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]
I did not call the update ;) - Brett did really. I only noticed something of interest on a couple of DCs.
PS. I dont believe in the rotating algo theory
Clint
Have you done the 301 redirect of your duplicate domains to your main domain. If not you should really consider doing this. Not a short term fix as it sounds that you may have a duplicate content penatly - this penalty may have to run its course.
ClintHave you done the 301 redirect of your duplicate domains to your main domain. If not you should really consider doing this. Not a short term fix as it sounds that you may have a duplicate content penatly - this penalty may have to run its course.
I've since fwd'd one of them by my registrar who offers this service and they have the option to mask or not mask the URL. So I chose not to mask the URL, which will mean (after the new propagation is completed), when this domain name is clicked, it will be my real domain name that appears in the address bar. It should be completed today, they said it takes about 24hrs to show up.
So is that the correct or preferred way, or is this something I have to do in my htaccess file?
Thanks.
If you explain your circumstance in the apache forum someone may be able to help you. (The experts on this type of thing may not be reading this thread)
[webmasterworld.com...]
Not exactly sure what the Registrars mean by mask - when it is done if you check your header using the following tool:-
You will want to see what Status code is returned. If a redirect is in place it should also state a location - this location should be your correct/main site url. I would suggest that you really want a 301 status code - but they may use a 302 or a 303 (as someone elses hosts used in another thread)
I've been talking to non-webmasters - whining about my lack of traffic - and unless they are merely trying to make me feel better, I do believe that users have noticed that "nothing in Google makes sense these days."
Without too much detail...
it was THEIR URL that would appear in the address bar.
This is definitely a possible duplicate issue.
You will need to make sure any redirecting is a 301, NOT a 302. (Use a header check to make sure, no matter what your host tells you.)
I would be happy to answer more thoroughly in the Apache forum. If someone else does not get there first =)
Justin
Added: Just as a rule... I believe, you are generally best to actually host the domains and then redirect and manage them yourself, so you are in control of all aspects of the domain.
I do a search for say, a four KW phrase, which happens to be the title of a page on my site.
In that page, I have metatags for description, keywords, robots - very clean and done according to my best understand of SEO - and with relevant, informational content.
Many other pages come up before mine which have NO Meta Tags, including a "What's New" page that is generated by my on-site search engine - that has no metatags.
This is occuring not only on Google, but on Yahoo and MSN, which, for this phrase at least, is really a mess.
Any ideas as to what I'm doing wrong? My robots tag looks like this:
<META NAME="robots" CONTENT="all">
Do I need to change that to INDEX, FOLLOW?
We have a web site that has 4 other domains parked and pointing at it for years. When you enter these parked domains the main site comes up with the url of the parked domain.
We have had great rankings in all 3 SE's for this main site for many years.
This method for parked domains has been in use for years. We use Interland for hosting, one of the main players, and this is how they do it.
This is not the problem.
I would post the link but I would imagine that it's against the TOS here. A search for that article will get you to it, though.
I'd like to see if anybody reads it and can comment. It may have quite a bit to do with what's been going on with this update, and previous ones.
>I just received an email which contained an article about the DMOZ, called "Trouble at the ODP."<
It could be the reason why Google "suspended" its PR on the toolbar for few days ago. Not to say that Google PR wasn´t already dead in practice for the last few months or so.
Any ideas as to what I'm doing wrong? My robots tag looks like this:
<META NAME="robots" CONTENT="all">Do I need to change that to INDEX, FOLLOW?
I thought this was the default and didn't need to be specified to begin with.
I don't want Google to cache my pages, therefore I have a 'NOARCHIVE' command - that's it.
We're grasping at straws here, folks.
Let's be logical.
<speculation>
It's in Google's best interest to deliver the most relevent pages. Google invests considerable man and computing power to crawl, analyze and sort websites. Which is the most active bot on your site? Google. Who has the largest number of indexed pages? Google. Who used to have the best SERPs? Google.
They try to stay ahead of the competition - like Microsoft, they strive to be lightyears ahead of the competition. Not mere steps ahead. Lightyears (Microsoft has become a bit bloated, maybe Google, too, let's assume not).
They've identified an increasing problem with the SERPs. Is it black hat? Duplicate content? Excessive internal linking? Scrapers? I don't know. But they wouldn't have made such damaging changes to their algo in Bourbon, unless they felt there was something that needed fixing, in order for them to continue to dominate the SE market.
So, and I'm speculating based on my experience in the pharmaceutical industry, they try out a new algo on a sample set of websites, privately, at the Googleplex. They see the results, test them on lab rats, survey the lab rats, and analyze their liver enzyme profile. What they see is good.
Time to implement the algo.
As the algo progressively makes it way re-shuffling the database, Google realizes something unexpected as happened and the new algo is going horribly wrong, with complaints pouring in, and a thread on WebmasterWorld that won't end.
Mmm...mmm... if you're Google, what do you do?
You can shut off the new algo in mid-stream and live with the results as you scramble to fix the mess. Or you pause and try to see how you can tweak it to give the effect on the SERPs you originally intended. But it's more complicated than you think.
Can you make a public statement to the effect that you are, indeed, broken? No way. No good can possibly come of that. Yet, you want to give some hope to webmasters by letting them know something is broken and they are trying to fix it.
Since you can't make a statement, you might symbolically shut off the cache. If webmasters don't get it, shutt off PR. Remember I am speculating here, and it's just as likely that they are having real problems with PR and the cache. But - think about it for a minute at least.
They ought to be acutely aware that something needs urgent fixing. I have to give them this much credit.
</speculation>
From: Dayo_UKClint
If you explain your circumstance in the apache forum someone may be able to help you. (The experts on this type of thing may not be reading this thread)
[webmasterworld.com...]
Not exactly sure what the Registrars mean by mask - when it is done if you check your header using the following tool:-
[searchengineworld.com...]
You will want to see what Status code is returned. If a redirect is in place it should also state a location - this location should be your correct/main site url. I would suggest that you really want a 301 status code - but they may use a 302 or a 303 (as someone elses hosts used in another thread)
I thought explained "mask". ;) When the "mask domain" box is checked, the fwd'd domain clicked or placed in the address bar, is shown in the address bar. This "masks" your REAL domain name so the fwd'd domain name's URL shows. The inverse is true with the box unchecked; and the fwd'd domain clicked is NOT shown in the address bar, the domain name to which it is fwd'd shows.
So I'm still trying to determine which of these methods is better.
From: jd01Clint
Without too much detail...it was THEIR URL that would appear in the address bar.This is definitely a possible duplicate issue.
You will need to make sure any redirecting is a 301, NOT a 302. (Use a header check to make sure, no matter what your host tells you.)
I would be happy to answer more thoroughly in the Apache forum. If someone else does not get there first =)
Justin
Added: Just as a rule... I believe, you are generally best to actually host the domains and then redirect and manage them yourself, so you are in control of all aspects of the domain.
From: Tropical IslandClint:
We have a web site that has 4 other domains parked and pointing at it for years. When you enter these parked domains the main site comes up with the url of the parked domain.We have had great rankings in all 3 SE's for this main site for many years.
This method for parked domains has been in use for years. We use Interland for hosting, one of the main players, and this is how they do it.
This is not the problem.
Like the SERPs!
On the bright side, some of us are not changing their sites, and waiting it out (control group) while others have already implemented changes (experimental group).
We are enough people here to, given enough time, make some sense out of it.
>I just received an email which contained an article about the DMOZ, called "Trouble at the ODP."<It could be the reason why Google "suspended" its PR on the toolbar for few days ago. Not to say that Google PR wasn´t already dead in practice for the last few months or so
I read that also. Very interesting but i'd doubt if it were likely to have an effect on Google. It largely goes some way to backing up what many have hinted at for a long time and i can't see G responding to hearsay - unless they know more than we do of course!
There is no consistency or common theme anywhere to be seen, so I'm going to take a long summer holiday. A really really long one. Maybe when I come back there will be something to analyse and formulate a strategy around, but for now there's no thread to unravel.
The only factor that does seem clear is an intention by Google to do away with affiliate sites - in the SERPS I watch, the source sites and even individual providers themselves are now ranking, where before it was entirely dominated by affiliates.
Man this thread's got legs, but it seems to veer off target at times.
The only factor that does seem clear is an intention by Google to do away with affiliate sites - in the SERPS I watch, the source sites and even individual providers themselves are now ranking, where before it was entirely dominated by affiliates.
The second site will also disappear the minute you gain enough redirects and incoming scrapper links.
So you are thinking we are getting punished because uninvited scraper sites have linked to us? That's a scary thought.
Some sites were wrongly filtered out.
Others, well deserving of a filter, aren't filtered.
I smell a job half-done.
the more internal links the page contains the more "protected" and "Google respected" it is.
I've been thinking I should to that. Better navigation on that site would be an improvement anyway. On my site that is still doing well I have navigation on the left listing all the related pages on the site.
My front page had >400 internal links, each pointing to a different "free widget plan." Useful for navigation, but easy navigation is only important if you have visitors. If you don't have visitors anymore, then you might as well deface your website for Google's benefit (I haven't lost my sense of humor).
If there was anything Google might have found dodgy about my page, that is it! Too many internal links. I went the exact opposite way you are going.
With the newly patented "suggestion rank" coined by nutsandbolts, where a hint on the page will outrank everything else, shoot for a keyword density of 0.00000192%!
TOO MANY internal links.I seriously doubt you can be penalized for that, however Google says right in their webmaster guidelines that no more 100 per page are recomended (if you want your site to be spidered properly).
Some sites were wrongly filtered out. Others, well deserving of a filter, aren't filtered. I smell a job half-done.
I know what you mean. It doesn't make any more sense than it did a week ago. My allin's are great, but I don't rank for any of our usual terms.
shoot for a keyword density of 0.00000192%
Why shoot for anything, since in some cases it seems that only magic will return your site in a search for your keywords. (I'm fresh out of pixie-dust) Maybe a ritual involving beer would improve things, I don't do bourbon...
Perhaps this update is taking a new turn?
Anyone else seeing a huge amount of bot activity on their sites?
One thing I've noticed is that a term I watch has gone from around 1 million results on Thursday to now just shy of 3 million as of Monday. Not sure what to make of that
[edited by: Ledfish at 6:31 pm (utc) on May 30, 2005]
Mozilla Googlebot was going mad yesterday. Normal Googlebot comes and goes.
Google isn't broken at all. Programing wise, things can go wrong, but then Google have the best engineer to fix them. Agree that the serps look different than before allegra and even before Bourbon but that doesn't mean Google is broken.
At the time of allegra 3rd Feb 2005, many of us thought that Google was broken, and since then still many dance for the "Google broken" music during this Bourbon update.
The argument that some of us see the serps poor and lack any system or logic doesn't mean that Google see it that way if they are implementing something new or doing some experiment that non of us know anything about.
Maybe and I say maybe, the folks at Google have decided that business and semi business sites shouldn't have a free lunch any more at top 10 or top 20 of the serps. Business sites should purchase Adwords/AdSense and pay part of the revenues those sites have been generating to Google. In this attempt and during the implementation of such possible policy, serps change and don't look the same as before the update. What I'm writing here doesn't need to be a fact but a possibility.
Some will say but I have a business site which hasn't been affected neither by allegra or Bourbon. But for how long. Can any of you guarantee anything?
To survive Google updates, we need to look at events in open mind, and look at all possibilities in the effort to match Google changes.
