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"This thread is ONLY for serious, generic discussion of changes that you are observing with the new algo in this update. As in things like "Looks to me like PR is less important this month, and anchor text of inbound links counts more.", etc. How your site is doing has no relevance here unless you can explain why you think so in terms of a general algo analysis."
This thread is NOT for y'all to say how much you think Google sucks, or alternatively how great the new SERPs are. The idea is to pick apart how Google is working, and not to criticize their quality.
In many areas I monitor, any set of intereconnected sites are now reduced to a single listing in a serp whereas they used to have three or four.
You are exactly right. Due to strong brand differences that we represent we devote a different site to each brand and they are interconnected. Under different circumstances this could be considered spam but in our case it is just good buisness practice. Of couse the different sites are what is currently being classed as overtoptimized for the particular brand names although we and the other search engines still consider it good practice. Keep in mind that we do not spam at all. Everything is super clean including the cleanest possible code. It is my beleif that our sites have suffered radically for these two reasons. From dominating our money words to totally gones for all the most important ones and yet still ranking well for the less obvious ones.
This is what leads me to beleive that we were not penalized but filtered on certain keywords. I would imagine that a list of manufacturers could have been part of the dictionary used.
In my particular case I am not willing to give up Y and MSN to chase Google so we are sitting tight untill threads such as this one can start to make some sense of things.
And watch our adwords bill go up.
This is based on the observation that one of our obvious kw searches, that put www.oursite.org/main.htm at #1 from Sept 2002 until Florida, dropped to #2 behind an "About" page, (that has five links to our site on it), with Florida. /main.htm has now gone back to #1 with a supp listing, the index.htm as #2. The About page is #3. /main.htm has anchor text of the particular kw-kw on about 80% of the internal links... it's the main contents page and every other page on the site, 200+ pages, links back to it.
The clients I work with took a hit on their main 2-word money phrases...for one of my client's he is dead set on a very narrow set of keyword phrases for his two main properties because he knows that these are the ones that convert to sales...I have always been of the conviction that you need horizontal keyword phrase distribution..instead of vertical...something I learned in the early days (1996) in the SEO business..
You want to spread your keyword assets out and reach the broadest and deepest audience sets this way..
Naturally, we switched to some PPC to pick up the slack as I worked to bring the sites in alignment with the new word stemming algo integration...I was starting to see some positive results of my efforts when Yahoo disconnected and Google decided to revert back to a previous index set (or at least implement a different blend of their new dual algo to bring back index pages for 2 word phrases...perhaps the recent increase in AdWords revenue has allowed them to take a breather from their new direction...I do not believe that the current index, such as it is, will survive)..
I believe Google took some of the treasured DataCenters offline and kept the old SERPS in a preserved state for the last several months and then brought them across live without any of us inquisitive types being able to take a looksee...
With the current SERPs our sites are back just about where they were prior to Florida (but the votes where never recounted properly...shame)...so we are dipping into the sweet nectar of natural SERPs traffic, though somewhat reduced, with Yahoo taking something in the order of 20% of the search market to their table...is that correct?
We are currently doing nicely with Yahoo and MSN so for now we have reached a reasonable balance...but I have informed my clients ... be ready to crank those PPC accounts again when the next Google update comes along...it could be uguuully...
On The Technical Side
...I believe that one of the things Google is trying to initiate is a more organic link structure....in the same way the hypertext documents were strung together before the WWW Browser became prominent (prior to 1994..you know Marc Andreesen? and Netscape)...this way link relationships flow more naturally from site to site...case in point...look at how many links Yahoo lost in the last update...from near 800,000 to 490,000 ... this indicates a scale down of centralized link pointing to more of a flow-through model...where the theme weight is carried from site to site...and the qualification and quantification of a pages importance is calculated in this flow pattern...just a thought...tell me to jump off a cliff if you don't like...I'll just strap on my parachute and have a blast...
Another factor to consider is the word stemming issue...this certainly tends to favor a more generic view of a page then the very specific on page optimization of the past...so one needs to be able to broaden their dialogue but still have it make sense for the visitors (this is where the sales come from...unless the engines are planning on making the bots "purchase agents")
So to accomplish this one needs to start at the very top of their respective category for their particular keyword structure and find a practical, elegant way to integrate some of the primary variants into the copy...not an easy thing to do and still read well...
Thanks for listening...
Good luck to all...now back to work making money for my clients...
[edited by: decaff at 2:31 am (utc) on Feb. 24, 2004]
Now I see only one site in each keyword group from our "network". It's not always the same site. Sometimes it's the main site and sometimes one of the manufacturer sites. Are they filtering based on IP block or is it this "Latent Semantic Indexing" I am reading about? The basic product info is identical from one site to another.
I'm still reviewing this for now.
In general:
Pages < ~10K or including indexes with framesets are being pushed down
Pages > 10K and < 35K are getting a boost (or are just boosted by other sites going down)
Pages > 35K are getting pushed down
This is consistent with the recent efforts to reduce SPAM, promote faster loading pages with content, and not overwhelm users at 56K speeds.
This is based on a comparison with pervious SERPs.
Also, I used to do well on a page "black widgets, white widgets, big and small", but after brandy, my site was filtered out of SERPs for "white widgets" but not "black widgets". White widget is a much more competitive phrase. I think that the repeat of "widgets" did me in on that search. But when a third keyword was added, such as "big white widgets" I am #1 -- so the filter dropped on third keyword.
Background:
[webmasterworld.com...] .
Observation 1. Anchor Text more weight:
Link from :
My site . Five pages with PR4 link out with a three word link.
Link to :
Site with related keyword in two word title .. second word is "web" ( ie irrelevant. )
Site with PR3.
Keyword density of Keywords light .
On topic body ( relevant to the KWS i link with ) .
Result.
Beats PR4 site which kills itself trying to rank , but with little content.
Observation 2 Giving away pr to on topic sites .
My site:
PR4.
Body is relevant to keywords and includes keywords.
Outbound links to both subdomains and sites which are on topic .
No inbound kw links.
Result:
PR sites which have title , tags and KWs in text . with inbound links with KW's pushed into 4th and 5th place.
Think there was some people talking about an over optimisation penalty a while ago, and im sure they do exist... however could it be that the sites are not considered topical .?
Observation 3 Anchor Text ..plenty of weight
It stands to reason that organic pages will include topical keywords in text and anchor text.
Observation:
Sites with density of anchor text that contain KWS rank well. However one site that I have seen rise on this premise links out to topical sites. Im going to play with this with a playground domain and see if i can see the difference between linking to on and off topic pages.
Personally given the raw state of LSI i think google should turn back this knob a bit. Most surfers dont know how how to search a web page to find out where their KW is...which is what i have found myself doing.
DMOZ and Directory Listings
Perhaps old news but new to me. But if you can manage to pass your kws into the description in DMOZ extra weight seems to be given to this beyond on page factors. Ive seen ( and griped about ) a listing that just should not be where it is based on DMOZ listing alone.
Bottom Line . On topic links in and out , with on topic content and interlinking .. almost sounds organic. Not there yet but going in the right direction IMHO. I am more and more confident that i have to spend less time here and more time writing content for humans that humans will want to link to.
David
So if you restructured your internal linking text how can you tell that internal anchor text carries greater weight? Maybe it carries the same weight but it is your changed link structure that is the variable that has made the difference, not the algo.
I restructured my internal linking text
I read that as a change in the anchor text rather than the linking...
Which was it Wellzy?
These all had different key aspects to them.
Immediate Brandy and 64 Brandy were pretty interesting. Now, except for successfully at least partially resurrecting many "lost" sites, current Brandy is mostly like it never occured. Clearly extrenal anchor text dependent trivial sites are doing better than the beginning of Brandy and on 64, but there is no major news in that.
The authoritativeness knob has been turned down. More lightweight sites are doing better. This may be the result though of the synonym/semantic knob being turned WAY down.... or at perhaps being altered in some way.
During Immediate Brandy and 64 Brandy searches for:
word1 ~word1
and
word1 word1
returned excellent results, including some extremely authoritative domains that are nowhere in the normal serps because they have basically horrible almost anti-seo site design. The results for these searches now are much, much more lightweight.
Considering the hubbub, nothing lasting really occured except Google added a lot of trivial and/or fresh piffle to what had been solid results.
This doesn't affect what I wrote. My point is that Wellzy made the changes, then he claims that after the changes there was a big difference, yet he is saying that the changed algo is responsible for the big difference, not the changes he made. How can he know or even guess such a thing?
This is not an important matter, I just wanted to point it out.
In other words, the whole iceberg concept has been turned on its head. Making a deep, content rich website with sections/pages on subtopics is definitely not being rewarded now.
If this holds, its a massive step backwards conceptually considering what Google (and GoogleGuy) have been talking about. The results I see now would encourage a person to put all their eggs in one basket, in one powerhouse index page.
I hope it doesn't hold, since that sounds like an awfully boring SEO future to me!
I noticed a while ago some of them were coming up on the same page for some minor terms that did not include a location in the term. I probably should have thought more seriously about this then and tried to stop this happening.
Now most of them have been hit for all the main search terms such as one of them going from number one for a 3 word term that it is easily the most relevant site for down to 350.
There are about 6 sites that interlink from the index page only and these 6 plus another 4 come off a central hub, with most of the external links coming to the hub and just a couple to some of the spoke sites, so I wonder if it might have had something to do with this type of link structure as well.
Brandy #6 for info sites (for "blue widgets"), today is #13 and tomorrow maybe #23 or Florida #...
Commercial sites with fresh tags push info sites down, and that is a big problem. They have the same content every day, while info sites with fresh tag and fresh content lost first page position because of them. I know for all standard problems with fresh boot, but the question is: "What is really fresh?"
Maybe Google must change their algo in that direction.
I see also commercial sites work fine for singular and plural (for "blue widgets" and for "blue widget") and info sites not, despite both have only plural on site.
This doesn't affect what I wrote. My point is that Wellzy made the changes, then he claims that after the changes there was a big difference, yet he is saying that the changed algo is responsible for the big difference, not the changes he made. How can he know or even guess such a thing?
True. Point taken.
I made no changes but seemed to see a renewed benefit from the internal anchor text. One case only amounts to anecdotal evidence, of course, so this might not be an observation of a real algo change.
Personally I think KW density made a big comeback on this algo. Looking at screnshots and notes of our positions post and pre-brandy, and then doing a quick kw density check on both sets of results sees a strong rise for those with both good KW density and kw anchor links to your own site. This seems to all but have eliminated stupid reults where a page with a link to you on it would be higher in the serps than you were.
I also think that Google has recalculated PR, and its not showing on the toolbar yet. Our own backlinks were recalculated just before Brandy, but I have yet to see any change in toolbar PR. When this starts showing a few more things might start to make sense.
[edited by: ntrance at 6:49 am (utc) on Feb. 24, 2004]
there seems to be filters on ppc providers eg. sites that use searchfeed have been filtered out
backlinks are the most important aspect at the moment
symantics seems to be playing a good part of the ranking algo as well...
and theming, your site has to be "themed"
[edited by: metagod at 4:29 am (utc) on Feb. 24, 2004]
"Making a deep, content rich website with sections/pages on subtopics is definitely not being rewarded now."
I'm #8 now in my main keyword-keyword2 search, whereas I used to be #4. No biggie. But some of the folks ahead of me have only a tenth of the on-topic content I've got -- and a few of them have less external links of good PR than me.
I don't think size matters as much now; and the authoritativeness knob, as Steve B said, has been turned down...
For example:
A site that has 30,000 pages, each page have a 'widget' link pointing to the internal 'widget page' and that page have the right semantics and on target as well for widget and no tricks...
based on what most have said...that page should be at least in page 1 of widget serp. Right?
But, here's the problem, that page is not even in the 1st 10 pages and in fact it is not even in the 1st 20 pages or so.
Anybody like to explain that?
In my observation, I believe that internal links have been devalued which is in fact in favor to smaller sites. If internal links are devalued the smaller site which might have a better content than the bigger site will have better chance in getting to the top of the serp based on other factors.
Devaluing of internal link is just logical and in a way prevent internal manipulation. I've seen so many sites that internal linking structure are based on keywords and you get the sense that it has nothing to do with navigation anymore.
Just look at the above example, anybody with extra cash can replicate the same structure thus the serp becomes who can build the biggest useless site.
However....'external (anchor) links'...are given extra weight. Again, in a way it's logical, this minimizes or even take out webmaster's control on SE manipulation. Done right, could truly bring up highly relevant pages...that is in theory of course.
Issues such as multiple throw-away domains pointing to the master site and issues about spammed blogs, guest books, and forums need to be address otherwise it would skew the ranking in favor of pages that has no real value.
For example:
A prolific spammer going through any spammed sources and pointing it to his/her master site or to the affiliate provider site.
But my greatest mystery is this one page that inspite of the different updates/changes pre-florida, post, and brandy remain at #1 where starting from #2 and down everything is fluid.
What is more intriguing is that it is #1 for a 2 word keyword where those words are pretty common and used by most sites in it's category. A solid example of unshakeable position (if it would last forever).
Seeing the same with interior pages.
>But some of the folks ahead of me have only a tenth of the on-topic content I've got -- and a few of them have less external links of good PR than me.
Sounds like two of my pages that were never well placed before that now reside on page one. <title> and <H1> live again. If these werent my pages, I would be pi##ed.
Still think links and anchor text rule the Google roost. Several service industry template sites now do extremely well because of links/AT.
<added>
Just read Net_wizard's post. For those of you Hilltop/circa experts, I wonder if local rank comes into play with the internal links in small sites where the index page does well for several kws.
[edited by: Kirby at 4:47 am (utc) on Feb. 24, 2004]
One thing isn't everything. Your question is a non-sequitor.
One thing isn't everything. Your question is a non-sequitor.
And ... do you have an answer to the "non-sequitor question? Or ... did you just want to use the phrase, "non-sequitor" in a sentence?
Post Florida: #1 kw1 & #3 kw2
Post Austin: all over the map but settled in around #3 kw1 and #3 kw2
Post Brandy: #1 kw1 & #4 kw2
All that to say that I use by the book, no spam SEO. And we have a ton of quality anchor links for kw1 & kw2. Index page is PR5. I have begun increasing kw density in title and on page. As well as some theme pages. Still caching in at same position so far.
What part of "one thing isn't everything" escapes you? LOL.
Anyway, the neighbourhood is as much important as anchor text now ... my 2 cents.
Mc
