Forum Moderators: Robert Charlton & goodroi
My understanding is that this filter is sitewide rather than page by page, and that it can only be removed by top level Google people - do others see this as a problem for many sites?
The first post in the thread was titled "G's dup content filter" and the subhead referred to "&filter=0." But then there was this quote also: "This results in downranking at Google so severe it usually results in the loss of almost all G traffic." My early hunch was that two different issues were being raised in the first post, not just the &filter=0 thing.
But a few early responses in the thread also referred to the &filter=0. And I confused things by adding: "We've seen exactly what CIML described" because I think you were referring mainly to "&filter=0", when in fact I was referring more to the early kind of filtering, which I found was being discussed a lot in N.O.
We have been looking at the "&filter=0" thing also, and there do seem to be a few little quirks to it, but to be honest I don't find the &filter=0 thing very difficult to understand, nor do I find it very useful. Most of the serious filtering (as I think you infer?), is being done before we get to that point.
So we've been spending a lot more time looking at that earlier kind of filtering, which I think is related to the problem I outlined in Case Two (msg#19). jomaxx echoed it in msg#21 also. This (new?) filtering system is *not* working well.
The reason I made the comment in msg#19 about wondering if I'd pulled the thread OT was a question in my own mind about whether the first post was more about the "&filter=0" dup's, or sites/pages that are being filtered out earlier in the process. (My guess was that despite the fact that joeduck referred to "&filter=0" in his subhead, he was in fact describing the other kind of -- IMO more severe -- early filtering that is taking place.
This earlier filtering, it seems to me, changed in some important way in the most recent update, though there were signs of it as joeduck says, since Feb of this year.
Marcia may have nailed it in that supporters thread that I linked to in msg#11 of this thread (or not, I don't know), but her input and theories fit what I'm seeing, and what I'm seeing is to some extent pretty new. I think it is part of the new system they got up and running with this update.
So to be clear, what I'm focused on is this: In a notable number of cases not all explained by canonical and redirect and non-www issues, sites are seeing their subpages vanish while other, often weaker and/or partially duped subpages on much newer sites take their place. The homepage seems to stay mainly in tact or down a few spots only, though that's not always constant (what is).
It's almost certainly related to the earlier phases of filtering and/or dup detection, but it is being done in some new way I think, and so far it is not working in a way that favors more established or more quality pages.
It is related to dup content (partial or completely stolen), but the real question is how are they making the determination as to what stays? Our current theories include: semantic/word proximity issues, freshness, or certain kinds of link superiority ... or some combination of these.
However G is doing it, it's causing a lot of very high quality pages to fall out of the SERP's, usually from well regarded and sometimes very large sites, in favor of lesser quality pages, often from newer smaller lesser quality sites...
And the impression I got from joeduck's msg#23 is that in fact this sort if issue is what he was ultimately getting at also.
Whew. :/
However G is doing it, it's causing a lot of very high quality pages to fall out of the SERP's, usually from well regarded and sometimes very large sites, in favor of lesser quality pages, often from newer smaller lesser quality sites...
Nice summary/clarification post Caveman. In my first post I should NOT have asserted that the downranking is from &filter=0 because I've only noted association which is not causation.
> nor do I find it very useful
Personally, I think the original filter that can be removed with filter=0 is great. Especially when searching with &num=100, it is often noticeable how Google generally presents each page of content once, rather than several times on the same or different domains.
I'm perhaps preoccupied by the other issue. I can't say with any credibility at all how often the earlier stage filters are applied. I know they've been hitting some of our sites for a couple years now...since Florida anyway; so we keep those sites live for exactly one reason...to understand better.
joeduck, my best guess is that this issue (lots of subpages going away with Bourbon, but typically not the homepage), is the sort of thing that is not likely to stand for long, because its effect on the SERP's is in too many cases to reward the sorts of pages they're out to get: new thin aff pages, scraper site subpages, etc. While at the same time, they're losing many quality pages that they've been rewarding through think and thin, till a few weeks ago.
We're not doing much on it yet...but if it does stay this way for any length of time, we're guessing that the discussion previously alluded to in Supporters more or less explains gets to what is going on...though right now it's still far more guess than conclusion. Anyway, our guess leads to conclusions as to possible next steps.
Seems G has some sorting out to do with how they're currently weeding out similar pages from different sites. I'm probably feeling more patient right now than I might normally, because of the general belief that they've got a relatively new system on their hands.
I have 7 sites that went from a PR5-6 to PR0 overnight even though some of the pages retained some PR ranking (usually below PR2) and I'm trying to figure out how I offended Google..:0) Needles to say this decreased my overall traffic about 80% so any help I can get to try to figure this one out would be highly appreciated.
I did have some "spam" techniques on the sites which I'm redesigning now. But I don't think this was the entire reason.
I'd guess that your PR did fall - you won't see the new number on the toolbar until it updates and there is a lag there.
And I'd guess it was the spammy stuff that got you. I think their patience for things that even *appear* to be spam is very limited.
Site navigation causing dupe filtering would hit a LOT of sites and we have not heard of massive problems like that.
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