Forum Moderators: Robert Charlton & goodroi
Thanks. I will sit tight; I'm too technically inept to chase algos, so I'll continue to focus on content (and on getting ready for an upcoming research trip, which I'm hoping will still pay for itself down the line!).
The outcome of these changes is that you may no longer rank as well for widgetown travel even though you have good links, anchor text, and authorotative content. What may take your place is a site with strong authority on TRAVEL and mention of widgetown.
That explains my recent frustration. I was searching for information on some places we are going to visit in an upcoming vacation. You would think the local visitors center info would be first instead I was getting all this mass generated junk.
Most of the first three or so pages were filled with Adsense scraper sites with nothing but links to other sites--after three pages I usually gave up.
It may be that Google's getting a nice bonanza with the Adsense revenue from these sorts of sites, but people *will* get frustrated if search results persist like they are now.
Really, I've never been one to complain about Google, especially during a dance/update, but I have noticed a decrease in quality in my recent searches. How long it's been like this I have no idea.
The only possible response to the growth of 'SEO', is to deliver unstable results. There is no other logical reaction to link buying, on-page tweaking, etc. It's have slightly crappier results, OR, let y'all SEO blackbelts have their way and COMPLETELY skew Google's results.
I'm amazed at how much chit chat is spent with Google watching and getting the last laugh.
EuropeforVisitors's strategy (although he admits getting knocked out in this latest round), of building content, is the only way to succeed.
You guys may be down this week, but my main site just bounced back from Dec.17's dip. Yin and Yang, push and pull, uh, jump and uh duck.. etc.
But this is webmasterworld not searcherworld. This is why I really like to discuss problems right here, share weird theories and think about strategies to solve problems.
;-)
In theory the ppc sites will give the best results for a search, because the advertisers are paying their hard earned cash for traffic.
Perhaps you should pause at some of these ppc scraper sites and start looking more closely :)
Not allways. I have seen #1 on a specific search keyphrases sometimes having only one keyphrase on the page, and other cases up to 5 per page.
BUT I have noticed the following which is very strange. Google is making keyphrases searches of its own choosing.
Allow me to illustrate that.
One of my pages covers free resources of Produc-X conversion and Product-Y trading. However I can see from my tracker that people land there when they search for "Product-Y conversion". Very astonished to find out that my page is #1 on the serps for the said search phrase. While my page doesn´t contain ANY term "Product-Y conversion". But the two terms "Product-X Conversion" and "Product-Y trading".
I.e Google chosen to merge two words; one from each of two phrases to end into "Product-Y conversion". It took "Product-Y" form "Product-Y trading". And it took "conversion" from "Product-X conversion". Merge the two words together into one phrase "Product-Y conversion"!
This is like you have a group meeting where there are a "John Hansen" and a "Erik Stark". You ask the secretary is Mr. "John Stark" at the meeting? she reply YES! she think let me take first name of "John Hansen". Let me merge it with family name of "Erik Stark".. and then I get no less than Mr. John Stark :-)
Is Google broken? it is up to you to decide.
[edited by: ciml at 10:28 am (utc) on Mar. 30, 2005]
[edit reason] "John Jensen" now "John Hansen" per member request. [/edit]
Perhaps you should pause at some of these ppc scraper sites and start sending G some spam reports :)
What can one do about this? It really depends. More inbound links from other pages scoring on the term youa re after is one way. My advice to you, however, EFV, is to sit tight and see if google comes to their senses. Sometimes they do and sometimes they don't.
Quite right Mfishy
We have been through a lot of different ups and downs over the years, if your a good seo'r you will conquer this and more updates in the future.
Its all part of the job and adds to the excitement.
Bek
I wonder if they are using the Adwords algo now, where they pick the most irrelevant and/or ebay driven ad possible for your search terms?
check 64.233.183.104
new SERPS
Yes! and ones i want to see!
Especially at this time of night (day) when they tend to add freshly crawled pages.
It is hard to find 2 datacenters the same - which one has the new serps and algo is anyones guess.
Some of these results on that IP do look better but still not as accurate as many of them should be imho.
Anyway am not making any changes to my site, just doing what we always do, adding new and updated info on a daily basis.
64.233.183.104
There is something about these results that google must find interesting. These were the results they were serving to me around 11:00 eastern time. I've noticed that they are serving these results nearly the same time each work day.
Overall daily visitors are down by massive proportions, as others have reported.
Patience is a virtue.
:)
I did Goofy, and my site moved way up.
It would be surprising if it didn't move up.
From a field of 10 million sites, in my niche there are only
5 million on that DC, so of course I moved up.
With half the claimed listings, I suppose its a test center
and not for public consumption any time soon. - Larry
But in reality that is not the title of the page at all.
When I conduct another search with is where we used to appear number one for that term - also a three word search. The same page appears but with the accurante title.
How could that be? That G can produce the exact same page on the same site etc with two different titles?
Too bad the reports don't do anything though.
Generally I agree! :( However, maybe they would if we ALL started sending them through en masse! Eventually some bright spark might check their "Do no evil" manual and decide that maybe something needed to be done ;) - on the other hand maybe this goes straight to "junk bin"!
I know it wouldn't really do much in the grand scheme of things - but makes you feel better for the 2 seconds worth of each dissatisfied with results post.
Cut and paste a stock response and it makes it even simpler!
But they do. Google has no doubt been impressed by the quality of ppc sites (a fact you cannot ignore) and are ranking these sites higher :)
However, as of a few hours ago on the "old" Google site we moved back up from #50+ to #1.
I am so confused.........
We have moved from over 1000 to position 5 for our main keyword and are back in the top 20 again, hope this stays.
Bek.
