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Thank you,
Ryan Allis
On November 15, 2003, the SERPs (Search Engine Result Pages) in Google were dramatically altered. Although Google has been known to go through a reshuffling (appropriately named a Google Dance) every 2 months or so, this 'Dance' seems to be more like a drunken Mexican salsa that its usual conservative fox-trot.
Most likely, you will already know if your web site has been affected. You may have seen a significant drop-off in traffic around Nov. 15. Three of my sites have been hit. While one could understand dropping down a few positions, since November 15, the sites that previously held these rankings are nowhere to be found in the top 10,000 rankings. Such radical repositionings have left many mom-and-pop and small businesses devastated and out of luck for the holiday season. With Google controlling approximately 85% of Internet searches, many businesses are finding a need to lay off workers or rapidly cancel inventory orders. This situation deserves a closer look.
What the Early Research is Showing
From what early research shows, it seems that Google has put into place what has been quickly termed in the industry as an 'Over Optimization Penalty' (OOP) that takes into account the incoming link text and the on-site keyword frequency. If too many sites that link to your site use link text containing a word that is repeated more than a certain number of times on your home page, that page will be assessed the penalty and either demoted to oblivion or removed entirely from the rankings. In a sense Google is penalizing sites for being optimized for the search engines--without any forewarning of a change in policy.
Here is what else we know:
- The OOP is keyword specific, not site specific. Google has selected only certain keywords to apply the OOP for.
- Certain highly competitive keywords have lost many of the listings.
How to Know if Your Site Has Been Penalized
There are a few ways to know if your site has been penalized. The first, mentioned earlier, is if you noticed a significant drop in traffic around the 15th of November you've likely been hit. Here are ways to be sure:
1. Go to google.com. Type in any search term you recall being well-ranked for. See you site logs to see which terms you received search engine traffic from. If your site is nowhere to be found it's likely been penalized.
2. Type in the search term you suspect being penalized for, followed by "-dkjsahfdsaf" (or any other similar gibberish, without the quotes). This will remove the OOP and you should see what your results should be.
3. Or, simply go to www.**** to have this automated for you. Just type in the search term and see quickly what the search engine results would be if the OOP was not in effect. This site, put up less than a week ago, has quickly gained in popularity, becoming one of the 5000 most visited web sites on the Internet in a matter of days.
The Basics of SEO Redefined. Should One De-Optimize?
Search engine optimization consultants such as myself have known for years that the basics of SEO are:
- put your target keyword or keyphrase in your title, meta-tags, and alt-tags
- put your target keyword or keyphrase in an H1 tag near the top of your page
- repeat your keyword or keyphrase 5-10 times throughout the page
- create quality content on your site and update it regularly
- use a site map (linked to from every page) that links to all of your pages
- build lots of relevant links to your site
- ensure that your target keyword or keyphrase is in the link text of your incoming links
Now, however, the best practices for keyword frequency and link text will likely trigger the Google OOP. There is surely no denying that there are many low quality sites have used link farms and spammed blog comments in order to increase their PageRank (Google's measure of site quality) and link popularity. However, a differentiation must be made from these sites and quality sites with dozens or hundreds of pages of informational well-written content that have taken the time to properly build links.
So if you have been affected, what can you do? Should one de-optimize their site, or wait it out? Should one create one site for Google and one for the 'normal engines?' Is this a case of a filter been turned on too tight that Google will fix in a matter of days or something much more?
These are all serious questions that no one seems to have answers to. At this point we recommend making the following changes to your site if, and only if, your rankings seem to have been affected:
1. Contact a few of your link partners via email. Ask them to change the link text so that the keyword you have been penalized for is not in the link text or the keyphrase is in a different order than the order you are penalized for.
2. Open up the page that has been penalized (usually your home page) and reduce the number of times that you have the keyword on your site. Keep the number under 5 times for every 100 words you have on your page.
3. If you are targeting a keyphrase (a multiple-word keyword) reduce the number of times that your page has the target keyphrase in the exact order you are targeting. Mix up the order. For example, if you are targeting "Florida web designer" change this text on your site to "web site designer in florida" and "florida-based web site design services."
It is important to note that these 'de-optimization' steps should only be taken if you know that you have been affected by the Google OOP.
Why did Google do this? There are two possible answers. First, it is possible that Google has simply made an honest (yet very poor) attempt at removing many of the low-quality web sites in their results that had little quality content and received their positions from link farms and spamdexing. The evidence and the search engine results point to another potential answer.
A second theory, which has gained credence in the past days within the industry, is that in preparation for its Initial Public Offering (possibly this Spring), Google has developed a way to increase its revenue. How? By removing many of the sites that are optimized for the search engines on major commerical search terms, thereby increasing the use of its AdWords paid search results (cost-per-click) system. Is this the case? Maybe, maybe not.
Perhaps both of these reasons came into play. Perhaps Google execs thought they could
1) improve the quality of their rankings,
2) remove many of the 'spammy' low-quality sites
3) because of #2, increase AdWords revenues and
4) because of better results and more revenue have a better chance at a successful IPO.
Sadly, for Google, this plan had a detrimental flaw.
What Google Should Do
While there are positives that have come from this OOP filter, the filter needs to be adjusted. Here is what Google should do:
1. Post a communiqué on its web site explaining in as much detail as they are able what they have done and what they are doing to fix it;
2. Reduce the weight of OOP;
3. If the OOP is indeed a static penalty that can only be removed by a human, change it to a dynamic penalty that is analyzed and assessed with each major update; and
4. Establish an appeal process through which site owners which feel they are following all rules and have quality content can have a human (or enlightened spider) review their site and remove the OOP if appropriate.
When this recent update broke on November 15, webmasters clamored in the thousands to the industry forums such as webmasterworld.com. The mis-update was quickly titled "Florida Update 2003" and the initial common wisdom was that Google had made a serious mistake that would be fixed within 3-4 days and everyone should just stay put and wait for Google to 'fix itself.' While the rankings are still dancing, this fix has yet to come. High quality sites with lots of good content that have done everything right are being severely penalized.
If Google does not act quickly, it will soon lose market share and its reputation as the provider of the best search results. With Yahoo's recent acquisition of Inktomi, Alltheweb/FAST, and Altavista, it most likely will soon renege on its deal to serve Google results and may, in the process, create the future "best search engine on the 'net." Google, for now, has gone bananas in its recent meringue, and it may soon be spoiled rotten.
from India
Greetings,
Herenvardö
It is really incredible to read back over many posts. When a Webmasters site does not rank well the SERP's are cr@p, when/if their site moves back-up.... "hey, the SERP's are fine now". It's no wonder Google cannot listen to Webmasters over the SERP's.
You guys are going to drive yourseleves to an early grave checking all data centers every five minutes. The least you are doing is going in circles!
[edited by: I_am_back at 10:44 am (utc) on Dec. 9, 2003]
Thanks Google, but I think your Algorithm is worse than last year.
1. Blue Widget - we're nowhere. (prev. top 3)
2. Blue Widget UK - we're nowhere (prev. top 3)
3. Widget UK - No 1!
But look at examples 2 and 3 - what happened to the 'more refined search' concept - now the *less* refined search is doing better than the refined ones.
I'm glad I haven't messed around with my site - it just don't add up anymore :(
We provide accommodation. We're partially relevant, but we rank above the embassy sites and citydomain.com.
I love Google, but I don't need their charity. Just Rank me for my keywords and I'll be happy :)
You guys are going to drive yourseleves to an early grave checking all data centers every five minutes. The least you are doing is going in circles!
All around the mulberry bush the monkey chased the weasel.
And in the words of Spike Milligan:
A bird in the Strand is worth two in Shepherds Bush
Apologies mods - chat - I will desist.
[edited by: superscript at 1:43 pm (utc) on Dec. 9, 2003]
Why can't anyone finally admit it is a stitch up of commercial sites!
The problem is that some high-ranking sites are commercial. The #1 result for one of my keywords is an online retailer (not large like Amazon or Target, but well-established).
Yes, but have you noticed that some of the huge companies -who rely on their name and reputation alone - barely
bother to optimise?
But I'm not even sure optimisation is the key:
Let's imagine a website for a multinational - your index page is full of mission statements, news, stock market quotes, strategy etc. etc. There is barely a mention of selling anything - because they don't sell anything - they sell through distributors. So it's likely the distributors / shops / retailers will be hit by a commercial filter.
As such, a huge business looks like an authority site, the site at the retail end, with its 'buy this', 'special offer' $ and £ signs gets hit.
And this *isn't* a conspiracy theory - I've held out against them. But from all I have seen, whether you call it a filter or not; the more relevant the search for some commercial sites - the lower they appear in the SERPs.
I was quite pleased my site ranked 1 or 2 for keywords (my region) web design, as far as I can see it's legitimate enough to get in to DMOZ so it's not spammy or duplicated.
Obviously it's fairly optimised as this was a competetive field.
Anyway, now it's gone and the SERPS seem pretty irrelevant
My question is how would someone be expected to find a web designer in particular region if the filter is removing any optimised sites.?
Why filter web design?
I get the idea that Google may be trying to clean up affiliate sites but how does this relate to web design sites.
____
I doubt that very much. Why?
Take Hotels.com they have by far one of the largest affiliate networks on the net. Over 30,000 affiliates.
Without their affiliate network in place I doubt very much if they would ever have attained the prominence and level of sales they now have. This even holds true as this is written. Geometric progression. 30,000 salesmen in the field will sell far more product(in summary)than the corporate office could ever dream of acheving on their own.
I migh also point out they (Hotels.com) are one of the largest advertisers on GOOGLE, BY FAR!
Take their affiliate networks out of the serps (on a permenant level) and you could expect that google would here from them in relativley short order.
NO, while it appears that affiliates are getting the hard hammer, I do not believe it was delibertly intended by google to take them out of the serps permanatly.
My best guess is that most of the big time affiliates had SEO'ed their sites so much that google had to do something to tone them down.
In reality (in travel related fields) most of the affiliates were out ranking the majors by a 100 to 1
As to web design, I would imagine it would be a similar case also. Just my opinion
1) There is no commercial filter or bias against commercial sites
2) Real PR (not toolbar PR) is alive and kicking and more important than ever. Real PR probably includes lots more information than Toolbar PR - and this time webmasters won't be given a view of it.
See my conclusion above about PR.
Also, is it fair to say the the likes of Dealtime, Amazon Ebay etc do not provide any content, nor a service that lots of people want to use?
1) Google realized their error in judgement and turned down the volumn on the "Froogle Filter."
or
2) They are so arragont that they were preparing to fight another round E.G. they were going after sites they missed in the first round of Florida ...
After seeing the datacenters, www, 2 & 3, today I regretfully feal as if the later of the two scenarios is true. Im going to wait and see just as I have been since this started several weeks ago, but at the same time I welcome the intervention of another suitable engine.
Of the two site of 25 of mine that went down, they were my smallest, everything else much the same.
2nd smallest(60 pages) now back at no15 for keword keyword search, smallest (10) pages nowhere to be seen.
Could be coninceidence.
I think "content is king" is based on size os site, not quality of content.
One site I see vault up in the rankings is a single geocities page with a good title and six links to other sites. The entire "content" of the page can be hidden by putting one of my hands on the screen.
Percentage of page content to link text out seems very important. In other words, if there is 10k of page content, and 8k involves targeted link text out, that page seems to do well. Maybe also that is why redirect sites are doing so well, they are just one big link....
GG, sent you two reports, I hope they got passed along to you. The first reply I got sounded like they didn't have a clue who or what you were.
Perhaps and/or percentage of outgoing links to internal links...
