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google.de,google.fr,google.it and google.jp
Berkan
I am in the same boat for some of my sites (pages) - however, these regionals are showing an updated index.
PS. Welcome to Webmasterworld :)
Have your pages dropped from Google SERPs and could it just be that this greater percentage is from a smaller total? Just interested as if this did indicate a shift of SE usage I would see this as a very positive step, as long as the others don't start trying to get clever with their algos. – Hissingsid
My traffic from Google is down about 50 - 75 % and has been ever since Florida first struck, but today was the first time I've noticed the referrals from the other engines
<added>overall traffic isn't actually down more than 10% - think I finally answered your question :-)
[edited by: subway at 8:55 pm (utc) on Jan. 26, 2004]
This damn google thing has been frying my brain all day and ive sat hear analysising what people are saying and the experiences they have had. needless to say some i agreed with and others didnt match up with the problems i was getting.
So i decided to do some research of my own and try and get some conclusions, i would be interested to know if it makes sense and if people have experienced the similar things as i have
What i have discovered so far is that:
1) highly competitive comercial terms are being effected, most of my clients that have specific/less competitive key phrases are largely unaffected.
2)My clients who were being found for competitve commercial search terms have on the whole vanished.
3) from the original florida update it looks as thought the filter has extended.
4) The vast majority of sites that are replacing our sites tend to be shopping portals or at least sites contain a huge array of both internal and external links.
5) sites ranking well have very little search engine optimisation.
6) sites with keyphrases in the title once are doing well, i.e keyphrase density is right down.
I decided to do research on 3 top commercial and highly competitve search terms and analysed the top ten results(websites), breaking it down in the catergores of information sites/government, shopping portals, commercial company sites, other search engines.
The results are as follows and show the 10 types of website after each keyphrase search
TRAVEL
------
info sites/government - 4
shopping sites - 4
commercial company sites - 1
other search engines - 1
Double glazing
--------------
info sites/government - 6
shopping sites - 4
commercial company sites - 0
other search engines - 0
Mortgages
---------
info sites/government - 4
shopping sites - 5
commercial company sites - 0
other search engines - 0
As we can see from the results there is a definate shift towards shopping and information portals and far less emphasis on the 'smaller commercial company'.
In conclusion, sites that have minimal keyword denisty, that are constucted with lots of internal links seem to be king.
What i fear is that unless we have shopping portal websites with loads of internal links and a damn site less optimisation we are going to struggle to be found, unless it is for less commercial or generic search term. I still have sites that rank very well using high keyword density but the terms themselves are less competitive which leads me to belive there is a filter attached to certain commerical terms.
Would anybody agree or disagree with my comments?
Thanks
Chris
Look the way I see this is that they are trying to prevent Google Bombs like the well documented "Miserable Failure" or "Unelectable" to be pointing to some guy's site in politics.
They are afraid that their SERP is being modified from a bunch of kids making a political statment. The problem is that they took this too far.
Personally my site has nearly 1000 backlinks in Google and a PR of 6 - in the anchor text most of the people linking to me use the keyword that my site is about. I am getting my rear handed to me by some kid that has a Geocities account with a H5 header with the keyword and 2 backlinks from FFA sites.
I am telling you guys something.. they really really went overboard with this. I am using MSN, Hotbot or Yahoo from now on (When they use INK results)
I never thought I would EVER say this, but Google's relevent results are really bad.. I would rather use a 1998 version of Altavista.
My guess is that Google's next move will be to visually integrate adwords more closely with the main search results so that they become less ugly and therefore generate more clicks/income.
The good news for me is that I've just achieved position #1 for a rather tasty careers-related search phrase on MSN and even before Austin MSN were sending me twice the volume of traffic that Google sent me.
I would endorse what you say and I have been seeing the same thing. My main keyword is a commonly used, four letter acronym. I used to hold number one but my home page is currently gone from the index although most of my other 70 odd pages are still there but not being found. The first two results are irrelevant but the fourth is a cracker! It's a junk site whose initial letters happen to be the same as my acronym. It has no related content apart from two links to the home page, for which it happens to use the acronym.
I despair because there is no way I can go on trying to compete and chasing my tail when Google ranks sites like this in preference to mine, (an information based site valued throughout my industry. )
As I said in an earlier post I think the only hope is that Joe Public gets so piss*d off with G that that they start to drift onto other search engines in greater numbers. Does anyone have any ideas how we can promote this effect? Can we start to get Austin mentioned in the press again or something?
If MSN (or another engine that delivers relevant search results) can assume that role, if only temporarily, then Google will just be a memory, sullied by their attempt at commercialisation.
The thing that sticks in peoples minds, right or wrong, is the impending IPO. Once they become public, by definition the stock holders are looking for a return.
But when I think about it, it must be driving the google brain trust nuts! All that power, all that talent, all that fame, all that money - and a few dozen jokers can still twist the search results on a whim. It sure makes a mockery of the whole "search as a serious business" thing.
TheFounder, if Google's intention with this algo was to hobble the google bombers then it doesn't appear to be working very well... that "miserable failure" is still a miserable failure (at least as far as I can see).
But when I think about it, it must be driving the google brain trust nuts! All that power, all that talent, all that fame, all that money - and a few dozen jokers can still twist the search results on a whim. It sure makes a mockery of the whole "search as a serious business" thing.
No it doesn't. And I don't think that's concerning these guys at all. Who the heck optimizes for 'miserable failure'? There isn't any competition, thus making it easy for them to do. Wake me when they make whitehouse.gov #1 for 'web hosting' or something like that...then the guys at the plex should be worried. Until then, things like that are nothing more than a mildly amusing diversion.
just a thought
Best of luck---
anyone seen the results stablize yet?
The regional Google results are updated with new sites, but the filtering is very pre-florida.
The update, in my mind, kind of marks the end of the 'American dream' that Google was before. What made Google popular, to a large degree, was not the fact that it was such a fantastic search engine but the fact that everyone could influence the results and that the best one would win. This is what drew hordes and hordes of people unto Google.
With that part gone, it's really just another MSN with paid results.
Oraqref
HOWEVER, target keyphrase search with quotes brings up identical serps on both english and french ('old' serps).
And this is holding steady as far as I know.
if Google's intention with this algo was to hobble the google bombers then it doesn't appear to be working very well... that "miserable failure" is still a miserable failure (at least as far as I can see).
Nope, that's not Google's intention. People are trying to read way too much sophistication into Google's algo. It hasn't changed much at all. Page rank and anchor text of inbound links is mostly wha tcounts. That's why the "miserable failure" search still points to G.W. Bush.
What Google is doing is PENALIZING a page in the SERPs if it is using too many SEO tricks to otherwise get a high ranking for a keyword search.
People think the new Google is somehow all smart, and can figure out the "context" of inbound and outbound links... phooey! It's a lot easier for Google to figure out if your page is SEOed and then use that to penalize that page.
That's what Florida was about, and Austin just turns Florida up a notch, and refines it.
Actually, in our travel industry section of internet search, there has been consistantly one website near the the top of the results. They use all of the "seo" tricks that most use--and push them to the edge of spam. They have been unaffected by the present update/filters. While i admit that using one website for 2 search terms is in a fact an over simplification, it leads me to believe there is something more here to this update than purely an optimization filter. Of coures that is what we focus on, but we may look through a scewed lense when it comes to intepreting results.
My site is a reasonably competitive UK industry, although not an ecommerce site. Some very expensive kw phrases in adwords (£27 per click anyone?).
I've done some organic SEO - nothing much more than opening up the data; putting in relevant titles for those pages; getting some excellent links in; some sensible internal linking (all of use to users). Content is refreshed, effectively by our users, at a rate of around 2500 new pages per month, with as many disappearing.
I don't bother much with fluctuations over short periods, but broadly speaking, my traffic from Google has grown over time from nothing in 2002, to c 3k per week this time last year, to around 20k per week now.
this update looks as though it will continue the trend of increased traffic. Certainly a lot of my SERPS are up.
OK, I'm not in the cut-throat business of converting referrals directly to cash, and my heart goes out to you guys who are suffering, but my basic message is this: I've pretty much followed the broad basic guidelines that I picked up from this site 18 months ago, and, apart from my own stupid mistakes from time to time, it's been a great success. Maybe if you are out there trying to second-guess every algo tweak, you're inevitably facing a bit more of a rollercoaster ride.
Best of luck to all...
H
