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.
Today we tried Adwords on one site and are having very high click through rates - so demand for what we offer must be OK.
Are you able to determine a conversion rate for your adwords campaign yet?
I opened an adwords account and integrating it into my "staying ahead of the curve strategy". Faired okay with this last update, but GGuy says major changes are still ahead this summer. Hopefully adwords will be a good insurance policy, just in case.
Been studying up in the adwords threads...seems like it is just as much a mine field as the organic serps.
Maybe part of the bourbon objective was to scare the hades out of merchants and into their ad program. If so, it worked dang it.
I found a scraper site doing a search for my own site on Google - My sites name and Yahoo (Overture)advertisement were listed in the "description" field for the Google search results under this sites title (this was the "snapshot" that Google found on the page). The site actually ranks well ahead of my own for my own business name, due to "scraping" and indexing a Yahoo (Overture) advertisement.
This site ranks very well for many "high dollar" key word combos, is obviously super optimized (I can't figure aout half the stuff they are doing - a ton of "invisible images?)
Question 1 - how does a "no content" site like this get ranked so well in Google? Google has admitedly penalized their own Adsense publishers in the SERPs, now they are rewarding Yahoo Publishers by considering their advertisements as their own content?
If this is what it takes to get my old rankings back (the rankings I had before I installed Adsense code on my site), I'm all over it.
Question 2 - Only a few large sites (supposedly memebership only sites) are running the beta YPN ads - how did a site get into the network that has NO content? (I know ... this should be in the YPN section)
Question 3 Do you think Bourbon marks the end for small, niche sites that don't have a dedicated SEO and a ton of money to market the site? It seems that the mega sites and super optimized sites have done well in Bourbon, but those smaller sites, and especially niche sites that added Adsense to diversify or supplement their income, have suffered. At least that is the feeling I get from reading every one of the the thousands of posts regarding the latest update!
>Maybe part of the bourbon objective was to scare the hades out of merchants and into their ad program. If so, it worked dang it.<
In connection with Allegra update I had a post mentioning something to the effect of what you write. Then came Bourbon and can see that one of its consequences is to "motivate" business sites to use Adwords and of course pay for that ;-)
Thanks for sharing. Great post!
>Think of it, it's the webdeveloper and designer that plays with the new technologies, constantly updating there site, constantly changing code. Never be afraid to make drastic changes to the base code of a site, as long as you have multisourcing for income and hits then YOU can have Google chase your site and not the other way around. Thats what i have been doing since the legend of google.com first appeared. <
Well... taking full control of your site and developing a marketing strategy independent of Google or any one search engine is a wise thing to do. And diversify should be the name of the game, as you correctly mentioned.
It's corresponding with our site getting hammered again... quality pages are going MIA, url only in the SERPS.
Anyone else?
People keep saying we should be concentrating only on making good content, yada, yada, (which I'm not sure why they keep saying that unless there's a sudden shortage of material for scrapers to work with lately) but how can we do that when:
1. Noone will probably ever see it (except the scraper thieves and THEIR visitors) if you don't worry about all the other factors like SEO. Creating useful, accurate, authoritative content costs money. Writers don't work for free. Do you think every site out there is a "hobby site"? SOMEONE has to travel, report the news, buy film for pictures, etc. No readers, No advertisers, no ad $'s.
2. It seems we have to be constantly re-writing to please G when they turn the dial or change the rules.
As so many keep pointing out it's apparently not the SEO experts who are complaining this time around, it's those who have been TRYING to just ignore G and just make good content. OUR best content is what got hit the worst during Bourbon. Our least useful pages retained the highest rankings and most of our unique content vanished altogether? Go figure.
Johnhh,
I wasn't talking about ACTUAL legality and policing the net, we were only using legal examples to illustrate how stating an absolute max would make the net a safer place for all to play.
Sailor,
I think the penalty should be that you GET ownership of their domain, since they want so much to BE you. :)
Rx,
If the site is that spammy, report it to Google. EVENTUALLY, they'll have some college student take a look at it. eval.spam :)
Today we tried Adwords on one site and are having very high click through rates - so demand for what we offer must be OK.
That's the entire point, isn't it? If you're not using AdWords, G sees you as a leech and will eventually hammer you into nothingness. Maybe not with this update, but sooner or later...
Diversify away from Google and the SEs in general. The first person who comes up with a method which outflanks the SEs will become very, very rich. The life cycle of the search engines is nearly over.
I didn't go back and check, but the length of this thread is now 30 days and nearly 4000 posts - maybe more. The sad part is that we're nowhere closeer to an understanding of what Google did than we were at the start. I just love to see people's lives dominated by a monster corporation. Gives me so much faith in people's ability to think for themselves...not.
The reason the spamming has been so rampant for me is that in November 2004, I took the contents of a large sub-directory that was password protected and made it publicly available. It took the spammers 3-4 months to grab all the data they wanted and google followed on shortly with dup content penalties until my site ranked below many of the scrapers.
My sin was creating useful content. The mother of all scrapers, Google, enabled smaller scrapers to proliferate by monetizing their efforts with AdSense.
Does Google care that the original web sites with original content are being abused and destroyed? Of course not, because most of the keywords and content are now spread all over the web and they can abuse the scrapers all they like. Give them good money one week, nothing the next, etc.
The proliferation of scraper sites carrying adsense is ample proof that Google could care less about quality in their own products. Time to dump Adsense entirely or become a spammer oneself.
Yes, Regis, that's my final answer.
Afraid difficult to track that - I was just looking for extra traffic. 80% of the site is content.
"That's the entire point, isn't it? If you're not using AdWords"
Possibly - but we always have done adwords on and off. We also do off-line advertising as well.
We still got hit though - bigtime - which reflects Google's market position. Looking at the results we are getting for searches whether they maintain that market position is another matter.
We may crawl our way back over time but with an absence of a "you got hit because you did this..and this.." who knows. All you can do is eliminate the possibilities.
But what if an unintended consquence of Bourbon was an increase in PPC revenue? It would be extremely difficult for a public company to wean itself off such a cash cow. They would have to not only continue, but push further in that direction.
My point is: conspiracy or not, it won't get better, and it might get worse.
A lot of you are suggesting diversification, and marketing strategies that are independent of Google. That's not a viable option for many.
As for the 'monster' corporation, ebay stocks fell sharply when Google announced they were going head-to-head against ebay. This after going head-to-head with MSN's hotmail.
If find their corporate presence crushing.
BTW: My little project is NOT going to proceed. Too much effort and no $$$ guarantees. What I don't need right now is another project which drains my resourses without providing revenue.
Thanks for your support, though.
A lot of you are suggesting diversification, and marketing strategies that are independent of Google. That's not a viable option for many.
Thank you, thank you, thank you! I am so FED UP with seeing that. Many for some unfathomable reason still cannot comprehend that simple fact.
And are looking for a complete understand of 302 redirect issues and the problems they can cause us.
Here is a comprehensive article by Claus. Hope it is ok that I post a link:
[addict3d.org...]
"The more I look at search results for my site, the more I find that I have been totally and completely spammed into oblivion. I don't believe anybody can do anything about spammers creating driectories with stolen content, keywords, key phrases, titles, paragraphs, entire pages, etc., so everything you put on the web that is freely available is freely available to spammers".
Of course, everything that is public on the net can be stolen. Every keystroke tracked. It is more difficult to steal your domain or logo unless it is imported to a net independent of the internet, e.g. an extranet. Do you think Pentagon publish their strategy on the internet?
KBleivik
On the topic of 302, our "302 Doctor" page has had to be moved. I registered a domain and pointed the nameservers a couple of hours ago, they must be given time to propagate.
Anyone interested, sticky me if you need the new URL. Chances are, it'll be sandboxed for some time!
[edited by: helleborine at 12:42 pm (utc) on June 21, 2005]
Personnaly my site is pointed at on thousands of pages, these pages come before mine in the serps right now... Maybe it's a signal that linking to a site can hurt that site?
Alex, that same exact thing happened to me, but it changed when I got back most of my G SERP's. Hopefully the same will happen to you.
I guess it's worth stating once again that all of my sites have the same partner links pages. This update helped ONE of my sites (it shot to the top), sort of helped then hurt (off and on) 3 sites, and trashed my main site. So, links to other sites obviously had nothing to do with this in my case. My main site has MANY more internal links that partner links, but my other sites have FAR MORE outgoing partner links than internal links....if that means anything. I would have thought it would have been the other way around if anything.
AdWords and AdSense are mapped onto pages independant of the free SERP. Excellent Google. Ad Words placement are determined by profit motive, highest bid per click get best position. An economist would lift his eyebrows if Google had a social and not profit motive for their business.
A directory listing another directory that has the content from another directory, who listed another directory with the content of another directory and so on and on and on.
And little Joe surfer who wants to buy something, will give up trying to find it on the net and he will go back to the corner store.
Great future for everyone!
It is not my intent to get into an argument about the economics of search engines.
Suffice to point out that the motto 'do no evil' can be updated for 'do no evil, we have googlebots for that.'
The 'democratic nature of the internet' was nice to exploit for building a company, for a time. But it's now getting in way of boffo profits.
In revolutions, democratic, grass-root forces carry a leader to the top. All too frequently, the leader turns into a dictator, and democracy becomes a thing of the past.
Have we now the 'dictatorial nature of the internet?'
[edited by: helleborine at 1:05 pm (utc) on June 21, 2005]
Google has created the single largest spam network on the internet - the millions of pages "built for AdSense."
If and when the Googlers decide that the spammy results of their endeavors are a detriment to the internet as a whole, the internet world will be a better place. Of course, that's a very big "if" and an even bigger "when."
Since they're making billions with this current configuration, my guestimates are: if, almost completely unlikely; when, they miss their quarterly estimates or hell freezes over, whichever comes first.
The single largest reason for the hellish results and disruptive effect of "bourbon" is Google's acceptance of and refusual to remove made for AdSense scraper sites, hijackings and content, KW, title theft.
All of the discussion of redirects, www vs. non-www and other secondary problems fall well behind. The scrapers caused Google to modify their algo. Worked for some, not for others - mostly didn't do diddly. The scrapers and spammers have wrecked small businesses and will eventually wreck Google. That's the good news.
The bad news is that small businesses, which rightly saw the internet as a bold new frontier with many great possibilities, are now desperately trying to survive. Many will not. Some will merge with others, some will die. Others will continue on, a shell of themselves, lost in the goop. Some day, a method will enable sites to achieve good rankings, based on content and competence, not links, techniques or outrightly underhanded methods. That day may come, may not. May be soon, may be later. Most of the cards are in the hands of Google right now, and that's a real problem because they have a huge profit incentive and almost no moral incentive.
It's easy to say, "don't be evil" when you have more money than God.
If Google results are poor, AND people notice, it'll be Google's downfall.
There cannot be two opinions on this statement.
About Google's results being poor, are they? What we relate here on WebmasterWorld is anecdotal evidence. How does one measure the quality of the SERPs? I bet Google has a SERP quality research lab somewhere, and I also bet that even they, with their resources, find that SERP quality is an elusvive quantity.
The question is: will Joe Surfer notice that anything is amiss, IF something is amiss?
If something is indeed amiss, and enough to be perceivable, Joe Surfer may still not notice, because the habit of using other search engines has been lost, long ago.
Joe Surfer has to be made aware. He has to have a reason to re-examine his choice of SE. And when he does make that effort, he has to see a difference.
Joe Surfer has the key.
"willie, you are so right! And why are all these directories popping up all over the place? One word: AdSense.
Google has created the single largest spam network on the internet - the millions of pages "built for AdSense."
You drink coke, brown water and sugar with .......?
Do you have a better mechanism than the price mechanism? Bartereconomy? Do you have a good site?
Then we may exchange links if it is related to mine.
I have read ("it is only words"), if you link to a site with zero pagerank, you site may be penalized.
KBleivik
[robotstxt.org...]
KBleivik
Brottfararspjald (Icelandic) = Boarding card
[edited by: ciml at 11:26 pm (utc) on June 21, 2005]
[edit reason] No Tool URLs please as per forum charter. [/edit]
Look at the paintings on this Norwegian page:
GoogleBOT (index,archieve)
[aftenposten.no...]
GoogleBOT (noindex,noarchieve)
Painted by an ape.
Spam? Profit motive.
Lousy SERPs? Profit motive.
Scrapers? Profit motive.
All correct, yet none offer any advice on correcting problems. I have. Kill off the made for adsense scrapers, content thefts, hijackers.
That is Google's responsibility, not ours. If they shrink from that responsibility, as they have, they endanger themselves. You obviously have never heard the term "moral hazard." Go check, and while you're at it, kindly edit your last post to correct my name. Abusing somebody's name is childish, hateful and a sign of ignorance, so in your case, I suppose it's appropriate.
Maybe it was a mistake. Maybe not. Either way, not appreciated.
About Google's results being poor, are they?
The answer to that probably depends on what you're searching for. But for the keyphrases that I watch (note disclaimer), results are better on the whole (again, note disclaimer) than they were pre-Bourbon. (That doesn't mean they're better in every case, or that Google doesn't have problems that need fixing.) A month ago, many SERPs were dominated by template-based directory and user-review pages, most of which had little or no useful content. That isn't as true today.
As for scraper pages doing well in the SERPs, again, that depends on the search term. But there's nothing new about spammers cluttering the search results through sheer force of numbers and leading-edge (to use a polite term) SEO techniques.
The clutter in the SERPs used to come from boilerplate affiliate spam; now the scraper crowd have joined the party. Still, it's a lot easier to find the Web site of the "hotel whatsis" than it was a year or two ago, when all of the top 10 search results were cookie-cutter affiliate pages. And in a search on "[the new model of a popular digital SLR camera]" just a moment ago, I found that nearly all of the search results on the first several pages were from the manufacturer's site or from respected review sites like DPReview and Steve's Digicams. That's a big improvement over the days when most results would have been identical sell pages from dealer and affiliate sites.
We need to remember, too, that different people have different definitions of what constitutes a "quality search result." To the affiliate or e-commerce vendor, a SERP that emphasizes manufacturer pages and editorial reviews is likely to be of poorer quality that a SERP that emphasizes commercial results. To the researcher, editor, or other user who isn't looking to buy something immediately, that same SERP may be the best that he's found in years.
Finally, it's just a waste of bandwidth to spew out nonsense about how Google is intentionally corrupting its search results to sell more AdWords and delight the analysts on Wall Street. If you're mad at Google, lay off the silliness and libel: You'll feel a lot better (and you'll burn up some calories) by taking out your frustrations on a punching bag.
Clint,
ME. NO 301 redirect, site recovered.
Thanks, very interesting.
FTR, this 301 thing does NOT seem to have affected my MAIN site in MSN. (I just checked my phrases there again some have RISEN, some stayed the same, and couple dropped down). I commented in a post yesterday that another site of mine was dumped in MSN and it apparently had to do with the content-type declaration line I had above the <head> tag and not the 301 redirect. Now, I have to verify this in Yahoo.
[edited by: Clint at 3:07 pm (utc) on June 21, 2005]
