Forum Moderators: Robert Charlton & goodroi
Continued from:
[webmasterworld.com...]
The same down-and-on problem here in Turkey.
But j3 goes on and off. No steady results. At least three different sets:
216.239.63.104 (I think with additional tweaks)
64.233.161.104 (still J2)
64.233.179.104 (J3)
If that's the case, these "Googlers" need to put their pocket calculators in a drawer, give themselves a bracing slap in the face, and join the real world.
In ecommerce, a professional look and consistency (among other things) are the key to good conversion. An example: we have one product that comes in 50 different versions and each version has several sizes and requires it's own page.
These products are identical in every way except the color and graphic. You don't describe the color and graphic - you show an image. The text description includes the specifications, etc.
From a conversion standpoint, it is imperitive that each page be identical except for the product name and the image, because many customers will want to buy two or more different versions.
If a customer visits the page for blue widgets with green stripes and then the page for purple widgets with pink polka dots, he/she expects that both will be identical. If the customer notices differences in the text or other page elements, it will put doubt in the customers mind that these two items are in fact, identical.
Not only would it entail a lot of extra work to make every page different, but it would have a significant impact on conversion, hence it would be stupid to do it.
I can't imagine that this is what Google is doing - it would indicate an incredible lack of understanding of ecommerce. Can anyone confirm for me that this is what they mean by duplicate content?
I see all different results, Some terms are the same on all centers, but other terms are different on each. Ranging from #3 to #50 for our domain and main search terms.
Some even show the the same results, but with different cache dates. I have seen at least four different dates for our domain. Ranging from Nov. 10th to Dec. 3rd
I run a Chamber of Commerce site and have catalogs. We have been hammered for the very reason, I believe, that Cutts talked about in the interview. There is just no way to get around duplicate content the way they are deciding what duplicate content is.
We list thousands of Christmas ornamets, for example. How can you make a separate description for each round ball?
We have abandoned that site and have started another to send customers to those pages. Call it a doorway site, if you will. But there is nothing else we see what we can do.
Shows sites that has long been expired, and now is parked by godaddy with a bunch of ads. I know a site that has expired 3 months ago, parked by godaddy, but ranks well with keywords that the site in question ranked well before expiration.
Weird? Yes. It always shows a fixed index size of 14,000,000 pages for a period of over one week for a keyword combination that I monitor. The kw combination yields an index size of 2,500,00 to 3,000,000 results under normal conditions.
I think this DC shows us the Google History since its beginning!
This appears to be what has hit my site - as I said I've stripped all the menus just leaving a link to site map and breadcrumb trail. Crap for the user, but Google likes it apparently since those pages are now appearing in searches again. <sigh>
When G says build sites for your users, not SE's, it evidently means nothing for an ecommerce site where people need logical menus on every page in order to locate their position in the store. G is confused even with my subsection structure which (obviously) would use similar words. Not to mention copyright text on every page, help page links, and duplicate words like 'Made in X' or 'Dispatch in 3 days'. Unless you write a mega paragraph to describe each and every widget, those pages are easily drowned in 'dupe' content.
Your problem is well understood. Google has dropped the ball, or maybe they could not give a!@#$ about legitimate catalogs or ecommerce.
The Cutts radio interview talked about similar phrases triggering dupe content penalties. I could not believe that when I heard it.
The man is unbelieveably misinformed. (I changed what I called him so the moderators would not get angry.) Read that Google Guy, Matt Cutts and Reseller. He has no idea what is going on in the real word of business to business selllng.
But maybe we are in the minority and are a little more than cannon fodder. So do what you have to do.
Best way for a directory site to go to the top is have all the site link outs as an internal page with a redirect on them.
Google is daft enough to think it is the sites own content but the directory owner is quids in.
Have found at least 6 directory sites using this method and it works every time. They rank 1, 1, 1, 1, 1, for almost all keywords in some very big commercial sectors.
You would think Google would spot this but clearly it doesnt - the latest test results are no improvement
I just checked some labelled products, and the first time ever, there were NO PPC adverts on the right?!
MSN and Yahoo don't seem to have this problem. It seems to me that this might stem from a difference in philosophy. Both MSN and Yahoo are commerce oriented. They understand the free market potential of the web whereas Google seems to have a certain amount of distate for ecommerce.
The paradox is that they don't mind collecting money from advertisers and in fact, are becoming quite greedy about it. For example, I just started noticing that Google is showing my ads on Google Booke. I emailed that I do not want to show ads on Google books since what we sell is in no way related to books. They replied that in order remove my ads from Google Books, my ads would no longer show on partner sites - ie. aol, etc. Their suggestion was to make "books" a negative keyword. What an utterly arrogant and stupid reply.
When Cutts was discussing the duplicate content issue, he never mentioned ecommerce type site. Instead, he talked about documents and papers, etc. In other words, informational sites.
IMO, they are blinded by hubris, while MSN and Yahoo are nipping at their heels.
One thing is for sure - I will not change my site to conform to what Google thinks it should be.
Every single page unique 250 words of text, however the footer has a navigation with about 14 links to other parts of the site.
The footer is the same on all of the 1000 pages, does this mean I have to remove it to avoid the penalty?
Seems kind of odd... as it is stictly for user navigational purposes.
GoogleGuy can you please let us know if using a Footer for navigation, to other internal pages of the site duplicated on a lot of pages is hurting our sites?
We are not changing for them either. If they want to play stupid and arrogant, they can.
We will just work around. Googel is a young company. They are too smart for their own pants.
Some of us old dogs do what we have to do. First we try to cooperate. Then we inform. Then we hammer.
My advice on this issue is to hammer. They could care. They are fighting to survive the Gates attack. We are nothing. Go for it.
If you have not listened to the Google radio bit mentioned earlier in this saga, click back through the pages and find it. Listen to it. I have had to go through it a few times. I can not believe what this guy said.
Those (word changed) are against you using the same phrases in your own site. Can you believe that! You get duplicate content penalty for using your own slogans and branding tag lines!
These are engineers who are penalizing people who understand selling. Right on!
He said phrases. May I suggest that you listen again and correct me if I am wrong. I am more than happy to be wrong on this point. Please check again - for all of us. We all speak with an accent and we all listen with an accent.
I am so furious right now I may be listening with too much of an accent.
Sure I'll listen again, but I'm off out to dinner now,so it'll be later.
The bit about the sandbox was interesting too, suggesting there is no such thing, and sites can be indexed quixkly, but not expect a large presence until they build up the website over a period of time :-))
I am an American, so I listen with the same accent that Cutts speaks with, and you are exactly right. He said "phrases." Maybe he used a poor choice of words. I really hope so for Google's sake.
Someone from Yahoo recently said (I'm paraphrasing) "If you want to find information about 18th century Spanish paintings, use Google. But if you want to find furniture for your deck, Yahoo is better."
What MSN and Yahoo both know is that a huge number of people are buying online - particularly commercial, government, etc. I just got an order this morning from a US Air Force base that we have never done business with before. The woman found us on MSN.
I am awaiting a call today from an MSN representative to help me set up a PPC account on their new version of an Adwords program. I can't wait!
I'm back from my break and everything is good with the world. Yahoo has given me top spots for really competitive keywords and has now listed all of my pages. MSN still loves me and my takings are back up to a living level again ... so nuts to google ;-). I'm using far less bandwidth and getting far better hit/revenue ratio now.
The Yahoo turn-a-round got me thinking that they may penalise sites listed top on Google, so I checked a whole bunch of my past designs, and low and behold it seems to be the case. Some high on G, low on Y & others the reverse.
Make of that what you will ... I'm thinking of a robot ban on google.
Now this board is getting down and dirty. I am American also, working on a Small and Medium Enterprise project in Poland. Our Chamber site used Adsense to subsidise small business development and college tuitions for some youngsters.
Google does not like an NGO, Chamber of Commerce because we use too many of the same phrases. So we will try taking them out of our advertising program and shift to another. We were only doing a couple thousand dollars per month in income, so it won't bother them.
But if we can restore that from someone else, we will be able to subsidize some college tuitions again.
Your absolutely right. I've got links from both the BBC and local government sites and the hits that they provide give me deep searching visitors. In the past Google has sent me a load of 1 hit wonders and they're just a waste of bandwidth.
I'm totally convinced that Google just sends me other competitors, looking to steal top places.
All the best ...
How do we summarize what may be, but may not be?
Duplicate phrases hurt you with Google. They do not with Brand X.
If you pull Adsense from your site you get better position in Band Z.
If you have information only, go with Google.
If you have ecommerce and want buyers, go with Brand X.
Is this right, wrong or incomplete?
Comments?
I'm dropping them. I've cut staff, cut costs, moved premises to a higher visability area and things are better without them. I now get more business from a £60 poster in my window than I ever get from Google.
Google is too expensive for me to indulge anymore.
Listened yesterday to the interview and that is not how I saw that. Just listened again.
MC says that where you might have a problem is when you have repeated sentences/phrases or pages on multiple domain, sub-domains and multiple sub-directories. The domains and sub-domains is pretty much obvious - not really sure what he means by sub-directories though.
On one hand MC is sort of saying that internal duplicate content is not a problem (eg for printer pages, expert/novice pages) - really not sure about the sub-directory bit - a site structure could be domain.com/web/infopage.com and then domain.com/prnt/infopage.com for the printer friendly version.
I am sure that MC did not mean problems will occur in those cases.
As we know if the duplicate like content is contained within a site then Google deal with this by returning a maximum of 2 results from that site.
Ok thats me over and out for the night - World Cup draw coming up - I bet England get a tough group I reckon England, Australia, Holland and US - with the Ozzies and the Yanks raising there game again England :(
Now isn't that absolutely STUPID! If I have series of catalog pages with different patterns on Pottery, done by different artists, only two of the artists pages will be returned.
Each artist is an individual but only two will be shown.
What idiocy! It tells artists not to list their products in a Chamber of Commerce site because others are listed there.
The Jagger update was done a month ago.
If someone wants to create a new thread about test DCs, or whine about Big G, then let them do so.
Stick a Fork in it, It's DONE!
Back To Watching (some other thread)
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