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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]
Be Fair to everyone
Google's job isn't to be fair to everyone. It's to deliver good search results for the user. (Which isn't to say that loading the SERPs with pages from huge e-commerce, directory, or affiliate sites is good for the user.)
Just as Yahoo has retained positions previous to this recent Algo change, while everyone else gets screwed.
Everyone else hasn't been screwed. :-)
Huh? Yahoo has a travel page. It ranks third. What are you complaining about?
Bad news is that the number 10 position is occupied by a site on a free server that has nothing to it, it's bad, pr0, no back links, dumb design, etc. I have never seen anything like this before. Not on the first page of results for a good traffic phrase anyway...
Huh? Yahoo has a travel page. It ranks third. What are you complaining about?
actually yahoo has some 6,200,000 or so... travel pages...
?
Placing a product feed on your template site isn't gonna cut it anymore. SO Deal with it. Enough with long-winded theories and bad talking these people.
To get good results on the most powerful and innovative engine in the world is going to take time, and I don't mean 12 months. I know many of you don't want to read these words but suck it up, put in the time, and be patient. That's your only choice at this point.
Go WebFusion!
I don’t think optimizing sites in order to gain free traffic that can be monetized is a bad business model at all.
It is if it's your ONLY marketing channel. There are SO MANY unexploited ways of garnering RELIABLE targeted traffic that utilizing SEO alone is ont only folly, it is leaving alot of money on the table.
The challenge is that Google commands the lion’s share of organic traffic, that’s just the way it is, so here we are.
I think a more accurate statement is that google commands the lion's share of organic SEARCH traffic. Alot of organic traffic can be had via articles, press releases, and even college kids (or substitiue your niche market) blogging about your site. Hell, we get over a grand a month in sales from kids blogging to other kids about our stuff.
I have to agree. If you are running an e-commerce site, traffic from the natural Google SERPs should just be considered icing on the cake. Any businessman who relied on me or any other SEO to keep the traffic rolling in would be a fool. (And, I'd say any SEO who claimed that he could keep the traffic rolling in is either lying to his clients, or a fool, and should be avoided like the plague.) And for any webmaster who does his own SEO and is relying on his "skill" to keep the business going should immediately fire himself as the company SEO, and find someone who actually knows about Internet marketing. In web marketing, putting all of one's eggs in the same basket is folly. Diversity is the key in Internet marketing.
Having said all that, the sandbox is hurting severely because in effect, it is a ban. But it's only one engine and as the others come along, it is becoming less of an issue.
If you have a website built in 1998 chances are you are treated as an 'authority' by Google.
Are you sure of this or might it just be an older site has had longer to get natural inbound links just by being there so long?
I have an older site and a year or so we were penalized. I think they just dropped some of the old links but I'm not sure. Now there doesn't seem to be any advantage at all.
I've noticed a couple of things while analyzing the new results that google is showing at the moment.
1) It seems that pages/sites that don't have the exact keyword match in the title are ranking higher than the ones that do have the exact keyword match in the title.
2) Google is rankings sites higher if they have heavy on-page optimization, if the keyword appears 8+ times on the page.
3) Meta tags are becoming more important again?
This are some of the things I noticed, not sure if any of that is right or not, but if this is the new google algo then the on-page optimization are affected rather than external factors such as how old the site is and how many links it has pointing to it.
What have you guys observed so far?
What the...?
It hasn't been changed for years for obvious reasons and even though it is a niche word the page is still competing with 3,740 other pages with the word. Aaaacccchhhh! It bugs the heck out of me that they won't take it down. Some of the info is repeated on one of my sites and it probably looks like duplicate content. Back before Yahoo bought Geocities they took down abandoned sites. Can anyone remember when Yahoo took over? That would give us a date. I'm thinking it was around 1998.
I don't know if itdoes so well in the serps because it's old or if it's that Geocities brings some PR or other ranking.
Another one that's a mystery to me.
