Forum Moderators: Robert Charlton & goodroi
What I mean is if there is an update today, do I look back and say 'Thank goodness I posted that new page and got that impressive new backlink from the BBC yesterday' or are we more likely to be saying 'Thank goodness I got all that work done a month ago.'
I know that with other variables such as everflux it's a really difficult scenario but I just spend a lot of time wondering.
For instance if I write 5 new pages today and find someone has linked to our homepage from an authority source, I tend to think 'Great! but I hope Google doesn't update for at least another couple of weeks so I can see the benefit!
What do others think?
I personally stopped worrying about Google a while ago, i focus on what my visitor want and try to make them the stay at my site as interesting as possible (most of the time it is imo anyway what the Google-Algo wants)...
Before that i was chasing Googles Algo, reading up daily on every possible new move, about how to get the last litte link, follow google Updates threads here and analysing my site to death.
If i compare before and after i must say the groth of my site is the same then before and i have a much less stressfull time...
regards
viggen
I personally stopped worrying about Google years ago,
Obviously you haven't been victimized by Google lately or your site is entirely a labor of love and not profit.
When your traffic drops 90% you worry about Google and those who think they're immune because they "play by the rules"--just wait. These rules will change out from under you, there are plenty here that will agree.
Back on topic, it is always easy to look back and say, "I'm glad I got this new page in before the update," or "I wish I had." But since Google is so totally capricious in its update timing and the application of its own rules and the rules that it hasn't yet announced that it's impossible to time your development stage.
Unless you have a web site assembly line development stages tend to be marked by very fuzzy lines anyway.
DITTO. Been there, done that. Whined and moaned...nobody listened. Hammered with several updates over the years. Added links, links, and more links. Worked on making the site more user friendly. Now averaging a pretty good sticky ratio of 9.0 plus pages per visit. Quit paying for adwords too:)
Did I mentioned anything about links?
Obviously you haven't been victimized by Google lately or your site is entirely a labor of love and not profit.
That is a bit ignorant. There are lots of sites on the internet that get lots of traffic that probably don't rank high for any well-searched keyword in any search engine.
Getting search engine traffic is simply one way to get traffic on the internet.
I think the point here is that some people have forgone worrying about that because it is way too unpredictable and hard to control and instead focused on other methods that provide more steady and controllable level of traffic.
Usually sites affected by the updates are not influences by when and what has be updated on the site. Usually it is external factors or structural design that the updates affect the most.
Obviously you haven't been victimized by Google lately or your site is entirely a labor of love and not profit.
Website owners that allow themselves to be "victimized" by google deserve what they get. We've lost significant traffic to several of our website over the last 90 days or so, but we had the forethought to diversify our traffic sources long ago, so althugh it certainly "stings" in terms of (probably temporary) lost traffic, it has certainly not "victimized" our business.
It always amazes me the sense of entitlement expressed by some webmasters. The fact that your site may be the "authority" on your chosen subject matter has little to do with you deserving free traffic from another company. Google is ONE source of traffic. If your business can't survive without it...you don't have a business, you have a monthly gambling operation you've been lucky enough to pull a profit from to this point.
you have a monthly gambling operation you've been lucky enough to pull a profit from to this point
From my experience that is a good definition of any small to medium business.
...it has certainly not "victimized" our business.
Stung but not victimized? He blinded me with semantics!
Google is an abuser and a victimizer, you may be in denial many victims are.
Google is reckless and thoughtless in the way it deals with webmasters and ought to be ashamed.
There mission is to provide results to the general public. If they fail in that there apology is to the public. They don't exist to serve webmasters therefore how can they victimise them. As advertising clients (adwords) yes but thats a different thing.
Google isn't for webmasters - I feel very strongly about this.
When you have a longstanding business relationship with someone where large sums of money have changed hands quite regularly you treat that person or company with some respect.
Google is arrogant and rude, I expect more than that from people I deal with.
Maybe you think you should be treated like dirt I don't.
The tone of their canned responses is polite but they have no consideration whatsoever for the reality that they are dealing with human beings whom they have led down the garden path of expectations with their behavior. They are arrogant and rude.
Thanks, Just want to project my future.:)
I agree that Google do not owe anything to webmasters, but they should attribute at least 50% of their visits to them.
Back to the original question, I think the frequency of new content inclusion is just down to the quality of your incoming links. If the amount of quality incoming links say that you have very important content you will eventually find your new content being picked every couple/few days. If not, you'll be on the main update every few weeks or so.
I'm starting to believe that content is the only way to get back up there. The latest updates seem to be able to sniff out the most obvious cheats, and although the results still seem to favour the directories, link machines and other thousand page plus site - I'm sure Google will eventually shoot them down too.
I felt the same way 18 months ago. Back then 85% of my traffic came from Google. I thought Google owed me that traffic and that i have a business relationship with them, but i didnt, i happend to be listed often on their site, thats all.
Then I decided this cant go on like this anymore and started to spend every month 20% of my profit in promoting my site to get away from that ratio. I invested with that money heavily in my community, useabillity and also in "nowhere else to be seen content".
Today i still get 55% of my traffic from Google, however the remaining 45% would be sufficient to make me have a decent living off my site if Google decided to drop me from their index.
Dont get me wrong, i enjoy getting tons of free traffic from Google, however i am not foolish in thinking it has to last forever, but instead try very hard to make those Google Visitors in regulars that come back without using Google.
Folks who have sites in the daily crawl will attest to the fact that the changes they make have an effect within 24-48 hours. (The last call for alcohol seems to be around 4-5AM UTC for our sites -- before which we need our daily batch uploaded).
There are some boosts in traffic on Sunday / Monday, perhaps related to some heavier batch jobs which are run over the weekend(?)
I'd say, focus on getting your site into the daily crawl by keeping it fresh, gradually getting links and avoiding dupe fiters. Eventually, you reach a point (PR5-6ish with daily updates) where you can get google to crawl you daily -- I think this might have something to do with the shards your sites are placed in.
I thought Google owed me that traffic and that i have a business relationship with them, but i didnt, i happend to be listed often on their site, thats all.
You have an inferior sense of your own self-worth, you're better than that and you should wake up to the fact that Google owes you more respect.
I don't have a problem with a company ruthlessly crushing its competition and taking the market, that's just business.
But I am not competing with Google, I'm helping them and I deserve their respect.
If you think you're not worthy and want to grovel before the uber-engine go right ahead but I have more pride than that.
If my audacity amazes you, good. Watch me, I'll be around for a while and I won't lie down for abuse.
I think my product is the best around and our great service to the customer was why we were able to create the sector and grow.
Why is it fair or right that Google can shift my site around the SERPS on a whim, whilst my competitors (who have all ripped off my concept already) can use dodgy SERPS manipulation tactics to get ahead of me and graudally erode my customer base?
That is not whining. It is comment on the monopoly power and zero accounability Google has over web search.
It is as if one corporation controlled 75% of the shop units in thw world and could control who went into them and when.
What we need is more credible competition and eventually some kind of global body to monitor the situation.
When your traffic drops 90% you worry about Google and those who think they're immune because they "play by the rules"--just wait. These rules will change out from under you, there are plenty here that will agree.
And when it happens, you often are left playing a guessing game, trying to determine what, if anything, you've done wrong. Or perhaps it's not you at all, it's just Google fiddling with the filters or algo.
It's a two-way street. Google needs our sites in order to do what it does, and we need Google to bring people to those sites.
For instance if I write 5 new pages today and find someone has linked to our homepage from an authority source, I tend to think 'Great! but I hope Google doesn't update for at least another couple of weeks so I can see the benefit!
I wonder if you're perhaps trying to quantify that benefit? In other words you want to think "OK, I know that doing that was directly responsible for my jumping 10 places in the SERPS"?
I wouldn't worry too much about it - you're chasing an ever-changing algorithm. Remember the elements of the Google algo are each weighted, and it's the weightings that tend to change, not the overall shape or form of the equation.
I know from your postings on here that as a webmaster you know enough to know that, with your "5 new pages" example, the probability is it will have a positive effect.
Quantifying it is not important, and essentially impossible without knowing those all important weightings.
I tend to think that all natural SEO flows from content. Your example is also a good example of that - new content, attract a couple more inbounds, a couple of bloggers start talking about it. Readers of those blogs link to it.
It all has a long-term effect of establishing your pages as "authority" pages - for both Google and users.
So with that in mind, I would answer your questions as follows:-
What is the optimum development stage prior to an update
The time in between the last one and the next one ;-)
Seriously though, stopping your development just so you can see a result is actually a waste of valuable time. You only really want to stop and seriously have a think about something if it's gone drastically wrong, in which case you'll be burning a few candles pondering over this:-
[webmasterworld.com...]
.... and put the new content creation to one side while you work out where you went wrong.
Where are you when the modern updates take place?
In a position of having more inbound links and more content since the last one.
TJ
