Forum Moderators: Robert Charlton & goodroi
Which is why if you have Canonicalisation problems and ask G if you have a penalty they will say No.
However, from the webmasters view point it has the effect of a penalty (IMO)
<added>
One thing that has made things confusing for a lot of people, is the presence of a penalty that changed the order of results and caused an unwanted canonicalisation. Without untangling the two things, the webmaster could take actions that harm their project.
OK. I never got a reply to the message posted on Page #4 of this thread. I guess it must have got lost in the flood of messages which appeared to get posted after it.
"Has something significant happened since end of June? The search for my keywords looks awfully like they did pre-bourbon? Have they brought back an old index or something?"I read somewhere that G tweaked the algo on 30th June. Is that correct? Well, see my comment above. That tweak makes my keyword search look almost identical to what it did pre-bourbon (which wasn't good)
"I used Google Sitemaps a few days after it was 1st introduced (about 3 weeks ago). All my pages got indexed correctly and I was pleased with my SERPS rankings. The last time I checked them was in the last few days of June and everything was still ok.
Now, doing a search on my keywords, the SERPS give me deja vue. Look awfully familar to pre-bourbon days. When I do a site:www.mydomain.com there are a significant number (maybe 15-20%) of my pages have lost their titles and caches and only now show the url. What causes that?"
Well it's now up to about 50% of my pages with no titles or cache and only showing the url. And I'm still wondering how that happens. Any ideas?
One last thing... how do you guys get to post quotes in rectangular boxes?
Stu, Ok, the easy stuff first. Click the "Style Codes are on" link to the left of the text input form when you post and you'll see what to do, it's "quote" but in [brackets]. For the life of me I don't know why this website doesn't have the "reply with quote" like most if not all other forums have. Having to paste "quote" or type it in every post at least twice is very annoying. That's why some just use the >>>> lines to denote a quote.
Since no one has answered you, then I guess you could assume that no one knows of any specific changes after June 30th, but I can also say that there CERTAINLY was! I got back most of my G-SERP's around mid June after a month of being dumped, only to see them start to plummet again somewhere around June 30th! And once again back to the same BS I saw when I was dumped with the non-relevant and blackhat sites topping the SERP's for my phrases. From your statement, it sounds like Bourbon HELPED you.
As for your: "my pages have lost their titles and caches and only now show the url. What causes that?", that is happening to many and as I have been told, it's just a "matter of time" before G gets the titles and caches back. However I don't fully believe that since I have some of my pages showing in a site:MyDomain.com command STILL not showing any of the title tag or description after MONTHS. The pages have been up for YEARS, but I've only been checking that for months now, and still no change. So, it would appear that some further investigating would be warranted on that issue. By whom or how, well, I unfortunately cannot say. I can't think of anything that can be done on our parts. Hmmm, I just did that command again for my main domain, went through the whole list and now ALL of the pages it shows have the URL, AND the title and descrip of the pages......however it's not listing ALL of my pages! It's leaving out a lot of them. I'm also still showing different amounts for the non-www and www versions (fewer for www), yet when I do it withOUT the www it's still showing www versions of the pages! Seems a bit senseless.
But how do you know the difference?
A Penalty can lead to lack of crawling, url onlys, deep results in the serps.
A Canonical URL problem can lead to lack of crawling, url onlys, deep results in the serps.
So people who have Penalties might think they have a Canonical URL problem and people with Canonical URL problems may think they have penalties and what comes first the Canonical URL problem or the penalty.
He he Ciml - it is very confusing to confuse Canonlisation with penalties - see :)
OK then, this clarifies things for me. Since my site has no canonical problem to be confused with, it seems to be penalized. :)
Anyone with an idea about how long a penalty could last? Penalty might be related to some stupid interlinking between two related domains. Those links have all been removed after July 16th, one site got crawled pretty deep recently, but both sites are still sitting in Google's cellar.
(Don't want to talk about 50 scrapers using my content and residing in the upper floor ...)
Peter
Agreed.
> A Canonical URL problem can lead to lack of crawling, url onlys, deep results in the serps.
When two URLs are canonicalised, we should expect them both to continue to be crawled (though URLs linked from the disappeared URL may not be).
The canonicalised URLs should not go to URL-only listings; one should disappear completely and donate its links to the other. As a result, rather than deep results we should see one normal result and one disappearance.
> He he Ciml - it is very confusing to confuse Canonlisation with penalties - see :)
Absolutely, that's why I think it's important to keep it in mind. Google have taken away quite a few of our toys (i.e. the searches that used to show us what was penalised for crosslinking, OOP, dupe content, etc.) and quite a few penalties and non-penalties look alike. This leads to many false diagnoses and much unnecessary heartache for webmasters.
Probably, it also means that Google are doing that aspect of their job rather well. :-)
Yes after the urls have been canonicalised - but before, eg when the problem is present - it appears to result in url only listings, results appearing very deep in the serps (eg for your own name) and lack of crawling.
Or am I mis-understanding.
(Even after the urls have been canonicalised it seems to take ages for a recovery)
So sites are coming back? I must say I am very happy for all of you who are getting your traffic back. My best site went from 5000 G referals a day to about 100, and so far nothing of it has returned. The site is 5 years old and 99% original content. So are most of you guys back or does it just feel like I am the only site left behind?
Some are, some are not. Some have come back, and are dropping again (as is in my case). Yours is certainly not the only site.
OK then, this clarifies things for me. Since my site has no canonical problem to be confused with, it seems to be penalized.Anyone with an idea about how long a penalty could last? Penalty might be related to some stupid interlinking between two related domains. Those links have all been removed after July 16th, one site got crawled pretty deep recently, but both sites are still sitting in Google's cellar.
(Don't want to talk about 50 scrapers using my content and residing in the upper floor ...)
Petrocelli, no, unfortunately it probably will only further complicate/confuse things for you. Your site may NOT have any penalty. These threads are FULL of examples of sites that have on penalties, and that are getting trashed (mine is another example). So that's something you have to keep in mind. I can guess your next question of "how do I know if I have been penalized" or "what can I do if I was not penalized yet removed". Short of being able to personally contact a G search index engineer, nothing. And that will only tell you at most if your site has been penalized or not, and not what to do about it! Sweet ain't it.
Your comment regarding the scrapers is all too common. That's par-for-the-course now at G. More precedence given to those type irrelevant sites than YOUR OWN site!
Stu, Ok, the easy stuff first. Click the "Style Codes are on" link to the left of the text input form when you post and you'll see what to do, it's "quote" but in [brackets].
Well let's see how this turns out. I think those quotes in rectangles really helps with the reading of a message. Thanks.
From your statement, it sounds like Bourbon HELPED you.
Well, that probably needs some explanation. You've probably seen me saying how much Google Sitemaps helped me out considerably since I'd been sandboxed way before (probably 3-6 months or more before) the bourbon update. I'd done some seo work on my pages (mostly tinkering with keyword density, adding text and some H1's, honing titles, checking for bad links and code, that sort of stuff) trying to get back into Google index (completely unaware of Google Bourbon, or any previous updates) I'd added between between 50-100% more content split between existing and new pages (about 150 pages total) and submitted my site to Google repeatedly without any success. This had been over the previous 3-4 months. After I discovered Google Sitemaps by accident (about 1-3 days after launch... about end of 1st week of June). I created a sitemap and uploaded it. Within 24-72 hours my site was completely indexed and cached and title/descriptions in Google's Index. This would have been at the same time this Bourbon update was raging (of which I knew nothing). My SERPS were again #1-5 for my keywords in low volume areas (which they hadn't been anywhere for maybe 6 months or more). They remained at that position right up to 30th June when Google (obviously) tweaked their algo. So yes. Bourbon helped from the time I was re-indexed (around end of 1st week of June) right up until 30th June (by which time Bourbon was supposed to be already over). After June 30th, searches for my keywords looks much like pre-bourbon, the sites listed look almost the same as before, my pages nowhere to be found, and many of my pages listed with just their url (well at least they're not supplemental yet). I don't see (m)any scrapers coz it's not a commercial/competitive area.
As for your: "my pages have lost their titles and caches and only now show the url. What causes that?", that is happening to many and as I have been told, it's just a "matter of time" before G gets the titles and caches back.
Well I had them all in place (see above) during and after this bourbon update and now they are increasing at an alarming rate since this algo change on June 30th.
However I don't fully believe that since I have some of my pages showing in a site:MyDomain.com command STILL not showing any of the title tag or description after MONTHS. The pages have been up for YEARS, but I've only been checking that for months now, and still no change. So, it would appear that some further investigating would be warranted on that issue. By whom or how, well, I unfortunately cannot say. I can't think of anything that can be done on our parts.
Neither do I. I HAD cured that problem entirely by using Google Sitmaps but it sadly now looks like I'm drifting back into the sandbox.
Hmmm, I just did that command again for my main domain, went through the whole list and now ALL of the pages it shows have the URL, AND the title and descrip of the pages......however it's not listing ALL of my pages!
Good for you.
It's leaving out a lot of them. I'm also still showing different amounts for the non-www and www versions (fewer for www), yet when I do it withOUT the www it's still showing www versions of the pages! Seems a bit senseless.
Well before I knew anything about the Bourbon update (say up until 1st week of June) I just used to shrug my shoulders and wondered why Google never liked me but Yahoo and MSN both loved me. It was only after I'd made a concerted effort (over the last 4 months) to try and get relisted and after having a chance OT conversation with you on a Yahoo group, where you pointed my to WW, that I've become embroiled in all this mess. Sometimes I wish I could go back to my blissful ignorance on these Google indexing/serps issues.
As you know, I only run a hobby site. Traffic from Google would be nice but I've been living without it for 8 months or more, most of my important visitors come by word of mouth, and there aren't so many of them. Yahoo/MSN provide approx 150-300 visitors a day. I never used to monitor these things until April of this year, so have not much idea how much traffic I've been losing from not being listed on Google (although even for the last 3 weeks of June in Google I have seen very little traffic from them). However, it would just be nice if Google users could find me (since they are the big dog in the yard).
So sites are coming back? I must say I am very happy for all of you who are getting your traffic back. My best site went from 5000 G referals a day to about 100, and so far nothing of it has returned. The site is 5 years old and 99% original content. So are most of you guys back or does it just feel like I am the only site left behind?
My site is not back either! :o(
One site is a very large site that competes with other large sites for a coveted term. This site has been around for 5+ years.
The other site is a small site that competes with other small sites for a coveted local term. This site has been around for 1.5 years.
Both sites faced some rearranging:
- The big site drop to 3rd place for a couple days and then was back up to 1st starting yesterday (the 4th).
- The small site had it's homepage removed for about a week, then it came back to 1st place yesterday.
Primary observation based on these two sites: the sites that passed them up on ranking, on a temporary basis, were sites that had been around longer (sites older than 5 years for the big site and sites older than 2 for the small site). It's almost as if Google increased the importance of site history temporarily, then decided to tone it down.
Did anyone else experience a temporary site age ranking blip?
Does this not indicate that there is some other problem, and any canonicalisation changes are merely artifacts of it?
Not how I understood the situation.
This is how I understand the situation from site launch to problem. (assuming no 301)
Googlebot comes along and finds link to site eg: http://www.example.com - indexes http://www.example.com and the links from this site eg http://www.example.com/page1.html etc - site appears in serps.
Sometime later Googlebot finds http://example.com and starts to index the site - Google then gets confused by what the canonical url is on the site the http://example.com or the http://www.example.com (both look like good home pages - but if anything Gbot might be more tempted by the non-www). (Not 100% sure but I think Google gets confused by just a link to http://example.com - therefore even before it has fetched the page!)
Rankings start to suffer, Googlebot starts to crawl less and pages go url only.
This fricking search engine is all messed up and broken.
Doing a search on my unique domain name brings up dozens of adsense scrapers right above me and on many occasions, many sites that used to link to me but no longer exist (some for almost a year now).
It is no longer an update or mini update or whatever you choose to call it. It is a plain and simple mess, a search engine with no one at the wheel. Just a bunch of clueless kidos patching and over patching a bug riddled algo.
I HATE Poogel and what it have done to my content sites!
Someone hand me a scraper script please. I lost my patience with this broken search engine. They want adsense scrapers, I’ll give them a thousand new ones. It sure looks like the ONLY safe way to survive their crippled/dumb algo nowdays.
Isn`t it time to encourage visitors to search with Yahoo and to publish a note like: Too many quality sites can no longer be found at Google, better use Yahoo search now!
Too many quality sites can no longer be found at Google, better use Yahoo search now!
Have you looked at MSN lately? They recently implemented a ranking change that I'm finding extremely useful (as a searcher). MSN is quickly becoming my search engine of choice. Google hasn't been for months now. They've screwed up their relevancy.
Anyway, it appears that MSN has found a nice middle ground that neither G or Y have. G obviously puts way too much emphasis on links, while Y still lets scrapers rule too many good keyword SERPs.
Way to go MSN! You had to think, with all the brilliant minds at Microsoft, they'd eventually get things right with their SE. I like it!
Isn`t it time to encourage visitors to search with Yahoo and to publish a note like: Too many quality sites can no longer be found at Google, better use Yahoo search now!
Yes it sure is. It is time for all affected webmasters to join forces and start an anti poogle campaign. The only thing working for poogle right now is their browser tool bar which is by itself an excellent retainer. I'll bet 50% (if not more) of searches originate from the toolbar. What we really need to do is post a message to encourage our viewers to use other search engines and most importantly, post a link to download the Y and/or MSN toolbar.
5000-10000 web sites with such message can realy work magic and spread the news/tip the scales within a very short time.
We must vote with our feets if we want to see real change. This crap is killing an entire industry and something MUST be done about it and fast.
I HATE Poogle!
The first step would be to ignore the google results and move on. The more time to spend complaining on here .. the less people you're going to convert to MSN. ;)
User-agent: GoogleBot
Disallow: /
in your robots.txt files out there? When G loses the stuff to mess around (and make money) with, maybe they'll wake up? Not an option, because G's referrals (no matter how many they are) is the air that webmasters breathe?
Hmmm ... isn't this true as well: Our content is the air that G breathes. Take it away until they decide do become more responsive to our questions and problems and start to act like in a normal business relation.
I'm dreaming - I know. It's way too late, they already took over the web and are as unavoidable as the other moloch out there. Remember the 90's when it all began and we happily welcomed Google? Oh my, times are a changing ...
Peter
What is different is the phenomena where at particular times during an update some sites lose almost all their Google traffic, whereas others regain theirs. It's a site phenomena, rather than a page phenonema. To me this points to Google applying or tweaking a filter (or filters) which effects these sites more than others.
Everybody affected (naturally :)) claims to be white hat, and it's probable that most are, but perhaps these sites are seen by Google as borderline "spammy".
I've no idea whether this is correct or not, but it is making me take a very careful look at my affected site for anything that Google might dislike, and I have come up with a few things (mentioned in an earlier post). But I have also now spotted something else that Google may dislike.
My site makes a lot of use of thumbnail images as indexes, and in the best traditions of usability all thumbnails have a desriptive Alt tag. I have also provided a Title tag for non-IE browsers. The result is that on same pages where there is little natural text, the Alt and Title text is very signifiant and has a serious affect on keyword density. In fact using a keyword density tool, including or excluding Alt tags gives a totally different idea of what the page is about.
Perhaps Google sees this as an attempt to hide text from users but present it to SEs, and has a filter based on what Google considers acceptable. Who knows? But needless to say I am now removing all Alt and Title tag text just in case. Usability is all very well, but not at the expense of traffic.
As nobody has come up with any other explanation of the "lost traffic" phenomena, it seems to me that the most sensible action is to make sure the site is squeaky clean.
<edit>Edited for spelling</edit>
The first step would be to ignore the google results and move on. The more time to spend complaining on here .. the less people you're going to convert to MSN. ;)
Or if you have good rankings across the other search engines and a offline business that Google can't successfuly attack (I guess we're very lucky to be in this position), you could put a note on your site explaining that Google is broken and give example searches of how bad it is, then a list to compare against other the search engines.
You can't expect Google to restore your position in the SERPs and whining here doesn't help. What you can do is show customers how bad G has become compared to other search engines and guide them to try the other engines.
Did anyone else experience a temporary site age ranking blip?
I see it sometimes everyday, sometimes every few seconds. Position X for a day or so, next day GONE, next day back to X, seconds later it's position X + 25 spots, back to X, gone, etc., etc. About as stable as a muon.
Isn`t it time to encourage visitors to search with Yahoo and to publish a note like: Too many quality sites can no longer be found at Google, better use Yahoo search now!
That's just what many have been doing. When the media gets hold of it, it will cascade. A few days ago, 2 different CNN shows did another story on G (a few weeks back it was a story called "Google bubble"), this time it was analysts saying "Google going down" and advising "investors to bail out". Soon, AOL and Netscape may dump them. They have not only, and are not only 'shooting themselves in the foot', they are amputating their entire LEG. At this rate, more body parts to follow.
Can anyone enlighten us about how many of the world internet users uses MSN, Yahoo! and Google. And what is the trend. Because i do also believe that MSN is becoming a choice for search engine.
Depends on whom you ask, and where you read. I've seen anywhere from as "little" as 35%, to 85%. Even at 35%, if you can't be found in G that's a massive hit. At 85%, it's devastation. I believe that it IS about 85% when AOL and Netscape are included since they use the G index. We all know the massive "appeal" of AOL and how many users they have! One thing is for sure, MSN and Y are gaining ground, thanks to G's on doings.
The first step would be to ignore the google results and move on. The more time to spend complaining on here .. the less people you're going to convert to MSN.
That's true to point, but remember that anyone can come to this forum and read all of these thousands and thousands of negative complaining posts on G and that is certainly getting the word out as well. When anyone asks me what's going on with G, I just point them to this forum and the threads on it. This forum is so far the best thing there is on getting out the word. You can always put links on your sites to this forum. These things certainly will help "conversions".
(FWIW, I just a searched for one of my phrases [widget widget sales] and the 1st hit [where I WAS but no more] is the ONLY RELEVANT HIT on the first two pages! All the others are 'white paper reports', research and statistics! The SECOND relevant hit is MY SITE, which is now last on the 2nd page!)
[edited by: Clint at 12:30 pm (utc) on July 6, 2005]
How about aUser-agent: GoogleBot
Disallow: /in your robots.txt files out there? When G loses the stuff to mess around (and make money) with, maybe they'll wake up? Not an option, because G's referrals (no matter how many they are) is the air that webmasters breathe?
Hmmm ... isn't this true as well: Our content is the air that G breathes. Take it away until they decide do become more responsive to our questions and problems and start to act like in a normal business relation.
I'm dreaming - I know. It's way too late, they already took over the web and are as unavoidable as the other moloch out there. Remember the 90's when it all began and we happily welcomed Google? Oh my, times are a changing ...
That's well meaning Peter, but the problem with this is G couldn't care less in such small numbers. It would take ~a million+ webmasters to do this to start to have any effect. Just a few dozen or hundred doing it isn't going to even get their attention due to their 8 billion indexed pages--and it will only hurt you for the occasions where you DID show up in their SERP's.
Theoretically it would work, but it would have no effect until their index shrunk to that of less than Y or MSN.
Are there any reliable figures out there?
