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Anyone else with losses please post like to get an idea of simliarities
Every single site (me and all my competitors - about 50 different websites) that specialized in this niche has had their home page completely dropped.... In fact, none of our internal pages are in the SERPs either. The only pages are big directory pages that vaguely describe our niche or are ads for companies who sell our niche product.
Are all of you listed in the same category of Googles Directory?
The entire category we are in has been eliminated from the results for the main Keyword1 Keyword2 search [for our industry].
Another poster may have noted something similar, I can't recall, but this would seem to be another bit of evidence that there is a master list of KW's being targeted, whatever the logic.
I was sorry to see that, as I was really hoping this was just an algo thing...
the links may be a cause all by themselves, not just a pre-condition...
I can't think of any other reason why three out of my four index pages would have disappeared. Those four pages all link to each other in a navigation bar using separate domain names, e.g.:
site1.com
site2.com
site3.com
site4.com
Sites 2, 3, and 4 are "sites within a site" under the site1 domain, and their domain names redirect to pages within the site1 structure. In other words:
site2.com = site1.com/site2/index.html
This structure with the separate "vanity domains" for the subsites was set up for historical and practical reasons. I could have just as easily linked with the internal page names instead of the domain names, but I didn't, since the sites had their own "brand identities" and the collective wisdom here at WW seemed to be that a few crosslinked domains were fine. Unfortunately, the Florida update appears to have changed the rules significantly, and that was that.
Fortunately, the disappearance of those secondary index pages isn't a disaster for me, because the index pages aren't all that important in the overall scheme of things. But it's annoying, and it means that (for example) the index page of a site that PC Magazine has called "the premier visitors' site for (city name)" is no longer listed in Google.
This directory thing is new - at least I have not noticed it before. There would seem to be no point in having the directory page showing a mirror of the search results page.
Everybody,
Regarding the general what the heck happened....could this new filter/dance/update be an attempt to begin separating commercial from non-commercial sites, and perhaps encourage shoppers to use Froogle?
M
The title tag of today had become the keyword/description tag of yesterday - highly stuffed, optimized and relatively easy to manipulate. Until now. Content is king?!?
seasalt
And, I would repeat again for those that keep mentioning that this is mainly impacting 'commercial' sites - it is not. Information sites (mine are all articles I have written about the topics at hand) are out of the results as well.
Additionally, in my case, I see many of the typical commercial sites like Amazon, epinions, dealtime, shopping.com, bizrate, etc. all dominating the search results. If those aren't commercial sites, I don't know what are. And, sadly for Google, most of those pages are really not very relevant to the keyword search, and speaking objectively, not at all what a person performing this search would be hoping to find.
Someone mentioned that for their search terms, none of the top 50 or so are index pages. Checking my main search terms, I have noticed the same. Unfortunately, even my non-index pages are out of those keyword search results, even when previously I was #1 with the second indent listing for another sub-page of my site. It seems that if the index page trips the filter for that search results, all subsequent pages from the domain are filtered out as well.
In my case, three of my four sites are too new to be in DMOZ, and are suffering the same - that might be an additional reason, but not the only one.
At least one of my missing index pages is in DMOZ, and I think all three are in Yahoo.
I just noticed that my PageRank increased from 4/10 to 6/10 but I still can't find my index page unles I use all 6 keywords that are in my title and H2 tag. I don't use H1 tags.
The PageRank on one of my missing index pages just went up from PR6 to PR7. A lot of good that did. :-)
I find it encouraging that that things are still changing and that Florida may not be over yet.
I find it encouraging that that things are still changing and that Florida may not be over yet.
Let us hope - personally, it is time for a vacation. I hope you guys straighten it all out by the time I return ;-)
Google "lost" the index pages before as a test, during that time they knew that their revenues increased. Now they have gone for the full on webmaster wipe out.
Got you all( and me) by the short and curlies. I spend a load on adwords anyway but I say it is a bad show when G has so much power.
Maybe the force of good will triumph over the dark side and they will switch it all back. Don't hold your breath though.
You can sure now that their adwords revenues are going through the roof.
Is Google now 'collapsing' domains based on IP perhaps? We are still listed for our company name domain (although our index has gone down over 100 places!), but seem to be nowhere for the other domains. Could this be a case of Google considering it duplicate content? We haven't submitted the other domains to Google, or tried to use any shenanigans to get multiple listings, those other domains worked their own way in through listings on other sites, through adwords on Google itself, forums, chats etc. etc.
Should I be concerned about us getting blacklisted? Or could this be part of our big drop?
karembeu
Goo was started in 98 and is around 5 years old, that is pretty young. Look at A V they were well on their way to becomming the top search engine then out of the blue hear comes goo.
If any of you are programmers, web-developers, or are interested in creating the best Search engine of all time email me at carr32fort@hotmail.com and we can begin work on the project.
Agian goo is young and if they continue to provide these poor search results how easy would it be to beat em.
Don't think for a second that it can't be done look at Billy he started in a garage.
Perhaps with the potential of going public soon and the thoughts of becomming MULTI-Billionairs over night has been like red dye candy to a hyperactive A.D.D. child and they can't focus on the important tasks at hand... namely unbiased and relevant search results.
1.) All of the companies were established online from 1997-1999.
2.) The majority of their backlinks came from editorial sites. (possible expert sites in Googles eyes).
3.) The majority of their backlinks were from other pages that had been established for some period of time. Some pages had posting dates, review dates, from 1997.
Could Google be looking at the following to determine some portion of their ranking?
1.) Dates pages/URLs were originally indexed.
2.) How long has the link been in place?
Your thoughts?
So please stop. You are the only one to turn this into an issue about other forum participants.
Pointing out bizzare theories are bizarre theories is not a personal attack so please leave those sort of comments out of here.
Also, deliberately hijacking threads with off-topic posts is out of line.
The fact of the matter is many people here are posting comments which are hopelessly uninformed and untrue, and these comments lead to newbies doing unfortunate, self-destructive acts. This is made all the worse when the instigator of some of the bizarre theories is simply attacking Google from another angle because that is what he does.
Some of us would like to address and examine Google's changes in a constructive fashion. When someone posts that the previous Google algorithm was primarily based on pagerank, that is simply hopelessly uniformed, or in this case, a deliberate falsehood stated for political reasons. In either case, pointing out the blatant falsehood of that is a good thing, lest some inexperienced webmaster might think the idea is a genuine or true one.
Duplicate content is the root of a lot of the lost problems, as of course is the new algo. People can talk about whatever theory they want, but that doesn't invalidate other's opinions, and they should be free to give them.
The fact of the matter is many people here are posting comments which are hopelessly uninformed and untrue, and these comments lead to newbies doing unfortunate, self-destructive acts.
Yep. I get the impression that some people are ripping their sites apart, and tossing things back together, on pure speculation. As just said, hunt down any and all duplicate content, and take care of that, before you do anything else.
Not meaning to p*ss anyone off, but the general level of civility has declined markedly here since the flood of new members rolled in post-florida. Let's hope it's temporary.
Not meaning to p*ss anyone off, but the general level of civility has declined markedly here since the flood of new members rolled in post-florida. Let's hope it's temporary.
I imagine that the level of civilty lowers in direct proportion to raising level of despiration.
If standing on "high ground" it is not likely one can understand what it is like for those who are drowning.
It might be helpful if theories are acknowledged as such by those who post them, at least for the benefit of those who might take them as gospel and "self-destruct" in the process.
Javascripter
The fact of the matter is many people here are posting comments which are hopelessly uninformed and untrue
Such as? ;) No samples for us? ;)
I value everybody's input, so by all means please provide samples of what you believe to be misinformed and incorrect theories of Google's new algo, and then after that please provide the scientific data which you believe proves your theories correct so we can all learn the insights into Google's new algo as quickly as possible.
If possible, please provide scientific data before you ask that we accept a certain point of view as "the truth". I have not seen you provide any "scientific data" when you tell others that some of their beliefs are "uninformed", so I am skeptical of your analysis on this particular issue until I see real data to support it. Asking to see data is the whole point of being on these forums.
Your scientific data seems to be "I like google because my pages were not affected so therefore others who were affected must be spamming, so therefore they must learn to stop spamming". That's perfectly okay for you to state that, I don't mind hearing others points of view.
But I think we are talking about two different sets of people in 2 different situations.
First, there are the people who lost major rankings because they held high positions for "popular" money words (kackle and aspdesigner and others). Secondly, there are other people who did not lose rankings because they had lots of scattered pages of diverse jibber-jabber which did not rank well for any "popular" KW phrase (but they did rank well for lots of lesser known phrases, which is a "great" tactic).
So I don't think you and kackle are in the same situation, I am not saying you are wrong but I just think perhaps you are in one category and kackle and aspdesigner are in another. I am not saying one category is better or worse than the other since diversity is a smart tactic, but I am just saying that we are comparing "apples and oranges" which is why I think you and kackle are at such odds with each other on this particular topic.
Again, people with popular keywords lost pages while those who ranked well for lesser known keywords did not drop very much (we already know this), and we are just trying to find out the details as to why people's pages dropped who held HIGH KW positions for MAJOR money words, which is the "topic" of this particular thread.
In fact, I hereby nominate Kackle and AspDesigner for the title of "honorary admin" of WW;) Anybody second that motion?;)
I've checked all my sites and none of my sites have lost any ranking. Am I lucky?
Naw, you are in the majority.
It seems to only be a problem in certain categories of sites, and only when the site gets the majority of its traffic from a specific keyphrase.
It's just tough for those people that are in areas where the vast majority of their traffic comes from one or two major keyphrases and they can't really diversify their traffic.
If it didn't seem to get you, then just keep on doing what you have been doing.
That's just the most obvious way to see duplicate content. There are plenty of others. I've moved a few pages recently, and the new locations aren't ranking as long as the old locations are being "remembered" by Google. Another site I've seen that dropped a lot for a term has site.com/page.html and site.com//page.html both on the server and being linked to.
Essentially, add a word or two in your title tag. I'm suspicious that a non-dictionary word helps. So for me, I'm adding the firm name to the title tags on each page.
