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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!)
How can Googlebot know this event has passed? How do they know you don't want a book on the topic? If I search "widgets", all Google can know is I have some interest in widgets. I'd have to add -book to eliminate book sellers. When the search term is broad, expect broad results.
You equivocate (http://www.datanation.com/fallacies/equiv.htm). Let's define out terms. What do you mean by relevant?
And, you use a circular argument (http://web.uvic.ca/wguide/Pages/LogCircArg.html)
"Google's results are relevant"
"Not for this search"
"Ah, that's a commercial search. Do an informational search"
"How about this one?"
"Ah, it's just an index. Those SERPs are relevant, just look at them"
So, is your position this - "Google is relevant because pages with relevant words are returned."?
Or, "The search in question is irrelevant because the SERPs lack meaningful information about the specific query."?
Rather than trying to defend a rather indefensible position, try responding to this:
Google results are far inferior right now to what they were just last week. That is why I have HAD to turn to ATW and Teoma for the article I am writing. I have to believe that I am not alone in that, since in this case I am doing a search much like that of many other non-SEO types.
WBF
Looks like the owner of Gifted Basket has a friend in the NY Times.
WBF, There is ALWAYS going to be those that scream about the google SERPs. Mostly from Webmasters that are not on page 1 so they cry foul.
Dave
Do you know what all of us are to Google? ---- just one enourmous QA Department. We sit here all day analyzing Googles results ad nauseum, just to provide them with wonderful feedback about their product. After all, why do you think they have representatives monitoring this forum?
Google likes to know what the SEO's strategies are and uses this information to ultimately flank us perfectly every time.
just my two cents...which is actually only worth a penny after the recent update.
The whining can wear one down. Seems though that some discussion of the data could lead to a clearer picture of the changes behind the changes.
I remain intrigued by the anomolies in the Directory. The timing may be coincidental. First the Directory was updated. Then Florida. Clearly the Directory is using two different sets of data. I suspect a correlation there that explains at least some of what we have seen.
I certainly am not convinced that it has anything to do with hyphens -- or two word terms. Perhaps something to do with on-page or in-site factors.
I would join the supporters forum just to peruse their threads if I could right now. Ah, maybe after the next update...
WBF
I would like to thank everyone here at WW for your patience during this update. Despite some isolated cases of panic and despair I'm glad that everybody calmed down at the end (remember it's not the end of the world, there are 21 more letters in the alphabet. :)
And that begs to ask the question: This suggests that the "old" update cycle is back (21 more letters)?
"florida" was a "f"ailure for many
"g******" will be? for the many - let's hope "g" will be good for many?
Then again, every update is good for some and bad for others.
I could not agree more. I wish I had a friend at NYT tooMaybe she is one. I suspect she may have already received an email informing her that her article was linked too in this informative thread.;)
musicman, do you remember approx. how long it took in dom/esm for your index pages to reappear? just need to plan for how long i can expect to be depressed. i might need to get more anti-depressants. seriously, though, that information would be useful. thanks.
My experience with Esmeralda was roughly the same as musicman's, and I'm hoping it repeats on Florida.
The dates I can trace by checking notes, threads, and emails are that...
- the update was being summarized on the forums as a done deal on roughly June 29...
( [webmasterworld.com...] )
- even though I have a philosophy of wait and see about these things, I was losing heart and doubting my techniques around July 2...
- I was confessing to thoughts of conspiracy theories around July 3...
- everything started popping into place in a succession of steps on July 8, with sites ranking better than ever.
That's the time frame as I have it. Florida is cutting deeper, though. On Esmeralda, it felt like link relevancy had simply been shut off. On Florida, there's some filtering taking place, and I don't know what's going to happen when they turn the knobs.
Hate to make it worse but it did in fact just got worse for us..It seems to have just jumped again in the past few hours.
Our traditional top 10 page was initially out at the beginning of Florida, then settled back in at a realistic #8, and as of a couple hours ago is now at #83. No black hat and world authoritative relavancy for the search term in question. Hopefully it will go back.
As GG inferred this seems to all be about natural phrases. I only see #1 single word results if the domain, title and text all match up. The guys who I saw before who were top 10 due to link relevancy are all gone.
Does anyone know what exactly the ie filters in use at sites like the Google dance machine do? If I use them everything looks normal again.
[edited by: Shoplifter at 8:53 am (utc) on Nov. 20, 2003]
same site in top 9 slots........
>same site in top 9 slots........
ACK! Now THAT is Google being broken.
Thanks for sharing that with us. Your post was very informative. In an attempt to make sense of what we are currently seeing, do you have any recollection of the following:
1. Were you appearing for some keyword pharases and not others in the few days after the update as many are reporting now?
2. Do you remember if your allinanchor positions were affected? Many here are have maintained their allinanchor positions while dropping in the serps.
Are you talking about adsense?
But that isn't what counts. From what I checked, SERPs were stable over every datacenter. The dance may well be over. Which depending how your site(s) are doing in the SERPs should be cause for elation or despair.
yup..if you signup to adsense you show adwords right?
Does the site have a fresh tag?
Aji
Really, to be honest, the dance is never over. Don't give up hope :)
Many of those who seem to be quite happy with the results and saying "there is no problem" - must of forgotten their posts here from 6-12 months ago when their sites were booted and they were anything but happy ;)
Florida is clearly addressing some of the problem and also not nearly doing a good enough job.
I kept expecting my site to return into the index but it appears not.
I was 1st or 1st page for lots of related keywords to my site......and now I cannot even find my URL in the top 10 pages for any of them!
Well thats got it off my chest anyway.
Strange thing is that my other site hasnt moved at all.....if not improved!
The asf codec thing, while existing now, is exactly the problem outlined in the New York Times and exactly the problem that Google has created for itself in the past six months by making anchor text everything.Actually, this is very different. The gift basket thing is about creating different domains and interlinking them. The asf codec is all about more than two listings per domain on the same page, which is why it is an example of Google being broken, rather than just spam.
Actually, this is very different. The gift basket thing is about creating different domains and interlinking them. The asf codec is all about more than two listings per domain on the same page, which is why it is an example of Google being broken, rather than just spam.
exactly...did u even try the next page?..same site again...
Just to shock everybody I'm going to claim that at the least the G algo is not yet perfect because of a #1 position I have that I should not have.
I have a page about a script that happens to have the same name as a holiday destination just added on to another site as it wasn't worth creating a separate site for it. This page has a dmoz listing and a couple of other specialised dir listings (mostly through redirects) and a link from another (PR5) site of mine. (The only plus point possibly being link text but even then it's only two or three unredirected links, surely some travel pages can beat this.)
For the single term search that is the name of this script/holiday location this page comes up first and unfortunately I cannot claim that more than a couple people typing in this term might be looking for my page.
I'm wondering what it is doing there given how competitive the travel industry is. Is G doing some sort of themeing and downgrading certain (known competitive) topics? Do they just like geeky pages?
Um, noooo. Google is about pages, not domains. It makes no difference at all if a company makes one hundred urls/domains, or 100 sub-domains of the same URL!
"same site" is a non-concept. 1000 domains can have the "same site".
Florida is clearly addressing some of the problem (of anchor text)
You may well be right. If that is the case, I am not sure if it is working well. A competitor has 50 odd domains that are promoted simultaneously and in exactly the same manner. Some of those sites have dropped in the serps but some are doing better than ever.
The sites in question all use a very focused external and internal anchor text stratergy. This group of sites makes a good case study. The fact that some have disappered while others have not suggests that there may be some other factor or factors at play.
Conversely, I have seen non-commercial sites, which do not employ any SEO, disappear completely.
[edited by: Goanna1 at 9:44 am (utc) on Nov. 20, 2003]
The directory categories I watch are switching between new and old almost daily. If I follow the link from there, to my site, my PR is up by 1, yet backlinks are stale.
Even the new categories in the directory have HEAPS of dead links, mirrors and other rubbish. What a great job they do over at DMOZ :o) I guess you pay peanuts you get monkeys!
I think it will be a few days more yet.
Um, noooo. Google is about pages, not domains. It makes no difference at all if a company makes one hundred urls/domains, or 100 sub-domains of the same URL!
yes, it is, the two most relevant pages from one domain should be shown. Subdomains should be seen as one domain and two pages picked from the entire network. The ASF CODEC is a prime example. Nobody complains at two pages being picked frm a site of 1000's of pages even if every page is more relevant than the rest of the serps, why do people think its different for subdomains? Clearly its an open invitatio to create every page as a subdomain rather than an internal page and then every page can be returned fr a single serps. It doesnt even appear that a duplicate filter is being applied across subdomains as far as i can see.
