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It seems that a major google update is under way. I just checked www.google.com with the normal set of keywords that I generally use to monitor any changes and found what I believe is a major update. Now its back to original results. Its kinda on and off.
One of my site had a 50% increase in the number of pages crawled.
I hadn't much chance to check out whether the update spells good news or not, so lets keep our fingers crossed.
<Imaster adds>
The changes are visible on 216.239.39.104
[edited by: ciml at 2:15 pm (utc) on Dec. 16, 2004]
[edit reason] Addition [/edit]
A competitor in my field has about four domains which frame forward to his main domain. His main domain has no title. However his main domain is now showing with the Title of one of the domains thats used for framed forwarding...
That is to say the title from one domain can be transposed onto the another one..
Im also noticing a lot of my sites appearing for terms ( quite well thankfully ) but with my / and /index.asp in the index one on top of the other...that is to say i get two duplicate listings..not to sure how good i feel about that.. Is anybody else seeing this ( do i have a host indexing problem? ). Id hate to be get whacked with a dup filter due to a google bug..
That's easy...just leave our sites as they are:-)))
Good content, accessibility, viral marketing.
We'll keep monitoring to see if anything untowards does occur.
"If I have a site that is currently ranking well, and then G changes the algo and my site drops, I don't change anything for 120 days. If after 120 days I'm still not ranking, then I take a look."
You can do more harm than good if you start making drastic changes. However, it is certainly a good time to add more content and links.
For me the holidays are ruined now.
Then you weren't mentally prepared for this game. As soon as I saw the problem, I decided to go and do my accounts, VAT returns, legal documentation, a bit of customer relations etc. - i.e. anything that didn't involve working/looking at me sites. I also took most of today off and took my wife out to a nice restaurant and went for an extra long walk with the dogs. If this sort of thing (Google changing) gets you that upset you need to go back to regular employment.
If your only source of income was free traffic from google - you killed yourself.
Exactly! The words "basket" and "eggs" springs to mind. And considering it's not your basket, that's a very silly position to be in indeed.
Google's key asset is the quality of its SERPs.
Google is aimed at VISITORS and not webmasters
I think that is what people are complaining about - the results themselves. In my own messages in this thread I wasn't simply pointing out that someone else was "beating me" now, I was pointing out that no-one RELEVANT is beating me. The results in my regular daily searching provide results that are no-where near what I was looking for. It seem as though Google is returning results based on "related topics" rather than pages that contain the actual keywords I searched for. i.e. searching for "eggs" gives me pages on rearing chickens for example.
and a very silient Googleguy of late.
Yes, I know. Normally, he shows up 2-3 days BEFORE an event such as this one talking about general stuff and then WHAM! Google hits us. No such pre-event banter ... very strange indeed ... I'm willing to be he is reading this thread though ...
It's also possible for that site to come right back where it was.
All without a penalty.
[edited by: Spine at 9:02 pm (utc) on Dec. 20, 2004]
Relevant results? Sure...
Viva MSN!
Google's key asset is the quality of its SERPs. People come to Google because the results are relevant and better than the competition. Remember AltaVista? That used to have the best results, but Google was better and basically ate AltaVista's lunch. Google is aimed at VISITORS and not webmasters - so Google's aim is to provide relevant and reasonably high quality search results for the visitor. Period. Everything else is a sideline.
Google's key asset WAS it's SERPS. Relevant you say? I don't know what sector your in or what results your receiving but in my sector the search results are ridiculous. Google adsense this, goodle adsense that....Forums that talk about the keywords and such and maybe 2 or 3 site that actually have what the customer is searching for. If I am a search VISITOR would I want to read a forum on one of my keywords? I think not! Would I want to visit sites that have adsense on them and nothing else?! I think not! Would I want to read a blog about the keyword? I think not! Try this for example...Use the phrase "I want to purchase a bike" in your search term. No I don't sell bikes either...This is just an example. From the results I get none of them even sell bikes! They have forums about bikes, a editors column with tips about purchasing a bike, another discussion board from ebay, another site with tips about buying a bike, a site from ioffer that has pocket bikes, chopper bikes and motorbikes, a site that asks what is the best bike, another meaningless site that talks about buying motorcycles, another site that tells you how to buy a used bike, and finally a site that talks about a FRAUD ALERT concerning bikes. Now you tell me what part of relevancy did that address? NADA! I specifically quoted "I want to purchase a bike". Now those adwords are very interesting...Every single one of them says the word bike...And you know what...They all sell bikes! Now to address your idealogy that google in concerned about the VISITORS? LAUGH! Think twice before you submit such a ridiculous claim!
SURELY Google's aim is to NOT provide relevant and reasonably high quality search results for the visitor. Period. Everything else is a sidebar called Adwords or Adsense!
You know the only relevant results I get from google is if I ask for "bikes" and then I actually get manufacturers of bikes. If I specifically say anything "Purhcase" google returns absolutely irrelevant results!
Congratulations...you've now got to #3 in the Google results with your previous thread with "I want to purchase a bike"!
I might visit that thread and learn of msn beta which will truly give me better results if I really wanted to purchase a bike.
Too bad I don't sell bikes. :(
Exactly right. Anyone who hasn't seen this hasn't been doing very interesting searches. This problem has been ongoing, and it hasn't gotten better. Google is filtering out the primary source for my searches even when those searches include as explicit as humanly possible terms that could result in only one possible number 1. Which remains unseen, off the top 20.
Not just forums though, old pages that refer to the search terms, but aren't actually authority on the terms. Plus lots of other stuff. But not what I'm looking for.
In many cases google does succeed, but in this type of search they are almost alwasy failing. In other words, they are not organizing the world's information for me. This problem is getting worse and worse, it's not getting better. Nobody is consistently better than google yet from what I see, but google is worse than google was, which means the bar is lowered to competitors. Yahoo's new results are interesting, haven't had time to do a long test of them yet though.
<<< But EVERY time this happens the same old conspiracy theories come out.. that Google is deliberately crippling the results to boost AdSense revenues >>>
Yes, you're definitely right, google isn't a business, it floats free and high above us all, purely and nobly pushing ever onwards in its quest to perfectly organize the world's information. It's adwords income that's being boosted by the way. There was and is no connection between their revenues and profits rising and the timing of anything that has happened in that timespan, such as their IPO and subsequent stock selloffs, or between their adwords income generator and anything else. You completely nailed it. How can people be so naive as to think that google operates with more or less the same business practices that drive any company. Silly us. Microsoft is also freeing you to be more creative and producive, or at least that's what their last ad compaign said, so I guess that's true too.
By the way, google visits up 150% this week, and rising.
[edited by: lizardx at 9:35 pm (utc) on Dec. 20, 2004]
Until today we used Google's cobranded free site search as our "on site" search engine. For years it did a great job of returning the most relevant pages on our site. After last week's changes, the results are pure garbage. The most relevant (and previously highest-ranking) pages for some common queries are being pushed onto the third or fourth page of results, usurped by pages of marginal interest and little content.
Anyhow, I just switched our search box over to Yahoo. Better results, fewer ads (on the site-specific search). I'm pretty sure our users won't complain.
Many, many system admins are doing exactly what you are talking about. I for one am in IT and the county I did some work for no longer uses google search as their default engine, nor do any of their users have the googlebar installed. Their reasons were irrelevancy and time wasted by their employees searching through meaningless results. Hopefully many more admins, isps, and the like will follow suit and then just maybe google will address the problem.
I once heard a wise old member say something like this: "If I have a site that is currently ranking well, and then G changes the algo and my site drops, I don't change anything for 120 days. If after 120 days I'm still not ranking, then I take a look."
I can't say I would recommend waiting 120 days due to Google's rolling updates. Obviously the 120 days would (should) take you past the next "big shuffle" so you'd know your position better. My advice would be to have several unique sites for your product/service and create them completely different using different style/coding/techniques/linking etc. - that's what I do and one of them survived this recent "attack". (I should re-iterate that only ONE type has survived this last update the rest have all dropped significantly - but hey! That's one more than most in this thread! ;) I have no intention of changing my other sites to match the techniques used on my surviving site as Google could switch back next month if it felt like it.
Anyone else seeing lots of .ac.uk and .org sites dominating again? Directories are a big hit too in both commercial and non-commercial searches.
Lately, I don't search much outside my own industry, but I'll be danged, he's right. I just ran a search for dogs and radio control cars. The #1 sites run adsense.
Can that really be the most relevant web page for my search? Oh yea, its Adsense also.
The #1 site for that term "xmas gifts" is entirely based on Adsense....BTW...You've gotta love the content that #1 site has! :>~ Great job google!
The #2 site runs adsense as well! And oh my, so does #3 and #4!
Do a search for your keyword(s) and check the top 10 results. How many of the top 10 sites run adsense?
[edited by: MLHmptn at 11:23 pm (utc) on Dec. 20, 2004]
I don't see any correlation between adsense and the latest update. Saying that a website has a high ranking because of adsense is nonsense. It is hard to find sites that don't have adsense these days.
I challenge any of you in your own sector to find a top 10 site that doesn't have adsense on it!
One of our big sites has no adsense.
Our three most popular 2-word phrases:
Key phrase 1 - #1 of 7,130,000 results
Key phrase 2 - #3 of 11,100,000 results
Key phrase 3 - #3 of 5,480,000 results
In fact none of our sites have adsense and we've never had a problem so far.
I think adsense is just very popular and you are reading too much in to it....
Sorry for the misunderstanding ;(
But after further review on that term you are correct not 1 of the top 10 for the term "Christmas Gifts" runs adsense....To my surprise.
The term "Challenge" was a bad term to use. I should have said, check your own sectors keyword results to see if it happens in your sector as well.
[edited by: MLHmptn at 11:12 pm (utc) on Dec. 20, 2004]
My site rocks , it kicks ass all over the SERPS for my terms... So im not annoyed by google.
Google fix your search engine.. you are turning it into a joke.
None of the successful sites in my sectors have adsense. I confess I personally forget about it completely and wonder what the heck people are talking about adsense, but people on the opposite side of the coin need to understand that adsense is small potatoes in terms of money on the Internet.
