Forum Moderators: Robert Charlton & goodroi
[edited by: Kangol at 12:00 am (utc) on Feb. 9, 2005]
It can be done very easily - but for sure they are not doing it now "realtime" to change the serps. If they collect this kind of information (and i would) they have done it earlier to collect a LOT of user selections which they add as a factor to rate a certain page.
One should also not forget the Google Toolbar ... this little baby delivers nearly everything you need regarding user behaviour / selections combined with querys..
itloc
I bet they check their Adwords revenue stream as well. One would think higher CTR on natural SERPs = lower Adwords revenue.
Thought I'd mention it just in case nobody else had. Do not trust these results!
[edited by: ciml at 9:20 am (utc) on Feb. 9, 2005]
2 things to consider though:
1) Sometimes you can refresh a query on certain datacenters and you will get dramatically different results with each refresh.
2) I believe the results at mcdar are based on a query that shows 100 results per page, which will sometimes result in slightly inflated numbers.
February 3: 21%
February 4: 13%
February 5: 9%
February 6: 14%
February 7: 19%
There's nothing even remotely blackhat about my site. It's static HTML with no frills - no Javascript, not even any images - except for AdSense. It has huge numbers of (almost entirely unsolicited) incoming links, from all over the place, and almost no SEO has been done on it (page titles are derived from book titles).
The only thing I can think of is that my AdSense alternate ads are causing a problem. For a while I had myself convinced that was the explanation, but the more I think about it the more implausible that seems.
mcdar has been a great help in my opinion.
Well, I did several searches using the default settings. I click on an individual DC, do the exact same search and get totally different results. How do you explain that?
[edited by: Liane at 1:59 am (utc) on Feb. 9, 2005]
The theory is that the pagerank that you pour in from different inbound links gets distributed across higher number of indexed pages thus assigning smaller PR to each page and thus ranking it lower.
That is not uncommon from what I am seeing.
Do you have any redirects or a parked domain?
I have a theory I'd like to check -- is whoever got hit by this update also seeing an increase in the number of indexed pages on at least one datacenter or the primary google at the same time? Just plain "site:yoursite" thing.
That has been my experience so far with this update. Pages indexed increased by 25%, referrals decreased by 75%. Don't know if they are related.
It sort of makes sense to me then. Inbound PR is not enough to support high ranking of such a number of indexed pages.
That looks very good so far...however...still my rankings are in outer space...
I havent been hit. and have an increase in pages indexed too.
Do you have any redirects or a parked domain?
And no, I don't have parked domains, if I understand what you mean correctly.
My conclusion is that I need to tighten the belt and relax, this update is here to stay and eventually I'll get my traffic back -- once growing PR compensates for the number of indexed pages.
Danny,
Do you have any redirects or a parked domain?
I have a redirect from my old site - but that's been there for five years now without causing any problems. And I certainly don't have any parked domains!
Do you have a long string you could enter into a search between quotes. Something from your home page and see what Google returns for results.
The only thing he could write is something like..
In which case he would choose to remain silent, because?
I know there are things which can and cannot be done by public companies. I don't think that anybody besides us webmasters could care whether these results are slight worse or slightly better - I don't believe the average surfer would know the different, unless they searched for something regularly.
Here's an idea for GoogleGuy though, other stuff aside... If someone were to use your engine, and it's likely that most of the internet users in the world have sone so then would changing results be a bad thing, regardless..
For example, let's say my neighbor was thinking of going to costa rica (a nice place), and imagine he used Google to look it up, but didn't order. Then he returns a week or 2 later, only to find that with the same search query, he can no longer find the same site he was looking at a week previous. The guy scratches his head and says to himself "maybe I can find it with Yahoo.." Let's say he does find it there - Google has lost a user because they were let down.
So, is consistenceny more useful that the "minor upgrades" which might, in all honesty considering the mass audience, be doing more harm than good?
GoogleGuy. What magnitude of a problem do you see this as being? Do you think these changes in rankings confuse, at least, a minority of persons?
Thye're a public company and he isn't going to admit that they have a problem on their product. Plus, in less than a week they can sell their shares so they have to be double careful. They don't want the stock to slide.
They don't want the stock to slide
Of course not. Neither would I.
I'm just asking him to confirm the opposite, and if nothing is posted then we know he can't verify is normal, so we'd have our answer by default.
Ultimately, and I have to be honest, I'm just selfish that a significant portion of my income has dissappeared over the past week. Being bitter aside, I'm really just looking for a reason as to why this happened (as are you walkman). I played by the rules, and done great for a while. So, after putting in all that hard work, things just get flipped for no reason?
I've even pointed some website errors out to Google (with Googles sites) and then they got rectified... I scratch your back...
Not trying to be arrogant or anything here, but I am just wondering what, exactly is up here. Google's guidelines have been followed, to the T, yet performance from Google is worse than ever :(
Is there anyway for my company to get in touch with Google in a more formal manner to pose the same question? Not specifically if they have issues or not, but more along the lines of "where's my site please?!"?
Of course GoogleGuy, you are free to PM me, ask me for the url and tell me what, if anything, is causing our extremely poor rankings (not even ranking for brand name), all privately of course!
My website has about 400 backlinks (non recip) and has been #1 for well over 3 years.
This of course brings me to believe that my site had been removed (and its only my index page that has been removed) because this guy took content from my homepage and it's been punished for duplicate content....which ironically, is mine originally.
I suggest that you check your sites for stolen or copied content.
things just get flipped for no reason?
You think so? Come on Chico it is a game al bit one that can make you a lot of money. Just reverse engineer it and fix what needs to be fixed. But I would not change much yet. I am pretty sure we are not done dancing.
I run several sites. Some were doing well before the update and are still doing well. Others dropped a bit, others improved. The bottom line is that my employer and I learned a while ago, not to be dependent upon unpredictable generic search results. We learned to make our sites do well through other venues. One site was sandboxed for a while. However, we promoted it in other ways and continued to generate revenue from it. We had stopped tracking it's google ranking months ago. Now I see that that one particular site is ranking well, so it's a bonus. If the results go back to where they were, oh well no big deal...business as usual. Search engines are never going to cater to people who try to make their living trying to manipulate them. And if you think they give two craps if your site (which of course is the greatest in the world) isn't ranking well (but of course you know it SHOULD be), you are sadly mistaken.
If you are that upset, take a deep breathe and a step back. Maybe you're not cut out for this...or better yet maybe you'll take this as a rude awakening not to be so dependent on the organic results of one engine for the majority of you traffic and revenue. Would you bet your yearly salary that google isn't going to have another update within the next year? Well that's what your basically doing if you're in that deep because your site's google rank dropped.
[edited by: eelixduppy at 8:18 pm (utc) on Feb. 18, 2009]
one version was:
mysite.com
mysite.com/contact/index.html
the other was:
www.mysite.com
www.mysite.com/contact/index.html
i quickly fixed the problem with a rewrite in my htaccess. i'll see in a few days if that fixes the problem.
