Forum Moderators: Robert Charlton & goodroi
Have been waiting for google's pending update but didn't get any on that. From last two days I have noticed extreme changes in search results for same google domain (like .com or .de or .nl etc.) with different interface language selected (like hl=de or hl=en or hl=nl). When you change the interface language the whole bunch of results are different.
Is this the actual update this time? Enabling the geo centric data which google wanted to implement for better localization? If yes (and if someone else is also seeing this change) then may be we can all identify the parameters of this new change, like language, servers in geographical locations or extensions (.de, .nl etc.)
-- rishi
This is great news. Thanks Google. A couple of stiff competitors have been dumped. Not sure why.
Changes I made over the last several months:
- removed any duplicate content
- removed all dead links from our links section
- cleaned up the HTML and removed invalid ALT tags
- changed dynamic db generated pages to appear as static pages.
- added 400+ static pages of product specific content
- waited VERY patiently
Back from the grave. I hope it lasts.
[edited by: zaneta at 3:29 pm (utc) on Oct. 17, 2005]
Now when I search for products I used to come up 1st for, The first couple pages show a couple sites that survived this, and the rest is sites that is are of stock on the products, have poor coding or hasn't shown for years is showing. Some old sites...... Also a lot of ebay.uk, ebay.ca, ebay and eopinions, dealtime, amazon and nextag showing on those searches I do that I used to be there for.
Our business and traffic this past few days has drastically dropped to about 1/2 as much. In the past year we have adjusted our company with extra help to accommodate the business and now there are going to be some people sitting with no work.
Is there hope? Should I be doing something? I have added new products on a very regular basis via a programmed database catalog I integrated into the site to make it easier to update. I have done linking with relevant sites which I "thought" that is what you are supposed to do. I have added content - articles, tips and a blog. I just wonder what I need to be doing. I thought I was doing it. Am I crying? Yes! I don't know what else to do. All I can ask is why, why why?
dumbfounded,
stuff4beauty.com
2) In many (not all) the serps have completely new sites appearing with the old established sites only ranking well for the odd phrase. The theory that this is adwords driven ( sites that previously had tons of free traffic can now pay) seems to fit what has happenned, though it is a bizarre theory.
That hypothesis isn't borne out in the SERPs that I watch, where the major players haven't changed much. I don't see anything like the changes of a few months ago where huge machine-generated "user review" sites were leaping to the top 10 for every imaginable travel phrase.
I think there's a tendency for people to draw general conclusions from their own experiences (and I'm not directing this comment at anyone in particular). When your own pages drop drastically or disappear from the rankings, it's easy to believe that there's been an upheaval in the SERPs. (I know that I thought there was an update on March 23 when my own Google referrals and those of several other established travel-information sites dropped by 70-75%, but very few Webmaster World members even acknowledged a blip.)
I have been watching activity last 2 weeks with it going up and down for us. The new serps fom yesterday seem across most of the datacenters. However, today is the first time I have seen lots of threads on other forums about changes. Also noticed some changes in our backlinks on one subdomain, though it went back when I re-checked.
So I think this is the start...though no doubt wishful thinking on my part...
Also some datacenters showing zero PR (as opposed to 6) for some subdomains...so something is afoot I would think.
One of my sites (pr6), concentrated (as the only site in the WHOLE WORLD) on a small area of a small (but famous) island, has gone completely of the charts, and the area is taken over by the "big boys" also selling something there on the side.
It has a lot of (internal) duplicate content (some texts are duplicated 100+ times), because of the way it was structured, and it runs a link exchange.
Also seems like google has dropped about 75% of its pages from the index of the first site.
Still looking for some other changes... google.de is showing some different results for one of my targets.... Which I like better.
But I noticed that one particular site in my field, not exchanging links (just 115 "naturals"), and plenty of original content has gone up like hell for all major keyphrases in the field.
Another site I have, doing a link exchange, and at one section a lot of duplicate content (because of structure), and at another section a lot of original content (allthough plenty of supplementals, its a phpBB forum), hasn't been touched as it seems, allthough traffic is lower.
Some data for those people trying to figure things out. It seems in hindsite I've made some mistakes but most everything I've done was in respone to the sandbox. Using exchanged link and directory listing to try and get traffic while I was in google preschool.
-It's 10 months old, came out of the sandbox almost 5 months ago.
-I've used a moderately active link exchange approach.
-Bought listings in many directories.
-I link to the home page throughout the site with our main keyword. It's actuaally makes sense, but...
-Site has over 1000 pages, about half product pages and half original articles related to the product.
-I do have some site wide links pointing to it.
-Was page 2 and climbing on google for most keywords in a competitive market. Now the site is not in the top 500 for any of the targetted keywords.
-I RSS feed out the articles.
Hope that helps somehow. In my market the updated SERPS don't look awful. Most of the major players are still there just shuffled around a bit. Almost all of them use the same methods I listed above. I know several of them personally and have studies the rest. I know what they are doing and my methods are tame compared to many of them. The only differince I can see is that my site is younger.
I'm not changing anything yet. We'll wait and see how this plays out. Congrats to the people that have jumped up with this update. I'll be back up there with you soon, save me a spot. ;)
I don't know about the link exchange..
Some have said that sites that exchanging links have been hit hard, my sites have 100% 1 way links, and they have been hurt.
Back to the equalizer comment, Google will be adjusting its algo, testing quality control, playing with elements ie sites from x are worth y. Recip links , lets apply 1-10 values, and so on and so forth.
A Google Algo bomb has just gone off, and there is dust everywhere....wait for dust to settle.
Has anyone else with site wide links noticed a big drop in rankings?
Glad to hear that you are still 3rd on the Bacon Polenta [64.233.171.99...] . Once they deploy that nice lady, there will be some tweaking too, as usual.
Edited to add:
Numerous scraper site seem to have a better position than me searching with in above way (including my sitename) with 2 different searches I've tried.
me. Unintentional, but Google sees it the same: [webmasterworld.com...] (message 52)
those pages have now been deleted from Google. I wonder how long it will take to come back.
Remember just because your site has stayed stable doesn’t mean an update is going on. Many sites have been given a bye for quite some time in every area. Also remember commerce sites have to sell something to keep people employed. They can’t devote countless hours to creating content about the history, evolution, and future of each product and then plop Adsense on it. Adwords is fair product at best for most, not a good, very good, or excellent product.
What I’m seeing in my areas is a major shift in thinking for how sites are ranked. Many sites won’t be back because the quality markers are unattainable and you can't SEO around them.
Just if Google are not helping anyone then I am losing the will and I have pointed this out to so many and seen there sites improve while mine dont :( - But hey.
stuff 4 beauty
You have a really bad duplicate content issue regarding non-www and www. Google has indexed your non-www homepage and followed links from this page to index other parts of the site (under the non-www)
This could be the cause of your problem. You may wish to consider doing a 301 redirect from you non-www to your www (or vice versa).
Lots of examples can be found of how to do a 301 redirect at WebmasterWorld especially in the Apache forum.
Me! From a site wide going for identical keywords. That's a one-way sitewide btw.
Nice observations. You made me look a little closer at what is going on.
We have a 5 year old site that has been #1 or #2 for the past 4 years on various keywords.
PR6 site
12,000 back links (10,000 sitewides from various sites we have been advertising on for over a year, they are in our market and send us a bunch of visitors) The rest are one ways and about 50 recip’s
I picked a middle of the road keyword result that we have always done well on for our main page. 4,500,000 results
What we see is all supplemental results on the first page. If your keyword is in the main URL your not on the first page anymore. That is across the board for what I am looking at. I am seeing the same thing as Mhes as far as results showing.
“exact match in the body text (preferably bold, H tag or anchor text) plus a nice distribution of words making up the phrase scattered throughout the page then it ranks well.” -- But these are not very good results and way off topic sites that should not be on the first page when searching.
I am also seeing sites that have text links to our site ranking higher for that keyword than we are. Which is odd. I don’t think it’s a penalty on our site since the same thing has happened to all of our competitors. We have also not dropped out of the results just off the first page. All sites above us have lower PR, not as many backlinks, and lower keyword density. We have always stayed well within the guidelines for all of these and have enjoyed good rankings becuase of it.
We do not have all our eggs in the Google basket. We rank very well in Yahoo and MSN. We do adwords, Overture, and other website advertising. I am glad some people have made it back in the listings but the results are still “not right”.
Most of us work hard and stay within the guidelines. I can live with someone getting better listings by working harder doing what’s right but this is strange. I am left scratching my head of what to do now.
Looks like Google turned the knob too far on one of the filters. I am getting results from one page of a site where the whole site has nothing to do with the original search. I guess you could call it an adwords filer. If that’s what the page is about and you use Adsense on the page you could rank well for that word and get a bunch of click thru’s on the ad. Good for Google good for the adsense advertiser bad for us that rely on the free listings for targeted traffic.
Add content and get more links don't seem to cut it with this change. If others can investigate a little more and take some personal I got burned feelings out of it maybe we can all figure this change out.
Please explain - what is a non www and a www - I did not know I had duplicate content?
Confused
stuff4beauty
Do a search for your domain in this format site:example.com -www
See all those listing Google has indexed without the www?
I am starting to think that the home page is the main problem when it comes to non-www indexing.
Look at example.com - you have PR3 and www.example.com - you have PR5 - Google is clearly treaing the non-www and the www of your site as different entities - when you do a 301 redirect from non-www to www everytime Google (or anyone) access the non-www they will be automatically redirected to the www.
I can live with someone getting better listings by working harder doing what’s right but this is strange.
Thanks for the reply - Is this hard to do? Will is mess up my website at all? Help! How would I go about doing this? I appreciate help - I have never heard of this. Thanks!
This thread probably covers it and refrences GG post regarding the subject for a bit of assurance for you.
[webmasterworld.com...]
Cheers Dayo
