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]
It's just a matter of time now before Microsoft takes over, the first move is right now, MSN results will get better and better, the official take over will be the day the Search bar is integrated into the Longhorn OS and every average joe goes buys the next upgrade.
If that's the case I hope MSN keeps improving their engine.
Is there somewhere that says specifically that sites working with affiliates are now going to be punished?
GoogleGuy said earlier today that affiliates needed to think about their "value add." He pointed out that having a bunch of identical affiliate pages high in the search results isn't beneficial to users.
In discussing "value add," GoogleGuy mentioned at least one example: a comparison of cellular-phone plans. In the travel sector, which is littered with boilerplate hotel-booking sites, I can think of one affiliate site that has risen above the clutter with an attractive, informative site that has original content and inspires trust among users. That site has ranked high in Google's SERPs for a long time, through any number of updates. That tells me that affiliate sites (including "pure" affiliate sites, not just editorial sites with affiliate links) can do well in Google if they avoid the cookie-cutter syndrome by having valuable content.
Also, wouldn't it just then lower those pages rather than destroy the index page?
Thanks again for the input.
I then tried some other searches and found same horrible results.
I stopped using Altavista in favor of Google because in altavista you had to type +wantthis -donotwantthis then add "precise phrases" and so forth. Google was able to find the precise result without any of this due to the revolutionary PageRank.
Now I'm back at using + and - and quotes and all tricks because the results plain simply suck.
Conspiracy theories continue in this thread - too bad.
Do I think that there is a sandbox - yes.
BillyS:
Those two statements are somethat incompatible, because Matt Cutts from Google has officially stated that there is no sandbox.
What I would like to see in your closed thread is an explanation of what the changes in this update were intended to accomplish.
What are the new rules? How do they differ from the old rules?
Also, wouldn't it just then lower those pages rather than destroy the index page?
It may have nothing to do with your affiliate pages. Quite a few information sites have lost up to 95% of their Google referrals at various times in the last half-year or so. Some, like mine, have come back (at least for now), and I know of another that plunged, came back, and plunged again.
I supposed I should just really try to stay patient then and see how the chips fall. We lost our position in Feb and came back in March so maybe the same will happen here. I sure hope it's not that we chose an affiliate. We can't afford to start a full blown store and this was a great alternative. A lot of our site visitors said they were very happy with the implementation. I would hate to have to take it away.
Maybe the datacenters are just as confused as me. Let's just hope they don't stay confused.
Right now, again, it looks like things are getting even worse. I sure wish they didn't have to test out their updates on live servers.
Ellie
It is getting worse!
Check DC 64.233.171.147
Yes! When I search for my domain name, I got some spam results!
01 = my big competitor!
02-04 = spam
03-06 = related sites
07-10 = spam
11-44 = 50% spam, 25% useless sites, 25% related sites...
45 = My site...
too funny...
