Forum Moderators: open
Worst update: Nov 2001?
3rd, 4th, ort 5th: Florida?
Other biggies:
Altavista: Too many urls Dec 1998 (?)
Altavista: Black Monday, August 1999
Excite: Density tweak (Dec 1997)?
Inktomi: Over submission update Spring 98 (?)
[edited by: Brett_Tabke at 7:25 pm (utc) on Dec. 2, 2003]
Is it over? I think not. Will Google achieve what they want with this? I really think not!
We will see what happens over the next couple of weeks, and maybe by then the chaos will cease.
For me the worst update was Esmeralda. We took a hit of 50% decrease in visitors over night and had to create loads more content to cover for it. ever since the non-update update I decided that panicking about SEO is as damaging to the heart as smoking 2 packs a day, and as I had quit smoking already it was the next logical thing to quit.
Sorry to hear that so many webmasters have been hit hard by another moodswing from Google. But I'm sure you'll recover. you always do.
i like google much more then AV
Really? Because, all upset aside, until now, even if my site wasn't doing well in Google, I have always used Google as my SE of choice. I literally haven't used another search engine in years. This has continued through Dominic and all the other bobbles over the past few years. I still could find what I needed with Google.
However, this week, with the searches I've needed to do, Google has been coming up as close to empty as a SE can get. Where was the first place I turned? You guessed it! Good ole AV! :)
Now, I'm getting what I need there. Seriously, if this crap continues, I'm only a few steps away from removing Google from my bookmarks and replacing it with AV.
BTW...my wife noticed Google being a mess and not being able to find what she wanted and so did my dad. Word is gonna start to circulate on this one.
And for those of you saying that people are going to notice that the results aren't as good any more, I disagree. The majority of people out there have no clue that anything changed in google. If they are not finding what they are looking for on google anymore, they'll probably assume google is still doing the best job, and it's the rest of the internet's fault for not having the information they want.
It is all rubbish, a lot of people got effected - have you ever had a network fail? Everyone wants to say this or say that and speculate...
a) Has Google announced any updates in the Algo?
b) Could it have been just a temp hickup, restoring itself next update?
c) I was told that penelized sites loose PR and get greyed out - has this happend, is it true?
d) I don't believe everyone in Google has somehow pulled a stunt like this, unless they all have 3 heads and have good share options;)
e) Years ago in UK we had lots of cornershops selling vegatables, newpapers and fresh food. Then the supermakets came, then the hyper markets came and now you have plots of land being bought up and sold to Block Busters, McDonald's etc...
If the bigboys are conspiring to weed out any future compition then you might as well give up the game and promote adwords. If however you are good at what you do, take the knock, move on and re-engineer yourselfs. 'The cream of the crop will always rise to the top'
If there is any corporate giants out there conspiring to change the algos - give up now I will not be beaten, on the other hand as I am a fair bloke i'll take a big huge bribe and will start a gardening company 'offline' and will no longer carry on my art of SEO. Why doesn't everyone just move on and wait for the next update, analyse the results and build a better solution.
Otherwise im going to add an update into the commercial-exchange post area - Link Parnters wanted, your country needs you. Google's future competitor seeks strong minded 'self opinionated' webmasters who think their system is better than googles...all we need to do is form a cooperative and link all our sites up together world wide and build a better search engine than google.
PS - profits are equal until I go for IPO in which case I will add premium rate advertising and add spider traps to screw you all up and forge a contract that says I own the World....
The best strategy for the future may very well be forgetting everything you know about ranking and looking as stupid as you can. toolman
I'm golden!
If Google had any brains,
they would set up a
google classic search bar
and a google new search bar.
Google would soon notice that
80-90% of the people are using
Google classic.
They would then drop the new algo
and go back to the old algo.
The one that worked.
Remember when ebay made all those
changes and nothing worked?
They QUICKLY went back to the old
algo and searches were great again.
We threatened EBAY with a boycott
and started putting our stuff on Yahoo.
It worked. Ebay is OK now.
When you search for "dolls"
you don't get a Pamela Anderson DVD.
Is this still true?
But I still think it is too early to conclude as to what happend. And I think it's bad timing for everyone. It's like the chicken and the egg, if you have good rankings then you appear more credible - Even if I get traffic from link partners by nature of my work I need my listings on Google to prove I am who I say I am and am therefore credible.
I used to work on Cisco's internal EMEA network and flew all over Europe working on Cisco software (which had and still has it's fair share of bugs). My market went sour and I went from a high-flyer to being unemployed. Since then I have been spending the last year researching, building sites and promoting my site. I want to continue SEO work, not everyone can do it and I think if you are going to put the effort in to optimise a site correctly as opposed to paying Google lots of money then it should be our right to do this with out Google 'manipulating' our situation.
I personally gained a top 5 listing on g for about 1 month. I saw 40 leads come in by email and now a lot of them are debating my crediblity. I have been out of work 'technically' for over 12 months and this was my last effort to regain some self worth, I have been working 10, 14, 9, 17 hour days sometimes without rewards and have had to sell my new mer. sports, have sold my yuppy flat and have thrown everything into my business. The only thing I own right now is a pair of DJ turntables that have 24 carrot gold mechanics on them. Luckily my girlfriend earns a lot of money to support me but after working for such a long time I thought I would be seeing very good results and would be receiving high rewards for my efforts. Only to find my listings gone!
That is the nature of SEO work and it has been that way for many years by the looks of it, it is a cat and mouse game.
I don't mind working around it but Google say it is a 'fair and honest' way of listing websites. If the problem does not get sorted out ASAP I think they will need to change this info as it would appear to be false information. I still personally think that the problem will fix itself. Lets hope it is just a temp. problem for everyones sake cause I still believe we could all work in harmony and all benefit from it. If we all know how the algo worked then why not make great sites and compete for the business? It is Google's right not to produce information on their algo but we are not stupid and can work it out ourselves. Other alternative is to pay for advertising which would seem fair, if they don't sort this out soon then I am sure Mr (Sir) Gates will use our skills to build a better search engine.
I pray that Google do not loose their position over greed and shifty foot work, and listen to honest, hardworking professional like us. At the end of the day it does effect many people and in the end will effect their position. I will be looking at the IPO in great detail and will become a share holder as soon as it is possible. If they are thinking for the future and their future share holders then they must listen to us as we are after all qualified in our area.
I sure hope this problem is resolved quickly. The majority of my business is drawn from Google. I am loosing alot of money because of this. I guess all i can do is sit back and wait it out like everyone else.
I love this site. I hope that one day i can contribute as much as everyone else has.
IMO, the great AV debacle, a bunch of my primary site pages (unique editorial content) disappeared, along with a good chuck of traffic, but pretty soon thereafter, so did AV from the search publics' radar because this little SE called "google"? had arrived on the scene, and by then, it didn't matter.
After a cursory check, it appears that my primary site has benefited from "Florida", got two pages back in the top 10 for a common 3 word search after nearly a year out of the loop (so to speak) and have the referrals chugging through ... WOO HOO! while other sites have slipped to top 20.
But this is all so deja vu' <shrug> ... algos come algos go, SEs come SEs go ... they're like buses, there'll be a new one along any minute now G has apparently stuffed up.
Meanwhile, those of you who relied on soley G serps to power your affiliate/agent/whatever money makers have suddenly learned what Henry Ford meant when he said that "It's OK to put your eggs in one basket, just watch the basket very carefully"; will have to adjust your business model and go out and shake your money maker to earn a living like the rest of us.
Or, as ex Prime Minister Malcolm Fraser once famously said "There's no such thing as a free lunch".
But then ... Malcolm is also famous for being found, on a state visit to the US, somewhat disorientated and sans trousers in a Memphis motel, after experiencing the hospitality of the locals. ;-]
Hooroo
JP
Im sure that when law suits are done, sure well all get a little piece for getting ripped on our paid inclusions. Even, maybe the entire public be get a piece for being defrauded as well.
The big search engines will surely make make more from this than they will have to pay. Isn't that how it really works.
Warduck
A search using Google Services may produce search results ... that some people find objectionable, inappropriate, or offensive....You may not use the Google Services to sell a product or service, or to increase traffic to your Web site for commercial reasons, such as advertising sales.
Looks to me like most of the people who find the new results inappropriate are the ones who have been using Google for purposes that it explicitly says are not permitted.
Makes a change for those of us using Google to find information who used to be flooded with inappropriate commercial sites.
The answer is obvious: use Google for what is allowed in Google, and do your selling elsewhere.
There is no contract between webmasters and Google. They simply come and crawl our sites.
However I also provide about 80% info on my site (SEO tips, graphic tutorials and free stuff) and I think that is why I'm still doing so well. I"ve been adding more info to various pages for last several weeks and every week my hits go higher (i.e., they are not static pages they are constantly changing and I think that is causing the search engines to check more often).
I manage about 20 sites and none of them have dropped significantly since Nov (other than one temporary glitch that only lasted 3 days) and a few have doubled their hits (but I always encourage my clients to add info pages).
So I suggest if you want to get site ranking high again start adding more info to your sites.
>I don't see any real difference in how information sites are doing at least in topics that aren't very commercial.
I did a search for "web design" the other day and went thru a multitude of pages of info sites on that topic when I was looking for an actual web designer. Then I tried "web design + a city" (not my city) and while the first result was a web designer all the rest for several pages were info sites.
This is one reason why I believe the more info related sites are going to rank higher with this recent update.
As webmasters we need to be tweaking our own algorithum to keep up with Google's.
As Lorel said ...
>So I suggest if you want to get site ranking high again start adding more info to your sites
OR, to put the mantra as many of us old timers (!) know from the "field of dreams" halcyon days ...
content is king ... content is king ... content is king ...
not link farms, not affiliate links, not commission links.
CONTENT.
Thanks for sharing and reminding us Lorel.
Hooroo
JP
<edit>Oh yes ... and I should have added UNIQUE to the CONTENT (not stolen, ripped off or framed from someone elses site or published works, unless you have their permission, credit them and link back to their web site!)
I don't know either way, but I wouldn't try to find hotels in Paris, France now on any search engine. As a webmaster, I have been getting more hits from "other" engines, but that may just be the holiday rush, since overall the hits from all s-engines has increased. As an "advanced" user, I too have noticed the high ranking of out of context results, and I have also noticed that some use external JavaScript to add keywords, but I just pass them up, It's obvious to a human --- I just wish the algo could at least come close... :)
Greetings,
Herenvardö
So, there is no contract: If your page is good, G will rank it high for its own interest.
A web need SEs, and the SE's need a web to search in. Simply two entities in a symbiothic convivence.
Greetings,
Herenvardö
The only site I'm watching stats on has dropped from +7000 hits in October from Google/Yahoo to 3000 in November and December. Mostly the same keywords driving traffic but I don't have data on where they were in Google's results.
But I too have become frustrated by the results I am getting with Google. As AnneJ said, if I wanted a spammy link farm to show me links to match my query, I'd have keyed my search into a spammy link farm.
I almost never click on adwords, but recently I have started doing so because they are now the only really relevant results Google returns.
Franky I don't give two hoots if a site exploited Google to get to a top 10 rank as long as they give me what I wanted, which they were doing until this autumn.
Still, much as I liked google, I have had no qualms switching to Inktomi. I'll give Google a chance, I have their toolbar instlled, but they'd better get it fixed or they're going to go the way of Alta Vista.
I'm surprised MSN and Inktomi haven't been flooding the news channels with "Is Google broken" propoganda.
By the end of the 1st quarter 04 the powerbrokers should have their acts together better then ink, yahoo and msn may be working - those are the engines that have failed.
Yours,
Warduck
I'm surprised MSN and Inktomi haven't been flooding the news channels with "Is Google broken" propoganda.
Back to the topic,
Google has, indirectly, given job to many people there. And when it has some objectable results everybody attack it.
Instead of working in your SERPs to get again your rankings, you begin a thread trying to decide if has sometime (or hasn't) been a worse update than this!
When I came for the first time to these forums, I found them wonderfull, but now I'm getting deceived by most of you :(
It's true that SERPs are not so good as they used to be. It's true that Google is not in their best times. But they have always been there. When hundreds or thousands webmasters were spamming G's results, there was a lot of people working against spam, to give users what they needed and to send to you the surfers that needed something from your sites. It's very sad. At least we could show a little more respect for thoose people who have worked for the Web more than anybody in this world.
I've also said some things about G that I now regret. G is a great search engine, moved by a lot of people who try to make the web better. And now, at the first problem, all of us are turning our back on them? No! I will get links. I will take my page again to the top and I will help G to detect spamming as often as I can. I will continue using Google and, as they have always been in the side of their users, I will do all as I can to keep users on G's side.
My most sad greetings,
Herenvardö
