Forum Moderators: Robert Charlton & goodroi
>>So do you think Google controls its SERPS by the use of filters and algoritm only? <<
They also use "Human Quality Raters".
[webmasterworld.com...]
When the figure 17,300 appeared my site almost vanished from SERPs.
Actually, originally a couple of months ago my site showed in Google 7,500 pages. I wrote to Google about it and got a reply that they forwarded my message to their engineers. I thought my troubles were finally over but to my astonishment in a couple of days instead of restoring my page count to 1900 they raised it to 17300!
To an onlooker this appears that I have created thousands of pages in a very short time by automated methods, thus spam. This is discrediting my site and I am seriously thinking of taking legal action.
They are abusing the power we, the websmasters, gave them and are acting like gods. Shame on them.
I'm taking the approach of going after the webmasters who steal. I can't force Google to do anything, but I can certainly force a weasel to remove my pages from his domain.
This is an unreal crime. I lose XXX daily and the guy who stole my site doesn't even rank. What a useless theft.
My site that was penalized in this update took a hit in the May update (around May 21). It came back in the beginning of July. I didn't do anything to the site to get it back in. I'm thinking it will come back again. Maybe in October. Again, I'm just letting it be.
I have quite a few sites - each on its own topic. They comprise of say 100 pages of quality content, and about 100 pages of on topic things to buy via affiliate programs.
About a month ago I updated two of them - I hadn't done much to them in ages (more than a year).
I added adsense to them.
I updated the affiliate pages.
Of all my sites, these are the only two that dropped down in rankings. However, the actual pages that used to rank well (top 5) have not changed (they contain no adsense / no affiliate content).
I don't imagine adding adsense would alter rankings.
Reading this, I tried adding '&filter=0' and saw my two sites back where they used to be.
But - when I checked for other sites containing my content by searching for a snipet off my pages that lost rankings - one site hadn't been scraped at all - the other had been scrapped by a couple sites only.
From what's been discussed, I can't help but think my updated 'affiliate content' has been seen to be more duplicate than the old affiliate content that it replaced... and has affected the whole site - not just the pages containing the 'affiliate content'.
>>Of all my sites, these are the only two that dropped down in rankings. However, the actual pages that used to rank well (top 5) have not changed (they contain no adsense / no affiliate content).<<
Here is my theory (c)Copyright 2005 by www.webmasterworld.com, All rights reserved ;-) :
If you are marked by Google as THIN AFFILIATE and have MOSTLY Affiliate referral links PLUS Any PPC spots (including AdSense) on the same page, the said page will be marked OFFENSIVE and drop in ranking
Above is to some extent in accordance with Google´s document "Spam Recognition Guide for Raters".
Thanks for the link. I do remember folowing that thread. It did not really convince me at the time,
although I would be very surprised if Google were not using hand intervention on some level (why would'nt they?).
I see no reason to think they would have bothered with my little 'ol site which is quite legal an inofensive.
I noticed from a previous post that you are more than happy with the results of this update, which is great.
I am happy for you. I myself have seen a pre-bourbon site with good earnings resurface,
however, I just can't ignore the way this update is incorrectly targeting original sites and favouring automated scraper sites that are feeding off of us.
Sorry, buts that just the way I see it.
Google will either reverse it, fix it(if it is in their power) or just bumble on. There seems nothing for me to do except wait and hope.
>>Reseller,
I noticed from a previous post that you are more than happy with the results of this update, which is great.
I am happy for you. I myself have seen a pre-bourbon site with good earnings resurface,<<
Allegra took away 75% of my Google´s referrals. Then on 22nd July (just 11 days after my birthday) I recievd from Google a birthday gift; Lost most of the remaining 25%.
My site at present is at a pre- 22nd July situation and still waiting to return back to a pre- Allegra one day.
Happy...maybe. Because my site hasn´t been hit again so far ;-)
How many webmasters have n't ripped off printed copy or other web sites copy by changing the odd word here or there? Everyone has done it!
Just because you don't blatantly copy doesn't matter.
I wrote a whole web site from a book's contents and it is making a nice amount from affiliates.
I find this really soul destroying as my site is mostly news and article based with 2-3 detailed articles and 10-12 news stories added a month. The content is unique and is written by one of the two editors or by a guest lecturer / academic.
There is nothing new I've done recently to the site and I can only think this filter has been triggered by other websites use of my content or a problem with the Google algo.
It makes me question remarks made in the past that other websites cannot adversely affect the listing of others. It seems as though by copying content from another site, mirroring the site, using redirects or some other technique can cause damage.
The only other consideration is that I know my site is on shared hosting and maybe other sites on the same IP are causing problems? Are other people who are experiencing the filter=0 issues also on a shared IP?