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The panic is settling down, the whine of worry is receding to a steady hum in the back of my head, and several recovery plans are forming...
I lost my index page entirely, due to lazy keyword stuffing. My fault! Unfortunately, mine is a very small business: no listing = no food (let alone xmas).
I was planning on overhauling the website anyway, and I've given myself until 1/1/04 before I accept an opening with another business and abandon my own. The question now is: overhaul the index page and resubmit to Google immediately, overhaul the entire website and resubmit the whole thing in a few weeks, overhaul the website (starting with the index page of course) and wait for Googlebot. Time is most definitely a factor.
...are any of these plans likely to restore my index page to the directory before I have to throw in the towel in January?
There are also longer range options of starting over with a new website and closing the old.
Mahalo Nui Loa! (Thank you very much!)
I'd just like to say that its a bit of a nonsense that if people now link to a domain with the link text 'green widgets', when the site itself is about 'green widgets' and if you have too many people linking to you with those kw terms, then under this new algo you receive a penalty and are marked down!
Who's talking about a penalty? As someone else here pointed out, Google may have just removed what amounted to a bonus for having lots of inbound links with on-the-nose anchor text. Tweaking the algorithm isn't the same as applying a penalty.
I mean, come on, what are you meant to get people to link to a site with now? Non kw's? Words that have bugger all to do with what you are about?
Unsolicited links from third-party sites tend to use the target site's name in the anchor text. Links that are reciprocal or to a site owner's other sites are more likely to have handpicked keywords in the anchor text. So, if Google has decided that search results are being skewed by artificial linking at the expense of natural linking patterns, reducing the value of anchor text isn't unreasonable. (And again, if this is happening, it isn't a penalty regardless of the impact that it may be having on site owners who have profited from on-the-nose anchor text in the past.)
In theory, it might make sense to treat internal links differently than inbound links from third-party sites, because it's perfectly natural for a Webmaster to use a keyword-rich descriptive link for an internal page. (In other words, if I'm linking to my own article on Norwegian nudism, I might be expected to call it "Norwegian Nudism" in the anchor text, but if I'm linking to an article on Norwegian nudism at ScandinavianSkin.com, I'll probably call it something like "ScandinavianSkin.com: Norwegian Nudism" or "ScandinavianSkin's article on Norwegian Nudism" to identify the source--in which case the keywords in the anchor text will be diluted by the name of the third-party site.)
Ditto!
Cloakers and link hiders(hidden links) in my category cant be found.
We started dancing again in the last couple hours(hence I am missing on some of my good ones)
We are far from over.
GG said a long time ago A Link to you can NEVER hurt you
Who knows what they are up too over there at Google Land.
Nobody should do a thing till we have atleast 3 - 5 days of the Google index settling down.
I most seriously doubt this is true. The reason why is that in the case of brand.com, sites like that typically will have tons of anchor text with "brand" in them. This would mean huge collateral damage of innocent sites.
I believe this is a keyword density problem or Google is just simply broke but since my index page does rank high for less optimized 3, 4 ,5 word phrases and it is just my highly optimized 2 word keyword, I believe it is a pentalty.
So until then go get some work done - e.g. start removing all those hidden links and reduce your kw density to below 5% heck how did you ever think youd get away with 20%?
keyword1 keyword2s - no were to be found
keyword1 keyword2 - #1
keyword1 - keyword2s - #1
kewords2 - keyword1 - #1
Keyword1 Keyword2s keyword3 - no where to be found
keyword1 keyword3 keywords2 - #1
Regadless, when ever my highly optimized two keywords
are used together it kills the ranking.. all other combinations of these two keywords still produces good results..
People interested in SEO at the WebmasterWorld Google forum? Perish the thought that such a thing could ever happen. ;) Yeah, I guess many here have partaken of the fruit of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil.
Correlation doesn't prove causation. Google has been filtering out guestbook links for a couple months. Blogs I believe they haven't yet.
I'm going to redirect my business plan and leave the widget business to all the rest of you.
How many $100's of thousands of dollars do you think have been lost over the last week?
As has been repeated many times - for every loser there is a gainer. The money hasn't been lost just shifted around a little.
still the same linktrade spam rulez here,
the so called english update hasn't started here imho.
cheers
viggen
Im seeing this on almost all the keywords I watch.
Is Google broken at the moment?
Sorry it came down to this, but someone had to lose. It's the nature
of the business. It's the search engine blues.
And, free hint. If your business model relies on free Google traffic for profitability, you may want to rethink your business model. Ain't no guaranteeds with Google except Adwords.
The SE marketplace needs competiton, perhaps G's current actions will stimulate the marketplace, by virtue of people leaving it in droves and going elsewhere...Y! bring on INK ;)
EFV > yep agree with many of your assertions.
I just hope that it isnt possible to damage a competitor by creating lots of IBL's. Perhaps GG can confirm that its not possible to hurt a competitor in this way?
The cynic in me would suggest that Google does not really give a hoot and is happy for 'free real estate' competitors to slug it out and blast each other to never never click land.
[edited by: TravelMan at 10:46 pm (utc) on Nov. 20, 2003]
That's not true. Many really old news stories have shown up...and they don't sell anything. I think half the winners probably don't consider themselves winners, as they probably will have no idea whatsoever that their site has been bumped to the top of an irrelevant category.
1-bizrate
1-sightquest
1-Directory site thing
10-sites links pages with my links on them making them show up, because these sites dont sell these things.
4- actual places to buy these products
3 unrelated just happened to have the 2 keywords one here one there
In otherwords >>>JUNK!
My customers will still be able to find me easily, on those 10 pages with my links ;)
Now Ive been told if you put "Google Rulez" on your page thats worth an extra PR point, im going to go to that right now, come back later........
A simple observation, nothing more, nothing less meant by it :)
1. Those of us who do SEO know that the main skill is not the x-step optimization technique that we do, but the ability to adjust to the changes in the search engine world. So, we'll just have to figure out how to make our way back on top since we've done it before.
2. These new results are pathetic. Google will HAVE to roll back from this as this is pure crap. I've seen better results at AltaVista....
Alex
Actually, this comes from my Internet background. I am a serious Usenet rat. For those who are unfamiliar with Usenet, it is basically like a decentralized message board system. You make a post, and it travels to thousands of different servers on the planet. One of the technical quirks of Usenet it that sometimes posts don't make it to some servers. Thus, some people may not be able to see the post you are responding to. Thus, standard Usenet Netiquette is to always quote the relevant parts of the person that you are replying to. That way someone who missed that post will be able to understand context. And, worse yet if you don't, it can appear that you are replying to the person 2 posts up the thread, when you are not. ALL kinds of bad if you are flaming someone.
If you're going to pay for results, it seems that overture is way better for the money. My clients go 10 to 1 for overture.
Side Bar: I really don't want to pay for my ads showing up google third parties. And when I personally advertise my company, I am not thriled about my ad showing up on www.mikescomputerstuff.com. Because you know that mike and all of his buddies(with different ip's) are clicking away ALL DAY LONG.
[edited by: greenfrog at 11:04 pm (utc) on Nov. 20, 2003]
Whatever they are doing, they are still doing it.
You are correct its no where near done. IF you have noticed the datacenters are filtering like crazy. Sites that have over optimized are being brought to the top like oil on water. When they reach the top they cycle to the end.
As I stated before this will all be done on Sunday the 23rd of November ... Mark your calendar!
Do you think it's possible that this is happening because PageRank hasn't been applied yet? It seems to me that once PageRank has been applied to the results across the board then those index pages will start to rank again.
The results that are showing up now don't have much PageRank to them. In most cases, they're PR0s and they are interior pages. So, once the PR is taken into account, I think the index pages will be back because they tend to have higher PR.
For all those New Posters here at WW (and some members).
We have all been through this before!
Surely you can all see that Google has still not finished updating.
If you stand back for one minute and see the whole picture you will realise that
results are changing,
Backlinks are changing,
PR is changing,
Filters are changing.
Now with all these signs its quite clear that any site can be classed as being dropped, banned, improved, black hat, white hat or whatever.
If what worked for the last so many years and you site complies to the rules then have faith in your own work.
Those site that had dropped to begin with were replace by other sites. Since today the new replacing sites have been replaced by yet other new sites.
You are all wasting your time thinking up ideas why you have dropped, new rules, etc. Specially when the update has not finished and statistics that don't make sense and are not logical.
It took two weeks or more after the great Dominic/Esmer update for sites to re-appear and rank well without any changes made.
Forget asking Googleguy, with well over 1000 posts on WW alone their is no way he can answer most of the questions.
If you business depends on such a short time scale loss then you don't deserve to be in business. Those in for the long term will see the fruits of this update.
And before anyone says, I too have been badly hit by the update, but I am not going to shout my mouth off and post here about it.
Give it time, after a couple more weeks take a fresh look, make a decision then act in a more proffessional manner.
I hope you all understand my point.
Take it easy guys.
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