Forum Moderators: Robert Charlton & goodroi
I had three sites I was looking at. One is an old one I did about three years ago when I was learning - a geocities free URL, 10 pages, crosslinking of every single page, long obnoxious hyphenated URLs, by far the weakest information of the three sites. It's actually just a test site thrown up, and of low and even amateurish quality. It has plenty of inbound links, but I haven't messed with it since putting it up.
Then I have two other sites ranging from 50 to more than 2000 pages of original content and photos. Top of the line, really, and sites people interested the topics and subtopics would want to find. The big site has lots of subtopics, going with the standard advice to add lots of good content.
Guess which site is still #1, and which two have been crushed in this update.
I'm wondering if it is a mistake to put everything into a single domain with lots of subtopics. I know many of those do well. And mine did before yesterday. But it seems one has to be so careful with cross linking within the site itself, that it's easy and even probable that one will cross whatever line Google has set up. I think I will seriously consider just building large numbers of very focused sites. The big sites with many topics connected internally by links appear just too risky at the moment.
[edited by: Vespasian at 5:14 pm (utc) on Feb. 4, 2005]
What's the general concensus on what factors Google is changing this time?
To me it looks kind of like a "Florida Lite" update. Top serp's loaded with big directory/affiliate/hub/authority pages that have the keyword mentioned once or twice on the page.
One interesting thing I have noticed for the first time are peoples mapquest address searches showing up. For example, if I do a search for "Anytown real estate", I'm seeing results for somebodys mapquest search for 4521 Main St. Anytown, California.
[edited by: More_Traffic_Please at 5:42 pm (utc) on Feb. 4, 2005]
In a few cases where I was knocked down a few notches, it seems that Google moved up sites that were at least deserving of higher rank. So in the two fields where I have sites, the results seem to be fine.
But last night I was doing some shopping and there were some very entertaining sites mixed in with what were otherwise good SERPs.
Every time I see you post your traffic went up
Is that so odd?
Between 4 sites, I only have two months where a single site ever lost more than 10% off the previous month's results.
Shouldn't that be the natural way things work with quality informational sites that add content and links regularly?
Shouldn't that be the natural way things work with quality informational sites that add content and links regularly?
It should be for an information site--or any site--that consists mostly of "evergreen" content (as opposed to news or other time-sensitive material) and adds new pages regularly.
Thats what I see MoreTraffic, Epinions, Amazon, Bizrate and such major sites are at the top. Have been seeing this trend more and more for the past year. Soon the little guy will be lost forever.
Honestly, I don't see those sites being much of a threat. Sure it's going to take a little work for the mom and pop to get recognized by the engines as being deserving of higher rankings but they mainly rank well for fairly uncompetitive shopping products. Any serious serps wont have those sites listed in the top.
Mom and pop or not, if you want free valuable traffic you're going to have to put effort into it or pay someone to.
