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My point is that the people who work hardest on SEO are also the people who most want that top spot. They are therefore likely to be the most relevant site. To punish them for that may be morally satisfying for those at the Google mothership.
Relevant to a search engine or relevant to a searcher?
If my theory is right, I don't think that it makes any difference what the link text is. The fact that they are generic links, and possibly because they use identical link text, is enough. Also, links into the site usually link to the home page, and are often arranged to use reasonably identical links text. To me, it adds up at this point in time.And I don't think it's anything to do with 'punishing'. I think it's to do with discounting certain links so that they are nowhere near as effective as they were.
Well that sure fits our situation as well, but I have trouble seeing how G, even with new interpretive abilities, could tell generic from non-generic names with reliability.
How about a penalty or *loss of credit* for keywords related to a homepage if they appear too often in the combination of:
--URL string
--page title
--internal backlinks
Seems harsh, since that structure is logical, but it would explain what we see ... I think. Or, maybe not ;-)
If you ranked for a 2-word keyword, try searching it as "keyword-keyword" rather than "keyword keyword".Results look much like they did before the update....
Google still not showing up in the top 100 even with search-engine instead of "search engine" (on the -in datacenter)
Fred
wow! you are right. searching for keyword-keyword DOES show my home page back at number 1, where it used to be when i would search for keyword keyword. OMG. That is wierd!
No idea what this means though.. I always thought the - was considered a space.
Results 201 - 227 of about 763,000
I cannot go past result number 227 unless i click 'repeat the search with the omitted results included.'
So, if you don't really like the new Google index, simply add a - in between the terms of your search :)
It works for my missing sites as well, now all we have to do is get all the searchers to include the "-" in all their searches... do you think google could post a notice on their front page about the new way to search until the repairs are done? :-)
My client's site has a PR5, 300 PR4+ incoming links (counted by Google), in the Google Directory and DMOZ. They appeared in the first 3 pages in the SERPS for its keyword phrases.
After this update, they do not appear in the SERPS at all ... what is going on? I am totally stumped.
Any suggestions would be appreciated. Thank you in advance.
"-" is making the diff these days..or we never bothered to search it earlier like this?
[edited by: wanna_learn at 8:19 pm (utc) on Nov. 17, 2003]
If you ranked for a 2-word keyword, try searching it as "keyword-keyword" rather than "keyword keyword".Results look much like they did before the update....
Same here. I wish we had that back. :(
I'm thinking it might be helpful for those relating info about their lost homepages if they note whether their index page is *gone* or *lower* in the SERP's.
I for one am more worried about index pages that are still there, but lower. The ones that are gone will likely reappear as has been true with previous upheavals...
Worked for me as well
my index page is there - just went from #1 to well below 1000 for my main keyword phrase. i think most of the problems are not that index pages are no longer in the google index, but that they are SIGNIFICANTLY lower in the serps for certain keyword phrases.
I have a site about widgets, organized by type of widget.
I was #1 on many widget searches.
I used to be #1 on xyz widgets. Now I'm not on the first page at all. However, on the second page, my page about abc widgets and my page about 123 widgets are both listed.
The site is database driven and so generally all the pages of the site follow the same format so the chance of one being penalized and another not is remote.
This is on all datacenters except IN.
It appears to me that results with - in between keywords are updated results.. I have a new page that was ranked about 150 before all this and if you enter - now between the key words i am on the second page.
How many of you guys that are doing the keyword-keyword have a - in the title.?
None in the results I am looking at.
I can't really tell from a lot of the posts... but it's important, I think. During Dom/Es, that distinction made a world of difference. Lost pages were eventually found; devalued pages/sites needed work...or in somecases abandonement.
Regarding the hyphens, I'd say it suggests only that the specific combinations of keywords have been devalued relative to the target page's place in the SERP's, whereas when the hyphen is included, you're simply telling the SE to search for that exact string of characters, and are therefore likely to get far more literal (and less interpretive) results.
Keyword-keyword Every single keyword I search as I have 50 different ones doing the keyword-keyword they pull up.
I noticed in every single one of them I have phone numbers on the page with at least 2 - in between them or a - in the title.
I'm trying to find one with out a - on the entire page.
Could it be the - used on a site more then once caused something screwy?
Dan
This thread is a big waste of time at this point.
There is so much misinformation. People are trying to read into things a little too much
I concur.
But I find that I keep coming back :-(
Of interest, in doing a "view source" for the new top 10 sites for my primary keyword phrase (1.9 million results), of the ones that allow a source view, NOT ONE had a description metatag and only one had a keyword metatag with only three words. All had a title but not necessarily the key words in the title.
The #2 site shows "done but with errors on the page"
The #6 site moved in 2002 and their "new" link returns a page not found.
The #7 site doesn't even have the keywords in the title or anywhere on the home page.
The #10 site comes up with a very large affilitate ad for an unrelated product before the keyword content.
I can't believe Google wants this kind of irrelevant search results.
<Addition>
One more interesting thing I'm seeing:
A site in the top ten for "keyword-keyword" has a title of: "Keyword Keyword - KeywordKeyword.com"
Ok you say.. but both "Keyword Keyword" AND "KeywordKeyword" are bolded in the SERP title.
That's saying that Keyword-Keyword = "Keyword Keyword" AND "KeywordKeyword".
</Addition>
[edited by: synergy at 8:43 pm (utc) on Nov. 17, 2003]
i think keyword -keyword2 (notice the space after the first keyword) would return results without keyword2. but keyword-keyword2 is what we were discussing. i think caveman is probably correct though in that this is just returning fewer results looking for the exact string. probably just wishful thinking that there was something to this. it is nice to see my site be number 1 again, even if it is just a fluke.
Results 201 - 227 of about 763,000I cannot go past result number 227 unless i click 'repeat the search with the omitted results included.' - dazzlindonna
Google's always done that - it never actually returns as many results as it says it's found.
Forget the searching-with-dashes-thing. It will only get you pages with the string "searching-with-dashes-thing"...
;-)
Google's always done that - it never actually returns as many results as it says it's found.
As far as I can remember the number of results is just an estimate and not the real number. I think it would be impossible to calculate these numbers in real-time across several servers in a cluster with more than 3 billion pages.
I'm not sure if I read it somewhere here or the speaker from Google said that at SES.
But my guess:
The bigger the gap between guess and reality, the more dancing to be done.
In most search engines you can combine the pluses and the minuses with quotation marks, as explained above. However, you cannot use brackets or the OR-operator.
+"pan pizza" -olives pepperoni
This means that the pages the search engine shows you must include the phrase pan pizza, they must not include the word olives, and they should preferably include the word pepperoni.
If there is no sign in front of a word, most search engines will nevertheless read a + sign. The engine reckons that the word should be present . In other words: it will default to AND if it finds no "mathematical signs". Some search engines will nevertheless give priority to keywords that you give an explicit + sign. The main exception is AltaVista, which will interpret the lack of a sign as an OR operator. This will not be the case, however, if AltaVista recognizes your query as a common phrase.
The use of the minus sign may have some unforeseen consequences.
Here's my 2 cents...
All the datacenters (and www) give crappy results for about 25-50% of the searches.
For some reason, the seaches on www-gv are not so bad, and I think that, when everything settles, which includes GoogleGuy's minor update and then some, the results will (or at least should) look something like that.
Maybe not - this is moving way too fast -
i've ALWAYS been able to go way past number 273 in a search with over 700,000 records before
...maybe it depends on how many results are returned in the first place, but I have noticed on previous occassions that you can't actually get to the *last* page of the serps, unless there's only a releatively small number of results returned.
[edited by: subway at 8:58 pm (utc) on Nov. 17, 2003]
A minus sign in front of a word will tell the search engine to subtract pages that contain that particular word.
So you are saying a search for blue-widgets that currently returns excellent results for "blue widgets" is doing so because the word widgets is subtracted? Wouldn't that be saying that the SERPs for "blue-widgets" would be the same as "blue"?
For some reason, the seaches on www-gv are not so bad...
I beg to differ for the keywords I keep track of.. results are crap (same as other datacenters) currently on www-gv.
I find it hard to believe that Google is going to make a user type in "-" etc. to get the results they really want. If we are providing quality content on our websites and Google is not picking up the best websites, people will find something that gives them the quality results. I have to believe that Google wants to provide the best results to searchers, if they don't it will eventuall catch up and people will start to use a different search engine. You may initially use a product because of its reputation, but if that product does not meet your expectations you will find a new product.
I would not be a satisfied user if I were a consumer and went to Google right now and did a search for certain keywords, many of the websites do not make sense. I have to believe Google will eventually (hopefully soon) get a good product out there.
Results for keyword-keyword look VERY good in my industry. The top 10 are sites that SHOULD be there. The results look even better than they did before the Florida update IMO.
I would not be a satisfied user if I were a consumer and went to Google right now and did a search for certain keywords..
My fiancee, who knows nothing about SEO or ranking, mentioned to me last night that she couldn't find anything worthwhile on Google for her research paper.
[edited by: synergy at 9:07 pm (utc) on Nov. 17, 2003]
Synergy, that was definitely the find of the year!
Amen. It might really be the find of the year in another 24-48 hours :-)
EXACTLY the same thing here... wish someone could explain what this means......
[edited by: Upheaval at 9:27 pm (utc) on Nov. 17, 2003]
(Just kidding of course)
jd
Hmm. Some of the other senior-ish people could answer this too, but keyword1-keyword2 on Google just does a phrase search along the lines of searching for "keyword1 keyword2". It limits results to pages that have that exact phrase on the page, or possibly in anchors.
Results are drastically different for "keyword1 keyword2" than they are for "keyword1-keyword2".
GG: What you are saying makes sense, but doesn't make sense when you look at the results of searches. I guess it boils down to waiting for everything to settle :)
As noted earlier, I must say thought that the results for "keyword1-keyword2" in my industry look very good.
YEAH. Same thing here as well. I was ranked number two for keyword keyword (out of 4.970.000 results) and now im lost somewhere in the serps. When i do a keyword-keyword search number two and when i do allintext:keyword keyword im even #1. The sites ranking 1-10 now for keyword keyword simply suck.. They have NO content what so ever.
My theory is true... go and type cheaphotels
I expect the update to be finished fairly soon. The search engine industry is ever changing.
Interesting theory canuck1980, I certainly hope you are right.
Sound like many of us have the same situation
- Index page is not doing well for keyword keyword searches
- Interior pages are relatively unchanged
- Searching for keyword-keyword gives expected Index page good results
- Searching with allinanchor, allintext, allintitle give good Index page expected results.
But when I search for my http://www.site.com - it's there.
? :(
The actual results in my (very competitive) industry show results similar to the ones i was seeing about 1 year ago, before there was the crazy competition on the "keyword keyword".
I see many old, un-optimized and not-updated websites at the top of the SERP's (e.g. forums, old articles etc). Most of my competitors (and myself) are gone... poof!
I was not spamming. I hate this.
