Forum Moderators: Robert Charlton & goodroi
complain about a real problem
Can't see the sandbox being a "real" problem, or a problem at all. It's there to stop the SPAM. If I start a new company called Mesothelioma Lawyers Ltd you reckon I should show up in the top 500 purely because that's my company name?
Sure, the "sandbox", whatever it is, hurts some. It hurts people who are creating sites for free traffic. Many of them are spammers/freeloaders. It also hurts others. They - particularly anyone starting a new business with a business plan that relies on free SE traffic - are probably better off staying unemployed (or employed if they can find a job). Any new site starting off on the premise that free traffic will sustain it deserves to fail.
So, if you remove the sandbox as a reasonable cause for complaint, and remove most of the other whining, we'd reduce this thread to one page and those that can't even be bothered to read it will get a personal reply from Googleguy because he owes them.
The results should be embarassing to Google.
I couldn't agree more. I've actually found myself going back to Yahoo to find stuff I'm looking for. Their results are currently BETTER than Google! Especially for 3-4 word phrases like metrostang mentions.
As I posted earlier: a search for "active server pages determine age" related query produced results on breast cancer, vitamin E and concrete. Hardly relevant results.
I can't believe that Googleguy hasn't showed up to defend the Google SERPs other than to say "we test thouroughly before updating" - that's BS - maybe the public is collectively stupid, but the people posting in these forums aren't!
Click your mouse and repeat three times:
Google is broken
Google is broken
Google is broken
I'm frustrated not only as a merchant, but as a user!
rehabguy
I still think the update is going on. Maybe Allegra is over and changed to a puzzling permanent process.
"active server pages tutorial"
Google - ten on topic results.
Yahoo - ditto - ok so they got MS at the top as well
MSN - eight on topic results. 2 generalised IT.
I just don't see the junk other people are claiming.
In my own area, spammy, zero utility affiliate pages have been booted out and replaced by proper commerce sites. I run an affiliate site and I think that's good, because I am at least trying to add some value (but then I would think that wouldn't I?!)
Suggy
I guess my point is that in the past, when I did a search for something like [google.com...]
I actually received relevant results in Google concerning active server pages logic. This has changed dramatically.
Compare these results:
Yahoo: [search.yahoo.com...] (Funny - the WebmasterWorld thread is actually number one! Shows Yahoo's attempt to stay fresh...)
MSN: [search.msn.com...]
Google: [google.com...]
At least Yahoo and MSN results actually contain results about "active server pages" WHICH HAPPEN TO BE THE FIRST 3 WORDS OF MY QUERY! For all of the PhD power around Google, you would think that they could tweak their LSI and lexicon servers to notice extremely common word groupings like "active server pages" - regardless of what you tack onto the end of the phrase.
Anyhow, I won't repeat all of this again. Promise. I need to get back to work diversifying my business!
Prior to this update I would never have had to do this and have always defended Google as being streets ahead of everyone else - sadly no longer!
I cannot understand why they seem to be sticking with this mess
Whoopee! way to go google! . Amazing what greed can do to your core business model (which used to be relevant search results!?).
The little SERPs switching experiment proved VERY PROFITABLE, now what?
I cannot understand why they seem to be sticking with this mess
For instance, I have a couple of pages dealing with a specific topic. They are the only pages on the internet that cover this topic in detail, and they have been online for years. Other pages mention it, tell you that it exists, or that it happened, etc., but none of them really cover the topic. Just mine. And when I do a search for them, by specific, unique page title, they either are so low in the SERPs I give up trying to find them, or they are at #50-something, or worse.
Above these pages in the SERPs, however, are pages that mention my pages, or my site, but don't go any further. So how is that relevant? You're going to bury a page with almost everything one could want to know about a topic, and place multiple pages above it that mention the page?
That's kind of like, "neener, neener, neener, we know what you're looking for but you aren't going to find it on page 1...or page 2...or page 3...in fact, you might not find it at all, but we're gonna show you a bunch of other pages that MENTION WHAT YOU'RE LOOKING FOR!" It's almost like they're teasing people. They can see what they want, the words are highlighted in bold in the snippets, but where is the page? You have to click on another page to see if there's a link to the page you wanted in the first place? That's crazy.
If this keeps up, Google will be driving people to their competition. People know they've seen the page before, in Google, but they can't find it now. So they go somewhere else to look for it, and guess what? It's #1 in every other search engine EXCEPT for Google. Now how is that relevant? And what does that say to long-time Google searchers?
Google is broken. Google should be embarrassed. I know I am embarrassed for them, because I know there are good pages out there that can't be found right now on Google. And I've had E-mails from people telling me how relieved they are that my site is still online, because they couldn't find it on Google...
Andy
time to buy an existing domain and move over the files. It sucks, but what else can I do? Starve as google says there's no problem? There's no way.
Time to do things differently. First this isn't black hat at all since I will block my-current-domain.com from G, but I am actually thinking of trying black hat stuff. If I got caught it will be like it is now, at least I will have no regrets, and have a few great months.
i am seeing constant daily rises in the amount of results returned for specific terms which makes me think it isn't over.
after spending a lot of time going through the sites we run it turns out that we have probably come out even (traffic wise)
the sites that have suffered and not ranking for their companyname now have Yahoo as their default search engine.
in my case i was very *shocked* when this first happened and couldn't believe that some of the senior members were saying "oh there is nothing wrong, etc".
these senior members have probably done well out of this update which is why they are happy.
personally, we are about even, but, Google is still not functioning PROPERLY
for those who are frustrated (as i was), at the end of the day if the poor results continue for much longer then word will spread and Google will find themselves HAVING to let people know what is going on.
In this case i think the silence from Google will cause them more trouble than if they just come out and said "oh give it a while we are implementing previously dampened/sandboxed/whatever into the index"
why not google?
you are losing some of your strongest supporters, i am sure there are members here who have some stock in Google (myself included (only tiny but still stock).
why would i want to change the default SE from one I firmly believed in to one i am not really keen on?
it's not to cut off my nose to spite my face, it's a case of wanting my visitors to find what they want, without having to wade through loads of scraper sites first.
obviously the relevance of results seem to be sector specific, in a few of ours the results are truly unbelievable.
<rant over>
Dazz
Just finished reading a blog that describes how several very well-knwon blogs are not ranking for their name anymore. Some moved 34 or so places, some 800. Their pages are the model of a webpage for Google. Plenty of related links, thousands of words of text to chew on, and ZERO spam. I mean not even an extra keyword, yet they're gone. Now a news story or directory that links them is ranking higher.
Makes me think that is (at least a large part) related to incoming anchor text. Maybe "too many" people linked them with the same or close enough anchor. Their names are not names or words you would use in everyday life.
Congratulations over there at GooglePlex!
We can see the junk accumulating over time on results page 1. With Allegra, Google has addressed a number of manipulations (directory spam, blog spam etc.) that were becoming common and obvious. If we had been discussing them in advance, could we have forseen much of Allegra's impact? Some legitimate sites with a vulnerable style were badly affected.
Within a few weeks the next gen. of junk will start to show up. It's in the interest of both Black and White hats to discuss the likely Goggle responses and the implications - and to get out of the main current before the waterfall. Sort of like staying one step ahead of the engineers... Anyone?
May I sit out the next dance?
I have various sites in various themes, some are in very competitive areas like poker, spyware, modeling, some in less. Some sites were not affected by Allegra at all, some got huge rise, some dropped a bit. Anyway the advice is simple: imagine there is no Google. Do the site for visitors, not for Google, only natural linking counts, so if your site has lots of artificial links or links which looks artificial, you dropped, if your links are blog links - you dropped because of recent "rel" attribute. Maybe your site was put on probation, so called sandbox, there are lots of reason why your site dropped. Analyse your site, work, instead of crying and blaming google.
Let's be constructive and help each other.
6. There is always someone else who cannot withstand answering to 5.
;-)
It is your fault, Google can't make mistakes. Stop blaming google and start designing poker and spyware sites. They have lot's of unique and relevant text...almost as unique as lyrics' sites. Actually do like 50 sites so if a few get caught, it's no big deal.
[edited by: walkman at 5:34 pm (utc) on Feb. 18, 2005]
walkman - Are you trying to tell that spyware and poker sites don't have / can't have unique content? :)
what the hell are you trying to say?
give me some facts to back up your point
Give some examples of so called rubbish results. Some general results - highly competitive keywords. I still find what i search.
One of my sites was affected in mid December, but it came back with Allegra. I didn't cry then, just examined, added some links and everything came back.
My Other sites were not affected by Florida, were not affected by Allegra. they are still at the top with thousands of keywords.
Its the content sites, lots of articles, lots of valuable content we add every day, people usually link that sites because they want them to link.
As I said there are lots of reasons for the site to drop in results, even for the unique name, even for the 9 years old site.
BTW I was affected too. I can't find myself with my unique name and surname even I have my own weblog. I was at the top before the Allegra. I see some reasons why my site dropped, but they are not general. Should I cry now and blame Google or should I try add some more links, some more content, fix the mistakes, reanalyse my site?
Look at all these URL-only listings for Google's own site [google.com].
Broken? You betcha.
Did anyone hit on Sept. 23rd make it out after Allegra?
<-- Give some examples of so called rubbish results -->
do your own research!
listen mate, if you really believe that there is nothing wrong with the latest update then fair enough, but don't try to undermine what other members are saying.
Lots of them showed up.
There shouldn't be any URL-only listings showing up anywhere on Google. You won't see any in Yahoo or Microsoft. It's a worthless listing and it inflates the counts.
All large sites have many URL-only listings in Google. This issue has been going on for almost two years now. It started with update Cassandra in April 2003.
Do some research, and then come back and tell us that Google isn't broken.
Don't send me to do the research, doing it everyday for years, and I don't see anything wrong in areas I'm interested in. That's why I asked for concrete examples.
Sorry guys for not standing on the same side of river. But lets talk with Facts and without offence to users and google.
The most sensible reason behind Google's listing of URLs only is that it does not have the space to store the URL's content or (much more likely) that it deems the URL's content too unworthy (low PR etc, banned site etc) to store its content.
HOWEVER - when using link: command to see my site's backlinks there are plenty of URL only listings which do not have cached content.
So, errr, how does Google know that there is a link in there to my site if it doesn't store its content?
Or does Google use different bots to look for backlinks and content? Sorry, I maybe missing something quite obvious here...
I see that you joined WW today.
Seems strange that someone would bother to signup to a forum just to defend a large corporation...
;-)
Seems strange that someone would bother to signup to a forum just to defend a large corporation...
;-)
*grin*
Nice conspiracy theory but I don't buy it.
If someone from the Google Allegra team signed up here undercover their username would be something ridiculously over complex. To choose the best one they'd probably analyse the names and posts of all the existing WW members and work out a list of ideal results.
Then they'd throw half of them away and put the rest in a random order.
