Forum Moderators: Robert Charlton & goodroi
the only problem with what you said is the average person is not hitting a search engine with their wallet in their hand.... I know how to use froogle and the hundreds of other sites out there to buy stuff
I beg to differ on this one. I work in the voluntary sector in the UK and one of the things we do is give people basic computer training and give them the chance to buy an internet ready computer at a very low price.
They nearly all want to know how they can search on line and how they can buy safely. I'll bet not one of them has ever heard of Froogle, but they have been shown how to use google and other SE's to find what they want.
There is a huge difference between the average computer savvy user and the average person going online and wanting to buy something.
If you forget about adsense and ypn on my site then the site is split almost 50/50 between pure informational (how to's) and product listings.
Site is ranking nearly identically (within 1-3 positions) on all three of the above DCs.
Only thing that is missing (and hurting me) is the homepage shows for almost no searchs because of www/nonwww and phantom dup content pages (one or the other or both issues).
King of All Sales: You've really hit the nail on the head here.
Ours is a mom-and-pop, brick-and-mortar business in a niche industry. For the past 4 years (since the day our non-commercial website was first indexed) a simple, direct, and accurate keyword phrase returned us the number one slot on Google (and all the other engines). We have little competition and none of our competitors even have decent websites, and I can objectively declare that our site is the most relevant result for that particular search phrase. But now all of the sudden when you search that same keyword phrase our site has dropped nearly out of sight, to #17 on the list. Above it are 16 sites that have distant relevance to our niche industry and the actual search phrase. Some of the results that have been placed above ours are simply baffling.
We still earn the number one slot on Yahoo and the others, so you have to wonder how long it will be before even loyal G users (including yours truly) start to migrate away from G if they want to receive even mildly relevant search results?
I'm not saying that the serps should be entirely commercial, but it appears that this update is skewing away from commercial. If you enter, say, American widgets, a lot of junk has been added to the first 30 results, so if you are looking for free American widget decals or how to make an American widget quilt, you're in luck. Or if you want to find three different Wikepedia entries in the first three pages, you hit the jackpot.
I have nothing against informational searches, I do it all the time. But Google first and foremost now, must provide results to investors, and the current model requires them to increase the Adwords revenue, and they can't do that if they are loosing the paying customer portion of their base.
As far as coming to the search engine with wallets in hand, you would be surprised at how many do. It's the only thing, for example, that my wife uses the computer for. Just the fact that Adwords has been so wildly successful, shows that bucketloads of money are being spent online.
This isn't a question of a different algo applied to the same data, and ranking it differently; it is more that the data to be ranked is NOT THE SAME in the two datacentrs.
For a really special search result where the SERPs show ONLY supplemental results, one datacentre has 22 results and the other has 18... and only 11 entries are common to both datacentres. A similar thing is found across dozens of other searches that I have looked at in the last few months. The data in these datacentres is the same data that Google has had kicking around for several months now.
I do not see an update. These searches give the same results as they did back in late August.
[edited by: g1smd at 7:25 pm (utc) on Nov. 6, 2005]
I wanted a new digital camera but didn't know anything about them.
1. First I needed to learn about different digital cameras. Then what other people thought.
2. Then I wanted to know how much they cost.
3. Then I wanted to know where I could get one.
4. Found the best and made my purchase.
Yes, I do have my wallet in my hand, but most of the time I don't know exactly what I want when I sit down :)
Side note: None of our sites have anything to do with cameras so this is not a pitch for anything :)
Amazing
I provide more information, on the thousands of products I sell than any other site in my field. There are many sites with little bits of info, covered with google ads, but almost nothing out there that has the in-depth discripts & fitment, and installation instructions that I have created & provided. So I know my site is shopping/ecommerce.
What do you call the supposed information sites with all the ads. Are they not commercial? Is any site with ads on it truly informational?
So all the webmasters who claim to be creating informational sites, who then put ads on them, are doing nothing but creating commercial sites, who leach off the sites that sell product.
I define commercial as sites that collect money in any fashion. Any site that provides information, but no sales, ads, or paid advertizing as informational, And I find VERY few of these, and if you relied on them for the information in my field, you would be totally uninformed on the subject matter.
So, if you created these add stuffed sites with no real benifit to the web, do not pretend to be more deserving of traffic than I.
ON TOPIC
When will Jagger 3 be rolled out to the rest of the datacenters? Hours, Days, Weeks, has anyone started getting traffic from the Jagger 3 results?
Back to watching
WW_Watcher
This was posted by MC today on his blog:
Jagger3 will probably move slowly over to other data centers. I was expecting it to stay for 2-3 days at one data center before it started to shift, and it first was visible on Friday.
I had not checked Matt's Blog Today
Thanks Again!
Back to Watching
WW_Watcher
I know - why dont people understand my questions :( - I have rephrased as perhaps it did not explain what I intended ;)
For example: If I search "home decorating" and find sites that are selling furniture, tables, chairs...I call that ecommerce. If I search"home decorating" and find articles on "how to" - I call those informational...even if they recommend items I can buy through advertisements on that site.
For our main keyword - 15 mil. pages returned on Google and 16 mil. on Yahoo - 20 of the first 30 results are completely informational now. Pre update, it was more like 10 out of 30. I realize that these results are going to be vastly different from one niche to another. I'm only pointing out what seems to be a trend.
Remember, two years ago, Google had vitually no competition. Now Yahoo has it's own engine and it's own paid search revenue generator and MSN has it's own engine and will very shortly have it's own paid search.
So the challenge to Google is to provide something that the average user perceives as better, not just different. More often than not, different ends up being a loser unless it's hands-down significantly better.
Sorry, there is no hypocrisy. And some of you can want to lump everyone in together, but the reality is what people expect when they do a search.
If I do a search for new york yankees, I will take the odds that my first goal is not to buy a yankees comforter or lamp, but maybe info about the team. If I wanted to buy a yankees lamp, I would ask the search engine to give me information on a yankees lamp. The site that actually has information about the yankees and then has ads is filling the need of the person searching.
It doesn't matter what you or me think is relevant. It ultimately depends on the person who is using the search engine. I don't have the numbers to support my position. I just call it intuition and 11 plus years of providing services on the internet. I know some of you deal in only direct commercial sites and it scares you to death that you might be relegated to a second-class area... but if that is where people expect to find you.. then that is where you should be... If the average person who looks up widgets actually wants to just buy a widget then of course, the serps should reflect that reality. I just don't think that is the reality.
And frankly I can't believe you complaining about those results. They are excellent. Three things share the same name and it is just weird that you think yours should rank for some reason rather than the other two.
Sorry I know you are good guys - just want confirmation that you at least understand what I am saying - OK, if I know you understand I can be happy in the knowledge it will be fixed as you will see the problem ;)
Basically - again.
The J3 dcs - look like they are ranking the canonical page top - so G looks like it can determine this page. (On some sites not all etc etc)
However, for sites with the problem the Canonical page still does not rank (even for a site:domain.com keyword search) - eg look at my example from before - the page can not even rank in a site:domain.com keyword search.
Do you see it or am I like going mad? Is this something we should see movement on?
I go to my browser, type google.com and I get results that definitely don't match 66.102.9.104, for instance.
I understand that my 'google.com' is resolving to a different IP . . . I guess I'm asking, what do these IPs mean? What are they? Are they beta sites? Or live somewhere that a user types in 'google.com'?
Also, regarding commercial vs. noncommercial/information sites, what if a informational site has a banner ad? Obviously, it too is in the market of selling something . . . visitors for its sponsor.
I not convinced that 66.102.9.104 is more commercial. My site is informational and it ranks -significantly- higher on 66.102.9.104, also (for those keeping tabs on site ages) my site (at its new URL) is 3 years old---not counting four prior years on an .edu server.
Yes. And more to the point, if G mess up the listings, they will KILL their own revenues as well!
I think I've heard this said in one fashion or another a couple of hundred times.
If Google messes up your listing... the only revenue to be killed is your own.
assuming you put all of your expectations for traffic in one engine.
[edited by: bobothecat at 8:13 pm (utc) on Nov. 6, 2005]
What was the intention of the so called informational site that told you basickly same thing (even if it even had close to the same information as the vendors), and then put paid ads to the site who sales the product and has the information.
They did it to get PAID, "Commercial" How do you think they can afford the costs of the sites? They just drive up the costs of the product on that "Click".
I call them a waste of space, when you could have gotten better info, and bought the product in a single site.
On Topic:
I lost 80% of my G traffic with Jagger 1, I was concerned about GG mentioning javascript redirects as a problem, so even though I was using them as reccomended to load pages into their corresponding framesets, I removed the javascript redirects, and implimented a new menuing system accross the entire site to get rid of the frames. I will not know when it is all done, if it was what I did, or Jagger that gives me back(or not) the lost traffic, but things are looking better than ever on the DCs of Jagger 3.
Please forgive my rant,
Back to Watching
WW_Watcher
Right now most of the datacenters ahve older data. A combination of the "9" data and the "7" fix should move to the rest of the datacenters over the next days.
[edited by: steveb at 8:14 pm (utc) on Nov. 6, 2005]
I stand corrected, Thanks you Steveb.
[edited by: Yippee at 8:17 pm (utc) on Nov. 6, 2005]
