Update Allegra - Google Update 2-2-2005

[illusionist]

My site which came back on december 26 update, seems to have disappeared again on this data center [216.239.53.99...] . Its notwhere to be found even in allinanchor, allintitle etc? I see majot change on that data center, is this a new update?

[andrew_m]

With the amount of pages I have yes, I have some internal redirects -- but no new redirects for the last couple of months.

And no, I don't have parked domains, if I understand what you mean correctly.

My conclusion is that I need to tighten the belt and relax, this update is here to stay and eventually I'll get my traffic back -- once growing PR compensates for the number of indexed pages.

[danny]

theBear asked:

Danny,
Do you have any redirects or a parked domain?

I have a redirect from my old site - but that's been there for five years now without causing any problems. And I certainly don't have any parked domains!

[theBear]

danny,

Do you have a long string you could enter into a search between quotes. Something from your home page and see what Google returns for results.

[Chico_Loco]

The only thing he could write is something like..

In which case he would choose to remain silent, because?

I know there are things which can and cannot be done by public companies. I don't think that anybody besides us webmasters could care whether these results are slight worse or slightly better - I don't believe the average surfer would know the different, unless they searched for something regularly.

Here's an idea for GoogleGuy though, other stuff aside... If someone were to use your engine, and it's likely that most of the internet users in the world have sone so then would changing results be a bad thing, regardless..

For example, let's say my neighbor was thinking of going to costa rica (a nice place), and imagine he used Google to look it up, but didn't order. Then he returns a week or 2 later, only to find that with the same search query, he can no longer find the same site he was looking at a week previous. The guy scratches his head and says to himself "maybe I can find it with Yahoo.." Let's say he does find it there - Google has lost a user because they were let down.

So, is consistenceny more useful that the "minor upgrades" which might, in all honesty considering the mass audience, be doing more harm than good?

GoogleGuy. What magnitude of a problem do you see this as being? Do you think these changes in rankings confuse, at least, a minority of persons?

[walkman]

"GoogleGuy. What magnitude of a problem do you see this as being? Do you think these changes in rankings confuse, at least, a minority of persons? "

Thye're a public company and he isn't going to admit that they have a problem on their product. Plus, in less than a week they can sell their shares so they have to be double careful. They don't want the stock to slide.

[Chico_Loco]

They don't want the stock to slide

Of course not. Neither would I.

I'm just asking him to confirm the opposite, and if nothing is posted then we know he can't verify is normal, so we'd have our answer by default.

Ultimately, and I have to be honest, I'm just selfish that a significant portion of my income has dissappeared over the past week. Being bitter aside, I'm really just looking for a reason as to why this happened (as are you walkman). I played by the rules, and done great for a while. So, after putting in all that hard work, things just get flipped for no reason?

I've even pointed some website errors out to Google (with Googles sites) and then they got rectified... I scratch your back...

Not trying to be arrogant or anything here, but I am just wondering what, exactly is up here. Google's guidelines have been followed, to the T, yet performance from Google is worse than ever :(

Is there anyway for my company to get in touch with Google in a more formal manner to pose the same question? Not specifically if they have issues or not, but more along the lines of "where's my site please?!"?

Of course GoogleGuy, you are free to PM me, ask me for the url and tell me what, if anything, is causing our extremely poor rankings (not even ranking for brand name), all privately of course!

[metagod]

i found today that the site that I lost a rank for; the content had been copied and the webmaster had spent a great deal of time in the past month working on a link campaign.

My website has about 400 backlinks (non recip) and has been #1 for well over 3 years.

This of course brings me to believe that my site had been removed (and its only my index page that has been removed) because this guy took content from my homepage and it's been punished for duplicate content....which ironically, is mine originally.

I suggest that you check your sites for stolen or copied content.

[skippy]

things just get flipped for no reason?

You think so? Come on Chico it is a game al bit one that can make you a lot of money. Just reverse engineer it and fix what needs to be fixed. But I would not change much yet. I am pretty sure we are not done dancing.

[mikec]

seriously, some of you are downright pathetic. an update rolls around and it's the same thing every time. there's a group who's rankings tank that go on with rants about "how dare they do this to us?".."i've lost all respect for them". you sound like children. Honestly, take a step back and think about how foolish that sounds. Why in their right minds would search engine's cater to webmasters? They're never going to tell you how to rank well, that would be stupid. Just make a good site, with good content and follow good practices. If this is your business, then you're are either a.) a cheap *** or b.) an absolute idiot to depend upon organic search engine results to generate all of your revenue.

I run several sites. Some were doing well before the update and are still doing well. Others dropped a bit, others improved. The bottom line is that my employer and I learned a while ago, not to be dependent upon unpredictable generic search results. We learned to make our sites do well through other venues. One site was sandboxed for a while. However, we promoted it in other ways and continued to generate revenue from it. We had stopped tracking it's google ranking months ago. Now I see that that one particular site is ranking well, so it's a bonus. If the results go back to where they were, oh well no big deal...business as usual. Search engines are never going to cater to people who try to make their living trying to manipulate them. And if you think they give two craps if your site (which of course is the greatest in the world) isn't ranking well (but of course you know it SHOULD be), you are sadly mistaken.

If you are that upset, take a deep breathe and a step back. Maybe you're not cut out for this...or better yet maybe you'll take this as a rude awakening not to be so dependent on the organic results of one engine for the majority of you traffic and revenue. Would you bet your yearly salary that google isn't going to have another update within the next year? Well that's what your basically doing if you're in that deep because your site's google rank dropped.

[edited by: eelixduppy at 8:18 pm (utc) on Feb. 18, 2009]

[mikec]

btw for something possibly a bit constructive. i noticed that odly enough my personal site dropped way down, on a search of my name. i did some digging and found that google was splitting my site.

one version was:
mysite.com
mysite.com/contact/index.html
the other was:
www.mysite.com
www.mysite.com/contact/index.html

i quickly fixed the problem with a rewrite in my htaccess. i'll see in a few days if that fixes the problem.