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 ran all the sites on the first few pages of G SERP's through the header check"Clint you have mentioned that several times, and I'm afraid I have no idea what you think you are doing. More to the point, (and yes I say this all the time) don't get in the trap of thinking there is ONE BIG THING that is 100% consistent. Google deals sensibly with these canonical problems all the time, and they have for years. But SOMETIMES they don't. In the past year, every single update, a different batch of people end up with canonical problems. Don't take this literally, but lets just say 1% of websites had their canonical issues bungled by Google this time, while Google handled 99% sensibly. Google isn't perfect.
Ok, I don't know exactly to what you're referring since it's not a full quote. I've said something like that a lot referring to different areas. I believe I meant that sites on the first couple or few pages in G results for any search I've done, have this www & non-www issue (or canonical issue if that's what it's also called). The sites can be separately accessed with OR without the www prefix and that version remains in the address bar. There isn't any kind of redirect (301 or otherwise) going on with them. I put their URL's through the header check tool and both URL variants (with and without www) are code 200, none are 301.
I guess I understand what you're saying; what I did was basically meaningless.?
Sorry to butt in but the collapse in my hits the past few days has been remarkable. I have many different areas on my site and they all have dropped a hundred places or more. The most obvious one to drop is still 1 on Yahoo and 2 on MSN but is 134 on Google. The loss of readership is very discouraging. This is much worse then the last Google update when things eventually returned to normal.
dgdclynx, one of my sites (that got hit really badly – nil G traffic at present down from 2500 referrals per day) displayed the exact same symptoms. The site gained great positions on yahoo and went to #360 + on google shortly after.
It seams that many of the webmasters affected by this update (if not most) experienced the exact same thing.
FYI, going top positions on yahoo causes your site to be linked from thousands of scrapers, scarpers feeding on yahoo API's. Your site suddenly gains thousands of incoming links from bad neighbourhoods (without your knowledge or consent). This happens rather fast and Googl's DUMB filters will penalize YOU as a results.
Many of these scrapers use bad redirects which again, Google's DUMB filters can not make sense of and you're site is being penalized for the second time, this time for duplicate content.
Some members here will disagree with this theory but it as clear as day light to those in this business long enough.
To check the extant of damage try doing a search for your domain name without the ".com". If your domain name is unique you should be seeing hundreds if not thousands of scrapers coming up above you with snippets from your site. They are all firing their guns at your Google positions and there is not much you can do about it.
It is a major Google problem, indicating (to me) that their algo is broken and can no longer handle the spam.
[edited by: max_mm at 12:23 pm (utc) on June 13, 2005]
Google picks the correct Canonical URLs *most* of the time. Not all the time - that is why the vast majority of sites in the serps dont have a redirect - Google has picked the correct Canonical URL for those sites.
>>>I guess I understand what you're saying; what I did was basically meaningless.?
Lol - nothing wrong with anaylising the serps.
I am not showing up [in] the penalised filter google-hack though that now looks broken to me!
Johan007 - you're correct about that tool. My sandboxed sites no longer rank well in the 'hacked' SERPS.
Something has changed...
As I indicated on an earlier post, from my observations on terms I've been monitoring, the FEWER the times the searched for phrase is mentioned on the page, the HIGHER it will rank. I detailed this on an earlier post of mine somewhere in this thread.
To check the extant of damage try doing a search for your domain name without the ".com". If your domain name is unique you should be seeing hundreds if not thousands of scrapers coming up above you with snippets from your site. They are all firing their guns at your Google positions and there is not much you can do about it.
It is a major Google problem, indicating (to me) that their algo is broken and can no longer handle the spam.
Maxx, yep, I just tried searching for mydomain with no .com, and I see almost 1000 hits in G, however I was 1st on the 1st page. Does that mean it's "OK"?
Hi all
As I mentioned in previous posts on Bourbon threads, I have been testing since allegra few of my resource pages which contained 100+ outbound links (and which lost positions on the serps after allegra) few factors related to outbound links and internal links. Those few pages regained to some extent their positions on the serps and seems that Bourbon has no effect on them.
Before proceeding I wish to underline that the followings worked well for few of my pages and I´m still doing more testing. However I can't say that its a general rule or a fact.
Provided that number of outbound links is less than 100 :
Number of outbound links (OTL) divided by number of internal links (INL) should be equal or less than ONE.
# OTL / # INL = < 1
If you wish to try, pls keep this thread posted on your results.
Thanks!
[edited by: reseller at 12:58 pm (utc) on June 13, 2005]
Clint
Google picks the correct Canonical URLs *most* of the time. Not all the time - that is why the vast majority of sites in the serps dont have a redirect - Google has picked the correct Canonical URL for those sites.
Ok, so I wonder why G didn't do it for me? (This is going on the assumption it did not since I was dumped). I guess that's the million dollar question. ;)
Tried that too! Doesn't work in our neck of the woods ( topic wise ) looking at the higher positions in the SERPS.
Also:
I have just done a brief review of a few failed pages and the still successful pages on the in/out links ratio issue. Wouldn't like to say eitherway at the current time.
When a site has many thousand 302's coming into it G only has to mess up on a percent of them to open up a site to dup content penalty.
For those of us in money areas that had extraordinarily high rankings in 100's of search terms I think the probability of getting the canonical url / redirect problem is higher.
I used to get up to 3000 unique search phrases coming to my site each day - I assume I was in the top 10 for most of them. So my site appears in so many directory scraper sites that I can't count them all.
Maxx, yep, I just tried searching for mydomain with no .com, and I see almost 1000 hits in G, however I was 1st on the 1st page. Does that mean it's "OK"?
- Do nothing as probably more changes on the way
- Subtle page changes and monitor SERP changes
- Do a 301 redirect regarding yoursite.com vs. www.yoursite.com (canonical url problem)
- Removing 302 redirects
- Removing duplicates
- Transfer your affected site to a spare/emergency domain
Have I forgotten anything ;-)
Maxx, yep, I just tried searching for mydomain with no .com, and I see almost 1000 hits in G, however I was 1st on the 1st page. Does that mean it's "OK"?
I did a search for mydomain without .com and it shows 3,860 where my site is on position 85. All sites before mine are sites refering to my site. Does it make any sense?
Number of outbound links (OTL) divided by number of internal links (INL) should be equal or less than ONE.# OTL / # INL = < 1
It may be simpler to say:
# OTL <= # INL
But I don't think that's the case. My pages (which took a big hit during the latest update) have a lot of internal linking with many more internal links than external on each page.
-- Roger
# OTL / # INL = < 1
Reseller, you are effectively saying you should not link out. This only makes sense if you're talking about affiliate links. It could be that google are trying to penalise pages which consist solely of affiliate links designed to 'encourage' users to click through.
"It may be simpler to say:
# OTL <= # INL"
Agreed. And provided that the value of OTL is less than 100 ;-)
[edited by: reseller at 1:50 pm (utc) on June 13, 2005]
1.Remove any form of duplicate content no matter how legit. Robot exclude Print only / Accessible versions etc. Duplication maybe inside the domain or on other sites!
2.Removing any test URL’s set up as "Domain Alias’s" as the odd one seems to have got spidered!
Sure do the redirect to www but I don’t think its an issue but it may all add up and if your site has more than www with non www and Domain Alias added that maybe too much. Tern you Domain Alias to simple 301 redirect.
Then re-submit to google with “Re-inclusion” in the title WHY your site was dropped WHAT action you have taken FUTURE: And you will never do anything like that again.
If anyone can PM a working Google hack so I can help other website owners of good sites only, please do so.
[edited by: Johan007 at 2:03 pm (utc) on June 13, 2005]
This is the Only Thing that GG has said can be an issue. (and has been an issue for ages and ages)
Johan007 glad your site looks like it is coming back :)
Personally I dont think 1 is actually necessary unless they are on different domains/sub-domains.(Just my opinion)
This is the Only Thing that GG has said can be an issue.
Agreed he did mention this. But when G finds it has such a problem, it should also post exactly which code should be best used to solve it.
There are different ways to do this, and I would prefer for G to say this is the best code.
But from memory GG also said they would be updating their FAQ's etc.
I still find it unbelievable they have a www and now www problem.
Me too.
He suggested a 301 redirect in his thread:-
[webmasterworld.com...]
I dont think it will be in the new FAQs - after all it is something that Google *should* sort out - for Google to actually ask Webmasters to code this so you can rank in Google is unlikely. (and it would also be an ommission of what a massive problem it is.)
Maxx, yep, I just tried searching for mydomain with no .com, and I see almost 1000 hits in G, however I was 1st on the 1st page. Does that mean it's "OK"?
I did a search for mydomain without .com and it shows 3,860 where my site is on position 85. All sites before mine are sites refering to my site. Does it make any sense?
Itedesco:
Well, no, absolutely not, but then again nothing does make sense in this "update". That is the EXACT same thing I'm seeing when I search for the phrases where I was first pre-May 21st; I'm GONE but those that link TO ME are showing on the first pages for the search phrases! Sites that have ABSOLUTELY NOTHING to do with the search phrase, other than just linking to my site with MY text, and the search phrase is only mentioned ONCE on their pages!
Personally I dont think 1 is actually necessary unless they are on different domains/sub-domains.(Just my opinion)
I thought this point was good. Wonder how many people that have been affected during Bourbon use subdomains (although I am sure if I read the few thousand posts on the subject I would have my answer!).
urlb = "http://" & Request.ServerVariables("SERVER_NAME") & Request.ServerVariables("URL") & "?" & Request.ServerVariables("QUERY_STRING")if instr(url,"http://www") <= 0 then
url = "http://www.mysite.com/" & url
end if
response.redirect(url)
***VERY INCOMLETE NEED HELP***
[edited by: Johan007 at 2:26 pm (utc) on June 13, 2005]
Plenty that use the sub-domain www.
" # OTL / # INL = < 1
Reseller, you are effectively saying you should not link out. This only makes sense if you're talking about affiliate links."
Not at all. Shall give you few examples.
A page containing 84 outbound links and 96 internal links.
84 / 96 = 0.875 (which is less than one)
or
A page containing 76 oubound links and 76 internal links
76 / 76 = 1
or a page containing 18 affiliate referral links and 110 internal links.
18 / 110 = 0.164 ( which is less than one)
"It could be that google are trying to penalise pages which consist solely of affiliate links designed to 'encourage' users to click through."
I haven´t tested pages that only contain affiliate referral links.
I wouldn't over anaylise the ratio of internal against external links.
You really need your 301 to kick in or Google to fix the Canonical URL problem before starting to make to many changes.
Just my opinion.
ps: YES we are an affiliate site, that has no bearing
on our position for company name, as other affiliate
sites show up above us.
Have you done any studies/got any thoughts on when the non-www returns a 404 - few of these turning up for people now.
[edited by: Dayo_UK at 2:43 pm (utc) on June 13, 2005]
>Reseller when you say "affiliate referral" links are you talking about just a links page where one links to other sites in an exchange? <
I´m talking about the standard "affiliate links" which redirect visitors to the affiliate program vendors sites.
Something like:
ht*p://www.affiliate_network_site.com/?affiliatename/vendorname
