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The results look really good.. hopefully this will reflect across all the datacenters soon. Seems like the spammier sites I compete against have moved down while the good honest pages have moved up.
Is it possible Google has reduced the effect of anchor text on a site's internal 'home' page links - where webmasters have used 'search term' as the anchor text for the home link instead of just a plain 'home' text link?
I don't think so. I have an index optimzed for 2 phrases. I only use one of the phrases to link back to the index sitewide. It's gone or hopelessly buried in the SERPs for both phrases.
Type in allinachor:keyword and see the results : they are VERY similar to the usual SERPS. You could almost say that without some kind of ranking here, you wouldn't get a good G ranking.
This latest change would, I assume, be directed at spammy linking campaigns : I have been rejecting irrelevant link requests all year -- even explaining that G will target people like this.
The bad news is that I can see evidence that blatant, spammy "mini-webs" set up to boost PR etc through masses of links are surviving this update intact.
If G thinks it is achieving anything, I would suggest it has fired wide of the mark, wiping out loads of innocent civilians while missing some of its prime targets.
Normal search for my keyword phrase returns 169,000.
Allinanchor equivelant returns 747.
Simon.
Also, besides the irrelevant junk, I am seeing tons of doorways and cloaked pages ranking well in some very competetive industries.
thanks
So do we think www-ex might be leading the way?
I certainly think that but this update has a way to go yet.
Well, despite the question I put out about internal back link text causing damage, I tend to agree that it would be bad for G to penalize pages benefitting from those links. That said, since I doubt that G was giving much weight to those internal back links previously, discounting them completely now would not account for the drop I see for our index page results (subpages look fine so far).
IF the allinanchor and related measures are correct now and I'm not sure they are, then maybe the notion that it's a bug still flies.
This whole fiasco really reminds me of esmerelda, both in the breadth of changes, but even more so in the quality of the SERPS.
Were I to take a guess, I would think that there is someone at Google that thinks they have a great idea and keeps tweaking on it. Unfortunately, whenever it goes live it just doesn't work.
WBF
WELL DONE Guys! :)
One of the things that I have learned in the last half century, is not to spend my time worrying about the things that I have no control over and instead concentrate on things that I can control.
I've read this entire thread and the majority of messages are from self-proclaimed "white hats" "leaping off buildings" because "the sky is falling" and they had "all their eggs in one basket". :)
Remember, Google became the powerhouse that it is because it defined its market and went after it. It was a fast loading page that provided better results for SEARCHERS than the other search engines out there. If their current "algo" is bad, they will either change it or watch as their traffic shifts to other search engines providing better results.
I have no control over what Google decides to do.
What I can do while Google dances without me, is to look for other dance partners.
What other search engines are out there providing quality results?
What other methods other than search engines can I use to drive traffic to my site?
How can I improve my site, so that it will be even better than it is today?
These are things that I have some control over, and a lot of that info is just waiting to be discovered in others threads in this forum.
Question: If WebmasterWorld disappeared from Google, would you stop coming here?
I am very happy with Google
I'll second that - so much spammy trash has disappeared - for the moment.
During the past couple of months i've read about how inbound links with keywords in it was so important, and in fact it was (based on searches i performed..). Many web sites where getting away being brand new with bad content but being #1-5 on keywords that where very competitive.
So offcoarse, I started to look for inbound links myself, thinking it CANT be a bad thing. I put alot of work on all 5 of my sites, buying links (not from those high PR fake sites but from real directories, like yahoo, etc.), trading links with similar sites, etc.
IT WORKED!, offcoarse, as i read here in these forums the guys that post here know their stuff (most ;)), anyhow, so this update comes and blows everything away, the 5 sites that where doing good are no where to be found. The other sites i have which i did not do the same with are still there. This tells me the inbound linking with the important keyword is now killing instead of helping my ranking.
I don't depend on the traffic, but im worried that if inbound links can hurt you, how the heck will you be able to increase the page rank of a site (in order for it to rank better in searches...)
BUT, I have an observation. The search for "keyword1 keyword2" USED to bring up the site www.word-keyword1-keyword2.com as the number 1 result, and that site had the title "keyword1 keyword2 word1 word2". Now that particular site has sunk all the way to the very bottom of page 2 of the SERPs (he's going to be losing a lot of money--not that I care--someone else other than me will now get a shot at the big money).
Based on the above observation, PERHAPS the new Google algo is no longer giving weight to domains with names like keyword1-keyword2.com, and titles that are perfectly optimized for the keyword.
Just a thought, I have no idea if this is true or not.
On to mine...
Remember Google is in the search business.
Let Google do their jobs and we will do ours. All quality content and well designed pages will benefit in the long run. Let's look at the big picture not just a short "get lots of traffic" plan. It is better to get 50 people a week that return often then 1000 people a week that will never return again.
[edited by: RobbieD at 9:04 pm (utc) on Nov. 16, 2003]
Most of them that were rankings for keywords within (Rank 5-10) have disappeared.
I can see the following pattern:
www.domain.cim/KEYWORD/ seems to be working. Sites with such keyword directories seemed to have taken the top slots. Of course they all look ugly.
http://www.google.com/ie?q=&num=100&hl=en is also showing funny results that do not match any of the 10 servers search results on http://www.google.com/ie?q=&num=100&hl=en I noticed that one of my websites is showing up for a competitive keyword with 15,500,000 competing pages at No. 7 on this is no where ranked on any of these servers. It was never optimized for that keyword anyways. In fact there are other sites that are being optimized for that keyword but they are no where even in the top 100. ļ
Never put all the eggs in one basket I guess. People who have group of sites could still survive this update as some sites would stay there and some vanish. But ones with 1-2 site owners are sure going to be thinking now.
I see these results as old and maybe Google¡¦s server that is responsible for showing the top 3 rank results is working. The servers that show the rest are malfunctioning. I know, it¡¦s a very weird logic but we can only keep our fingers crossed and think of something. Only God knows what is wrong with the google guys.
Cheers
No I'd still come but I might not be here now if WebmasterWorld never had shown up on my search request.
>> It is better to get 50 people a week that return often then 1000 people a week that will never return again.
Maybe. But what is better than 50 people that return? 1,000 that return. I want to be found by the 1,000 and then the quality of my site should get them to return.
Google SERP showing some very interesting results...
Google Directory showing some interesting results...
Google updating in the middle of the month...
Backlinks and/or PR not being updated...
GG denying anything wrong...
Glad I have top listings in ATW and Inktomi...
I have evidence to show that focused (identical) inbound link text from several sites has not been devalued or penalised, as some people are suggesting. I still have a #1 ranking for a good, seo related searchterm solely on account of identical inbound link texts from several sites.
If any spam pages have bitten the dust, it's probably just coincidence because many whitehat pages have also vanished from the rankings, and I can still see highly placed cloaked listings that have the target searchterm inserted every few words in a large amount of text. So cloaking and keyword stuffing hasn't gone.
The index page problem is right, I believe. I've searched for index (home) pages in searches for several searchterms, and looked as deep as Google would produce results for (1000 results or less). In thousands of listings I saw only one home page - domain/index.asp. It was the only variation of an index home page that I found. There were a few with name/value pairs added, but that was the only index home page without additions.
My conclusion is that Google does have a problem with index (home) page URLs again, and I don't believe that it's intentional - it's an unexpected mistake.
For all of you who are very happy with the recent changes
and are saying "good job google" and "ha- ha", don't get too comfortable ... the only constant is change. Many of you posting happy comments will be crying later and many of those crying now will be posting happy comments later.
My personal sites appear to be doing better than previously, but I am seeing the same kind of nonsense rankings on some of my test searches that we had when they broke the algo last year. Some of them are EXACTLY the same poor results that appeared in the bad updates last year. That was eventually fixed, this one probably will be too, I suppose.
I'd like to help you out by posting the bad SERPS, Googleguy, but frankly I hope it stays broke:)
Now I must bite my nails and hope the axe doesn't fall my way.
Good luck to all.
Either that or its time to up my daily adwords budget ;)
I think I'll wait for the dust to settle before I jump out of the window.That's an excellent idea. The dust will help soften your landing.;)
Worry not, there's still probably another 16 hours until the "index pages are back" thread starts.
