Forum Moderators: Robert Charlton & goodroi
The problems seem to be getting worse now that Google has been listed. Maybe the engineers arent the problem, but are just following orders.
Your scenario: A bunch of cocky programmer geniuses at Google are nodding obediently and keeping their mouths shut while an investment banker on Wall Street sends them lists of domains and pages that should be promoted or demoted in the search rankings.
My scenario. LOL. If you re-read my top comment I said "maybe". However I dont think engineers have total control over Google results. I think group meetings of Google top brass will decide, and then tell the engineers what they want. I never said these people were Wall Street bankers.
My scenario: Changes in Google's algorithms and filters simply aren't favoring certain types of pages or sites at the moment, and some legitimate pages are getting lost from the SERPs as a result.
This isnt a case of favoring certain sites, a huge chunk of sites have disappeared, probably never to return. Again I doubt it's some legitimate pages, from the general consensus on most webmaster forums. You may not be hurting because of this update, but some of us are on death row. It seems more severe than all the previous bad updates. I just cant see alot of websites returning.
Yeah.
What Google reminds me of is in my earliest days of maintaining mainframe programs. You would have these immense monsters that dozens of people had worked on over the years until their complexity was such that nobody could fully appreciate the implications of any code change anywhere.
What bothers me is Google seems to go happily along kind of like "Oh well. If a few thousand legit sites get killed off, that's life."
At this point they have to know that any change is going to have huge effects throughout the index - punishing the innocent as well as the guilty - but they apparently just don't care. And its not even clear what conceivable improvement they are trying to achieve. Consensus is every major change they have made over the past year or so has actually made their results less relevant.
Now, after last weekend, most of our sites are in the 50s and 60s. I'd hate to think that Google would do any such thing, but boy, it sure makes me wonder.
This isnt a case of favoring certain sites
I said Google may not be favoring certain types of sites at the moment. That has a much different meaning.
a huge chunk of sites have disappeared
That's hyperbole, not observable fact.
probably never to return.
What basis do you have for that statement? We've had quite a few reports here about sites have taken a hit in Google and recovered after a few months. (Mine is one of them; it may have been a victim of the www-vs.non-www canonical/duplicate content issue.)
Again I doubt it's some legitimate pages, from the general consensus on most webmaster forums. You may not be hurting because of this update, but some of us are on death row.
Been there, felt that. I tried not to lose my objectivity, though. Search rankings are like the stock market: Sometimes you're up and sometimes you're down, but the important thing is to prosper over the long term.
It seems more severe than all the previous bad updates.
Sure, it seems that way to you because you're hurting. I've seen hardly any changes in the SERPs that I track, so to me it doesn't even look like an update at this point. I'll bet you weren't talking about a "severe update" last March, when I lost 70-75% of my Google referrals overnight, as did a number of other content publishers of my acquaintance. But it sure seemed like a "severe update" to me (even though Brett didn't acknowledge it as an update, unlike Danny Sullivan over at SEW). Severity, like beauty, is in the eye of the beholder at any given point in time.
Whether currently affected site owners will recover is going to depend on several things, namely:
1) Whether they're victims of a glitch (in which case they'll probably recover in time);
2) Whether they have technical issues or other problems at their end that, rightly or wrongly, make it harder for Google to do its job (such as failing to redirect non-www URLs to www or vice versa).
3) Whether their content is the type of content that Google wants to index. (Boilerplate content, cloned directories, and scraper sites may not qualify.)
But it's too early for site owners to talk about Doomsday; even if they've been whacked by the current update or tweak, that doesn't necessarily mean they'll still be out of the Google index or down in Google's rankings several months from now.
a huge chunk of sites have disappeared
That's hyperbole, not observable fact.
I know my sector inside out. Lots of my competitors have totally disappeared. Many of them 4-5 years old. Of course I cant give evidence.
I've lost about 80% of traffic three times over the past year and a half, I never complained on WW or had a go at Google. I expected to be back in time and always was.
This time it just feels different, I have no evidence. It's the fact my main site hasn't just lost it's traffic, it's just disappeared off the Google map. I've seen this with plenty of 4-5 years sites in my sector.
I agree it isn't Doomsday, but it sure feels close this time. My sites have been up and down in Google for 4 years plus. It's the first time some of them have totally disappeared.
In the past people always complained on these threads about losing a % of traffic. Now it seems to be more and more of 'My site is lost'.
[edited by: mikeD at 7:48 pm (utc) on Oct. 3, 2005]
Have to agree with bobmark here. No basis for it except observations over last year or so.
Google used to be a young company, fast on its feet and with the origins and goals of its program clearly in sight.
I too worked on bug fixing for ten years on what was, well.. lets just say a very large and complex design program easily on a par with the complexity of the Google programs, OK so what? well my experience was that after a while programs get out of hand, too big, too clumsy and complex and need a rewrite..this is when the new guys come along and the whole thing repeats..
Could Google already be at that stage?
is is when the new guys come along and the whole thing repeats..
Could well be, MSN and Yahoo are producing results nearly equal to Google now. Google's success was always on being an inclusive engine. If they wont allow new sites to rank well then they have long term problems.
I for one would like you to come over and wash my car.
It may be tempting, but people should obey this forum's charter and not make pleas, obnoxious or not, for Google Guy to say something about anything. He'll speak when he has something to say.
And once again, I have no clue where this weird presumption that Google is perfect comes from. They screwed up. They would fix it if they could -- if they recogonize the problem. With 302s in February, the Google employees were in pure denial, frankly foolishly so. Perhaps that is the case here, but that seems unlikely. They screwed up badly in an obvious way... and it is obvious because there is no upside here to the screwup. In other words, &filter=0 did NOT show any significant amount of spammy sites disappearing. If this filter was intended to hurt low quality sites, it didn't happen. I only see authority sites, and good quality mid-level sites, being the ones to disappear.
The Supplemental Index was a stupid stupid stupid idea that has some merits (lots of stolen copies of pages DO end up there after all), but it is badly conceived and horribly implemented.
Google is my friend, but every one of my friends has done stupid things in their lives and needed to be told to go take a lie down. Google fix your core product please. It's embarrassing to see my friend hurl in the bushes this long.
This would make sense if not for my personal experience and others reports here.
We are talking sites that had decent midrange PR and page 1 SERPs for relevant keywords for several years that suddenly gone. Mine - and I believe others by their posts - are content driven sites with 1,000+ plus original pages developed over several years - no tricks, no questionable linking strategies, just honest sites banished to page 100 land.
In my categories, it is precisely the "boilerplate content, cloned directories, and scraper sites" which are now dominating page 1. So my solution is what? Screw 5 years of work in a legit retail area and get started on scruing-donkeys-with-viagra.com?
[edited by: mikeD at 8:18 pm (utc) on Oct. 3, 2005]
Which scenario is more likely to be accepted by a reasonable person who doesn't have an axe to grind?
One would be inclined to think they are NOT influenced, but it may be a hybrid of the two in that Google is measuring ad revenues - it's overwhelming source of money and success and valuation - on a daily basis.
If an update change dramatically affects those revenues it's hard to imagine this is simply ignored.
Could the success of scraper and junk sites at Google be at least in part due to the fact they help boost adsense revenues and thus it was low priority to worry about them?
Now that scrapers are a plague on the index Google must get rid of them to preserve the integrity of the index, and they appear to be working on that, albeit too slowly and with much collateral damage.
Whether in Google or in war, collateral damage is a self-serving term to cover failure.
The point of Google's "war" is to improve the index; killing legit sites and elevating exactly what they are trying to kill is not collateral damage, its failure.
For some keywork searches at Google, there's more adwords ad ($$$) links, them non-adwords web site links. It's OK for Google to make money from there web pages, but don't you load-up you web pages with affiliate ad links. If you do your out!
Worst I have ever seen! IMO!
Againt TOS, I simply said what I would like, no plea or demands made.
However, Google is many years and an IPO away from admitting imperfections.
As with any large corporation or public entity its SOP is: ignore, deny, obfuscate, blame others.
I DO suspect they will fix this eventually...not because they are concerned that having achieved dominace they are killing the honest sites that helped put them there, just because it may affect their bottom line if they start losing searchers to competitors.
AltaVista, AltaVista and rivals
Saying you were bigger could help attract users
AltaVista, AltaVista and rivals
Spent all of their days counting up pages
from
End Of Size Wars? Google Says Most Comprehensive But Drops Home Page Count
By Danny Sullivan,
very interesting (though many members have already read it)
However, it's given me a good chance to have a look at some results in detail.
My biggest (and most commercial) site has been pretty much wiped out, however even when taking into account duplicates, there is an extremely high proportion of unique content.
The site has reasonable PageRank (PR5), but does not (for example) have a link from the ODP.
The site uses AdWords extensively.
The site is a .co.uk domain. Due to restrictions on registration, that needs to be renewed in 2007. The .net and .com versions have virtually no PageRank but were outperforming the .co.uk in the SERPs. They expire in 2010 and 2011.
The site is hosted in the UK.
The results at the moment look just like a PR0 penalty, and yet PR is still showing on the toolbar.
So I wonder, is there a common pattern to the sites that have dropped out?
I cant put my finger on this, but if this is due to the scrapers then I dont think that there much that we can do but to rewrite whole sites from scratch. I dont think I want to do that. I cant see how G can tell who copied who, I just dont think that they have the ability nor the knowhow to tell the original owner from the scraper.... unless someone here can tell me otherwise - but I highly doubt it.
I have had some problems in mid Dec of 04 - ranks started to shift up and down, but many remained in the top20. then on 2nd of Feb 05 the site was gone, but mostly recovered on March 8th and fully recovered on 28th of March 05. no problems since, but now the site is gone. filter=0 does not bring it back. the SERPs in my sector look pretty bad - most of the sites in the top20 should really not be there and hardly deserve the spots that they occupy. quite shameful.
as some of you have said above, it feels different this time, hence my first post here ever. I'm not sure what this is all about, nor am I complaining, but if this is the way G is going to reward unique content sites, I will just have to join the dark side of it all - it seems to be working that way. a shame indeed.
How many unhappy - rejected - legit SEOs will go to the dark side due to this?
If 'SEO is like the stockmarket' - as has been mentioned here, then it is admitted there is no stability in following googles rules.
This whole thing is going to encourage BH sites and I dont know if google is ever going to be able to really spot them. - exept they use alot of adsense and affiliates on their pages.
Content IS there to a machine - snippets, articles, rotating stuff, fresh each 27 hours etc.
Do these 'updates' get rid of BH?
No! - as they say just throw up another site - if you make 30 sites a day and loose a couple its no effect.
Really google should just focus on keeping the top twenty results clean.
I'm starting to think google sees any seo as spam, anything like meta, any sort of keyword density, link gaining etc
Do no evil has gone into a google paranoia of 'SEO evil is everywhere'
I feel that if google had stayed inclusive then the authority and good quality mid-level sites would easily be out ranking the scrapers. Whats the problem with having the scrapers on page 2, 3 and 4. The attack on scrapers will never work, because the sites are mobile, and always easily change with the times. The better strategy is to have quailty sites easily beat them in the serps.
In my very short time it is clear that many of the search engines, and Google especially, is way too focused on going after bad sites. Instead they should be focused on what it takes to be a good site and make sure those sites are included. Then armed with that information find out how they can diminish the sites they don't like, while protecting those things that make sites they want to include.
It seems clear to me they are doing things entirely backwards and are way too focused on excluding bad sites instead of including good ones. The reality is people using the search engines want good results at the top when they do a search. The fact that they eliminated a handful of bad results does not really help that. Google is way off the mark with their current focus and strategy.
Yeah. They remind you of how some people in law enforcement eventually come to regard the entire population as merely criminals who haven't been caught yet.
Tell ya one thing, we (all of us, world wide) need an industry association ("association of independent websites?" like that anyway) to deal with these kind of issues collectively. Almost every industry - including many a lot smaller thanus - has an association.
Because what we do is barely a decade old, we have not caught up with things like this but it is time as we have zero power individually. Google cares as much about one of us saying we are going to ban Googlebot as Microsft does if my grandma says she won't ever but a MS product again. Google does not even care if 50% of us go under.
I mean, GEEZ, how powerless are we? They won't even talk to us. I bought several bad bags of bagels, called the multi-national company that makes them toll free and got an apology and my money back. Screw a toll free, Google doesn't even answer our emails.
Despite the fact we provide 100% of Google content, they treat us like freeloaders who should be thrilled if a visitor ever shows up from them. All that's gonna happen is we'll be crowded out one by one from every sector as well financed giants with ties to Google, etc. take over.
So you're saying the people who pay into things like the independent motion picture producers association, the various independent trucking associations, etc. are all just a bunch of idiots who like to throw money away?
Virtually every industry has an association to:
1) lobby on their behalf both with industry and government if necessary;
2) collectively negotiate settlement of problem issues;
3) litigate those issues if #2 fails (forget copyright, you think Google isn't vulnerable to litigation on a whole ton of restraint of trade issues?);
4) address member issues on an individual basis if necessary.
5) a whole lot more.
Without one, we're all pikers to Google et al; a bunch of little guys they can afford to ignore individually, becuase we have no collective clout. So don't go all Reagan cowboy on me: Paul Revere was instrumental in setting up the Silversmiths Association...another whiny pinko, huh?
