Forum Moderators: open
Why is Florida good?
Because it is not in our interest for a SEO method to become standardized.
If Google kept its algo the same, then the whole world would figure out how to get high rankings. If everyone knows how to get high rankings, then we are all out of jobs.
We don't ever want a SEO method to become standard enough that software, or the kid next door, can reproduce it.
If Google decided that its pre-Florida algo was perfect and would never make any changes, then in 10 years everyone would be producing highly-optimized sites.
The only way that we will have high-ranking sites is if search engines continually change, so that we can figure out how to use the changes to give us a temporary advantage.
To be in the SEO business you have to expect and embrace changes. You also have to be willing to learn and do research.
The good thing for us is that there are many people out there that don't want to do the research to figure out how to stay on top.
I, for one, am happy to see an update. Because of our participation in this forum, we will adjust quickly and get our sites back to the top. The typical web site owner won't even know there has been a change in Google by the time we have recovered.
It is simply a numbers game. How can I write 100 pages of content? It would be a waste.
As long as you have that mid-set you will either stagnate or get buried. Probably the ONLY reason why most of your traffic is via your index pages is because it ranks better in Google. There should be nothing stopping you trying to multiply the index page traffic by 100 by adding 100 more pages.
Dave
Bring on the crowd.
I predict that within weeks, not months, that it will be shown just how flawed the "New Google" realy is. In reality it is just an extension of the "Old Google" but with a twist that will be unwrapped in short order.
From the quality of the serps, it is already apparent.
Take the majors out of what is now being presented and apart from a few listings, what is left is dribble and hardly revelant.
The whole concept behind this company has been gamed from day 1. (that links entering a site should play a great deal of importance in how a site should be ranked.) Nothing is going to stop gamers from abusing a system that relies on that concept.
GOOGLE IS BROKE! And if you dont believe me just do a search for miserable failure and see why the # 1 position is there. It is there -- because GOOGLE IS BROKE!
I for one would never have thought I would be saying this, but it is the flat out truth. Facts do not lie.
To slaughter thousands to punish a handfull is wrong, both morraly and business wise and will lead to their eventual downfall.
I will be spending my marketing dollars everywhere but at Google. I will continue to use their database and whatever it takes to get ranked, even though, in the past I never participated in anything but good old fashioned "white Hat SEO"
Well hats fade, and it's a new ball game.
It isn't a mind-set. I have content on the site but many people do not enter through those pages. It isn't my fault that the index page was ranked better or that visitors are more likely to enter through the index page rather than a page on content that they are not interested in. Some people are just after a service and pages of information are just an obstacle to getting the sale at times.
I gotta say, this is the first "update" I've seen that has had a large number of the mods and admins here actively criticizing Google. You have to wonder. Me, it didn't make any difference, big surprise, it's a pretty obscure site, (but we do well against tourist outfits in a lot of serps). Who the h*ll knows what's going on, but content is still #1.
I think I'll restrict myself to non-Florida threads from now on... there's too much desperation/frustration bumping against the relatively smug like myself.
Good luck to all the white-hat victims... hope you magically reappear.
At the end of the day all you have to do is build solid sites with real content, link it well with clear and easy HTML navigation and Google will do the rest... Couldn't be easier as I see it!
Thanks for the good advice. My sites are all info sites - reviews, articles and tips about specific topics that I have a personal interest in. Simple navigation, good HTML structure, basic Google-ish design theory, and no spammy tricks. I don't even try to keyword stuff. Every thing is written to provide the best information I can to my visitors.
And, yet, my sites have all been butchered in the results...
So, any other suggestions?
If you are happy with how things are for you now, then you are doing the right thing. If you are not happy, then perhaps it's time to think along different lines.
Dave
If people want to buy a widget they type in "widget". If you are on the first page, you sell a lot of widgets. For many products, there is no such thing as a green widget or a blue widget, there is one kind, widget. Now you may say this is very competitive, but you make big money if you beat the competition and get on page 1 for "widget".
All the pages in the world won't get you on page 1 for "widget".
On the largest technical mailing list in the world on a particular technology topic, people who ask simple questions are often told ...
" ... go look it up on Google ... "
Tonight, someone asked ...
"What is <xyz> technology about?"
"Describe the layers, protocol, etc."
That person was told
" ... go look it up on Google ... "
Checking google for that topic, using a variety of queries, no useful information could be found to answer the questions.
I have not seen it this bad since Altavista became un-useable.
I have not seen it this bad since Altavista became un-useable.
I concur. In a momentary lapse of reason, I thought I would add another "content" page to our main site. Since our widgets are often sold via auction, I typed in widget auction results (in Google).
There were a few relevant results, but my God, the spam results.
I swear, there are folks out there that use the Unix dictionary to generate pages for the SE's to find! ***** Auction in title and <Hx> with the same listing of on-line auction sites. Arrrgh.
I have to say though, Teoma was the only one that handled this term with any grace.
WBF
I personally use Google to look up technical information 20 or more times a day
You've hit the nail on the head. You see, you know exactly what you are searching for. An lo and behold - you find it!
Now any search engine can perform that task!
If people want to buy a widget they type in "widget". If you are on the first page, you sell a lot of widgets. For many products, there is no such thing as a green widget or a blue widget, there is one kind, widget. Now you may say this is very competitive, but you make big money if you beat the competition and get on page 1 for "widget".All the pages in the world won't get you on page 1 for "widget".
In that case, you are in the lottery for the jackpot top ten positions. How many thousands of other sites are there competing for that one word? If you have no real content different than all the other thousands of pages, then it is all SE formating tricks that you have to rely on. i prefer to gamble with better odds personally.
You've hit the nail on the head. You see, you know exactly what you are searching for. An lo and behold - you find it!Now any search engine can perform that task!
If you keep aiming for nothing...you will hit it every time!
Found via google toolbar, first result for "you will hit it" :)
Which paraphrased is: If you don't know what you are looking for, why are you wasting time searching?
I've been checking in about once a day. Lately it seems to be less analysis/discussion and more arguments between folks, so I mostly avoid those threads..
I see that I did not post the numbers in this thread:
83 of the top 100 useful results for this technology area are missing in the filtered results.
Google’s results are now mostly irrelevant directories listings for the most part.
Don't you just love that all these www.##.us/kw1kw2.html pages have made it into the top ten for kw1 kw2 this update?
Maybe next update they will all be number one.
Baloney,
Google’s results are now mostly irrelevant directories listings for the most part.
Ok, I broke down and decided to break down and do some searches in the Horrid, spam ridden, irrelevant directory filled areas of travel and real estate.
Vacation in Hawaii searches: All two or three word searches for bed and breakfasts, tours of different types, hotels, etc.
Results: Mostly independant websites of the operators with some very on topic directories thrown in. In fact many of these were there two years ago when I went there last. If you look for "[City] Hotels", hotel directories are a valid result because you want to find what is there.
Did the same searches for Australia, a couple Carribian islands, European spots and got very good results.
Ok, Real Estate. This is almost as competative, maybe more so because of the profits involved. Checked in Atlanta, Dallas, Miami, and Alaska. Results had many more directories, but then the whole industry is directory driven at its base. Many realtor sites and agency listed and well as informational sites. Were some not the greatest? Of course, but they had your standard SEO done to them so they made it up there, but few were aweful or useless sites. You will have a better chance at finding a realtor if you search for a realtor instead of general real estate.
Over all as a searcher, I could find what I needed in the first 1 to 3 pages of results. Could I explain to a client why they were not #1 when I had promised them that if they paid me a large sum of money I would make them #1? Nope, that's why I never promise something like that to a web client. I just tell them that I will design the site so that it is easy for a customer to use and doesn't do anything that would cause it problems with sidering or is dangerous. Mostly just nice simple navigation and lots of nice text (don't look at the next word) content for their visitors be them human or robot to read.
Discuss and analyze how to remake our sites for the user, we did that once and errr.... basicly a lot of us will be empty handed come Xmas time.
I wonder what the impact will do to unemployement rates? I wonder what the impact on businesses that went under in 2003/2004?
I wonder what the impact will do to the Internet in General. One would think that Google would want people to buy things using the internet. Ill be willing to wager that sales this year for xmas will be lower then last year, all because a company was allowed to almost have a monopoly.
Instead of keeping people on the net for buying things (thus more revenue for google) you will be driving them away from the net, and from clicking your ads. Of course right now you chuckle, but not for long....
Google had too many complaints about uneffective ads, people click but dont buy, so Google in its infinate wisdom has found a short term(1 week) cure. A plan not thought out.
So what is there to discuss everyone knows what has happened if they dont, they will in a month when rent is due...
[edited by: deanril at 8:29 am (utc) on Dec. 3, 2003]
No wonder GoogleGuy has been staying scarce... there's a blo*dy lynch mob waiting for him...
I don't share this sentiment and distance myself from it entirely. Please don't speak on behalf of others on this forum.
The good thing for us is that there are many people out there that don't want to do the research to figure out how to stay on top.
Let's apply this to driving. It would be loads of fun if the Gov't randomly switched which side of the road you're supposed to drive on, or changed the meaning of red lights/green lights.
I am one of those people who has in the main BENEFITED from Florida and I still think its bad update.
One site I manage has now got the 3-4 position for "suburb accommodation".... yet it does not even PROVIDE accommodation? No mention of "suburb accommodation" in inbound link text or page title, or even body text....
It has one link to an accommodation site on the home page. That is the only relevance.
The accommodation site it links to? Was never a top10 site for "accommodation suburb" and is now gone into the murky depths of below top 500 of course. So only relevance is anchor text to a low low ranking site?
My Site also ranks top15 for "suburb real estate" No mention of real estate on the home page at all! Real estate is mentioned 2 clicks from the home page!
My traffic is up but is far from targeted traffic as it once was. I am paying for bandwidth for nothing.
It is not a good update.
Forget that every is ****ing and moaning and blaming and whingeing and arguing.
Results returned are poor.
I don't share this sentiment and distance myself from it entirely. Please don't speak on behalf of others on this forum.
It an observation, not a commandment. If people are P.O.-ed at GG, it's for good reason. He started it, not the SEO's.
All this could not have happened at a better time, with many disillusioned Webmasters now looking for other options to get traffic back etc along comes 2 of them ahaha classic!
Next year is going to be one of the most interesting and fascinating in the SEO world, and you can bet very soon that INK and MSN are gonna be raking it in as we all look for an alternative to G, and hope one of them is the knight in shining Armour ready to fight for the crown.
Early this year G made some big changes and we all seem to adapt to them very quickly with its new rolling update etc, but this Florida thing maybe have been one step to far and has gone to far ahead of itself.
Time will tell but nobody stays number one forever, Even G
Re: Google
Why am I writing about Google?
Just to pass on some info.
In the last two weeks ago, Google changed their mechanisms
of how they display search results.
Personally, I think they've gone waaaay downhill. I went
searching for some industrial espresso products recently and
couldn't find anything near what I needed on Google.
But I could find what I needed on Alta Vista and All The
Web.
If you've developed the habit of only searching Google, my
message is to remember, if you don't like what you find, you
might try the others:
www.altavista.com/
www.alltheweb.com/
http://www.reuters.com/newsArticle.jhtml;jsessionid=XZFB35UTVFHGACRBAELCFEY?
type=internetNews&storyID=3927775
As you probably know, Reuters supplies news to major newspapers around the world.
[edited by: DaveAtIFG at 1:59 am (utc) on Dec. 6, 2003]
[edit reason] Fixed sidescrolling [/edit]
Ok Ill believe that one!
Google has improved for the users, sure sure....
What Google is saying is they are weeding out SEO, however they took out 90% of the regular non SEO websites too, the only thing people can find now are advertisers.
This is the biggest joke ever, and still theres people saying, Florida update is good.
Wake up!
I guess it's spray n pray all the way then.
