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Quote: If the search results continue to be inferior to what was delivered in the past people will turn away and I guess that's happening now - what Google gain in ad revenue will be more than lost in brand loss of value.
Very true. We will have to pay for AdSense now, congratulations Google, you made us you customer. But not your searcher anymore, coz what you deliver is C##P. I can even find any online store in Sydney via Google.
I just want to say to Google people that it is not JUST whining, it is a lot of WORK, a lot of sleepless nights, money, years of adding new content, links, articles, tons of stress and hopes. HOW COME that we have been working for years over our sites, improving our positions step by step, one by one, and now BANG - Florida, update, new filter. You like it shaking masses? Think about people... Just imagine that one day, somebody, for example MS, just "filters" Google out of the game... Google has too serious positions now, and it can not just PLAY, it has to thing, test, and think again and then test again and then only in case it is at least 99,999999999% relevant filter, then you may use. Otherwise, the power is in wrong hands.
Obviously. It is going to take months
Couldn't agree more and in fact just posted a similar comment in another thread. My money however is that Google will continue to grow in popularity.
Webmasters are opinion formers, and a constituency that Google played very well indeed during its early days.
True also, but they are only a tiny minority often with a biased opinion. I have seen it year after year, "My site is ranking well, Google is Great!" or, "My site has slipped to page 100, Google is crap!".
My organic site that was cast into PR0 Hell two years ago is seeing a sharp increase in Google traffic.
Nice to know that a life sentence can be commuted after all. Move over Amazon and Ebay!
The tech guys must be going crazy. Tweeking coeffients in a 100 X 100 matrix will send sane people to the funny farm.
Yes I too can't find pre florida results, using - - and a string of letters. Are there any other ways of doing this now?
Time travel?
You'll be pretty close just using allinanchor:
Google had won the battle a few days ago. Florida plus returned sites of early December, with the implication that returned sites could easily rise after one more fresh cycle, showed the best Google ever, drastically superior to pre-florida. But -in... ick. So much of the junk eliminated by Florida is back, while many of the quality "lost" sites are not.
In a way, -in is a mix of high quality sites and absolute dreck. Just in terms of pondering an algorithm, it is pretty weird to see some of these sites together... #4 is good, #5 is hideous, #6 is good, #7 and #8 are hideous, #9 is good, etc.
-in is kinda like Dave Kingman.
Thank you - you have brought a smile to my face this morning.
Exactly, now we have to figure out how to climb out of the abyss. I am surprised Google did not close the programming glitch sooner. Dark side here I come.
I think I will now go approach some Colleges and institutions for redirects and pop-unders on their page1 in-house widget order forms. Google thought they had a spam problem before....they just created a massive army of clean webmasters that have been forced to the Dark Side. If I have to hang out with D.Vader in order to put food on the table - so be it.
[edited by: LateNight at 10:26 am (utc) on Dec. 11, 2003]
DolemiteThank you - you have brought a smile to my face this morning.
That's the best I can do...if I couldn't laugh, I'd have to cry. ;)
Mets fan huh?
Please try to stay on topic folks. And don't feed the trolls ;)
/claus
Google is like the yellow pages.
As a Yellow Pages ad salesmen for 14 years, in my former life, I can tell you that people PAY for Yellow Pages ads big time.
Another point:
It is obvious that they are hesitating to implement -in (with good reason) and I think the input from WW has helped - keep it up. I just went through the first 20 results for our main term again and, while there are a few gems, the majority is just awful.
Another point:
Someone suggested a few hundred posts ago that perhaps Google is going to have to bite the bullet and manually remove the worst spam offenders who seem to be always two steps ahead of them. This may sound like a horrendous job but in reality it's probably not that big a deal. The vast majority of sites are honest even if they may have a few too many key words or a bit of innocent duplicate content - most site creators don't even know they are doing it.
The few areas that are the worst offenders could be cleaned up very quickly with a group of well trained employees checking SPAM reports and getting the really bad stuff. Once this was done and continued the few operators who are doing it would stop as the cost of creating the SPAM would be outweighed by the rapidity of their banning.
IMHO that will never happen....it is admitting you are defeated and the EgoPlex will never do that!
Once on that slippery slope there is no point of return.
We can't even get Google to admit there is anything wrong with these Florida and post Florida -in SERP's. If they think they have a problem they are sure to try to fix it mathematically, not manually.
The only other effect I can see checking across numerous industries and "niches" whether info or commercial, is the addition of importance to newspapers, yellow pages entries and commercial "infomercials" but I believe thats already been discussed - a little weird to see a yellow pages entry from a town in Az come up for a search for an adult term
<added> and what the heck is that junk on -lm?</added>
Google thought they had a spam problem before....they just created a massive army of clean webmasters that have been forced to the Dark Side. If I have to hang out with D.Vader in order to put food on the table - so be it.
Exactly my thoughts LateNight (by the way I love your nickname, describes EXACTLY my surfing habits). :)
Half of my income is based on the accommodation I provide in my city, and I've been hit HARD, REAL HARD.
Now before other webmasters chastise me for putting all my eggs in one basket I'd like to point out that all I did was optimize my site as best I could. The fact that most visitors come thru Google and Google feeds to AOL and Yahoo etc. is out of my control. Although I'm way up near the top on Altavista (which I love) and Inktomi related searches, they just don't command the numbers that Google does.
If surviving means asking my girlfriend to register another domain name on another server with different I.P. and modifying title tags and folder names etc., so be it. In the end we all do what we need to survive.
I will gladly dance with Darth Vader if Google forces my hand.
I agree with percentages in that Google will never go back and admit their mistake. They have already invested enough resources in this new algo to turn back, and they don't have the resources and manpower to manually check spammers. They will most likely develop new filters.
NazaretH, I think it might be a good idea to start a "facts only" thread so we can accumulate a wealth of knowledge which would be easy to access, without expressing our theories (maybe that could be another thread) on what does and doesn't work.
I've noticed many interesting things about the "new" Google and would both like to share my information and see what others have noted. Again, it would be a good idea to stick to facts in 1 thread and leave another for conjecture. Sort of establishing a database of known facts that could easily be accessed and used.
I doubt anyone who has been severely hit has regained all their previous traffic at this time....it would take a full/deep crawl on a totally new structure to achieve that.
There is no single answer to what changes you should make, look at the SERP's, then determine why they are ranked the way they are and adjust accordingly. I know that is of no real help for those looking for a "quick fix".....but there is no quick fix to this one ;)
Look at the SERP's.....that is where the answers are :)
I'm lovin' the www2 and www3 search results. The $64K questiion is how soon will www2 roll-over into www?
Oh, unfortunately you and many other may be doing just right now, while some are doing bad... Now I understand that this is a battle of one. And nobody would care much about loosers while there're winners. You dont' have to care about those who're in abyss, while you're on top. Who would? Why Google should?
"I can't change the direction of the wind, but I can
adjust my sails to always reach my destination." - Jimmy Dean
Look at the SERP's.....that is where the answers are :)
And there they are sitting, waiting in www-in......still.
To tell the truth, I dont strongly optimize for particular keywords - just try to get my content out there with common sense Titles, H1 etc and Google seems to bring the visitors anyway - normally on unexpected phrases.
and now people are saying that Google may be holding back on www-in (which I would be surprised about) - well I am getting real depressed now.
Is there anyone else out there who can see lots of content from a deepish crawl from Sunday night just waiting to migrate.
Come on Google I need some Xmas cheer.
