Forum Moderators: Robert Charlton & goodroi
I can't be the only one, I know some forum sites that have had similar experiences - but what about other sites?
The site only has a PR2 and is a new site I started in September - October 2005.
I have another site I started in August 2005 and it's page count keeps going up? It only has a PR1. I don't get it?
The site only has a PR2 and is a new site I started in September - October 2005.
Well PR cannot be a factor as my site has the home page on a PR5 and has done for a good 18 months.
We are in the uk and I've seen our page count drop RADICALLY over the past couple of months.
We were up at 166k pages in January and now down to 30k pages. No Idea what do about it.
Bob
site dropped from 250 pages down to about 130.. it's insane and traffic has dropped too. this is a very well-indexed site, or at least it was. I hope this is google doing something! ... the googlebot is on my site 24/7, indexing all the time. The site is all unique content with my photos on a number of niche topics.
I'm not allowing cached pages but it seems every page i added in the past 3-5 months is not in the new site:widgets.com list.
BTW, i recently starting allowing cached pages again and my yahoo presence has increased dramatically, is there a correlation?
Further to this I have done some searches using manufacturer codes from our product database and found that the pages I expect not to show are indeed nowhere to be found in the top 1000 results and that pages found in site:www.domain.com are listed as expected.
If it is any help the following things have been applied to my site and found not to have changed the current situation to date.
1. Google xml site map
2. Dedicated server
3. Fussing over unique content (there is always roam for improvement in a 10,000 item product database and I am sure there are still products on our site where descriptions are little or no different from the manufacturer.) but on the whole most pages are unique.
4. Change source code ordering so relevant content is at the top as opposed to possible lengthy menus etc.
I would rather be spending my time make my visitor shopping experience more streamlined, adding new lines, features and making my site more user friendly than plugging resources into something that may or not may be broken - what ever way you look at it Google is still of massive importance to online retailers and not being listed for so many pages still really hurts.
Can any one suggest (since most of you here are more experience and have seen many updates) whether I should sit tight and wait of go ahead and spend my half of my advertising budget.
I basically don't want to spend too much money and find out that I did not need to because Google fixed itself.
If I do sit tight, then for how long? What game plan do you guys have?
If I do sit tight, then for how long? What game plan do you guys have?
In terms of game plan this is our current thinking - Google may or may not fix itself - instead of as in the last 3 weeks making changes and waiting to see if it 'fixed' the problem we are going to make the assumption that Google will not fix itself for at least 6 months and that i will never find out why our pages are not listed during that time. Thus we are going to plan on running our online shop without relying on any Google traffic during the next 6 months.
So we are looking at:
1. Yahoo Stores
2. ebay Stores
3. Amazon stores
4. Other price comparison stores
5. More comprehensive overture advertising (as they allow bulk upload of adverts)
6. Utilising our existing customer base etc.
If our product pages get reindexed during that time and our Google traffic gets turned back on we will only consider this a bonus.
Hopefully in a few months time we will be able to say that we are no longer reliant on Google for our future and I for one will sleep a lot easier.
Did read on another forum somewhere that the site:www.domain.com command may no longer be telling the whole truth in that they are simply not listing all pages to save on bandwidth a bit like the link: command.
I saw that too. There is absolutely no truth to it though. It seems that there is often a great deal of resistance to any suggestion that something is seriously wrong with Google. Partly, I guess, because any problems (and ultimately their resolutions) take such a long time to propogate.
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I think this is the best thing that will come out of all this mess. Our diminished reliance on one search engine to bring us traffic.
To coin the old phrase of not putting all yer eggs in the one basket. Google came a long and we have become complacent, lazy even. We have been over fishing the SERP waters for too long now. It's time we started looking at other alternatives as a back up.
As much as this is a Royal piss-off, those of us who are so inclined, will emerge from the dark cloud stronger and smarter.
I admire your attitude Tank, familiarity breeds contempt... and that's what millions of folk around the World have been doing with Google. Getting too familiar with them and wading in over their heads.
This past Easter was a wake up call.... it's time to take the scenic route instead of the Highway.
Martin.
Lets hope i don't forget this time around.
It would be nice to hear from more people about their game plans and how they intend to reach "Google independence"
(Let us name today "18th April 2006" as Google Independence day ;-)
I agree with your plan. No use crying over it and spending tons of time trying to change something until we know that it's worth changing.
We too are looking at alternative options for more traffic and sales
Ebay and increasing adwords, etc
I am in Canada, sites are UK subject matter, hosted in the USA. I have tried various Google dot extensions, all with the same disappointing results.
Cheers,
Martin.
Yeah, but then google comes along and starts giving you a bunch of traffic again, time passes and this becomes the norm. After a stretch of time, google dumps you again. Then you are wondering how to get back to that level without google.
The real problem is there isn't enough balance between the search engines.
Lots of pages, lots of links appearing on google.
Now two weeks later it appears google has removed most of those pages, and with it goes my traffic.
Its like a roller coaster ride.
Anybody know whats going on here?
My guess is we can expect to see even more oddities, anomalies and just plain weirdness going forward -- including some unplanned collateral damage here and there. At some point, new patterns may become clear, but the Google SERPs will never again behave the way they did before BD.
Last week traffic started to deteriorate. Traffic had been down 40% from norm, and sure enough, 40% of our pages are now missing in Google. Overnight we lost another 100,000 pages.
When will this end? The pages that remain are still high ranking, but at this rate we won't have any pages in Google by the end of the month. I'd like to think this is a bug that will soon be fixed, but I can't afford to sit around and wait.
I am on my last two pages now in the index. Will be completely dead anytime soon!
Have Fun!
So as good as Zonked.
I wonder how long this will last, I had this before, people were coming in like mental and next week it was a tenth of the week before.
Checked logs no major non Google site referrals.
Also Germany btw.
My other site is still nearly all supplemental showing over 4000+ pages indexed but supplemental
