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I emailed Google and they say I do not have a penalty.
It is very clear and obvious that many of the sites listed are nowhere near as relevant to the search. PR0 and no backlinks etc.
I am relatively new and the sites are largely non commercial by the way.
Do I sit tight or should I try and do something?
Regards
Rod
Last week they went from #1-3 to #200+ or gone completely from Google.
The sites are properly optimized, and completely spam-free. (ie: No penalty)
The SERPS that now come up are absolutely irrelevant to the query.
My only alternative is to go spend my money at Yahoo, and abandon Google altogether. Life is too short to mess with Google's inconsistency. I'll just start telling my clients that Google has gone off the deep end and that Yahoo is going to crush them.
It's time for Google to get off their "college-campus" testing mentality and start acting consistent like a real business.
...Rehabguy
I was meaning that normal SEO is now causing negative results on Google.
IMHO utter nonsense, depending upon what you call 'normal'
(We've been through all these arguments before: but it doesn't do any harm to restate the obvious when the glaringly obvious has been misplaced once again :)
We judge a book by its cover. If I wrote a book about 'Salmon Fishing' - I would expect, and my publisher would demand, a few mentions of ... er Salmon Fishing, in its title, on its covers, on the back, on the front, in its publicity.
Is this 'optimisation?' Well of course it is! That's what the f*k'n book is about!
Are we now suggesting that if G published this book, I should call it "Otter Hunting in the UK?"
And then, using the 'under-optimisation' strategy, sprinkle the odd word about the books actual content into the subheading?
e.g.
TITLE
"Otter Hunting in the UK"
SUBTITLE
"This book is actually about salmon fishing, but we're just a bit anxious about stating this in case it leads to a penalty."
FOOTNOTE Salmon, fish, perch, boat, food, restaurant,
fishing, book, letter, manuscript, salmon rushdie, piscean
That should do it!
Grow up
[edited by: SyntheticUpper at 8:11 pm (utc) on Mar. 18, 2004]
I've lost 75% of my traffic, now it's ridiculous and I don't understand the reason. I've lost 40 positions on average; before my results at pr5 and pr6 there are a lot of pr3 and p2 without any authority
I think this is a wrong update from google; I think strongly that he will come back with something else more concrete and effective
If Title, H1, and 7 percent kwd means I am a bad person, then so be it.
I've actually played around some with changing my Meta Title to a semantic variation of what the page is about and have had overnight success with that page.
In my case, most of my inbounds were "Blue Widgets" - I then changed my Title to "Affordable Blue Widget Prices" - and "poof" - #4 for "Blue Widgets" as well as #1 for Blue Widget Prices.
But that's just one page. I have another 1,200 that left me with traffic down 75 percent. Instead of solving the semantic problem 1,200 times, I think I will go write some content and take pictures. I am not changing anything else because I did nothing wrong.
The SERPs above me are irrelevant. Seriously irrelevant. Maybe 2 good ones out of 40. Google Yo Yos between great and crud. It's happened too many times already and this probably won't be the last. It will happen again. And then a few months later, again. And then a few months later, again. And then a few months later, again.
However, I have to wonder at how much their AdSense income is down. I have some peace of mind to know if my adsense income is getting hurt, so is Google's. When they hurt me, they hurt themselves more.
- They have never added a keyword to try boost search engine position and all content is written to be as clear and concise as possible with no thought paid to how a search engine might view it
- Every link out from the site is only there to provide further information for the reader not in return for a link from that site. The only inbound links you have are from people who have come across your site and thought "nice site informative site, I think I'll link to it"
- html tags such as H1 etc are used only in appropriate places and not for the sake of it
- The title is there as a title eg Site about blue widgets is called, "Blue Widgets", not "Blue Widgets - For all your Blue Widget needs plus other types of widget"
All of the above and tens if not hundreds more techniques are often used not to make the site better for the user but to try and get higher in the SERPs. If Google was to start giving less importance to these factors sites that were designed without a thought given to SEO but still had equally valid content would start to perform better. Google would want this as it doesn't want to show people the best optimised sites but the most relevant.
Is this such a crazy idea? I'm not trying to cause an argument just trying to rationalise why I and many others have dropped so drastically since the latest tweak.
<edit> Must learn to spell! </edit>
[edited by: march83 at 8:14 pm (utc) on Mar. 18, 2004]
[edited by: SyntheticUpper at 8:50 pm (utc) on Mar. 18, 2004]
Does anybody agree that Google might want sites that pay no attention to SEO to rank well with sites that do if they have good valid content?
Maybe that is what the current tweaks are aiming towards, of course changing some of the fundemental things previous rankings were based on will cause some strange results at times. This is why SERPs keep jumping around more than ever before as Google try to come up with something they are happy with.
Does that make sense to anybody but me?
This will discourage webmasters from optimizing their web sites (IE: Reduce spam)
...Rehabguy
That is fair enough, if every single person who has suffered a drop because of this latest algo change can honestly say the following:
- They have never added a keyword to try boost search engine position and all content is written to be as clear and concise as possible with no thought paid to how a search engine might view it- Every link out from the site is only there to provide further information for the reader not in return for a link from that site. The only inbound links you have are from people who have come across your site and thought "nice site informative site, I think I'll link to it"
- html tags such as H1 etc are used only in appropriate places and not for the sake of it
- The title is there as a title eg Site about blue widgets is called, "Blue Widgets", not "Blue Widgets - For all your Blue Widget needs plus other types of widget"
All of the above and tens if not hundreds more techniques are often used not to make the site better for the user but to try and get higher in the SERPs. If Google was to start giving less importance to these factors sites that were designed without a thought given to SEO but still had equally valid content would start to perform better. Google would want this as it doesn't want to show people the best optimised sites but the most relevant.
Is this such a crazy idea? I'm not trying to cause an argument just trying to rationalise why I and many others have dropped so drastically since the latest tweak.
<edit> Must learn to spell! </edit>
A poorly disguised plant. March83, sort out your organisation's dreadful serps. I rest my case.
I'm guessing that instead of looking at how to remove spam, they have switched to trying to make the algorithm so effective that spam can't work - hence the recent boosting of .org and information sites.
By the way, there is some serious spam by some of our own affiliates. We've stopped paying them but Google are still listing several of them above our own listing (we must be seen as teh duplicate). Googleguy said in another forum that has wants to hear about superspammers, I think some of these come into that category but Googleguy has his stickymail off so how to we let him know?
I know - officially, AdWords and SERPs are mutually exclusive and independent of each other. But the coincidence is uncanny with what you all are reporting in SERPs behavior this week.
Our impressions and clicks dropped to under half the average levels for the past two days. Today, they're back up and way over par already.
Anybody else back up to normal today?
By reading the posts in this thread I believe the following.
Florida saw google use the new algo on the top keywords.
The new update(if I can call it that) on 12th March has seen the new algo used on a broader range of keywords.... hence why my sites have been hit now as opposed to during Florida.
I believe that i'm being punished because my site uses the same keywords in the inbound anchor text, title, h1 tag and body.
Rather than change it i'm going to create a new "information" site with lots of relevent content which will link to my current sites.
Lets hope this works!
Look somewhere else for your problem. I have keyword phrase in title, description, H1, two other places in the top half of the page and in incoming anchor text on 15 other pages. The is true of around 40 pages and most are ranked #1 through #4.
That being said, my traffic is still down 50% and I don't have a clue why. Maybe folks have gone to Yahoo and MSN and given up on Google.
I don't think it's safe to say that an 'informational site' will solve your woes. I run a bunch of large content rich sites and they are all gone from Google since the 12th.
What's the deal GoogleGuy?
what's the deal?
It's mainly to do with words [Heaven's knows why I'm explaining this - I just hate to see people suffer]
It's all to do with words, and words connected with your site. This is a part of it, not all of it, but when the serps go strange this is the major element.
Look at your competitors. What words are they using?
O.K. its crap, irresponsible,; lacks a social conscience, and is secretive: but this is prob. what G is attempting. The technical term is not 'word', but 'token' (because when you think about it, an algo has *no idea* what a word actually means.) It looks at your 'tokens' and tries to connect them with other 'tokens.' If, among many other variables, Google's f*cked up algo approves of your tokens, and you're sufficiently related to other tokens it regards as related, you go to the top of the list.
Too many 'tokens' of one type might look like an OOP, but this is not the case - it depends upon their balance with other tokens. You get the drift...
Good Luck
[edited by: SyntheticUpper at 10:45 pm (utc) on Mar. 18, 2004]
Yeah, right.
No seriously, take a look! The SERPS I'm looking at aren't showing sites with aff links like before. The computer generated/database driven thing also looks to be major factor.
Even more confusing - the site which has been buried on it's "local widgets" search ever since Dom, suddenly reappeared at #2. The weird part is that the site has been a holding page for the last few months as the owner retired and just says that the business is closed.
I give up. Maybe people will just start using Yahoo and everything will make sense again.
Maybe the algo changes for diferent keywords... or even different pageranks or number of backward links...
I'm looking at my competitors page and i'm thinking. how the heck is he no.1 when i'm not... the only real difference is that hes got a lot of static pages which link together... whilst most of pages are dynamic...
I'm going to create a site with lots of static pages lined together and plenty of content... then i'll analyse and counter analyse until i'm back where I belong... either no. 1 or in a mental hospital...
I mean "real" directory websites. Not the ones made up to look real and then offer XYZ product affiliate ad instead of directory information, but real directory websites.
Florida seemed to go after text link and the hottest 1 and 2 word search terms. This "Update That Dares Not Speak It's Name" has killed off ONLY my directory websites where I had strong traffic for 3, 4, 5, 6 search term kw combos. From reading the posts around here, (nice place too), I get the feeling this Update (That dares not speak it's name) went after mostly directory websites optimized for 3-6 kw combos.
I'm posting this message because I have had many stickys from people in the same boat as me with their directory websites.
Did this happen to anyone else?
The fact that Google rolled out Local Search days later is just too "coincidental." Wipe out the competition and then include your own Super Directory. I don't want to stoop to Google bashing but this coincidence is just almost evil.
They can deny that one had anything to do with the other but that is exactly what happened and it's hard not to look at this as competition killing. Wipe out directory sites from the SERPs and then introduce Local Search.
(What was Sergey's motto again?).
Alina
PS: I'll be glad when they go IPO because it will be harder to keep quiet on these issues. Shareholders are going to ask questions, the same questions, and unambigous answers will surface. And it's highly likely that webmasters themselves will own a large part of the publicly offered stocks.
I can't help but beleive google has made a mistake and will fix their regular search. Local search is too new to draw any conclusions. G was the finest of the finest and now I have to use Yahoo just to find anything in personal searches...
-s-
Either way there's things going down at the Googleplex that I believe they need to change back...
You don't speak french do you ...
Any of you guys seen where "gg" is currently answering in these forums........ROTFLOL
The silence anywhere else from him is deafening .....
What if you have #1 in SERPS?
If what is being discuused is true then the game just changed................
Sorry all I never did work ou how to copy and paste a string here ....
