a pain in the arse.
That still doesn't mean anything about anyone else listing it.
You FINALLY got it! Have a banana!
The list of what these directories WON'T publish is a LOT longer that the list of what they WILL publish. The list of what they WILL publish is in NO WAY correlated with what their search "customers" are searching for. Got it yet? Who made these people authorities for ANYTHING? I sure didn't.
Google delivers top quality search results to the searcher. That is why they are number 1.
Before there was such a subject as economics a shopkeeper overheard one of his clerks arguing with a customer about her choice of merchandise. He walked over to the clerk and whispered in his ear. "Just give the lady what she wants.". Get it?
You proabably haven't quite figured out the "ice age" metaphor yet have you? That's why I subtitled it "Survival in a changing environment". Get it?
FREE SPEECH.
I repeat. There's an ice-age coming
Yes, run, the sun is falling...
I still believe the web is one of the most democratic things around - and Google is one of the best and stable promoters of that democracy.
The rising cost of doing business will drive the small operator OFF THE WEB just like food conglomerates killed the small farmer,chain restaraunts killed the family diner & the malls killed the small retailer
May be the case for many sectors: E-bay for auctions, Dell for computers, etc.
Yet the reverse holds true for other sectors as well: No software implementation conglomerate will hold top ten search results in every language for a search "village (location) microsoft software installation problems". Google and improved Geo-targetting Google will see to that in my opinion. In some cases - no more need for expensive mall rental for exposure..
There's still traffic in other search engines. Don't depend on Google for all of your traffic.
For regular search results and for the normal decently established site, the one comes with the other. Nowadays such a site will rank similar on every search engine. If I'd want to depend on Alltheweb or Inktomi to rank well, I'll immediately rank well in Google. Other search engines might not call it Pagerank, but they now all have similar ranking algos, yet diminishing market share.
Google has gone through some massive changes lately.
If you mean basic ranking algorithms - I'd be interested to know them. The base of their ranking mechanism to me is a more solid version of what it used to be - or was meant to be. It is fine-tuning misused or percentile aberrations in my opinion.
I've been reading these forums daily for months. Since Dominic/Esmerelda I have seen very few messages about how much better the posters' sites are doing
I think the majority of longer time members who run established sites are too busy managing all their extra business thanks to stable good-old Google rankings. They probably also get visitors through hundreds/thousands of search queries - not on a few - that might drop or rise in rankings.
Publish or Perish - & - drive in decent links or die.
There's not much more to it but persitence and patience.
Keep the coming Ice-Age in permafrost - I like it ;)
The sooner someone at DMOZ has the balls to make the change the better!
Dave
DMOZ is dying a slow death!
If your recall,when AOL had all that money and were buying up Netscape,eBay and Time-Warner they were behind the formation of DMOZ. AOL is dying a slow death.
Netscape acquired Newhoo [wp.netscape.com] on November 18, 1998. AOL bought Netscape [cnn.com] on November 24, 1998. But Newhoo had been around before even that date, but as an independent project, totally separate from Netscape, AOL, et al.
Newhoo first went live in early June 1998, as this Wired story [wired.com] reports.
The Open Directory (or 'Newhoo' as it was then known) was formed before AOL bought Netscape.
I stand corrected. Does anybody remember what the original topic of this thread was?
something about lemonade?
Well said, Shak. <big chuckle>
If you can't make lemonade in the "ice age" - make lemon popsicles.
*melting Google one icicle at a time*
A little poke at the "sky is falling crowd".
Excuse me while I "acorn proof" my website - I think I hear Chicken Little.
Wrong. For every site that goes down in the SERPs, one goes up.
And some won't change at all. My own rankings are remarkably stable, for whatever reason. Sometimes they bounce up or down a couple of places, but most of the time they just hang in there quite nicely--even for competitive phrases. why? I'm guessing it's because I don't do much optimizing except for making sure that I have descriptive page titles, headlines, and (when I think of it) anchor text. Taking a "natural," "organic," or balanced approach may not deliver immediate results, but it may have advantages over the long term. Think of it as the "index fund" approach to search-engine optimization. :-)
When I'm laying out pages I prioritize along the following lines:
AllInText:search term
AllInTitle:search term
AllInAnchor:search term
AllInUrl:search term
This top-to-bottom approach seems to get me the positions that I want. Have you tried playing around some with the anchor and hyperlink text to see if it helps your ranking?
<a href=http://keywords-in-domain-name.ext/keywords_in_url>Keywords in Anchor Text</a>
AllInText:search term
AllInTitle:search term
AllInAnchor:search term
AllInUrl:search term
Which of the 18,208 search terms that people used last month should I waste my time concentrating on? Considering the sort of site europeforvisitors runs, I would say that there is a fair chance that the number of terms exceeds mine.
By having well written content, making sure that I have reasonable titles, use decent page layout and navigation, my site owns the more obscure searches, and is almost always page one on the more popular searches. In every case the incidental weird searches add up to more hits than the big kephrases for a category. As far as I'm concerned, the allin*: searches are a waste of time for the webmasters of the vast majority of the sites.
It was the specialist animals and plants that always had problems when an ice age approached. If you can optimize your site using allin, then you are a specialist that can do incredbably well for a short time, but you are in danger of extinction if conditions change even slightly.
