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Tribewolf: If you got your top 20 spot more than a year ago then chances are it has held through all of this.
Nope, not here. Held our #1-2 for longer than that and it's gone, buried a hundred or more deep, although it isn't quite as deep as it was, it's still useless. Our #6 for slightly different terms was more recent and it's been buried too.
Sorry, but I don't think that timing is the key.
LisaB
That implies that Google is broken. Give us all a break already. It isn't broken. It is doing exactly what they want it to do and that isn't that they want to punish commercial sites.
They made a change of some kind in the algorithm and they are using a base index that was established prior to the rolling update period to evaluate the effectiveness of the change. They are slowly adding filters and fresh data to it and studying those results as they are applied, which explains why some people have seen slight changes in the serps over the last 2 weeks.
The index is now primed for the introduction of the next major crawl data which is being gathered now. That along with whatever filters remain should put everything mostly back to reasonable normalcy.
What is going on now may be the compilation of a new base index for a similar major update sessions to be done next year. Remember, Google people consider themselves as academics and scientists. You can't study changes applied to something without a controlled base point to start from.
And it's not how old the site is, it's how old the listing for the keyword is. You can have a 5 year old site that just got its first top 20 listing last month. I don't think that the age of the site itself has anything to do with it.
I think it is admirable that they would do that, but I wonder if they became a little over zealous in their efforts...
LOL! I Like it.
Unfortunately, search is the way that many of our customers find us - and we're not there, (not for your run of the mill searcher) we are missing along with quite a few of our competitors. We use adwords, so we still appear, but adword visitors alone do not convert as well or equal the traffic we got with both. (no mystery there)
There just seems to be no rhyme or reason to it, goodness knows I've compared sites, as well as notes with some of those competitors. What the NYTimes or the sinatra family, among others, has to do with [my keyword phrases] I'll never understand. I'm trying to wait patiently for the changes that must be coming.
all I want for Christmas are my old SERPS back, my old SERPS back... sung to the tune of Two Front Teeth [washingtonmo.com] ;)
LisaB
It hasn't fully propagated yet, but many of the phrases I'm looking at show the following characteristics:
a) Two-word keyphrase prominant in titles/snippets
b) The negative operator (-gfgfddfgfgd) no longer making any (or very little) difference
These are money phrases, and it's happening all over the place. I can see it's in the early stages, as Keyword City1 might be showing changes but Keyword City2 isn't.
Tried to start a new topic to this effect but it hasn't been approved. Mods must be asleep.
Let's dance!
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edited - typo
[edited by: oodlum at 9:33 am (utc) on Dec. 2, 2003]
Perth travel
Perth travel -fdgfgfgd
Miami singles
Miami singles -gfdfgsdg
I first noticed with my sites then looked around. I can feel it in my bones.
I'm in Australia so I'm not sure we're seeing the same thing yet, but I passed the above examples through the dance tool and they were consistant on all DCs
It may be passing through Aus first. I was going to post the example miami holidays but it's not happening over there when I checked the dance tool.
I think it's more than just closing the gibberish thing, because the results are showing the two-word KW everywhere and I haven't seen much of that since Florida.
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edited, and kind of off-topic: now that I think of it, it isn't keyword stuffing that makes the serps look spammy, it's that Google bunches all the KWs together and HIGHLIGHTS them. Maybe they should stop that.
I've noticed that search for: my main keyword
provides same nasty results as of Florida shake-up,
BUT
search for: "my main keyword"
provides same good results prior to Florida shake-up.
Anybody else notice this? Any thoughts or insight?
[traffick.com...]
I don't see different results on Google Australia.
Still waiting :(
And referring to SEOs as freeloaders is just wrong
I agree.
I am in the "printing" industry and now, the top thirty SERPS for my "money making" keyphrase are now the manufacturers of "printing equipment" as opposed to those supplying "printing services". Based on the fact that the majority of my clients have used Google to find me in the past year, and the number of visits I would get per day, that tells me that the user is not getting what they are looking for with these SERPs.
"Google is doing what search engines have been doing for years: studying common SEO techniques and trying to ensure that clever marketers don't get the upper hand in the "free" index."
Funny because it was always my impression that search engines who made their #1 priority "ensuring that clever marketers didn't get the upper hand in the free index" ended up losing almost all of their market share to a certain search engine (Google) who made their #1 priority "relevancy of the search results"... Now Google seems to be moving in reverse. My point here is to simply ask, why should it matter if a marketer got to the top of the results by being "clever" if indeed their web site is relevant for the search query? Does it matter? I say no. I say relevancy is what matters.
"It's ingenious, really. Google has figured out how to get paid much more than the zilch they used to get paid for running a search engine, whether users click through to commercial listings or quality content"
Funny again. It seems to me Google was already making money from Adwords and Adsense before this algo change. Now Google seems to be trying to squeeze extra profits out of their business model but the move seems to be coming at the expense of relevancy of the "free index results" with respect to commercial searches. And relevancy is what got Google where it is in the first place... Lowering relevancy for an entire category of searches (in this case commercial) will probably lower Google's profits in the long term as users begin to look elsewhere for these search results. It may take some time. But webmasters affected already by the change who know their industries very well are basically laughing at the quality of the new Google search results for the money two keyword phrases, while at the same time crying over lost profits.
But none the less, the search results are not as relevant. And that cannot be good in the long term for Google. In my opinion, it would seem Google is less concerned with its long run or future user base, and instead more concerned with its short run profits, perhaps in an effort to maximize the IPO value.
It's a great opportunity for another search engine to step up to the plate with commercial search results more like what Google was showing a month ago. Yahoo probably has the best chance to regain market share, perhaps by switching to their inktomi results for these commercial searches if nothing else.
I'm certain Google's profits were plentiful before this algo change. But it would now seem the quest for extra profits is affecting the quality of their commerical search results, be it at the expense of clever webmasters or not.
The purpose of search results is to provide relevancy. Now the purpose for Google appears to have changed.
We will see how it affects their market share.
I know of at least a few people who have switched a portion of their daily searches (commercial searches) to Altavista and Alltheweb.
search for: "my main keyword"
provides same good results prior to Florida shake-up.Anybody else notice this? Any thoughts or insight?
Yes, decent results sometimes. Here's another for the real estate fans. Add a call to action at the end & presto; the agents and agencies return most of the time:
mytown mystate real estate buy
mytown mystate real estate sale
mytown mystate real estate purchase
mytown mystate real estate selling
Etc., seems to need mystate to lose the zap.
Afterthought: are they after us or are they boldly trying to potty-train Joe Surfer? ;)
It seems that spam continues to rule and I am so frustrated that I did everything that was supposed to right and "white hat" yet I am the one who is gone and spammers remain untouched. How ridiculous!
end of rant. sorry.
it was always my impression that search engines who made their #1 priority "ensuring that clever marketers didn't get the upper hand in the free index" ended up losing almost all of their market share to a certain search engine (Google) who made their #1 priority "relevancy of the search results"
Just for the record, that's you adding the phrase "#1 priority" into the discussion. Goodman's article, which you quote in your own post, says nothing about #1 priorities.
webmasters affected already by the change who know their industries very well are basically laughing at the quality of the new Google search results
My suspicion is that Google doesn't really care much what webmasters think, at least relative to what the general searching population thinks. Once they're done with these adjustments and the fine-tuning of the algo, if the mass of searchers is happy with the SERPs they see, little else will probably matter to G.
the search results are not as relevant
And, just maybe, since G is still fine-tuning and making adjustments, it recognizes that?
I think your comment about potty training the user is closer to the truth than any that have been made in all the update threads. Seriously.
Seriously.
LOL, Merlin. That really was good. Cracked me up.
I didn't put quotes around #1 priority. I'm very sorry for any confusion.
By the way, regarding your comment about Google not caring what webmasters think about the results. I have to say that webmasters are searchers too.
And not only that, but webmasters often know the industry they operate their web sites in very well. Well enough to know if search results are relevant or laughable.
There is a big difference between "being jealous" that a competitor has a better ranking and "being able to laugh" because a site that is not relevant to the search is in the top. Google should care that I am laughing. They shouldn't care if I'm jealous. Right now, I'm not jealous. Because the sites in the top for my industry are not relevant. I'm laughing at the quality. And at the same time crying over the lost profits. For my main keyword combos I am seeing sites that have not been updated in years on top where I once was... I update my site every day. Oh well. So much for keeping content current and so much for relevancy of commercial search combos.
We shall see if this "caring" about what webmasters think affects Google or not.
Funny because it was always my impression that search engines who made their #1 priority "ensuring that clever marketers didn't get the upper hand in the free index" ended up losing almost all of their market share to a certain search engine (Google) who made their #1 priority "relevancy of the search results"...
I think the distinction would lie in how many "innocent" web sites get toasted in the attempt to eliminate the spam. We all have our views on that in re: this update so let's not rehash it, but I think that's the distinction.
MQ
VERY good point.
I'm not sourgraping because some competitor 'stole' my top spot, heck, right now we're all out stranded in the desert, and I'm not one to think the universe owes me a living. What I am seeing is hundreds of utterly irrelevant results being served to surfers using the keywords specific to my industry, and I don't use the word 'irrelevant' in a frivolous or petulant manner. The results are championship stinkeroo.
In my industry, the generic product name is the specific keyword phrase. The results, although they contain the keywords in question, are utterly useless to anyone using the search term to actually look for the product that *is the keyword phrase*. Joe Surfer looking specifically for 'professional doodads' has a reasonable expectation that he will find sites selling professional doodads, not pages that have the words 'professional' and 'doodads' somewehere in them but have nothing to do with professional doodads except in the most ephemeral manner.
Whatever Google is doing, if they want to 'serve up the most relevant results' they had better fix the crap currently spewing out. "Potty train Joe Surfer"? Don't make me laugh. Joe Surfer wants what he wants when he wants it, and will not "learn how to use the search function properly", he will simply go to a competitor that gives him what he wants when he wants it without extra hassle.
Rule numbah one of good capitalism: NEVER make the customer work to give you money. They'll simply go next door to the competition.
