Forum Moderators: Robert Charlton & goodroi
[webmasterworld.com...]
My website has plenty of outbound links, but they are on relevant pages. The problem my site has always had, was a lack of "inbound links." I got tired of searching for people to link to me (with all the spammy sites around) and gave up. So my pages have acquired some links naturally I guess(and I'll bet I still don't have more than 30 inbound links for the whole site) Still have a PR4, which I've had since it disappeared in Nov.
[edited by: Brett_Tabke at 8:54 pm (utc) on May 27, 2005]
Adsense is an expense to Google. It is the Adwords advertisers that generate the jackpot for everybody to take their cut.
That's what I used to think. Lately I've started to realise just how vital the Adsense network is. Less than 5% of the time people reach their destination through search. The rest is through links... and tapping into that market is the only way Google can massively increase the eyeball count. Advertisers can go - others will take their place - it's the publishers who are key. I speak as both an advertiser and publisher.
But that is OT, sorry.
Well yes - hence best case scenario. I suppose there could be legitimate reason for the use of the sub-domains. Just an example of how I wanted to underline a theory as it relates to non-www and www ;)
But going back to your and my case. Remember www is just a sub-domain and Google obviously did not think they were the same site so we had duplicate content on the www and the non-www according to G algos?
Anyway - hopefully changes are afoot to combat canonical url probs.
Also - in light of GGs comment - your eye of the storm theory might be correct.
I've managed to spot a change in the algo which may be playing a part in some of the irrelevant results talked about here.
For 2 word search terms, pages which relate to just one of those terms but contain the other term somewhere are beating pages which relate to the two terms (ignoring all other factors).So for example if there is a page about a film star with lots of backlinks and a high pr, then it will beat a page about another topic containing one of the terms in his name which has less backlinks and pr.
I noticed this because I have been top ranking purely on content, pr and internal links for some uncompetitive 2 word terms (term1 term2) where term1 is constant. I've kept all the positions where term2 does not really mean anything in its own right but have dropped considerably for cases where term2 has another meaning.
It looks like Google is giving more weight to the individual rankings of terms for multi-term phrases.
MyWifeSays:
Yes!
This is exactly what I am seeing.
Now if only Google will fix it.
Here's a legitimate reason why multiple subdomains don't necessarily constitute a spamming attempt - cobrands. Back in 99-00, we used to private label our service out to other sites, resulting in identical sites under different brands.
All of these cobrands "died on the vine" and we ended up switching to a destination site model in 2001.
What we've learned during Bourbon is that some of these pages from these cobrands are still out there, and are outranking the primary domain's pages. We've only just 301'd them back to the primary domain.
My understanding of the duplicate content penalty has always been that it's not a penalty at all - Google simply ignores page duplicates, and guesses at the primary page for indexing purposes. Our experience would reinforce this.
That's not to say that Google hasn't now decided to penalize all versions of identical pages.
I'm still trying to figure out what to ask you guys at WebmasterWorld in New Orleans? I have alot of questions, and this update will be among the questions.
For 2 word search terms, pages which relate to just one of those terms but contain the other term somewhere are beating pages which relate to the two terms (ignoring all other factors).
Know what would be neat? Could we test this with a 3-word search query, and a 4-word search query? Sticky me for instructions, I'll crunch some numbers for my familiar searches, and report back!
For our site, the Google page count is incredibly inaccurate. The site command says we have five time more pages than we actually have. With Yahoo, MSN, and Ask - all are right on target. Even when I have written Google, I get the canned response - "Number of pages indexed can fluctuate and rankings can change."
For once and for all, Google Guy should come out and say if this is an issue or not. If it is, people can take the measures to fix the issue. If not, we can move onto something new.
Something must be very flawed with Google if I have to contantly worry about www vs non-www, absolute urls, 301 vs 302 redirects, putting a trailing slash on urls, etc...
Just my thoughts.
Clint
You may wish to view the following 3 threads concerning 301:[webmasterworld.com...]
[webmasterworld.com...]
[webmasterworld.com...]
RewriteCond %{HTTP_HOST}!^www\.domain\.com [NC]
RewriteCond %{HTTP_HOST}!^$
RewriteRule ^(.*) [domain.com...] [L,R=301]
That needs to go under your "RewriteEngine on" if you already have it. If not, RewriteEngine on needs to be placed above it. This will direct non www request to the www domain, and the header check shows it as "HTTP/1.1 301 Moved Permanently". So this should fix the issue (if any) of the dupe content issue of non www and www sites.
Advertisers can go - others will take their place - it's the publishers who are key.
I see your point. To remain on topic...
As the algos change during Bourbon, sometimes I see scraper directories with adsense dominating, then at other times I see clean serps without them. The primary focus of Bourbon seems to be how to sort out true adsense publishers from these scraper directories.
It defeats the purpose of using Google if you search for "widgets" and then get an index of directories cataloging the sites that sell those widgets. It gives the impression that google is abdicating its responsibility and purpose for existance as a SE.
On the other hand...an adsense publisher that writes product reviews for widgets would be of great benefit to the searcher, then have adsense ads pointing to widget suppliers. Unfortunately, scraper directories are crowding out the true adsense publishers and widget suppliers alike.
The dilemmia for google is how are they going to identify the good adsense publishers from the bad. It seems that with bourbon there has been alot of collaterial damage.
I am one of those widget suppliers and tired of seeing my keyword serps with so much of this "pollution"...not to mention my original content being scrapped.
I am one of those widget suppliers and tired of seeing my keyword serps with so much of this "pollution"...not to mention my original content being scrapped.
I sort of envy you - I would love if my site was being scrapped. :(
Right now my site dropped mostly 40-50 places and that is for unique content which can be found only on my site - every other webpage that has link to me got pushed in front of me!? :o
And if that wasn't enough if I try to do search for my domain name ("domain.tld") it is lost on bottom of page 6 as if someone at Google really hates me.
Few pages are still amongst first ten but only because my site is only one on the net which contains that information, but here also Google tries to put anything that could possible be related in front of my website. :(
