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.
“So, it would be my contention that you can duplicate quite a bit of "fixed" information between pages before triggering google's duplicate content filter within a site”.
"What about syndicated minisites within a site? They may have a lot of identical content to the supplier. It is business, and should not be considered copying? But the minisite should of course get a lower rank than the mother site."
I'm no expert. Just passing on my experiences and observations for others to digest. Didn't somebody else say here that there needed to be a minimum of 12% different content? That shouldn't be too hard for most people to overcome.
Make it simple, as simple as possible, then make it simpler.
:)
Steve
From what I recall reading, the rule of thumb is that any page without at least 30 or 40% (no one is sure and it can vary between SEs) unique content will be ignored or pushed so far down the SERPs it might as well not exist. As well, if a site is filled with such pages, the entire site may not rank well.
1. Request about linking:
Hello!
My name is MrX!
I interesting to link exchange with you.
My home page have a PR 5 and i could be interested by a link exchange (front page) with one ore more pages with a PR 4,5,6. I offer you the following sites:
If you are interested, my link info:
2. My answer
Hi MrX,
Your are from CountryY?
If you link to me and show me where the links are, I may link to you on the following pages:
You find information on how you link to me on the sitemap:
Because of bad experience, I always ask to first link to my site, if you start the request.
KBleivik
3. Answer
Hello Kjell Gunnar Bleivik!
Yes, I'm from CountryY!
Yours link pages have PR0, and I not have on my site pages wich have PR0
=))), If you will added my links on yours other pages, I will add your
link on my page, on PR3.
Do you have 3 pages, where you'll add my link, one of them have PR1-2?
Do you have another sites?
I'm very interesting in link exchange.
Kind regards,
MrX
4. My answer
Dear MrX,
1. Your Forex site has bad contact info, only email as I can see. As a central banker for 20 years, the contact info on a Froex site must be good. For that reason I can not link to the forex site on my site. I regret if I did not see better contact info. Ideally: Oraganization number and info on where it can be found in CountryYs register. The address and at least one phone number.
2. Your portal Portal*** is as far as I can see a CountryY Portal, and therefore it is natural to link to that where I explained to you. In my view it should not be so strict requirements for a protal as for a forex site.
3. Your last site is a site related to gambling / casinos that it I do not link to.
Yes, I have other Norwegian, only sites.
Page rank is not so important for me, when I exchange links.
I can not use more time on this matter, so it is up to you if you want links to your portal.,
PortalA.
If the contact info is improved on the forex site, I may link to it.
Best regards
Kjell Bleivik
Conclusion:
The country and language is not important. Other things are more important?
Have some of you got link requests from sites with AdWords and AdSense with high pagerank?
Is it time to start deleting links?
KBleivik
Make it simple as simple as possible, but no simpler. That may be complicated.
"I'm no expert. Just passing on my experiences and observations for others to digest. Didn't somebody else say here that there needed to be a minimum of 12% different content? That shouldn't be too hard for most people to overcome".
I deliver content / ad and do not mind.
If you have better financial content, please let me know. Then I link to it. That is not forbidden yet, even if I have seen pages where they require money for linking to them. Do you think I linked to them?
KBleivik
"Mr Price Mechanism" is too hard for me. One dictator in line with the worst of them all, "Mr Market".
"Kgun:
Make it simple, as simple as possible, then make it simpler.
:)
Steve"
It's leaving time again.
KBleivik
We're back to 'everflux.'
Hey, it's been a month since the last update started.
The next one must be round the corner!
~ duck ~
Hey, it's been a month since the last update started.The next one must be round the corner!
It was two months between the unnamed March 23 update and Bourbon, and at least three and a half months (if I recall correctly) between Allegra and Bourbon. So the corner may be a good stroll down the road.
My site is clearly about the (two- and three-word) key phrases X, Y & Z. Says so in the site titles, meta description, h1 tags, and page contents. MSN ranks the site top-ten for X, Y & Z. Yahoo! ranks it top-100. Google ranks it ~100 for X (was top-ten pre-Bourbon), but Y & Z now don’t rank in Google at all! Moreover, even though Google reports total results in the tens of millions of pages for X, Y & Z, it stops delivering results at about 500+ in each case.
Objectively speaking, my site might not deserve top-ten results for all three key phrases in its niche (top-twenty seems fair), but not to rank at all, to have vanished completely?! After it’s had high rankings in Google for years up until now?
If the above were not screwy enough, let’s move on to shorter key phrases and individual keywords.
My site is not about, but mentions in passing on one or more pages, “wydgets” and “purple wudgets”. Google ranks “wydgets” top five, while Yahoo! and MSN Search give it no ranking (in the top 1,000). All three search engines rank my site for “purple wudgets” in the top twenty. In the MSN Search results, my site ranks #1 for “purple wudgets”! I’m talking about very common keywords for this niche.
Objectively speaking, these “wydgets” and “purple wudgets” rankings seem high, but I’m not complaining!
All in all, it seems to me that Yahoo! and MSN are returning more sensible results, while Google is way off the mark. For my site not to rank at all for Y & Z is ludicrous. Clearly the site is about Y & Z (those exact key phrases are used in a variety of contexts on-site, no doubt about it, and not excessively or in a spammy or “black hat” way either). This and the fact that the results stop showing around 500 for these common key phrases suggests to me that Google’s index is broken in these areas.
On the other hand, for Google, also Yahoo! and MSN, to rank my site so highly for shorter, very common keywords--keywords mentioned merely in passing--is likewise strange. But I’m not complaining!
The fact that my site still ranks highly at Google for some common keywords and key phrases suggests to me that my site as a whole has not been banned or penalized. Still, Bourbon has nearly killed my popular content-rich site (in a major market niche), with Google referrals down by about 90%. Revenue from that site is similarly down.
I should note that I have another site, also in a popular niche, where Google (and Yahoo! and MSN) treats it fairly, and where Bourbon has not altered that niche’s SERPS, or my keyword rankings, in any significant fashion. (I have similarly high rankings in all three search engines in that niche and for a wide variety of keywords and key phrases.)
Overall, I must conclude that the Bourbon update has badly skewed the SERPs for certain niches. The Google index is corrupted for certain niches.
Your Mileage May Vary. (In your particular niche for your particular site, you may not be seeing strange or incredible results at all.)
There is nothing to do but to make these points, wait things out, and hope for the best in the next update, I suppose. Unless I just give up on this particular site before then.
GoogleBOT has just crawled some thousand new directories and followed their links. The index is updated, and somebody are hurt.
GoogleBot never promised you a rose garden.
Some, that noted what GoogleGuy said do not write here any more. Noticed that?
KBleivik
Make it simple, as simple as possible but no simpler.
The Google index is corrupted for certain niches
After some experimenting, I've come to the conclusion that Google isn't handling multi-phrase queries as well as it used to. For example, if you search for "aaa bbb" where "aaa bbb" is a proper name, Google seems to do a good job of listing appropriate sites in the results. But when you search for "aaa bbb zzz" where "zzz" is something related to "aa bb" Google doesn't give very good results.
As a more specific example, today I searched for a business in my area by using "aaa bbb zzz" where "aaa bbb" is the name of the business - a common name - and "zzz" is the unique name of the city where I live. The SERPS listed sites referring to the business (many linking to the business's site), but I couldn't find the business's actual site anywhere in the first few pages. I know it used to work better than that.
-- Roger
After some experimenting, I've come to the conclusion that Google isn't handling multi-phrase queries as well as it used to.
Yes, I've noticed that, too.
You would think that as you increase the number of words in key phrases, words and key phrases specific to pages on your site, that you would rise in the ranks. For example, a string of five or six consecutive words unique to your site should rank you #1. But that doesn't now seem to be the case. It was pre-Bourbon.
So, this one site of mine ranks for "purple wadgets," say. If my site also covers "inexpensive purple wadgets" or "purple wadgets design," pages with those keyphrases have disappeared entirely from the SERPs in many cases.
Equally strange, my site ranks very high and even #1 for some common, single-word keywords. Alas, there are not enough of them remaining to offset the loss of the three- and four-word key phrases.
It's not just my say-so that many of my pages rank too low (the pages that have not disappeared entirely from the SERPs). We have a second and third opinion from MSN Search and Yahoo!, both of which rank them high. Heck, we also have a fourth opinion from Google itself, who pre-Bourbon was ranking all of these "lost" pages highly.
These observations suggest to me that the SERPs are broken--in certain niches. (Like I stated, my other site and its niche SERPs were little impacted by Bourbon.)
And keywords and key phrases with total page results reported in the tens of millions going only so far as six pages of SERPs (before hitting the duplicates and supplemental results)? Common keywords and key phrases where it's absurd to think that there are only 500 or so unique mentions out on the Web?
No, something is clearly broken somewhere.
Who was responsible fo rthis update and if it was google which I think it was, why did it affect yahoo and msn?
Does this only affect your traffic and site rankings? or does it affect money made through programs such as adsense directly? (i saw ppl complaining about this but I wasn't sure whether it directly took down earnings or due to lower traffic.)
It is Google updating its index.
It doesn't have any impact on MSN or Yahoo.
As for adsense, think about it for a minute click rate x average number of visitors x average amount per click = revenue.
Reduce any factor and your revenue can decrease
The update affects a sites placement in the search engines results thus number of visitors a site recieves.
I think it would be more pertinent to illustrate how Google searches have degraded overall, not just for your or my site in particular. Let's face it, while I care deeply about my site, and it's supposed to pay my bills and offer me a quality lifestyle (right now it does neither), I'm the only one who really cares about my site, what happens to it and what happens to me. No one else going to make any changes based on what my site or yours does - but perhaps the people at Google will take it more seriously if they understand how and why the searches are degrading overall. That will lose them share eventually and that they may take into account more readily than the complaints of us webmasters regarding our own sites.
In my own particular niche, I have to say that a lot of the other sites that appear instead of mine are good, quality sites (along with some scrapers and stinkers), but the pages that appear for those sites may not be the most pertinent. And that there are a couple of kw phrases where my site does manage to appear on page one, but it probably shouldn't - or at least the page that shows up isn't really the best result for that particular kw phrase. If you guys can come up with your own experiences in your own niche, maybe that will bring us all closer to figuring out what went wrong, and why good sites like mine - and many of yours - have virtually dropped out of Google.
Actually, I think this whole discussion deserves a thread of its own... does that mean the fat lady has sung? (And honestly, someone should send her to me - I will help her get in shape!)
I will keep an eye out for them as I am sure they will resurface at another hosting company.
I tried to start a thread about this but it is put on hold...not sure why.
Ann
All in all, it seems to me that Yahoo! and MSN are returning more sensible results
BINGO!
I hope others realize this and vote with their feet. Let google know they screwed up by NOT USING THEM ANYMORE.
MSN is my new favorite engine, sad to say...Google has jumped the shark.
Stu2, msg #1125, thanks also.
I KNOW I said "thank you" yesterday, but my posts seem to have mysteriously disappeared!
I have sent an email to help@google.com explaining how my literary website has been penalised under the 'original content' rule. Could somebody please verify that help@google.com was the correct place to send it. I had had an automated response from this address on reporting to Google that I had problems.
Dgdclynx, I haven't tried that email address in about a week, but when I was trying it the AR's I got back said it was no longer a used address and it said to go to some URL at the G website.
Questions:
1.Do you see any reason for using different code on different pages?
2.robots.txt is mostly placed in the root directory. What about a spider entering a subpage (subdirectory page).
3.What about code on a syndicated mini site?
Sorry Kgun but I'm a bit confused with your post #1140. I thought all that was already covered. Sure, you have to use different tags on each page (if that's what you mean by "Do you see any reason for using different code on different pages"), according to whether or not you want the page indexed, followed, or archived.
2. I'm not sure, but a spider is supposed to first enter the robots.txt file. I've never experimented with this before since I use "index, follow" on all of my pages. I don't know if by "first" it means the first time it EVER spiders your site, or every time it visits, or periodically. I just noticed in my stats the Aipbot spidering several pages, but it didn't stop at my robots.txt file. Could be it saw it on some previous visit.?
I also saw several hits by the Googlebot hitting some pages, but in some of them it ONLY seeing my robots.txt file and not going any further! Does anyone know why that may be? I only have one G-bot page disallowed in my robots.txt file since it's a PDF page and the robots tag of course can't be added to it.
I also see some odd things about what bots are spidering. Those of use that use cPanel are familiar with the "Web / Ftp Statistics" in it, and under that "Latest visitors", (that's from where this info is coming). Pages that are spidered (also visited by anyone) show as /whatever/WhateverIfAny. In some cases all that's shown is "/", JUST a slash alone! I'm curious as to the significance of those.
Regarding the Aipbot, I checked again and this time the Aipbot entries DOES show it checked my robots.txt file. I also see that the Aipbot is not a search engine bot, Aipbot[dot]com appears to be the robotstxt.org site! (I originally posted a bunch of info here regarding this, and I think I better put it in another forum since I think I found something rather suspicious about that site, it was also using what appears to be a "Frame spoof". See that post here [webmasterworld.com...] ).
Hi Folks!
Updating.. including GoogleGuy´s suggestion on how to send your feedback to Google engineers.
- Do a 301 redirect regarding yoursite.com vs. www.yoursite.com (canonical url problem)
- Removing 302 redirects
Please do not remove your own site using Google's url removal tool. All it will really do is remove your own site for 180 days.And don´t think that allinurl:yourdomain.com returning a result like someotherdomain.com/redirect?url=www.yourdomain.com could be a hijacking. That's a common misperception. All that "allinurl:yourdomain.com" does is look for documents with "yourdomain com" anywhere in the url that we saw. It's not a hijacking if you see results
from other sites with allinurl. The only time you need to worry is if you do site:yourdomain.com and then you see results from someotherdomain.com.
- Removing duplicates
- Subtle page changes and monitor SERP changes
- Create and submit a Google Sitemap (You want Google to crawl more of your web pages)
[google.com...]
- Send feedback to Google engineers
One of the effective ways which GoogleGuy recommend to contact Google engineers if people have feedback or are unhappy with a search (or if your site(s) can't be found for any keyword phrases and you don't have a clue why?). Send an email to jun05feedback [at] googlegroups.com.
It's easier if you give a typical query you would have expected to show up for, not just your site name. If you wish to drop a notes, please include your WebmasterWorld nickname so that it's easier to put things into context.
- Optimize your site for other search engines (like Yahoo, MSN ..)
Keep working to increase non Google sources of visitors.
- Transfer your affected site to a spare/emergency site
An emergency site is an additional site with 1-2 pages of real content related to your affected site. You create the emergency site in good time, submit it to the majors (also maybe local directories) and leave it to age for at least 6 months before moving the content of your affected site to it.
- Outlet Sites Strategy
In short its about creating several sites each contains part of your contents (instead of having the whole contents on one site). Outlet sites have their own "value added" contents. The benefit of Outlet Sites is making your business less vulnerable to be hit by Google´s updates.
Resources:
Google Update Bourbon Part 4
[webmasterworld.com...]
Dropped from Google - a checklist to find out why.
[webmasterworld.com...]
Further Google 302 Redirect Problems
[webmasterworld.com...]
301 for non-www. to www. not working, plus custom error stops working
[webmasterworld.com...]
Google Sitemaps
[webmasterworld.com...]
Successful Site in 12 Months with Google Alone (Brett Tabke)
[webmasterworld.com...]
Sandbox Question and SEO for Google
[webmasterworld.com...]
GoogleGuy's posts (Some posts and advice on Bourbon and other topics)
[webmasterworld.com...]
eval.google.com - Google's Secret Evaluation Lab..
[webmasterworld.com...]
Your comments and suggestions shall be highly appreciated.
Thank!
I think that Google didn't do this because they wanted this to happen. But they couldn't overlook the results that this change in the algo would look like.
Anyhow, if Google wants to stay the biggest and (best?) SE the best thing they could do is...
Admit this was a mistake and go back to the used algo before Bourbon. Drink a few Bourbons and get back to work..
If they won't admit this (probably ..) they will lose the visitors. So it indeed may be the best for us all to get focused on yahoo and MSN, Overture. Then we've got a head start from the rest...
