Forum Moderators: Robert Charlton & goodroi
This time I prefer to keep calm about this update. So instead of start a thread about how evil-ish is Google, I decided to start a thread to discover the cause of all this mess.
I'll try to explain all SEO relevant characteristics of my affected site (I have other sites not affected by this update), and I hope more people do the same, so we can find a pattern and act consequently.
Morphology:
The site is three years old, and is structured in folder, and every folder is about a different theme and they are not related.
Every folder has articles (unique content), a discussion forum, a links section and in some cases, photo galleries.
Most of the articles have a thread in the forum to discuss about it. And the first user comments are displayed under the article. After the comments, there is a link to the related forum thread, so the discussion can go on without disturbing too much.
The article has a link to the thread, but the forum thread has no link back to the article.
I run Adsense ads in all the pages of the site.
Inbound links:
4 of the subwebs ( folders) of the site have an inbound link from 4 different DMOZ categories.
There are some (maybe 3 or 4) link exchanges, but from/to related sites.
Outbound links:
All the outbound links are to 'good' sites. The outbound links are usually only in the links section, and some directly from the articles.
Inner linkage:
The main page of the domain links to all the folders of the site.
All the pages in the folders have a link to the rest of pages of the same folder.
In addition, the footer of all the pages have links to the rest of the root of the other folders.
Every folder has a valid sitemap submitted to google a few months ago.
Special folders:
One of the mini-sites (folders) is a 'free photo album' application, so there are a lot of pages with the same text, but with a different picture.
Other mini-site is a directory of hotels and restaurants of a city in Spain, so again there are a lot of 'similar' pages.
Evolution in the serps:
The last two months the number of indexed pages in google has been growing after being in the supplemental hell.
The position in the serps for a open broad of searches was quite good, always in the first page for my targeted keywords and variations.
Panic actions:
I know I should have stayed away from making changes now, but.... Today I've created a robots.txt that exclude googlebot from indexing the images of the free photo album site, and the details of every hotel and restaurant from the spanish city site.
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Any similarity with your affected sites?
[edited by: tedster at 8:07 pm (utc) on June 28, 2006]
Before this update, doing a site:mysite.com returned the list of all the directories in the domain, with correct title and description. Now, it returns a unordered list of pages picked randomly from all the domain...
Site: command is messed up too.
Don't worry - this looks like the bad data push. I am almost sure nowadays that it will be fixed. (and then the next disaster starts for someone else..!)
If, at the end of the day, it was just an hiccup, the better, but I can't afford waiting while watching the grass grow.
[Edited:] Now it sounds the rude is me... sorry
I cover about 10 different industries and basically sit on GOOGLE all day. These are the best results they have had in 4 months....the datacenters are finally showing the complete update that started about 4 months ago.
(and then the next disaster starts for someone else..!)
June 2005, one of my 2004 created themed subdomains from my main domain had been hit.
About 15% less revenues than expected because of this.
This time, all major income sub domains from my main domain had been more heavy hit.
About 72% less revenues
I can deal with one disaster at one time, but this is like a hurricane destroying Miami, Tampa, New Orleans and Huston in one run.
About site structure:
I use a self written CMS with named pathways.
So the URL contains practically a description of the page.
I use this CMS at my own sites and also at all my clients sites from my internet promotion business.
It seems only one small real estate site has been hit. All other checked client sites are in the same range with visitors from Google.
Trying to find a pattern?
One subdomain of my main domain is not affected, but has exactly the same layout, the same structure.
An other of my own sites is also not affected, but has a very similar structure.
In my case, this "update" fixed missing home page on site command problem, which was missing since Big Daddy started.
The opposite just happened to me. Starting last night my homepage is no longer showing in the "site" command out of about 700 pages where it had always showed before.
today, some of my results have very strange titles that include menu links in them.
Looks like this:
Actual Title - Web Links Main Menu Home About ...
Is this really
"These are the best results they have had in 4 months....the datacenters are finally showing the complete update that started about 4 months ago."I don't think so...
I fear that it is not only a 'bad data push', it has spread across all the DC too fast.
I noticed some weeks ago, that some of my sub domains are suddenly indexed
theme.example.com (like it should be)
www.theme.example.com (unwanted)
I checked now all my sub domains for
site:theme.example.com
site:www.theme.example.com
Some heavy affected subdomains are not indexed as www also.
So being indexed by accident as www and not www can not be the reason
if i trow a site:sitename it show me internal page but not the home page!
For months i was in 1° page and now i'm not in the first 10 pages! I have lost my site?
In the last 3 weeks i have made some links exchange about 15, so now i have about 15 new incoming links.
My opinion was that too many new back link can be trow my site in sandbox, but now i have undestand that i'm not the only!
Have you improved your back link recently?
Tony.
Rest Easy My Friends and Enjoy the Sun
All the Best
Col :-)
p.s. that 2 word phrase has only 683 possible sites to choose from {:-))))
[edited by: colin_h at 5:26 pm (utc) on June 28, 2006]
I hope so.
Quite a drop :-(
Town Name Widgetmaker - 683
County Widgetmaker - 515
Country Widgetmaker - 42'000
This is google's error, so please don't fall into the trap of blamng your programming and knee jerk a site change. If you've got honest content it will come back. In May I came back nearly twice as strong.
All the best guys
Col :-)
Our main "Taj Mahal" (most important AdSense revenue) site was #1 or #2 for years, and today it's #8 and our revenue is off by 40% already, grrr.
The funny thing is, we have been seeing the DMOZ titles for the home pages for our sites (off & on -- 90% DMOZ titled, 10% our correct titles) for a month now. These DMOZ titles are five (!) years old and completely out-of-date, so I wish Google would stop using them. Don't they expect websites to change at all? Or are home pages supposed to have the same titles ForEver?
Anyway, this afternoon all our sites but one (a gardens guide) has been badly demoted.
Our website on "St Pauls Cathedral" (virtual tour) has disappeared COMPLETELY - NO listing AT ALL!
And our "Kew Gardens" virtual tour has gone from #2 to god-knows-where (still listed somewhere).
>Quite a drop :-(
pechspilz know how you fee, same here
from +300,000 to 25,000..
Thanks
