Forum Moderators: Robert Charlton & goodroi
We need to keep this thread focused on the followings:
- Changes on your own site ranking on the serps (lost & gained positions or disappearance of the site).
- Changes you have noticed on the new serps (both google.com and your local google site) especially in regards to the nature of the top 10 or 20 ranking sites.
- Stability of the serps. I.e do you get the same serps when you run the same query within the same day or 2-3 successive days (both google.com and your local google site).
- Effective ethical measures to deal with the above mentioned changes.
Thanks.
I WILL raise a stink and ruckus the likes of which G and the national media has never seen
I don't want to disillusion you but this won't work. The national media don't give a tinker's cuss about what's happening to the search results. It's just not newsworthy.
You may be right but all those of us can do is try. I think they will be interested once G stocks start to fall, and the national economy is affected due to the countless thousands of bankruptcies, business closures and lay-offs, etc.
I will wait to see where the few pages we still have in the top #10 are, and also where the pages I have done subtle changes on are positioned.
If sales are not up a few days after that it will be "cunning plan number 3".
Clint is the tip of the iceberg. There are many angles to this story. It's not just about SERP quality, or individual webmasters anymore.
Forgive me the comic book philosophy, but with great powers, come great responsibility. This update shows that the powers have increased faster than the responsibilities.
The few things we have identified as possible negatives are... www and non www situations
I would add /index.php?blabla versus /?blabla - I believe that's what hit me pushing my site below links to my site (which seems to be most often recalled Bourbon effect at the moment).
sure you will. Google would've gone out of business during Florida if that was the case. Personally, regardless of the merit or seriousness of the threat, I wouldn't suggest threatening Google, especially if they know your site name. Sure GoogleGuy wouldn't do anything, but with 5000 or so employees, you never know. Maybe I'm just paranoid...
And, yes, I have been heavily penalized (as in 0-10 referrals a day) for a good 9 months. Looking back, it started with a www vs no-www situation and I compounded it while in "panic mode". Should've just sat that one out. The good news is that I used the time to do one more thing to soften any Google ups and downs.
Clint - it could be my 301 kicking in or it could be Google sorting things out.
I've been away and quiet here. This is just a short, slightly off topic note on what I see for my non-www and www issues and 301 redirect.
I commented a while back that my 301 had been in place for > 6 months with no results in removing non-www pages. The non-www are now gone.
Now the www pages that are left have changed from url-only to full (old) description and cached. The odd part is:
1) virtually everything has gone supplemental
2) 1st page in each 'widget' category which were previously indexed correctly have gone m.i.a. and
3) my cache dates are Jan 27, '05. This is actually an improvement in a way; many cache dates were previously Oct and Mar '04. and the bot visits these pages often.
I don't understand much of this so am sitting and waiting before making any site changes other than to content.
Also, a thank you to Dayo and g1smd for your previous gracious suggestions. (g1smd - I haven't put categories into their own seperate directories with an index.* yet, am going to wait for things to settle down.)
Thanks,
Jim
I'm sorry to report that I've found a major competitor who has 64,000 pages listed as www.hisname.com and
340,000 (!) listed under hisname.com
And believe me, he's NOT being penalized for this.
Not yet, anyway.
So... that's not 100% certain. He is a pretty big league site, Alexa 10,000, fast growth over the past few months, thousands of links in. Fast growth over the past year for him, really.
Any thoughts on this?
sure you will. Google would've gone out of business during Florida if that was the case. Personally, regardless of the merit or seriousness of the threat, I wouldn't suggest threatening Google, especially if they know your site name. Sure GoogleGuy wouldn't do anything, but with 5000 or so employees, you never know. Maybe I'm just paranoid...And, yes, I have been heavily penalized (as in 0-10 referrals a day) for a good 9 months. Looking back, it started with a www vs no-www situation and I compounded it while in "panic mode". Should've just sat that one out. The good news is that I used the time to do one more thing to soften any Google ups and downs.
Fla wasn't as screwed up as this. Twist this around as you may (I KNEW some would), but it's not a threat, it's just a plain fact. Yes, they DO KNOW my site name as I have been emailing them about this about ~15 times since May 21st, and calling them on the phone; all to no avail. As I stated, I have nothing to lose since I have lost everything anyway. At least I'm in the PROCESS OF loosing everything, and I will if this continues on. I have still had only ONE SALE since May 21st, and that was a $40 sale! When I'm backed into a corner, I FIGHT, especially when my life depends on it. EVERYONE SHOULD.
Has he got strong PR on both the non-www and www?
Regarding the "www and non www situations"
I'm sorry to report that I've found a major competitor who has 64,000 pages listed as www.hisname.com and 340,000 (!) listed under hisname.com . And believe me, he's NOT being penalized for this. Not yet, anyway.So... that's not 100% certain. He is a pretty big league site, Alexa 10,000, fast growth over the past few months, thousands of links in. Fast growth over the past year for him, really.
Any thoughts on this?
Yeah, I mentioned in a previous post I've seen the same thing. Interesting how certain things "allegedly seem to affect one site" while the same things do not affect others. Perhaps this may change.....but then again maybe not.
Yep - that the way it seems.
I suppose if I was a Zebra on the Serengeti I would think the same way - why do some Zebras get caught by Lions and others dont.
if i may ask...
what is the nature of your business? do you control an actual inventory and use the internet to market your wares, or is it publishing type sites with adsense?
i am curious as to why google is so important to your business.
I suppose if I was a Zebra on the Serengeti I would think the same way - why do some Zebras get caught by Lions and others dont.
lions, wolves and other predators lay in watch, survey the herd of prey and choose the weakest member, then attack for the kill.
The strong survive, the weak get eaten...that's why some zebras get caught and some don't. Any lessons to be learned here?
and just because other sites have survived does not mean that yours will.
>>run quicker than a zebra!
He he - that too.
[edited by: Dayo_UK at 4:01 pm (utc) on June 14, 2005]
I WILL raise a stink and ruckus the likes of which G and the national media has never seen
Clint, you do that! i know that i already did. I recently sent a letter to my member of parliament detailing the dangers such entities represent to free speech and their secretive anti competitive practices. I’ve also sent the same letter to two major newspapers here in Australia. Raising awareness to these issues is the least I can do.
As helleborine have said, with great powers, come great responsibility.
Google's unti competitive tactics can no longer be ignored or forgiven. They must be held accountable for the damages they are causing to so many businesses world wide.
They must be forced to provide more transparency and access to their code (or ranking mechanism) to web developers just as Microsoft was forced to do.
The later were spelling their nasty policies for years. Google must be forced to do the exact same.
Our job and responsibility (as publishers) is to raise awareness to these burning issues as much as we can. Google is hearting our business for absolutely no reason. Time we did the exact same.
Regarding the "www and non www situations"
I'm with Undead Hunter with this. When I check the top search results in the various field that I monitor, I find that 80% of the site do not redirect www to non-www or vice versa.
I still think it's a link problem (scraper sites, 302's...) that Google will resolve this by next update.
Right now I am maintaining status quo.
<edit typo>
By all means, if they plan to fix it, they know where to find me. They can fly me to California and show me the memos, meeting minutes, and SERP improvement request forms that must filled in triplicate and approved by 6 different departments, in evidence of their efforts to solve the problem.
It will my utmost delight to report the good news to all.
I'm waiting by the phone. My luggage is ready.
So far I have not seen any hard evidence of algos changed where one could say that that goes for all serps.
One thing I do know that has changed with Bourbon is the mark up of KW in URL's.
Eg. in a search where the Danish letter "Ø" is represented Google used to mark up the KW if "Ø" was written as "oe" in the URL.
After Bourbon it doesn't anymore.
Why can't Google interpret eg. Danish letters anymore?
Are there other non English sites seeing the same thing?
clint,
if i may ask...what is the nature of your business? do you control an actual inventory and use the internet to market your wares, or is it publishing type sites with adsense?
i am curious as to why google is so important to your business.
G is not important to your business? No, I never used AdWords or AdSense. Yes I have an inventory of products which are sold via the net. I covered this before and it's too much to type again. ;) So, to paraphrase; my line of work is of an area that people use SE's to find vendors, dealers, suppliers, etc., thereof. The other method that the multi-million dollar competitors use (which couldn't care less about SERP's), is TV ads, national newspaper flyers, etc, of which are not possible for such a "small person" in my field. Those that do not read such national ads or put much into TV commercials are going to use an SE to find the dealers or sellers. Since G+AOL+NS is a MASSIVE overwhelming majority of the SE user-base, if I'm not in G, I'm DEAD, which can also be said for countless others in my dilemma. (AOL and Netscape use Google's screwed index).
I found out the hard way to never mention my field at forums. For one, there could be competitors here that would try and make things even worse for me, and another is some a-holes would find out and attack me with spam after they've figured out my site (which HAS happened). So please understand why I cannot go any further. Those of you that DO know my site and or field, POH-LEEZE keep it to yourselves. No, it's nothing illegal or immoral, no porn, no Rx meds, no schemes, no scams, etc. There is no one on the net more against this BS than I (such as spam, scams, schemes, and illegal things). I'm NOT putting porn into this category unless someone has a porn site that is embedded with viruses, worms, Trojans, etc. That's just not right. We all have to make a living and if porn is your field, good for you and more power to you.........IF you are doing it without hurting others.
I guess one could say I'm similar to your locally owned Mom & Pop *hardware store or **produce stand. The kind that have been around for years that people trust, that bust their a$$ to compete with the big boys of the industry--such as for example in this analogy respectively *Home Depot or *Lowes, or **Albertson's. It it THESE type of small businesses WHICH ARE THE BACKBONE OF THE INTERNET, that Google is ruining.
[edited by: Clint at 5:26 pm (utc) on June 14, 2005]
HA Ha Haaa he's saying...
Until he reads the first article in some tech magazine and then he'll have to change his underwear.
Let's see GoogleGuy mentioned that they were fixing the CKJ search corner case, maybe they didn't mess up the BAE corner case or the PGR corner case, but did the DNS corner case.
At this moment I am standing still, just normal content addition.
I can envision GoogleGuy reading this post and chuckling to himself about our thoughts of getting some info out to the media and putting pressure on G.
HA Ha Haaa he's saying...Until he reads the first article in some tech magazine and then he'll have to change his underwear.
Hee hee. LOL. I don't think GG really cares much since he (or she) is not in any danger of losing his or her job, or home, everything. If the proverbial (or literal!) shoe were on the other foot, I think things would probably be different. Google is without compassion & understanding.....and logic at this point. I'm not saying that they should have it (compassion and understanding) since they obviously do not, I'm saying it's the right thing to have. They are shooting themselves in their collective foot. That "foot" is severely traumatized now and they may lose it. Time will tell if their "foot" requires amputation; which will be by their own hands, or, if "doctors" will be able to hopefully save their "foot". At this rate, their "foot" unfortunately appears unsalvageable.
I apparently haven't been affected near as much in the Google Images index. My logs show many hits from images.google.[com, ca, uk, many more]. The HTTP code is always "302". Does that mean anything negative?
I'm also STILL seeing these two "underground" type websites that are accessing the same image at my site. Of all things, it's a type of "security" type image. The http code on these are also a 302. I have since added their IP to my "IP Deny" area in cPanel, plus "Hot Link protection" and it's still happening. I've gone to these websites and NO WHERE ON THE PAGE do I see any references or links to my name, business, site, or images! So I'm baffled as to why and how this is happening.
There are also two auction sites in S. America that are also 302'ing some images on my server. Again, their IP's were also added to the IP Deny area but it's still happening. I can go to these sites and now see a red X where I images were (thanks to the HL protection).
Does anyone think any of this is bad or hurting me with G?
Thanks.
[edited by: Clint at 6:03 pm (utc) on June 14, 2005]
To answer the question above:
The NON-www version has a PageRank 7.
The www version has nothing - it says "no pagerank info available".
When you search for his keywords or page titles, its the non-www version that comes up.
Anyway... he's got many of the symptoms that people *think* caused their problems, except he doesn't suffer from them.
Maybe because he's too big, too well-known? Part of his thing is that it's a "free site", so he gets a lot of legit links in as well as the obvious scraper stuff.
(URL HERE)phrase&type=cat&id=00130
and
(URL HERE)phrase&id=00130
...versions of his pages, one below the other listed.
All things I've heard warnings about, yet nothing, no penalities, nada.
my business is similar to yours in that i have an actual inventory (manufacturer). our ranking on all the search engines is pretty good, but google has a much lower conversion rate...so google is not so important to us as it is you i guess.
we have approached our marketing efforts in such a way as not to be so dependent on search engines for our traffic. therefore, should we drop significantly on one search engine (which has happened many times) our business is not dead in the water. about a year ago we dropped rank on google so far down in the serps we had no referrals from google for several months...and no adverse affect on sales. now we are back on top and whatever we get from google is just icing on the cake.
for what it's worth...i suggest you concentrate on diversifing the exposure for your products on the internet. IMO you are overestimating the value of google. you have to fish all over the pond instead of always casting your bait into your favorite honey hole. catch a few fish from many different places in the pond and you will have more success.
