Forum Moderators: open
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.
"New User" posters should be paying attention to the isolated posts from members here who have more than 500 posts to their credit, instead of latching onto whatever bizarro idea some newbie concocts.
That's right, then you could also post how the latest Google shuffle dropped you from all SERP's.
Dave
Welcome to WebmasterWorld all new posters :)
It's not a general attitude that new posters have no valuable points to make and i don't really think that it was steveb's intention to say that either. It's just that these threads naturally lend themselves to all kinds of theories and speculation, some of it might even turn out to be valuable information, but not all will.
I'd personally just say that it's easy to get carried on in the debate sometimes, especially as things like these is what a lot of members make their living from... please try to keep a good tone even when you disagree with someone - readership is always much larger than the number of posters ;)
/claus
There are pages and pages here on an idea that exploded into a million pieces when it was discovered the phenomenon held true for all individual words, but in the meantime some posters actually went out and made changes to their sites. Not good.
Kackle explained it much better than I could or did in his/her last post.
I am open to hear anyone give a reasonable explanation of why adding the exclusion with nonsense letters in it brings up pages that have been dropped in the serp.
But the fact is that at the moment using the same keywords in a normal search and an exclusion search (with nonsense letters) does bring up different results for certain keywords. When as Kackle pointed out the results should be the same only minus the pages that have the nonsense text on them.
<eddited for spelling>
[edited by: BradBristol at 1:39 am (utc) on Nov. 23, 2003]
[edited by: Newman at 1:40 am (utc) on Nov. 23, 2003]
KW KW
google.com #0 out of 1,300,000
allinanchor #5 out of 2,410
allintext #5 out of 1,280,000
allint title #3 out of 2,950
KW KW -whatever #4 out of 1,210,000
KW KW KW
googl.com #1 out of 138,000
allanchor #1 out of 170
allintext #1 out of 137,000
allintitle #1 out of 329
KW KW KW -what #1 out of 120,000
I hope this helps.
I have a contender for least relevant SERPS on the new index [users.htcomp.net...] (a real estate site selling ranches) is top ten for jewelry. Can anyone beat that?
Not only is that result completely non-relevant, but the word "jewelry" does not appear anywhere on the page!
I have a suspicion that the page used to have relevant content for "jewelry".
Nope. Check the cache. Then check the listed title & snippet for this page in the SERP. The Top-10 jewelry listing for this real estate page was based on it's current real estate content. The snippet is particularly interesting - note that there are no bold words, as there were no keywords matches anywhere in the content! Not exactly what I would expect from a Top-10 listing on a extremely competitive search that returns almost 23 million results!
But check-out the back-links, a number of them are from jewelry-related sites. That doesn't mean that this site is, though (obviously, not, in this case!)
Perhaps somebody smokin' somethin' at the 'plex suddenly decided that top listings should now be selected based on the "theme" of the backlink sites?
What I have noticed is that my 3 word anchor text is holding me at #1 in the natural results but for any combinations of 2 KW's my index page is gone except when I use KW KW -whatever.
Yes, all of these tests are helpful. So, either your third keyword was a "Get out of jail" card or the filter only goes two keywords deep. What was your third keyword? If you try it alone, is there any evidence that it's in the dictionary? Probably not. Then the next question is, can you come up with other "Get out of jail" keywords for the third term? What happens if you use KW KW KW without the -nonsense term?
Finally, what happens if you use KW3 as the first term in your search, and follow it with KW1, KW2. Any difference?
So many questions, so little time....
allintext: keyword keyword...and compared to the -asdfsaf? I'd have thought it to be identical, but it seems it's just very similar.
As i see it, it has the same effect as doing a quoted search ("keyword1 keyword2"). The keyword-dash-keyword did the same thing, didn't it? It seems like an operator that means "all searchterms are equally important" or something like that...."exact phrase"?
/claus
edit:added last part
keyword1-keyword2 on Google just does a phrase search along the lines of searching for "keyword1 keyword2". It limits results to pages that have that exact phrase on the page, or possibly in anchors.
[edited by: claus at 3:51 am (utc) on Nov. 23, 2003]
Not only is that result completely non-relevant, but the word "jewelry" does not appear anywhere on the page!
The results look fine to me. You will always end up with a couple of spammy sites in SERPs
Dave
[edited by: Dave_Hawley at 1:50 am (utc) on Nov. 23, 2003]
Search for "Googlebombing". Anchor text of inbound links can make a site rate high even if it has no relevant content.
The results look fine to me. You will always end up with a couple of spammy sites in SERPs
It was not a spammy site. Please re-read my post to see what I was getting at.
Well, if the update was supposed to be done Wednesday, and it's not, when will it be done and things return to normal?
They are the old anchor-text based results. Perhaps Google is not running the new algorithm on search phrases with the -gsretsre exclusion. Perhaps they are deliberately keeping this data unchanged as a reserve of some sort. Perhaps somebody at the 'plex forgot to flip the "add nonsense word exclusion searches to the algo" button (I think it is the pink one).
Whatever the reason, the -systsrs exclusion is merely bringing up pre-florida style results. Another way of saying that is: heavily anchor text weighted results.
Why they left that data there (at least temporarily) is one question. Why something so mundane generates a conspiracy theory is another question.
KW3 #163 out of 5,558,000 money word
KW3 KW2 KW1 #11 out of 126,000
KW3 KW1 KW2 #2 out of 131,000
KW2 KW3 KW1 #3 out of 131,000
KW2 KW1 KW3 #0 out of 131,000
I have five KW's in my Title that through combinations I make up my Adwords KW's. All the money combo's are gone. I have been advertising for a year now and was finally going to cut the umbilical cord and go it without adwords and now this.
Over the last seven days, I'm actually noticing a marked increase in traffic from Alta Vista.
I find this fascinating, in that I've held the #1 positions across the board for the key terms people use to find this site for quite some time to compare with.
Alta Vista usually comprises between .8 - 1.1% of referral traffic, with an average of 1.1% over a one year period ( #1 spots on all search engines but google-derived currently ).
This last seven day period, they've jumped a point to 1.9%. Considering I haven't seen them this high in years, I thought it was a neat anomoly.
Google has not lost any ground via a comparison... Traffic is UP by a good 2 points by comparing the last week to a yearly average; however, it is up via less relevant results. I'm getting alot of traffic on money words at a non-profit site that I shouldn't really be getting.
It's converting @ 8.7% on my adsense account though.
I didn't even see this sort of shift back in June.
This data comes from a site w/ 30k page views monthly.
Anyone out there with a serious wide-range traffic flow ( drawing traffic from a wide range of related searches ) seeing any shifts in search engine referrals?
- Jason
Search for "Googlebombing"...
I am quite familiar with the term already, thank you very much.
Many posters here have been observing that the inbound link text ranking parameter has been tuned down quite a bit (or even penalized) in the Florida update.
My observation was not about the link text, but rather, the actual theme of the back-link sites themselves (i.e. - that many backlink sites were jewelry-related).
This could just be a Google bug. Since it will only rarely effect real world punters out there doing searches, all kinds of low as a priority at the Googleplex.
I checked the first five links for [users.htcomp.net...] and they all point using 'Custom Jewelry Webring'.
I know other sites for a competitive term that are merely a frame around another site which hold their place purely on incoming anchor text.
Sorry but Kackle has something and its not incoming anchor text.
It was not a spammy site. Please re-read my post to see what I was getting at.
Perhaps a bad choice of word, but I cannot see how you could know if the site got to be there via "spammy" techniques?
The bottom lines are;
The SERP's will never please all of the people all of the time.
There will always be an irrelevant page in any search result.
Dave
I don't understand why you keep wanting to believe that people that are trying to work out what has happened are creating some conspiracy theory. Maybe it has to do with todays anniversary of JFK’s assignation.
But hey, that’s your opinion and I respect that. But is rather silly that you just keep repeating it over and over.
The anchor text theory continues to explain the discrepancies simply and adequately. Results for Mongolian yurts are only slightly affected, because no one in their right mind is optimizing for that. Results for hotly contested phrases are going crazy, because everyone with 500 anchor-text links was in the top two pages last month and now suddenly they're on a level playing ground with sites that only have 30 anchor-text links, and consequently some sites are gaining or losing 150 places while this sorts out. Meanwhile the sites which had great ranking from Google for reasons other than anchor text, such as a ton of inbound links or on-page stuff or high PR or whatever--or for non-anchor-text-related spam techniques for that matter--are holding or gaining ground.
I've had people lately putting spam links to themselves on my stupid guestbook... I mean, I have about 8 friends who read that thing, and there's only one link in to the guestbook, so it must be useless for hits or PR purposes. The spammers must have just wanted an 878th copy of their same adult keyphrases in anchor text to them. Maybe adjusting Google so that the value of repeated anchor text drops off after a certain point will make this spam technique less valuable. The downside is that other, different spam is becoming more visible, but I'm sure they're working on that. And, of course, good sites that relied heavily on anchor text for promotion are taking a beating. But it shouldn't take long for them to integrate some other promotional techniques.
In the meantime, non-commercial/non-competitive searches are looking great. My educational site's down a few positions, but I assume that's because it had previously been artificially inflated by extra anchor text (something it seems automatically happened to sites with the topic in the title, because that's how other sites link to you). All the sites ahead of mine are also good sites with real content. There used to be porn spam on the second and third pages of this search, and it's all gone now. Presumably anchor text had been keeping it afloat (it certainly had nothing to do with the topic). I'm glad to see it gone. (-:
I do not believe, as some here have suggested, that this is returning "old" database results.
First, from a programming perspective, it makes no sense that the addition of a simple exclusion word to a search phrase would cause it to go to a completely separate database. In addition, the SERPs I am observing are not the same as pre-florida (and also include new sites).
My best guess is that it's a programming screw-up. Part of the new ranking code is either not activating properly for these searches, or the code can't "handle" exclusions yet, so it is disabling itself for searches that include them.
Either way, this discovery is QUITE valuable, as it gives us the opportunity to observe and compare SERPs with and without this new filter, and hopefully discern exactly "what" effect it is having on the rankings.
BTW, has anyone noticed the difference in the titles on Top-10 results with and without a -dhsad?
jd
I hold a great deal of respect for the knowledge that flows from this forum and very seldom find a need to comment, because the efforts of others usually bring forth the true answers to all our questions.
Throughout the last trying week, I've watched all the conspiracy theories and the flooding speculations of what could have been changed to undermine all our hard work to be No. #1 for our clients.
We have followed the rules to the tee, we rank the very highest in every search engine on the net. Now, when we see all our efforts completely ignored and thrown aside for ridiculous search engine results, we are quick to assume that it is something we have done wrong and need to make immediate changes...
It is in such times we all need to take a moment and look at the truths. We have done our jobs properly... We have several other successful search engines to clarify that. We have followed the rules of not only Google, but all search engines.
This is obviously an attempt on Google to better themselves, as can be expected from a winner. Whether or not is is successful or not, remains to be seen.
Yet, we all have to look at the reality that in its present state, this is not only devastating for us, but Google as well. The ridiculous search results are costing them audience, that may never come back. Ultimately, such drastic moves could result in the demise of what is the most powerful force on the Internet.
Myself, I'm confident that the folks at Google are scurrying to correct the "wrongs," and this will soon be corrected. For those of you who are speculating on how you can change your sites to make them work on the new Google algo, my suggestion is, "Don't worry about it!"
If the overall consensus of a decade of search engines analysis and research is suddenly wrong, then Google can let it be wrong. BUT, I'm putting my money and efforts on what has worked successfully for years!
In the end, I think we will all find that not changing a thing will be in our best interest. If Google continues on the track they are now, they will lose their lose their audience and we will still be the winners on the winning search engines.
So, with all that said, I'm going to sit back and enjoy my Saturday night after a very trying week, have a few cold ones.
Myself, I have great faith that Google will get all this straightened out very soon. They are winners and will continue to be! S... happens..
