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However, to explain my theory on Robert123's disagreement:
The reason sites like that get through is because something about them is telling Google not to apply the penalty. What is it you say? Every one of them I've seen had a lesser percentage of links with targeted anchor text. (meaning, they could have more targeted links than the site below them in the SERPs, but percentagewise, they have a lesser percentage overall of targeted links....more fuzzy links, etc...)
I hope so, because it wont take us long extract this information from studying the results.
Are people still seeing fluctuations in their results?
I've said too much...the men in black are coming to shut me up! :D
This is a property rental company. Throughout the paragraph, everytime the general area of rental is mentioned, they have a text link pointing to that rental page.
This is done everytime the key phrase is shown throughout the text.
For example-- Siberian home rentals(link to rental page)--this is done repeately. Isnt this a way of trying to trick google into thinking your site has more pages to do with that topic and promote internal link structure--
wouldnt it be better to create pages that were similar in this situation but not identical pointing back to one page?
This might be off topic, but this site has remained at the top of our industry pre/post and during florida/Austin
So does Yahoo!, so does Amazon... every site I enter.
Anyone else seeing this?
Pagerank bar working just fine here.
I find they almost always are and have been since the early days of adwords. That fact really gets me.
I agree with Brett here. In the past, I have started "serious algo analyis" threads, limited to just analysis with no complaining about the results, when it looked like the fat lady had sung, and the dance was over. I am not convinced in the least that this dance isn't still ongoing. I'd suggest that y'all work on adding your sites at the moment, rather than try and figure out what the new algo is like. I've found the best strategy is to try and put up as much varied content as possible. The logic being that whatever algo changes Google comes up with, one of the pages will hit the "sweet spot" and rank high.
The chaos has been in commerce. Can anyone deny that?
Couldn't agree more.
I have thought about creating another site regarding "widget clothes"
and linking to our site that is about "blue widgets". Most of google top 10 results are links or redirects like this having nothing to do with blue widgets, in our market.
I have found by accident, searching for some thing else, that our site now ranks #3 for
widget wire. We do not sell or have much of anything to do with widget wire, we sell blue widgets but on one page the word wire exists, there if you search for blue widgets we do not exist now but if you search for widget wire we show up at #3.
This is why we see commercial sites dropping out, but non-SEOed hobby sites remaining.
Spam sites could still remain because the Google crawler doesn't know the difference between a page of randomly generated words and a passage from Hemingway. Pagerank is the proxy for the quality of a page. If a page is full of spam, but has a high page rank, Google think's it's a high quality page full of valuable information.
Can anyone post the IPs of Google datacenters that currently have different results? And, if anyone knows the URL of one of those web based "Google Dance" checking sites that is now using the various IPs, I'd be interested. Since the policy here doesn't allow posting URLs, feel free to use the "stickymail" feature here to tell me.
So mad it has caused a two year forum lurker to post so big thanks to Brett and the rest for the help and advice I have gleaned from this most wicked resource over the years.
Luckily I fled my job two months ago to start a new venture, luckily for me as it appears that the sites of my last employer have all but disappeared from their main keywords!
I can verify the commerce side of sites has been changed, searching for 'financial sector term london' instead of returning advisors now returns a load of affiliate sites and directories, only a couple of individual companies that offer the service. Sites that held number one spots for the two and a half years I worked for the company have all disappeared but they can still be found if you search for 'company name financial sector term' - wierd!
Now we go deeper...
Most of these directory sites, e.g kelly search, sapivi (a new one I had not seen before, whois shows only registered in November!), shopping.net contain the sites that held the number one spots up until the Austin update.
The sites are not over optimised, title tag, meta data and relevant content and copy on the pages and that is about it apart from DMOZ listings and a few free directory entries.
I started work on a widget model dealers site a while ago and after a few directory engines and the usual page title and meta updates his site was rocking! November came and his site could be found if searched for by company name and a couple of other slghtly relevant strings. December update(s) saw him front paging for a few terms and one number one spot. January, so far, saw almost 2,000 referrals and several number one spots. Come back today from a weekend away and results are down the pan accross the board! All exactly relevant kp searches down to g knows where in the results but still being found for company name and also quite a few long string (four word or more) search strings.
Again though, on the front page, where my client sat up until a few days ago, are these bloody directory sites, kelkoo (no surprise there, kelkoo is everywhere I look on google when shopping), as someone earlier in the thread (page ten I think) said a load of canadian wierdness and the sapivi site I mentioned earlier and another directory 'from a to zee'.
My thoughts are, can the fact that these directories are listing my client have had an effect on their positions? And if so does this mean Google prefer directory sites rather than taking users direct to the site containing the relevant content? Crazy if this is the case, giving all of those directory sites ad revenue is surely shooting themselves in the foot.
Anyway, I am off to cry into my cocoa and register some directory type urls!
Doncha just love being and SEO'r.
chubba
Doncha just love being and SEO'r.
Sometimes.
I two site of 25 crushed by florida, both were small. Added 150 apges of junk content to site one, now back in top 10, other site left alone, remains in the toilet.
I'm still going with it being an overoptimisation filter, probably applied to small sites more heavily than large. Bonus points for pages per site.
Top 10 I am competing in, are roughly from 1-10 based on size.
overoptimization: When you work hard for three weeks to put the perfect page together and it drops out of the SERPs during the first update. Usually replaced by a page using your keywords only once, not in header or title text, and with less than 10 incoming links.
This is why we see commercial sites dropping out, but non-SEOed hobby sites remaining
This is, IMO, another fallacious argument I'm afraid. You see, I used the same, valid techniques on my hobby site, as on my commerce site, because I wanted people to find it in Google. I ensured the main search terms were all there, included a header, made a nice link structure, got reciprocal links etc. etc.
It's wrong to assume that 'info' sites are not optimised in some way, in the same way it is surely fallacious to assume that all commerce sites are somehow 'over' optimised.
The fact remains that both sites are optimised the same way, but the commercial one has really suffered in G. *Both* sites do extremely well in all other search engines, especially Fast.
Food for thought ;)
p.s. The old trick of adding +a to search terms brings the commerce site back to all its original top 3 positions in Google; so Google still rates it highly, it just chooses not to display it anymore :(
I did my term +a and I'm #2 now. Non-existent without the +a. I tried googling for this info, but searching for google +a and various similar constructs gives me junk.
can the fact that these directories are listing my client have had an effect on their positions?
I really think this is something important in this new algo / filter / whatever. I continually see high ranking pages where the only real content on the page is a link to the site that used to rank well. It is as if the link to the site is now more important than the site itself. And yes, these new high-ranking pages are directory pages.
Does it now hurt us to list our sites in niche directories? Will doing so cause those pages with our listing to be ranked well, and cause our pages to drop out of sight?
Many of my clients are in serious competitive sectors and we are beating out the companies you see on the Super Bowl commercials. (Mainly those companies that use a monster as a mascot.)
We use a special combination of SEO and publicity for our clients; I think the many sites out there just need to hire a very serious SEO company and fast before the average professional SEO job/proposal rises to over 10k either way ya look at it or add it up.
In 2004 I expect a major verbal war to breakout between what is over optimized and what is optimization.
If I were not considered (by a few opinioned clients) one of the most conservative thought out SEO firms I would say hire a conservative firm with a solid resume. Remember that SEO is a very new field and a good background consists of those well seasoned from those companies that made the most mistakes from the boom 90's.
Hollywood
my situation is not as severe, but without "+a" my site is ranked #22 on my main keyword phrase, with the "+a" i am #3.
i have seen my site's ranking fluctuate from #3 to #30 and back over the last 2 days. the traffic to this site has dropped 50% and the pr dropped from 5 to 4.
what is really odd is that now one of the sites that is listed ahead of mine does not have the keyword phrase anywhere on the page. must be inbound links.
this is the first time i've ever watched a google update this closely and it's been no fun. here's hoping that those suffering from this update see better results soon.
My web develoepr site, has 12 pages, only reference to "my town real estate" is the link to the above site on my home page, and one mention that I build real estate sites so very little optimsiation for "my town real estate. Ranks no17 for "my town real estate"
Another site I manage has 450 pages including a directory of links, 25 links on one page with a link to real estate site "my town real estate" This page ranks no.12, is two clicks from site home page and there is not reference anywhere else on this site to real estate.
My theory is Google KNOWS the real estate site is a real estate site, as it has real estate in the title, and perhaps also because of KWD usage on the page. It also knows it is a SMALL site as only 15 pages. It gets listed way low
My own site, ranks higher, but has no page with "my town real estate" in the title and little other usage therefore google decides I am NOT a commercial real estate site(so not going to bother paying for a google adword) so not worth penlasing for being small, or for intentially setting the site for RE. I'm further betting, it is a HOME PAGE setting only(as home apge title reall details what a site is about), so I could set an inner page on either site with "my town real estate" and receive no penalty.
When I get to it, I will add 150 pages of shiite to "my town real estate site" and I am pos it will fix the problem
Since Sat. 24th i do not appear within the top 1000: but i am within the index.
Not only have i been dropped from the top 30, but many of the original top 30 have gone as well - it's like a new index.
What i've noticed within the last two hours (Tues morning in UK) is that 10 out of the first 30 (of the new index) are showing dates of 24 Jan 2004.
This seems all too much of a coincidence: could it be that if Google had visited me on the 24th Jan (last visit was Jan 22) i would be sitting within the top 30 today - maybe i need to wait for a fresh visit from the bot to re-engage with the database.
I have copied the top 100 serps for this single kw and will be interested to see if new listings appear within the top 100 with a date "after" the 24th. next to its listing.
GoogleGuy is quiet: i'll be very keen to read his first few responses to the thread.
