Forum Moderators: Robert Charlton & goodroi
This is weird: I don't even show up for my allinurl:domain! If I add a &filter=0 I show up for that, but &filter=0 does nothing for the SERPS. There's no duplicate copy of my site as far as Google, Yahoo or Copyscape can tell. Great job Google! At least if I had a few dupes, one site would rank.
Even the few DCs I was holding up have been replaced by nightmarish results. I will give it two weeks and then buy a nice black hat. Screw this
[edited by: walkman at 1:26 am (utc) on Feb. 8, 2005]
I am never again going to put myself at the whim of a search engine.
never.....
the fightback starts here and it starts now.
(if I have two kids in the future, the first will called Florida after the update that made me rich...the second will be Allegra after the update that made me smart!)
I don't know if this helps, but I have to mention what has happened to my sites.
I know there is a lot of talk about Google introducing some sort of LSI or other secondary algorithm to the results but I don't think that is what it is.
Of the sites that I monitor, it seems that quite a lot of inbound links from sub-pages have been downgraded. By that I mean either removed for duplicate content (a much higher reconition filter) or for other reasons.
This seems to have caused a knock-on downgrading of sites - I think many sites have been penalised incorrectly and you are seeing the classic link only listing or supplemental in the results.
I say this because I am lucky enough to follow updwards of 1000+ sites (not mine) and the big industries are hit harder.
It looks as though Google are using a basic filter to try to stop link problems but aren't really aware of the implications when you apply a rule to the full index.
I would be the first to say that this is the most ineffective filter that has ever been applied. I say that because many of the sites I follow have increased in traffic - and I find that at odds with the fact the sites are basically not relevant compared to the sited that have been hit. By the way I have been hit by every update posted over the past 6 months.
I have no problems in discussing the results - but now that MSN is on the scene, I don't want to!
MSN and Yahoo are much easier to optimise for - and as an SEO I would rather see on-page penalties than link penalties that are crazy for the commercial world. As we honestly know it is so easy to buy links than it is to create good content. Lets be totally honest thats not my problem, but people who aren't trying to SEO and get banned because of a redirect etc.... thats not fair - I do think I would rather see the small guys take on the big ones (with quality content and links).
And thats why webmasters like ourselves need an alternative until normal service is resumed.
Anyway, sticky me for some examples and tips - I really don't have that much of a problem as although I consider myself a "black hat SEO" (life is too short to not earn a living) I would rather you "white hat SEOs" do your stuff and make it better for the mass market.
Ta! (An SEO Black hat with a heart!)
The serps are never rolled back totally just a reduction in previous filters - that is why it seems that things change during an update. Googleguy is listening - make no misktake they are listening, but trying to piece together what is going on in the wider sense rather than a controlled local update. What you are seeing is links being valued back to their existing weight on and off.
It seems over the past few days that the power of certain links are being introduced and then de-introduced.
Whatever, I think this type of update will be more common - would you not do the same thing?
Ta!
This begs the what customer question.
So what or which customer?
I see only one customer the adbuyers but only one party that really counts Google's shareholders.
hopefully the serp's stick this time.
People who link to a site rarely (like probably never) consult Google's book of what they want.
Several thousand inbound high PR offsite links are a strange lot when acquired over many years.
Now, Google wanted organic sites the last I knew. So much for organic huh, now let's talk LSI .... how does one present search results in rank order from multiple knowledge domains?
Gets interesting doesn't it?
I think that if you own a trademark and that trademark is also your domain name and google decides to stop listing you for that trademark, then if Google is also selling Adwords to your competitors for that trademark then it is time to go to the Lawyers.
Wow...if your pockets are deep enough to take on google's army of lawyers, you really don't need the free traffic, do you?
looks like google is finally rewarding sites that have put in the hard yards over the past 6-9 months and obtained high quality incoming links to their website.
hopefully the serp's stick this time.
That's honestly what it looks like to me as well. The moron who bought himself to the top of the serps in my industry (via paid links from high PR/unrelated sites) has been effectively zapped. Too bad, so sad.
The half dozen or so scraper sites I've been reporting for the past 4 months or so got zapped as well. So long, lazy morons.
Frankly, even without the fact that our site was finally released from the sandbox (or whatever), these serps are pretty clean. Only 2 spammers in the 1st 30 results in my industry.
I should also note that my oldest (hobby) site in a highly competitive category (45 mil+ results) hasn't budged.
