Forum Moderators: Robert Charlton & goodroi
My Google.com is currently 216.239.39.99
While Google.co.uk is currently 216.239.57.104
That's great. Problem is, by the time you convince them by changing your entire site around, they're likely to tell you they liked it better the first time.
Getting back to the update; looks like the same old cr*p to me. Links,links,links, anchor text, anchor text.
I'm really starting to hate Google. They're doing way more harm than good to the internet with their stupid "trust rank", "page rank", "aged links", blah blah blah. It's no wonder you can't find any decent sites any more, all the webmasters are out working on their link campaigns instead creating quality sites. If this is the best 200 phd's can come up with, somebody with some common sense needs to get in there and kick some serious butt.
<rant>
It's difficult to believe the same Google engineers that are too inept to figure out your www. and non-www. pages are the same are trusted to implement something as sophisticated as "TrustRank."
If such a thing exists, I might very well be a victim of it. Victim of my own link popularity? I can hear the violins.
Thanks. Much appreciated.
But when you run a query of the same keyphrase/keyword on google.com , do you get the same top 5 sites as per the two DCs I mentioned?
Nope - you must be just hitting those DCs. If you ping Google.com you will see which datacenters you are accessing.
Also check out the sticky I have sent you.
Dayo.
I agree 100% with your post that Google is ruining the web by making webmasters work on rankings instead of content. Kind of like the US tax code: it's so bloated, everybody needs an expert to sort it out.
Pissed at Ph.D. morons more and more every day.
Since then, resolved a 302 redirect problem and dup content issues. And google changed the way they're handling the canonical stuff (per googleguy). Over past 6 weeks google traffic had come back to about 80% of mid-Dec level. Site moved up to #3 for site name (used to be #1), and three main subpages were back to #1 for their name.
Since Bourbon, google traffic is off about 60-70% and site is not found in first 30 serps (didn't look further) for site name. Three main subpages are not in first 30 for their name.
Was just beginning to add more content, since I now had some visitors to see it. Guess I'll go work on something else...
[edited by: bether2 at 2:51 pm (utc) on May 22, 2005]
have you considered the possibility that what you've been experiencing since February could be some sort of implementation of Trustrank?
Many of my incoming links are "old" and may be devalued because of their age. But they're all organic - I've never run any kind of link campaign - and because of the variety of books I review they're pretty diverse. So I have links from techie sites to my computing reviews, links from academic sites to my history and science reviews, links from literary sites to my literature reviews, etc.
In any event, the structure of my incoming/outgoing links has been pretty stable, so I can't see how Google's algorithms for evaluating trust could move my site from "sort of trusted" (November) to "most highly trusted" (in December/January) to "suspect" (February to May) and now "totally untrustworthy" -- or if they have, how I can possibly track them so as to stay trusted!
site:sitename.com
site:www.sitename.com
link:sitename.com
link:www.sitename.com
Is this normal?
You're a prime example of what's wrong with the current Google algo and why nobody should be betting their future on their Google rankings.
If somebody searches "specific book review" and visits your site, it's not hard to tell if they found valuable info or not. If they spent a significant amount of time there, they obviously found your site suited there interest. And that's all that should matter! I always check my page views and time spent as an indicator of what people think of my site.
That's not hard for google either with all the google toolbars out there.
The same goes for spam and scraper sites. If the visitor hits the site and they're 3 seconds and out, not to return, than it's obviously just a scraper/directory/spam, whatever! There's no need for this ridiculous "sandbox" or whatever you want to call it. Let the surfer decide. Sheesh........
dont forget the lag involved in these evolving uodates.
I think that says something in itself.
216.239.39.104 (better for me)
64.233.161.99 (-"-)
216.239.37.104 (worse)
64.233.167.99 (-"-)
64.233.161.104 (-"-)
64.233.167.104 (-"-)
abbeyvet, are your clients' sites relatively new (< 9 months)? Sounds like they're in the sandbox.
Some not new, some newish. All the results I am referring to are on the first page of results, some where there before this update, some just appeared.
So it means that my site (web design/services etc) is appearing on the first page results, above client sites, for all kinds of completely and utterly unrelated stuff just because a page, unlinked to from anywhere, appears in my portfolio that has a brief description of what a site I made does/sells/is for.
These are single pages, and by design have no more than a sentence or two, an image and a link. So I suppose are highly focused, though I cannot say I was thinking about that when I made them. But at least they act as a conduit to client sites and to what people searched for. It is just a bit embarrasing that client sites are now below them!
None of the client sites link back to my site as I never put links on client sites.
I would guess that Google may see your non-www and www sites as two seperate entities still as they show different backlinks and PR.
I redirected from a non-www to a www and the backlinks and page rank only consolidated at a PR update. (Having said that traffic aint improved much yet)
Taps - I am starting to see a bit of movement too.
Oh well I am off down the pub and then back for sunday roast ;). Maybe I will have a bourbon
Since it is not over yet there's still hope for anyone else.
They are clearly penalizing plenty of legit sites just to get rid of some of the garbage ones.
Definitely. I am wondering though, maybe they are penalizing some sites that are on shared ip's. If my site was penalized by ip, if I changed to dedicated, would my site still be penalized? All of this is automated, so there is room for error.
We're a long-established niche content site with slow-but-steady growth over a six-year period. (Forbes Best of the Web, Yahoo "cool shades" etc.) We lost about 85% of Google referrals in in mid-December and slipped a bit more with the update in February.
Over the winter, we fixed a 302 redirect problem and also the canonical stuff per GoogleGuy's suggestions.
In mid-March our Google referrals roared back to similar levels to those before mid-December. They fell apart again with the Bourbon update -- again dropping about 85% in a day's time.
While it is possible that this is only temporary it is of concern because it acts like all of that work was a waste of time.
Updates of this magnitude take time to roll out and we have no Idea as to exactly where in the process this update is.
For those of you who lost your rankings, I really feel for you because I know how I felt after March 23.
