My site has been First Now vanished from Google

My site has been the first of its kind, I drop off Google

[sabine7777]

For the past year I have experienced periodically being completely dropped off Google. My site has been the FIRST of its kind and is in all the natural search results on the first spot. I'm just a small business, but since spet of 2004 I have been vanishing off of Google every 6 weeks or so--recently it has been more often and for longer periods. Does Google discriminate against Older sites? Are they doing it so that we will advertise with them? Any help, advice, comment from a desperate single mother of 4!

[reseller]

chopin2256

>>It could be true that search terms are filtered, but it also appears that whole domains are filtered as well.<<

Of course there could be "filtration" effects of many kinds.

But the changes since the 22nd Sept. are so extensive that its rather difficult to explain with the filtration effects alone.

[aliszka]

Don't think that the folks over at Ya__o don't know what's going on and all the upset people at Go___e, I think this will be a major turning point with search engines, I was on the phone with them yesterday! I offered my advice to them to do away with search sub and go back to free and capture 50% or more market share from Go___e!

All IMO OF COURSE!

[edited by: aliszka at 8:58 pm (utc) on Oct. 1, 2005]

[wiseapple]

>>It could be true that search terms are filtered, but it also appears that whole domains are filtered as well.

I am for whole domains. We have been dead since Feb. 2nd. Not matter in what form or format we add stuff to the site, no of it will rank in Google. The "&filter=0" moves stuff way up the charts. It's a brain buster. I feel like I am following the rules but getting nowhere.

[reseller]

wiseapple

>>I am for whole domains. We have been dead since Feb. 2nd.

.......It's a brain buster. I feel like I am following the rules but getting nowhere.<<

I have just looked at your site mentioned in your profile. Shall sticky you few suggestions.

[pescatore]

wiseapple
"We have been dead since Feb. 2nd. "
I made all the compinations of your title of your home page and you are always number 1 in over 1-2 million results.!

[anttiv]

Has anyone made any big changes to their filtered sites and seen improvement in traffic?

I noticed that I can get normal rankings by making a new subdomain for the filtered domain. If I moved one section from blue.widgets.com to red.widgets.com and set up a 301 redirect then I would regain some of my lost traffic. Should I test it?

[Iguana]

pescatore

try searching for the keywords on the home page (e.g. internal links anchor text) - you have to use &filter=0 to get wiseapple's site to rank at all in the SERPS.

This is different from the 'my site doesn't rank for it's own name' problem. For me, this shows that we are dealing with a set of filters - one is demonstrated by &filter=0, another is the 'doesn't rank for its own name'.

[bobmark]

"wiseapple
"We have been dead since Feb. 2nd. "
I made all the compinations of your title of your home page and you are always number 1 in over 1-2 million results.! "

Yeah, me too so I dunno what you mean.

Dead is when you have a PR4-PR5 site for 4-5 years that has thousands of pages in the index but does not even come up for the site title. Dead is when Google referrals drop to maybe 5% of former levels. Dead is when you have 1,000+ pages of original content, no questionable linking strategy (tho lots of awful unsolicited inbounds) abd virtually none of your leywords come up. Dead is when your idex page has PR0 and the highest ranked internal page is PR2.

Clearly something has gone horribly wrong with this. I don't believe it is deliberate by Google, but an unanticipated result of some esoteric filter they did not think through very well (which doesn't mean their motive for doing whatever they thought they were doing was not naked greed).

If I search for my site title (always #1 SERP in Google and still #1 in every other engine) the first spot is occupied by something called OXiDE Search. Nothing on the page contains any of the keywords which seems to indicate the magnitude of the Google screwup (You can bet if this happened to EBay they would be fixing it pretty quick).

My only hope is that something similar happened 2-3 years ago. For one month I was nowhere to be found and all the top spots were spam sites, fake directories, etc. Next update everything went back to normal.

While like everyone else I am scrambling to try and alter things, I suspect its pointless. A few dead links here and there, maybe less good inbounds than ideal but certainly nothing that should have resulted in this.

Great timing tho. I do 70% of my business now thru April.

[steveb]

Just talking about September 22 sites, are some people saying &filter=0 is still working for them?

I see that having no effect now, meaning pages no longer regain their proper rank when using &filter=0.

[Tinus]

Filter=0 is still working here.

[edited by: Tinus at 9:50 pm (utc) on Oct. 1, 2005]

[soapystar]

works for me.....

[outland88]

You're seeing it Soapystar but you explain it better. It perplexed me last week when those eight sites mentioned didn't drop and I did. I knew a supposed filter kicked in at those points and knocked you back 30-90 places. I had fallen slightly behind the group. Boom, those grouped sites this week dropped 400 places. It seems to kick in at various tiers.

[outland88]

I see the same thing as you steveb. I think Google is refining the filter in some areas. Testing.

[CanadianLove]

Not refining anything. Just hiding their deeds.

A certain Google search partner has always had the results unfiltered (including last December when the same filtering method was widely deployed). Look in your logs and you will know who this partner is...

[steveb]

Okay I see it is datacenter-dependent.

For example, &filter=0 still works on 64.233.161.105 but does not work on 216.239.63.104

[thebug151]

Ok, I can’t take it any more, I have to throw in my story. My site started in 1999, is a travel site. I made it through all the updates without even knowing that there were updates until Bourbon. I was in the top 10 for hundreds of searches (a few of which I should not have placed that high).

Before May 21 site doing great.

May 21, 2005 Bourbon takes away 3/4 of my traffic. I do not even come up in a for my name. But strangely about 4 or 5 very major kw I still come up in top ten. Example: Tennessee Widgets, & Pennsylvania Widgets. My other State Widgets drop to around 500. I do nothing to site. Four weeks after the start of Bourbon some of my main kw searches rise from somewhere in the 500s to around the 300s. No help but offers a little hope.

June 30, 2005 My site comes back in a very big way, about 20% more traffic than pre Bourbon.

September 21, 2005, (hummm, May 21/September 21) My site is gone again, except for the same states which held on the during Bourbon and a few more. Another strange thing. My site has widget information broken down by state then County. I still come up #1 when a search is done for exampleCity widgets. The page this search goes to is about exampleCounty widgets, but dose mention exampleCity in some of the text. By the way, this time I only dropped down to the level I was at about four weeks after the start of Bourbon.

Two last items:
This time around when I do a search for my web site name (Widget Widget Widget) I am #1 and #2 with 22,700.000 results.
When I add &filter=0 I come back to the same place as before this non updating update filter thingie.
For what its worth, there it is.

[chopin2256]

Just talking about September 22 sites, are some people saying &filter=0 is still working for them?

I see that having no effect now, meaning pages no longer regain their proper rank when using &filter=0.

I have never gotten this &filter=0 to work. I don't understand why not if it works for all of you guys.

[web_24_7]

I just applied filter=0 to my site name / brand name and it gave a huge index result that is nearly identical to the site: command except it ALSO included my blog and listed all pages in the blog and the home page.

It looked beautiful all those cached pages =)

shame the traffic is soo low?

Definately drop the filter is my vote!

It is strange that the filter results are now very different and I hope it represents what the results will be like once this is over.

[joeduck]

Has anyone made any big changes to their filtered sites and seen improvement

Good question - NO for us after many changes.

I'm increasingly convinced that Google must manually remove certain filters, and is reluctant to remove them once they have been applied (or possibly it's just very low priority). In our case site:oursite.com shows our pages but we get virtually no G traffic - down 99% since Feb 2.

I'm pretty pissed at the emails saying "your site has no penalty" when obviously we, and many others here, are penalized to the extent Google no longer sends visitors regardless of the page's relevance.

I no longer think Google is being straight about "no penalty", rather they do have a site wide filter that effectively kills the site for all searches. I also think this in contrary to Google's own interests in showing the most relevant results.

[pescatore]

message#801 and not any reply from someone G insider?

[NibbleGuru]

... I'm pretty pissed at the emails saying "your site has no penalty" when obviously we ...

hey joeduck, how/whom do you email/contact to know if u have been penalized?

[joeduck]

Nibble -

[google.com...]

Click webmaster.

Replies seem to vary greatly in detail, though I'm no longer convinced this system even gives you valid information becuase I think the support staff is not privy to the filters and penalties that are invoked at higher levels. This leads to emails stating "no penalty" for the thousands of sites that are now penalized by heavy duplicate and other filters.

[pescatore]

SOMETHING VERY IMPORTANT
check your recent added one way links using as key word www.mysite.com +links.check if they are coming from Casinos and Gambling sites.I strongly believe that competitors have discover that new way of disvalue authority pages by puting one way links on Gambling sites and other penalized sites.

[Pico_Train]

Something is in the air. What is pretty unclear...

Just checked one result where I have always been first. Now, I am 11th for the same keywords but for a different page.

There are loads of casino/make money quick sites linking in to me since about 3 months. They don't seem to have had an effect.

I disappeared in May, wrote to Google twice and came back about June 20th.

Traffic is good but not as good as it was previously.

Every other update I survived and in fact got better. Lately, it's just been waiting to see when I next get nailed for nothing.

Good luck to all!

[reseller]

Pico_Train

>>Something is in the air. What is pretty unclear...<<

Yes. Much Air Pollution.. thats what I see (:(

While testing my standard keyphrases, I see this site as #2 on the serps:

<TITLE>Free Widget1, Free widget2, Free Widget3, Free Widget4, Widget5, Free Widget6, Bulk Widget7, Opt In Widget8 Services, Widget9 Lists, Widget10, Free Widget11, Widget12 Free, Widget13, Widget14, Free Widget15 by www.site.com</TITLE>

And within <head></head> you see this comment:

<!-- Free Widget1, Free widget2, Free Widget3, Free Widget4, Widget5, Free Widget6, Bulk Widget7, Opt In Widget8 Services, Widget9 Lists, Widget10, Free Widget11, Widget12 Free, Widget13, Widget14, Free Widget15 by www.site.com -->

And more...and more of the same garbage.

Nobody talks anymore about the serps quality. Nobody cares. Most important is having a "LARGE INDEX" based on inflated number of pages, URL only, 404´s, dead links and pages which only exist in the mind of Mr. Eric Schmidt!

[Dayo_UK]

Yes EFV had a canonical url problem - it was fixed soon after it appeared so the correction in the G index was quick.

If the problem is left for a little while then G cant seem to fix it.

Yes, if you email Google and have a canonical url problem they say the site has not got a penalty.

Perhaps the engineers dont understand what the situation is - therefore lack of comments?

Google you indexed a site of mine this week (thursday) - took almost every single page - missed out the homepage though - lol good work yet again?

Listen Google - I will say this only another 92 times. The canonical url for my site is the homepage with the www - I have done the 301 - this is the page with the most backlinks - it is the page that should rank for the company name search. Etc."

[cyclinder]

I've just been hit by this stupid dup filter.

When searching for "online blue widgets"
my site is OUT of top-100, while with &filter=0
it is IN top-10

Question: will I stop being filtered if my postion rises? (for ex from TOP-10 to TOP-5)

[cleanup]

Not sure if I understand the question, how do you expect to rise with the filter in place which you say is pushing you down?

Seems like catch 22 to me.

If what you mean is.. that top sites are not being filtered I can say no to that, as I have seen two long time Google topping sites, non afilliates, totally original content, gone or limping badly after application of this (asumed) duplicate filter.

[AlexK]

chopin2256:

it also appears that whole domains are filtered

Certainly the case at my neck of the woods.

I've got 2 sites:
- mysite.com (php, 3 years old, continuously updated)
- mysite.co.uk (html, 4.5 years old, never updated)

Yesterday Google sent 1,595 people to the not-updated-for-4-years site and 677 people to the updated-daily site. Hardly seems worth 3 years work, yes/no?

[FattyB]

Well a change overnight on some results.

I note that when you search for My site Name it was showing main site, an article index and then a sub domain that was not very busy.

Now shows the same but a more popular sub domain in 3rd place and the less popular sub domain is way down on page 2 of the results...so I guess still movement across the board....for us.

Filter zero results are very different as well.