Forum Moderators: Robert Charlton & goodroi
I've said it again, and I'll say it here now - relying 100% on search engines to build and sustain your business is not sound business practice.
Google is nothing more than a fancy Yellow Pages. The rules for building a business have not changed in the internet era. Something about eggs and baskets comes to mind.
How long ago did you start trading links? Have you always solicited reciprocals on the site or is this something you have recently started?
Even if visitors from Google are only a small PORTION of someone's business, it is still important to them.
If Google is only 1% of your sales, should you be concerned about losing that 1%?
I would be.
- Edited for spelling
[edited by: tedster at 9:15 pm (utc) on Nov. 4, 2005]
1) Dupe content (this includes others stealing whats yours and putting it on their site)
2) www and non www (same as above check if there is an index / caching of [mysite.com...] and [mysite.com...]
3) Site wide links from others (check your backlink on all search engines if there is a site pointing to you from lots of its pages it can be construed as "bought links")
4) Link pages (if you have pages of outward links make sure they have content not just links)
5) Unnatural growth (if you are working on content and adding more than 1 page a day google thinks this is unnatural and can kick you for it .. really stupid reason imo but there we are)
6) Site wide change of page structure (if you suddenly change your template site-wide this can kill your site .. i guess this is really a case of design it correctly in the first place)
7) Server problems (googlebot having trouble usually only happens if you have changed servers recently)
.... to be continued by others
You don’t have to have done anything wrong to have fallen off Google. This happens all the time to web sites for no reason, and unfortunately they never return.
Emailing Google for help, or following any advice, opinion, supposition, or cliché one liners you read here will only frustrate you further. Spending months trying to figure out what went wrong with your site will serve no purpose but waste your time.
1) Dupe content (this includes others stealing whats yours and putting it on their site)
>>Your competitors put your content on their sites and Google kicks you from the top 10!<<
2) www and non www (same as above check if there is an index / caching of [mysite.com...] and [mysite.com...]
>>Google can not distinguish between www and non www and therefore you get kicked from the top 10!<<
3) Site wide links from others (check your backlink on all search engines if there is a site pointing to you from lots of its pages it can be construed as "bought links")
>>Another site links to you and Google kicks you from the top 10!<<
4) Link pages (if you have pages of outward links make sure they have content not just links)
>>The sites you have linked to change their content and Google kicks you from the top 10<<
5) Unnatural growth (if you are working on content and adding more than 1 page a day google thinks this is unnatural and can kick you for it .. really stupid reason imo but there we are)
>>It is unnatural to be too industrious and therefore Google kicks you from the top 10!<<
6) Site wide change of page structure (if you suddenly change your template site-wide this can kill your site .. i guess this is really a case of design it correctly in the first place)
>>Don’t change your site too radically because Google will kick you from the top 10!<<
7) Server problems (googlebot having trouble usually only happens if you have changed servers recently)
>>Server problems are notorious for Google kicking you from the top 10<<
.... to be continued by others
It's all an algorithm which seemed to work well for some other sites in some other category and some other continent -- extrapolated.
Now, why is Google STILL putting your site in the top 100? it STILL isn't any intrinsic merit either in the site or the business -- you could turn to crime (or further into crime, I wouldn't know!) and Google would not adjust the site's positioning. Should Google adjust their listings to allow more of your competitors a better placement? (We don't know but what some of your competitors are rejoicing in these very forums today!) These are just as fair questions, and more relevant questions for search engine quality, than what you asked.
Google is using a different rule, today. They think it works better than the one they were using before. What it does on any one site (or any million sites!) is too insignificant to matter -- any new rule would be better if among a few dozen (or few hundred) searches, it could place a larger number of relevant sites near the top.
I'd seriously consider dropping the links to the Pharma, Gambling and link exchange sites, they give the wrong message....
You must be aware that you have a lot of real rubbish links in there, and should not be surprised if Google comes up with an algo that at best disregards daft links, and at worst penalises you for them
And Hutcheson's "don't faint when you see blood on the carpet" post
Why did Google put the site on page one before? It wasn't any intrinsic merit either in the site or in your business ...Google is using a different rule, today. They think it works better than the one they were using before. What it does on any one site (or any million sites!) is too insignificant to matter
We all have to see how the cards fall when the dust finally settles, then get on with the business we have of optimising under the new set of rules ;)
You have a fairly large (considering the number of pages on your site) number of duplicated pages in the visible index.
You also might want to do something about the chap that is runing a copy of trace.php.
That is a script that opens a connection to a site and then displays that site under its url in realtime.
WIKIPEDIA, Wikis in general,forums, blogs, newspapers ..?:¦
Ah yes there are bound to be some ecceptions .. Wikipedia has now been around for some time and its growth has probably been noted by someone at google and thus "unpenalised" for unnatural growth. I dont know of any other wiki sites but their design formula is basically exactly what is being looked for. No real standard template for layout every page with different content and different structure (wiki links)
Forums once again if well established will have the growth penalty humanly removed imo. I certainly doubt that even google has the power to decided automatically as they claim about these sites. Few if any are in top 10 in my industry.
Blogs .. nasty rubbish usually ... i dont come across any blog sites in my industry for top keywords even though there are lots.
Newspaper big newspapers eg well frequented many people visit, has a good sticky nature to it, the new york times say would be once again recognised for its rep and humanly un penalised.
My real gripe to be honest with the stupid unnatural growth is they are no doubt looking for sites that are automatically generating pages. This is fine no new content to them copies of affiliate rubbish ect but .. what about sites who are in development creating new content. This unnatural growth flag would be set in motion as soon as new pages appear really in any quantity other than a few a day imo, which is stupid. Yes if this is repeat content no if it is in fact new "fresh" content. The only way this is done is by humans it must be, the only way you can get a site unpenalised is by humans imo.
Googles technology search sucks really ... there are no two ways about it. If you are less than a couple of years old, your content that is, it is not recognised as "good" and if you are producing content .. beware.
(please note that these comments are gripes by a disgruntled webmaster with growing sites that has to think how he is going to be paying his staff if his penalties are not removed in the next 2 years and NOT the opinons of this site and its google friendly owners)
We have just had a new design done for our site. The structure will remain the same but the design is completly different.
Is it possible when I implement this new design I could be dropped?
No-one links to gambling and phentermine sites, except to game google. Google knows this.
Remove your #*$! links.
I believe google is also very tough on real estate as group. There is a software company, advancedaccess that writes real estate software which includes a bundled links manager.
Its been abused so often, and its written so poorly, that google refuses to give its links pages any value above 0.
It has been known to happen in the past but .. if you have already done it dont undo it ... that is just a waist of time. Undoing things that have been done for the "good" of the sites users eg better navigation better access to content users require and read alot is no longer a good idea imo.
In the old days you used to have a spidering .. google would make a desision which you could see on a google dance tool you would then have a few days to undo what you did that hurt the site and regain you ranking before the next update took effect.
It isnt that easy today im afraid.
Stinkfoot states:
3) Site wide links from others (check your backlink on all search engines if there is a site pointing to you from lots of its pages it can be construed as "bought links")
4) Link pages (if you have pages of outward links make sure they have content not just links)
5) Unnatural growth (if you are working on content and adding more than 1 page a day google thinks this is unnatural and can kick you for it .. really stupid reason imo but there we are)
a. site wide links will NOT cause a penalisation. They may be ignored, thats different. Otherwise everybody would be giving there competitors site wide links on junk sites.
b. Again having links pages does not cause a PENALIZATION. These pages may well be ignored. Or have there link power reduced.
c. unnatural growth. More than one page of content causes google to kick you?. I have content sites and I can verify that this is simple not true.
more dubious opinions:
John-1976 states:
You don’t have to have done anything wrong to have fallen off Google. This happens all the time to web sites for no reason, and unfortunately they never return.
come on, please, sites do come back, it can be a real rollercoster. To state that a site once pushed down the SERPs cannot come back is just plain wrong. Sites can and often do recover positions lost.
Why have moderators allowed these opinions to be stated as fact without somekind of corrective guidance?
I have unique content, and am not set up as a store, etc. I am mainly a reference/trivia site.
Money is earned via affiliate programs (Amazon, Adsense, etc).
Like most people I hate sifting through ads and popups for what I'm looking for.
I had a steady rate of growth of 15-20% a year, and was on page one for each of several hundred key words and phrases for several years until Bourbon.
I added/changed a bit to every page several times a year.
When I'm getting 18,000 hits a day, I make about $50.00 daily. When I'm at 5,000 daily, it's more like $12.00.
I run a family-friendly, no pop-up, no pop-under site. I used to think that "fun" sites, not selling things in your face, were a boon to the internet. I see less and less of that all the time.
I didn't view visitors as customers.
Even with 5,000 visitors and 15,000 page views daily, I can make some money every month with pesky popups.
I'll give things until the end of the year, but after that, the internet will be about 1200 pages "colder".
:-(
Erm .. that IS a personal opinion mate and it has a typo in it!
>a. site wide links will NOT cause a penalisation. They may be ignored, thats different. Otherwise everybody would be giving there competitors site wide links on junk sites.
I notice you say not cause and then say maybe ignored .. thats not very concise. There are many sites in the past that have been very high ranking for very competitive keywords and site-wide links to them. They are ALL gone now from the top 10 in my industry. They are under penalty place 2 to place 900+ is NOT just ignoring links.
>b. Again having links pages does not cause a PENALIZATION. These pages may well be ignored. Or have there link power reduced.
So who said it did? A bad links page with rubbish outgoing may get you struck off. It is a known fact. If you require proof of this just sticky mail me .. I will give you some pages to link to and see what happens to your ranking.
>c. unnatural growth. More than one page of content causes google to kick you?. I have content sites and I can verify that this is simple not true.
This is a slight exaduration, but not much of one. Adding content has been difficult for about 1 year or so now. The stagnant nature of high ranking sites in very competitive industries is appalling. Why ... because production of new information does not get ranked. It gets pushed away to the back and never seen for 2 years. If you produce to much new info you can get kicked from a top 10 position quite quickly.
You may well have content based sites that produce 20 pages a day and are very highly placed in hypercompetitive industries, but you are not the norm.
Where personal opinion is concerned .. I have a policy in life that is simple ... if I know something of a subject that is broached I will say something about it to "share" my experiences. If I don't know anything about what is being talked about I shut up.
The facts that i stated about what CAN get you kicked from google are so because they have been in my experience true. These points have been brought up many times in this forum and are well documented by many others as well as myself.
first off, sorry. Seems that i had a really bad day yesterday! And none here should have to take bile from me.
i will reread the dribble I have written and edit it.
Saw a competitor, several months back, with hundreds of links from student union sites and was in fact #1 for the search 'loans' imagine how much money they were making......
I thought cooooOOOol, and asked a financial blog site for some links, before I'd paid, the links were up, sitewide.
Then I read an article about the bad practice of link buying... I very quickly made sure all the links were removed again.
Then.... Google finally finds all these incoming links! (after they'd been removed!) My ranking however, was unaffected.
It wasn't until Google picked up on the fact that the links had been removed that my rankings were affected.
Now down to page 4 in some cases and not listed for some other searches.
I'm only trying to obey the rules and I've been penalized for not being able to predict the future....
Written to G. See what happens...
Any other suggestions..?
Just gonna keep on marketing....!
Next cracker, something about cell biology. Nummer 4 on page 1 in Google. Content ONLY links left and right and an adsense in the heatmap.. center nothing else. The keyword not to be seen anywhere even in hidden text. The keyword is such an obscure term I doubt anyone would use it, let alone know about it.
You don’t have to have done anything wrong to have fallen off Google. This happens all the time to web sites for no reason, and unfortunately they never return."
Incorrect. Doing nothing at all is a top reason for ranking plunge. It is a mistake to think, if it isn't broken, don't fix it. You need to work your sites daily, and failure to make a change daily on your main page especially, can very serious hurt ranking, eventually.
Plunge in ranking can in fact cause a site to "never return". This is most likely to happen because a webmaster who left the site unattended, has no idea over many months what went wrong. He/she changes this and that, randomly, hit and miss, and may only then break, what wasn't broken to begin with. Just adding new things to the page, and removing older content, partially, continually, would have prevented the problem.
It is also most likely to happen to a site quarterly, when Google does the seasonal update. That would be now. Things go good for 30, 45, 60, 75 days, then the update comes along. That is when everything that has been going wrong, is suddenly shoved in your face, and you become very aware that something is wrong.
This hurts in many ways. If you were updating, but made some critical mistakes in seo, you may not have slid when each mistake was made. So, you make more mistakes, thinking everything is fine, until the quarterly update. So, much has passed, so many mistakes, it is hard to isolate the problem(s). It will take alot of work to resolve the issues, and recover.
Since quarterly updates are a deep crawl, that is when all those bad neighborhood links are discovered, and you get the google whammy.
Simply put, most webmasters don't have the moxy for it. That is why they don't recover. When the tough gets going, they start putting in applications to work for the man... and we thin the pack.
