Forum Moderators: Robert Charlton & goodroi
However, we have one site that is still #1 for the two main keywords.
I have looked at various theories, to no avail so far.
Here's another ---
Do any of you have badly affected sites in which the home page has AdSense with pictures right above the AdSense banner?
I have four pix semi-aligned above the three- or four-text AdSense listings.
Google actually wrote me an email a while back saying this was okay as long as the pictures were not intended to mislead visitors, just to "draw the eye" to the AdSense area.
BUT, the site I have that's not affected by the 27 June screwup does NOT have these pix above the AdSense area.
Yes, another screwy theory --- anyone else think this might be a problem?
Intrestingly, i'm not seeing these type of pages being dropped.
In one area that both I and Tigger work in, mass created doorways almost seem to be the norm and finding thousands of pages in a folder all using area-keyword1-keyord2.html as the page name, and then heavy optimisation and keyword placement on the pages is not unusual.
But it is these pages that seem to be ranking ok, whilst the main sections of the sites using this method have fallen through, therefore if people are searching for a specific area + keyword the sites show up, where as the important pages of the site don't.
Another spot, is that on these site, the site:command is actaully returning these doorways as the first results.
> the words appearing on the pages consistently apprear in their urls
> global templates (couldn't find matt's post on this)
my whole site is optimized with descriptive keywords in pagename. also, it uses one global template... i've been thinking about redesigning the template based on each section of the site, maybe it's time to do it.
but 10% of the pages still in google index that come up on top for their keywords are exactly of this pattern... keyword names in page names... this whole thing just makes you go "hmmm".
<rant>
This is just crazy we are talking about creating almost mini sites within our own site just to keep G happy so that it doesn't think we hundreds of doorways just because it has a 100+ plus pages.
So do we have to have a new design for every 10 pages - this is utter madness - what happened with building sites for surfers not SE's
Don't get me wrong I'm not saying what your considering inst a bad thing just extremely annoying that as webmasters we have to be considering this
<rant/>
My site is well-respected and loved by its users. It has Adsense and was doing very well. There are no doorway pages or anything like that. The only thing I can think from this thread is that I use templates. I really don't know what else I might've done wrong. I'm not an SEO expert and don't want to be. I just want to create content that is useful. AARGH
As for templates, this can't be the case since my work site i mentioned in my original post is totally database generate with over 40,000 pages. This site was not affected and is still ranking well with these template pages. My best personal site is also database generated with template pages and was affected.
I stop my ad's and we stop growing at the same rate. :-/
Interestingly, after interacting with them early on at meetings with our reps and seeing them now... Google is growing away from the cool upstart company they once were and growing into another IBM of the 80's. Big, unresponsive and greedy.
I wouldn't start rebuilding your site into silly little sites
And again, I have proof that this is not right
c.example.com 449 pages okay
p.example.com 338 pages okay
b.example.com 159 pages ko
www.example.com 330 pages ko
All same layout
a:set date of shuffle:
b:mark date of site update (above set threshold)
if a=b mark as seo site
if a=b on consecutive shuffles penalise
I presume there could be safe guard the of one vote per user.
At least then we will know the extent of it. Perhaps we are in the minority, it's just nice to know so we can move forward with fixing whatever is wrong, if something needs fixing.
It would also give Google some meaningful feedback too, which seems to be what they are after.
"I wouldn't start rebuilding your site into silly little sites just to please G yet, the book is still open on this (27th) problem and I think we really need to give it a few more weeks yet but "IF" this is what we have to do just to please G then this is crazy."
Yes, I agree. It's certainly tempting to want to change things, especially when you see your site(s) slipping a few Google positions every day for a week or longer! :/ I'm going to try and hold out to see if Google corrects its mistakes before I "correct" my sites.
I don't know what Matt Cutts is up to, or talking about, but I don't see how a radical change in search engine position can happen without a radical change in algorithm. I also don't see why this update ("Google Dance") can be going on for weeks now (instead of days) if everything is normal at Google. And we already know about the new SPAM issue. (And all this while Matt Cutts, their guru, is on vacation.)
I don't expect a billion-dollar publicly-traded company to admit mistakes too quickly. Although they did admit they have a hardware problem--lack of hardware to hold all the web pages it spiders--and so I have to wonder if that is part of the problem.
Similar to an earlier poster, I have a website that had the #1 position in Google (for a two-word phrase) for five straight years (since 2000). It has been indexed in dmoz for years. It has PR-5. It does not use a template. I have not tinkered with SEO; it's very straightforward, no tricks. It has Adsense since about January 2006. Google has never written to me saying anything is wrong with my use of Adsense placement/code, and it has the same advertisers, so they have not blocked my site b/c of anything misleading/problematic. I survived all the earlier Google Updates. The site content has not changed in months. (And I have not touched it since June 27). After 60 straight months at #1, I am now about #25.
It's like the sandbox in reverse! I thought Google respected old sites to some extent (sandbox principle), but it's treating my site like it's new, and it just concluded this, thinks all its many web pages were just created, so it has to push it down the ranking. #*$!?$%^#& That's just a wild rant/guess b/c of so much earlier continued success before this new problem/disaster. I honestly don't know what is going on. All I know is I didn't change anything; it was *Google.*
p/g
[edited by: potentialgeek at 10:00 pm (utc) on July 9, 2006]
"I don't know what Matt Cutts is up to, or talking about, but I don't see how a radical change in search engine position can happen without a radical change in algorithm."
It seems changes in alogs is called these days as "data refresh of algos". In the past we use to call it an update.
Have just visited Matt's blog to see whether he mentioned any related thing. Nothing yet!
However, he posted a very inspiring post about our good friend, Emmy. She looks great and I and Dayo_UK like her as well as JD boy (Matt's other cat) very much :-)
Maybe, Emmy will find her way to Googleplex and switch off those ugly boxes containg that nasty "data refresh" of 27th June :-)
[edited by: reseller at 10:18 pm (utc) on July 9, 2006]
I don't see how a radical change in search engine position can happen without a radical change in algorithm.
One way is that the various components already set up in the algo are installed with "dials" and "switches". So while it has the effect of an algo change, moving several dials and flipping a few switches can create all kinds of shifts in the SERP -- even though nothing new has been added to the existing algo.
its the only common thing with everyone that has been dropped is the site:command is showing either supps first & then the index buried, or the index buried and non-supp pages showing and it really depends on which DC you hit - the odd DC that is showing index in the correct place at the top is also ranking my site well
That hardware problem sounds interesting. Do you have more on that? If G has problems holding all the data, it might compact data in some ways, that could occaisionally (read June 27) cause problems
The template does not sound logical to me. I'm sure tripadvisor uses a template for example. And Google loves wikipedia, even though it is drawing search traffic away from them. Isn't that a template? Perhaps they use template plus certain criteria to see doorway pages - like having a redirect on lots of pages.
gidspor - you ask how Google can hit it's own revenue stream by black balling certain Adsense sites. I maintain that Google would have different departments with different objectives which sometimes may clash. Search vs Sales. Google likes sales, but it needs search. Without the search users there will be no sales.
The things Matt Cutts has said makes the data they have on your site key. Something they have measured has gone against those who have suffered here. It may be something on the site or it may be that their way of measuring things is not 100% reliable. I think if you want to make changes, go back to basics - literally. Just check HTML with great care and make sure things are simple. Then make sure the users are happy. Try and keep them in the site and interested.
One of the worries for me with adsense is it take the user out of the site, which looks like an unhappy user. That could give a bad impression to a computer algorythm.
Yep, very intresting post by Matt. :)
However, at the moment I would much rather Google fix the problems in their index.
"Lol Reseller
Yep, very intresting post by Matt. :) "
Sure. Emmy has gained weight as far as I see. Too many happy meals :-)
No news of "Bouncing JD". Maybe Emmy chased him out of the house, while Matt and Mrs. Cutts were on vacation :-)
Ok. Back to business. Matt isn't saying much about changes in algos, only "data refresh"! So..
Maaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaatt, C'mon say something :-)
PS. driving within few minutes with family for a short vacation here in northern Denmark. Talk to ya later.
[edited by: reseller at 9:13 am (utc) on July 10, 2006]
[edited by: steveb at 9:33 am (utc) on July 10, 2006]
Are any of you who were badly affected by June 27th seeing any changes in your SERPS.
My site kept its slots for our main target terms but dropped 10-15 places for a couple of important secondary terms. I'm seeing changes each day and the pages that slipped from #1 to below #10 are now back at #4 or #5 depending on DC. For our top 2 word term a different competitor came in at #2 but that has dropped back to #6.
I was just wondering if these small changes in one niche were indicative of much bigger changes in more severely affected areas.
Is there any reason to hope?
Sid
I agree dolcevita least that shows the site:command correct and places the index first hopefully the rankings will then follow
I actually like the rankings too but its too good to believe. That DC has me at #1 and inset #2 for all of my main target terms. I'm pretty sure that it was in a list of 5 or 6 DCs from two weeks ago that I said were all too good to believe and the results for me look the same.
The point is I don't think that it is indicative of a possible dirrection that Google will be moving towards, IMHO its more like one DC left from an earlier experiment.
Sid
[edited by: dolcevita at 10:14 am (utc) on July 10, 2006]
site: command (with space)
Including the space will just search for the words "site" and "www.example.com". It isn't a site search.
