Forum Moderators: Robert Charlton & goodroi
Seriously, give Google what it likes. I saw free web space and subdomain accounts in the top for my keywords so I registered some new accounts myself and already see traffic.
At the moment it is the only way to get Google traffic for my original website (apart from Adwords).
I brought a domain anysite.co.uk on 05-Sep-2005
Added content to site made manually before 17-Sep-2005
Added first link on the Internet on 19-Septem-2005Indexed on 20-September, appear in Google all pages indexed ~60 pages.
25-Sept-2005 last visit of Googlebot.
26-Sep-2005 dissapeared from Google.
If your keywords are highly competitive and you were ranking for your major keywords the first few weeks and then disappeared and there are no technology blockers detering the search engine bots then it is likely Google's sand box which may last from 6 months to a year. If that is the case then find alternate ways to advertise your site (forums, press releases, writing articles, taking out ads and other paid advertising) and by submitting it to directories in your market.
We don't track keywords as site is broad in coverage. But when traffic dropped I check the site name in Google as in "Site name" not sitename.com.
Over the weekend this showed 4 pages of results from 1.6 million. First few our main page and a couple of subdomains and the rest sites that link to us.
Now previously before traffic plummetted, we had thousands of pages but not listing fro other sites, rather Google showed all our internal links (we use lots of subdomains).
Now tonight I am seeing 1.6 million results with thousands of pages listed. Our main site on the first few and some subs listed. But it is now listing all our external links rather than our internal ones. I figure this can only be good news.
Traffic appears to be recovering today....
James
One thing that I tried tonight was dumping a 1000 plus page affiliate product catalog, that was fed by remote server into my domain. I used the Google removal tool to take out that directory, and the results were quick: inurl and site:mysite.com have dropped those 1000 pages in Googles SERPS, although supplemental results remain. I'm hoping that removing this from my site will help recover any dilution of page rank or other penalties that might have occurred.
Also -- here's an odd one -- in trying out search terms for my site today, and then using &filter=0, I had some surprising results. On at least three searches, with the &filter=0, I occupied the top three or four positions on page one. These pointed to different pages on my site, all of them relevant for the search term used, those being home page, directory index page, and a particular content page or pages.
I can see why these pages would be picked for SERPS - each one includes the search term in some fashion ie home page might have "visit our widget index for more homemade widget directions," then the directory index itself has a title, like, Homemade Widgets, and a short snippet description of various pages available, with the content pages having a title like: Homemade Widgets: How to Make a Red Widget" and corresponding meta description and page content. But of course it would be ridiculous for Google to return three or four pages from the same site in the top four positions - so they impose a filter and take out ALL the pages. Problem solved.
Anyway, someone suggested (pages back in this thread) that duplicate navigation or duplicate metas might be triggering a filter in this update. I would say so...at least in the example cited above. It also involves duplicate snippets or phrases the pages might have in common.
As sites grow, and have to sub-divide content into different directories, this tendency to have multiple pages with the same snippet or description on it is almost impossible to avoid. It's logical and what readers expect to see -- but apparently the bots can't tell the difference between useful navigation descriptions and duplicate content/spam.
The filter that Google is applying is obviously meant to reduce duplication in SERPS results - the problem is, it is working too well and removing every mention of top ranking, worthwhile sites. They are sites who have worked hard to have a navigation system easily traversed by readers and robots. Their efforts are tripping Google out and I think this is why we are seeing respectable top ranking sites being totally devastated in this update.
Someone at Google needs to turn down the volume on the trigger button.
I'm also trying to deal with 301 and 302 redirects, so that's also part of it for me.
Sorry this is so long, but I felt this experience was relevant to solving at least part of the mystery we are all trying so hard to understand.
Well we certainly have a lot of snippets. Since we are a news site we tend to have a summary, which is first few lines of the story. No way round this as we publish 400 articles a day and as you say you have to display something beyond a headline for punters. We also have likes of news topics, where news from across the site is gathered...so again same snippets. But not something I will be changing.
Anyway, will be interesting week. If they are now listing all our external links I will be very happy as we have thousands, many from top 200 sites. Partly due to moreover, google news as well as when we get a scoop.
Traffic wise as I said it looks like last part of tonight it picked up and I noticed a boost to our stories on G News regards ranking, this must be tied to g search. But still below normal traffic...guess tomorrow and rest of the week we will see.
I also think there is more to come as you allude... fingers crossed all goes well.
I also think it odd this only seems to have hit certain sites. Hopefully Google Guy or such will weigh in with some explanation of what went/is going on.
I hear ya there. Our directory system uses the title of the article as the link and also a snippet (description) to give readers an idea of what each article is about. These happen to be the meta title and meta description of the the actual articles. To make matters worse on the bottom of most articles we show the most related articles to that article in which each use titles and snippets that are found in our directory. For visitors this structure is quite logical, easy to understand, and keep them within topics they are most interested in.
If there is some kind of penalty for doing this then I have the option of:
1) Removing the Title and snippets from the related articles as well as directory listings of the articles. This would leave virtually nothing in the directory and take usability away from our visitors by not having the related articles. <- OK stupid idea.
2) Rewriting thousands of descriptions and titles so that the link does not match the meta title/description or title of article or both. To keep the related articles we would have to add a 3rd description/title for snippets on related articles so they don't match any meta titles/descriptions or any links or snippets in the directory.
I guess #2 would be a good test. But why should any webmaster have to do all of that. (thank goodness I don't add some articles to another part of our site (like our shopping directory) then I would have to create a 4th title(link text)/description for each.
Perhaps, the reason is same. I assume my site get penalty also, because I added to many content during too short time ...
I also plan to use Google removal tool.
Please inform us about your recover.
Thanks,
Staring the day by looking at not less than 18 supplemental results added to my site when running command site:
Those files are something I removed by the removal tool for sometime ago. So here I´m removing the same files again by the same removal tool, instead of enjoying my morning cup of Java ;-)
This time I´m gonna keep the empty files (with meta NOINDEX, FOLLOW) on the server so I don´t need to create them again and again and again ....
I love ya Gooooooooooooogle ... but please keep those old supplemental results away.. maybe for ever if possible ;-)
We have exactly the same pattern: Headline as link, snippet, snippet in meta description and snippets from related articles.
I think, this is totally normal and it is user friendly. So I hope Google will not consider this as dupe content.
However we are punished. But I think it's related to another more obvious problem that was easy to solve via url console.
I wouldn't think google would punish for that but ya never know anymore.
Sites with associate networks like this have done very well ever since Bourbon. In my sector the #1 was nowhere 2 years ago and then launched 5 near identical sister sites all at the same time. Result was they have been firmly rooted at number 1 for almost 2 years. Plus they get the new sub topics underneath their listings.
Confusing and spammy link networks are a sure sign of authority for the dumb Googlebot.
I crunched my logs and saw a search term in Google that I had been checking earlier in the day. Results varied all day from my site at number one, to nowhere to be seen.
So...imagine my surprise when I try this one more time...and see my site not only occupying the number one slot...but sitting there at the top of the page, proud as you like, with some additional stuff on there that I've never seen before.
Here we go - it looked like this:
Widget Stuff, More Widget Stuff, Widgets (page title)
How to make widgets; homemade widgets; special widgets;(page description)
[mysite.com...] 22k (cached) (similar pages) - the normal stuff we expect, and then:
Foreign Widgets - Maple Leaves
Junior - Junior Stuff; Recycled Widgets
More results from mysite.com
Each of the four categories below the usual SERP listing was a link to four different main directory index pages on my site. The More Results link pulls up another page featuring links to all pages on my site.
Awesome. Maybe I was wrong asking Google to turn the volume down. Maybe this update is just starting to make sense. And maybe, just maybe, Google is lifting the bar here on search engine results.
Wow.
www.mysite.com/product.php?content=blue-widgets
Similar Page
from this
Blue Widgets Here - Review of Blue Widgets
more blurb about blue widgets etc
product.php?content=blue-widgets Cached - Similar pages
None of the php pages above appear in searches other than site:www.mysite.com
All my static pages are ok.
I am guessing that I'm getting done over for duplicate as many of the php pages had similar info. The annoying thing is that there is unique content on each page (maybe two paragraphs and of course 'variable' word) so why are they being dropped?
Yahoo and MSN seem ok with them.
Which DC was it?
That format of displaying results has been tested for a while - nothing to do with the update.
Probably been half a dozen threads on WebmasterWorld about it. :)
No improvements for my sites yet (surprise surprise)
