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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.
>> Check that backlinks and you'll see how it got there. I have a suspicion that the page used to have relevant content for "jewelry".
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Cache of the page has *NO* one single word for jewelry, so backlinks do count heavily - this is an obvious flaw in G algo, it cannot analyze that the destination page has nothing to do jewelry.
I am starting to come back in the top slots in the SERPs.
What did I do?
I cleaned up my over-optimized pages where there's an alignment between anchor text, file name, and cross links within my site. I cleaned that up and got rid of all the INTERNAL anchor text alignment. I do not believe external links with keyword anchor text is having a negative impact.
So, how do I know it is working?
Of twenty city pages (e.g., Chicago Widgets, Los Angeles Widgets, etc.) , I only made changes to half of them. The pages that came back are all the ones I cleaned up. The others have not.
The first thing I did this morning was to validate and ensure that Google had the most receent cache of my city pages (all pages with or without the recent changes). They are all current so I know my changes had a positive impact. Will the results stay there. Hell-if-I-know...but at this point, I'll take any positive gains I can get.
Okay...so now my city pages are coming back...but my index page still does not show up for my primary two keyword phrases....except for my third phrase which was not heavily optimized.
Me thinks the rules have definately changed at Google. YMMV but backing off on optimization seems to be working for me.
Google has *always* been this way. Do a search on "Googlebombing".
Look at the page name - ring.html
Check that backlinks and you'll see how it got there. I have a suspicion that the page used to have relevant content for "jewelry".
Well Spotted,
This proves that not all filters are being used.
Actual on page content may not have been properly added or filtered, this would answer the question why some of the highly SEO indexed pages are not appearing.
Also I would say that
this update is going to last more then weeks less then months :)
Just to note that one or two of my sites that have been hit by the usual rankings seems to still draw in the same amount of traffic, this is due to internal pages appearing in results that I didn't appear in before.
Still a long way to go yet guys!
Leave your site alone, your can't re-optimize sites based on a half updated search engine :)
One thing I am wondering is if this page *recently* changed? The Google update is based on what it saw 2-3 weeks ago, and SERPs are based on that. If 2 weeks ago that page was about jewelry, then this would explain things more.
Using the Keyword1 Keyword2 -fufufu method allowed me to precisely determine which keywords (actually keyword combos) are being filtered.
Actually, my number one search phrase for my niche is:
keyword1 keyword2 keyword3
if I search for: keyword1 keyword2 keyword3 -fufufu
My index page still does not show up,
BUT, if I search for:
keyword1 keyword2 keyword3 -fufufu -xyzxyz
My index page comes up #2... So it seems to be some sort of DOUBLE keyword filter? You have any input on this?
If I search for just: Keyword1 Keyword2 -fufufu (only using 2 of my keywords in the search and 1 -fufuf, then my index comes up at #2 as well.
Wed, 29 Jan 2003 13:14:58 GMT
Appears not to have been updated for a while but I may be wrong
I have another related site that is an info site and that seems to be pretty stable through this entire thing.
My key client right now is not however and I am not sure I agree with the over-optimized theory. I have keyword at the start of the title in the anchor and body text (11 times) nothing in the H1.
So it seems to be some sort of DOUBLE keyword filter
willardnesss, I can confirm this, good find
I am getting traffic based on words and phrases removed a long time ago?
Freshbot comes around alot, so the cache looks current, however, the serps don't match the cache.
This is exactly what I find for my index page, which vanished a few days back.
Not one, but two of my product specific sites have dropped from front page to no where.
These are not 'optimized' or SEO'ed sites in any way, other than legit product content and links from a few of my other sites....
The funny part is that several sites that now appear on the main page are totally unrelated to the product search terms, unlike my sites, which represent them well.
I can't expect Google to be perfect, but I CAN expect Google to be LOGICAL. I think that is what is bothering most people.
Good Luck
Josh
that keyword1 keyword2 -dfdf -dfdf search is awesome suddenly I get more results and the serps are very clean. I see sites which should rank high, ranking high again. So all we have to do is tell everyone to search for things using the -dfdf -dfdfd.
Can anyone figure out why this is happening?
Very interesting. Here's a rough summary of what you said, I think:
Rule 1: If the user entered more than 4 terms in the search box, then the search is sufficiently narrow, so don't consult the dictionary.
Rule 2: If the user entered 4 terms in the search box, then use only the first three.
I probably don't have it right, but you get the idea. There's an initial if-then parsing of the search term box that determines whether you even do the dictionary lookup. Once you're sent to the dictionary, the -xqwqxw trick works because the dictionary lookups aren't smart enough to deal with the excluded term properly. But if you have enough search terms, you probably aren't even sent to the dictionary to begin with, so you don't need the excluded term to defeat the dictionary.
It's just a guess, and more testing needed. But I think we're getting sufficiently close to figuring out Google, so that Google might soon react by trimming back the dictionary. That would defuse the spectacle and make a lot of webmasters very happy.
Too many webmasters have been 'gaming' Google, getting useless links from completely unrelated sites, along with building GAZILLIONS of useless pages in an effort to improve their rankings.
This new update is Google's way of 'getting even'. They're now listing all those 'useless' pages in the top of the SERPS.
Let's see if a site about 'How to Make Butter' (which now ranks #1 on Google for a search on 'widget'), with 312 links, will really drive business to your 'widget' site.
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Hey, it's the 40th anniversary of the Kennedy Assassination...maybe I've been watching too much of this conspiracy stuff on TV this week....
My observations on my site:
Title and H1
<title>Key1,key2,key3,key4,key5<title>
<h1>Key1,key2,key3,key4,key5</h1>
Key 5 still #1
Key 1-4 no where land
2) The quality of the serps is much better when searching with -fgfg -fgfg
example (niche term):
search "boston real estate agents" 6 out of 10 results have to do with phrase
search "boston real estate agents -dfdf -dfdfd" 10 out of 10 results have to do with phrase
Sorry to include real searches but it is just to illustrate a point. I am not associated with these searches.
3) I noticed pr has little to do with the domination of certain sites. The level of over-optimization plays a big role.
Anyone else making any observations?
Kackle, I noticed that the searches that I'm still on top with do not use "jewelry" as the first of the 2 search words sooooo maybe they are only filtering the first word of the search?
I don't know, frankly. But I can confirm that the single word jewelry is what I'd call "dictionary sensitive" without even knowing who you are.
Do a search for: jewelry -xwqwxwq and then do a search for just jewelry.
You will see that the top site for the first search completely disappears in the top 100 results for the second search. That means "jewelry" is a sensitive word. When you find a keyword that is so obviously sensitive as the word jewelry is, then it's a matter of combining it with other terms, both sensitive and non-sensitive, to figure out how the filtering works.
If I do a search using all 6 keywords that are in the title on my home page, my site comes up number 1. If I do a search using 5 of the 6 keywords in my title my site appears further down the SERPS. It appears the order of the results in my case is highly correlated with the closeness of the match of the search term to the title.
-agreed, now what is the madness behind it? Quickly before the Google programmer closes the window.
