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Kackle - can you explain the "dictionary" for me? And how I might benefit from it - Im reading your posts hard but dont see where youre coming from.
Sure. But you have to act quickly. Google will fix this one just like they fixed the hyphen.
1. Google is depreciating pages/sites that are over-optimized for certain keywords or keyword combinations. It does this by looking up search terms in a dictionary of target keywords or keyword pairs that it has compiled. This dictionary is Top Secret, because if you knew what was in the dictionary, you could avoid these words in your optimization efforts.
2. If the search term or terms hit on a dictionary entry, the search results for that user's search are flagged. This means that before the results are delivered, the order of the links, or even the inclusion of links, are adjusted so as to penalize pages that have overoptimizated for those terms. Most likely the title, headlines, links and anchor text are examined. It's possible that external anchor text pointing to that page has also been pre-collected and is available for scanning, but this is much less likely. (Besides, external links are not something within your immediate control, so don't worry about it right now.)
3. You want to find out which keywords that are relevant to your site are in Google's dictionary. Compile as many relevant keywords you can think of that searchers might use to find your site. Now take these words singly and in pairs, according to how users might search. Run two searches for each combination and compare the results.
4. If the results are strikingly different for the pre-filter and the post-filter search on a particular term or combination of terms, it means that some variation of those terms has been flagged because something was found in Google's dictionary.
5. Do lots of searches and you can come up with a list of "sensitive" words that you'll want to avoid when you re-optimize your pages.
It's a nice weekend project.
users.htcomp.net/website/ring.html is top ten for jewelry one of the most searched terms on the net and in the past google has served up the top 100 results as 100% relevant for this term.
Relevancy has declined in many important e-business areas. If that is not a "buggy update", What is?
There is a problem. It will get fixed or google will get a bad reputation as a lousy search engine.
Radically different and I mean all top ten results totally different on my 500-800 visitor per day search term on google.com in the last two minutes.
On competitive searches, all of the datacentres are never in sync are they? Perhaps you're just hitting different datacentres if you're using .com for the searches.
I thought it was just a buggy stage, but I'm afraid the effects of adding -anyoldnonsense to search terms, discovered by someone much earlier in the thread, has convinced me. It is a commercial filter, and as such, many of us are ruined if it stays in place.
I am packing it in. Why? Because even if the SERPs improve, there is no guarantee that Google will not decide to do this again in future.
This means there is no stability in Internet marketing, all investment is unreliable - it is essentially an Internet financial crash.
Sure there is stability. Buy Adwords.
In that case I am No-one. Which government, BTW?
Apart from that the update seems fairly undramatic in the sectors that I know best.
Search for Keyword1 Keyword2 - no where to be found
Search for Keyword1 Keyword2 -dfdfdf - #2
Don't this this "penality" is going to get lifted anytime soon. Hope I am wrong.
This sucks! Just increased the max/day on the Adwords, again. Glad someone is making some $
Sticky me and I will give you the URL..
And how does Adwords reduce your credibility?
customdy check the google cache. I changed my site today
also to remove <Hx tags and I have the Nov 23 freshbot, but
the cache shows the old content with the <Hx tags when I
view the browser source. It may take a few days for
the freshbot data to be incorporated in the google index.
[edited by: lgn1 at 12:04 am (utc) on Nov. 24, 2003]
Think about it - de-optimisation is crazy. You deliberately do a poor job, in order to convince Google that you're doing a good job!?
I sell widgets, but am I expected to redesign my entire site to convince Google that I am actually doing something else? whilst sneaking in the odd reference to my products.
This would be a new form of spam wouldn't it? Perhaps we should call it Anti-spam?
Let's try it - I sell widgets:
Meta Title: We will sex your Gerbils
Meta Description: Gerbils sexed by professionals, widgets also sold.
Content: Although we have some interest in Gerbil sexing, we also sell widgets, you can buy (no) purchase (risky) procure (looks o.k.) our widgets here.
Footer:
p.s. Apologies to those people who wanted the sex of their gerbils determined, but we actually sell widgets - but we are anti-spamming Google in order to get our honest commercial site back in the listing.
[edited by: superscript at 12:08 am (utc) on Nov. 24, 2003]
keyword1 keyword2 --adsfrt
Yesterday I took a page that is awol, deoptimized the hell out of it, left one occurance of keyword phrase in title, one in meta description, one on page, no H1 or H2, made sure
sprinkling of each keyword around the page did not occur more than 3 times --- page text containing 750 words.
No backlinks to be concerned about anchor text other than the home page which does contain the phrase as anchor text.
New tags are the 23rd showed up a while ago.
Zip - Nada - All she wrote. Page rank did not change and when I eliminated the --adsfrt could not find the page anywhere for the two term search.
The singular version of the phrase moved a little because I removed it from the title area.
My guess is that once a penalty is trigered, the site url is taged for the penalty regardless of where the problem really is.
What makes me say this is somewhat of a confession.
I have an outside domain pointed to the same page. It got indexed under it's domain name, while on a meta redirect to the inside page, as a resultit has the(exact same page content, but a different url)
This page comes up number 2 in a regular search for the keyword phrase.
To me it looks like clean it all up, and then maybe we will let you back in. I also believe, just a gut feeling, that the penalty is not reconsidered on a refresh update, but rather, on the next big loop around.
Which means, figure many months to get back up top, even if started tommorow.
I think de-optimzation is NOT the way to go right now. Do some searches, and you will find that optimized sites still rank in the top 10 for some keywords - while others do not.
Why? Because those sites have webmasters who have de-optimized their sites? No...because these pages have huge numbers of backlinks.
I think what we're seeing here is backlink importance beginning to mean a lot more.
Think about it: would google suddenly start penalizing sites for keyword optimization? No. That would make no sense.
I was reading an article earlier today about the probabilty of certain additions to the algo. There is a very low probability that google has effectively stopped optimization - and a very high probability that backlinks either aren't factored in yet, or mean a lot more now.
For example, if you do searches for "home plans" or "make money," you'll see none of the top 10 listed sites have started "de-optimization" practices. They do have large amounts of backlinks, however. So, it dosen't make sense to me for Google to drop some sites due to optimization practices and not others. These sites that still rank in the top 10 for largely competitive keywords have not de-optimized: they have done nothing and stood still the entire time.
So, what can we do to get our sites back to the top?
I think we should all begin start linking with HOME PAGE LINK EXCHANGES. I have had two webmasters email me in the past week, stating that their sites have dropped from Google SERPS, but they're beginning home page link exchanges. They think this will put them back in the top 10 for keywords.
I'm not going to de-optimize my site: it took a lot of bloody time and pacience to optimize the way it is. And if you think about it: Amazon and other commercial sites that are having their pages on a keyword rank in the top 10 for those keywords is because Amazon has thousands of backlinks.
This is all theory - but I think if we all begin home page link exchanges with relevant sites - that our sites will come back in the top 10 again.
Perhaps backlinks now mean more then optimization. Maybe someone's anchor text repeated thosands of times over is now more important that how one optimizes. Perhaps I should de-optimize my site and wait for the spider to come around.
But I've been looking at people who hold top positions and they have no de-optimized. So why should I?
Not at all.
I have been increasingly uneasy about the dominance of Google : it's bad business to have all your eggs in one basket, but that's the way that mainstream Internet business was being forced.
The news about the alternatives to be offered by Yahoo -- and even M$ -- was (by increasing competition) a good thing.
Google's behaviour this past week has destroyed much of the goodwill it has built up, which will make the advance of alternatives much easier.
Don't give up. Every setback creates opportunities. Tell your clients that the smaller alternatives actually provide them with stability, that a lesser flow of steady traffic is preferable to a fluctuating flow of highs and lows. Think of your own things to add to this : you are their Internet advisor and can base what you say on experience they don't have.
Give up? I'm looking forward to the next phase, and if we really don't matter to Google, then we will build our strategies where they won't matter to us.
Sure is - you'll be killed. I would suggest you proceed with extreme caution if that is going to be your strategy.
...not only is Google not giving out food treats they're not feeding the dogs at all.
...making for a pack of mad, hungry dogs.
Reporting on my de-optimization experiment (from a few days ago - index page that was #4 pre-florida for a two word key term and then sent into limbo).
I edited the title, description, and h1 so that the keyword1 and keyword2 were not adjacent and left one occurrence in the body text and each separately once. The page was refreshed today and there was no noticeable effect.
I have to say that I don't think inbound links anchor text is much of a factor either - sites linking often have different-keyword1 keyword2.
I wish I had something conclusive to report from this admittedly shoot-from-the-hip test...
But there is the problem of cashflow and confidence - this is what causes crashes. I have recently invested thousands of pound in a new venture, but my current business is now earning approximately zilch. The new venture has no future, or my employees. I can't afford to wait until Internet users switch to an alternative search engine.
This is not bitterness, just fact - I am resigned to the fact that all my future plans, and my efforts over the past few years have gone down the pan. That's life I guess.
Kind regards
[edited by: superscript at 12:20 am (utc) on Nov. 24, 2003]
the high number of backlinks theory doesn't pan out with my search term. some of the sites in the top 10 have less than 20 backlinks, with number 10 only having 4. my site's backlinks is more than at least half of the top 10.
If it's a viable business model, then surely increased PPC (etc) will preserve it. Perhaps you'll be adding to Google's revenues through Adwords, but then there's Overture, etc.
And if SEO's are being dumped by G, it'll be fun to be around when they direct their clients to alternatives.
But of course, all this could be temporary, and you could be back on-line in a while...
Google has recommendations regarding good SEO practice, and one of their representatives has even gone on record here approving of Brett's suggestions for good website design with the high standards of Google in mind.
If the SERPs have suddenly been adusted by an arbitrary filter, for commercial reasons, and with previously accepted custom and practice suddenly changed, then it may may amount to a breach of contract.
Just a thought. Any commercial lawyers out there?
As with all busineses, you should allocate 6-9% of your buisness to advertising, and build it into the cost of
doing business.
I may wan't my gravy back, but I won't go under because of this google update.
I agree, after my little experiment, I am more convinced than ever, stay the course.
In my mind, with the current state of the results that google is returning, unless they revert back to what was a year or so ago, or very quickly improve on what they now have, they will eventually be discarded to the trash heap of their predescors.
Thanks for agreeing with me though, trawler ;)
And unless Google does do something soon about this, people will start making posts like "Google is doomed" or "the fate of google"
Even though we de-optimzed for keyword1 keyword2 I would still think that we would have some ranking in the "new google" by having keyword1 keyword3 keyword2 etc...
CACHE IS showing the new/changed/de-optimized results...
I have no contract with Google. They have never promised me to spider and list my sites. I have never payed them for doing it.
Hey - Now I'm sounding like a conspiracy theorist!
;-)
[edited by: superscript at 12:40 am (utc) on Nov. 24, 2003]
I have no contract with Google..I have never paid them etc.
Do you have a subtle and valuable legal point to make, rather than the most obvious one?
It is a complex issue.
