Forum Moderators: Robert Charlton & goodroi
DCs 66.249.87.104 and 66.249.87.99, have just had another look and the SERPs are alternating between pre-update and new but both do not include the sandboxed sites that are present on DCs 64.233.167.104 and 64.233.163.104, I've been seeing this since 19/05.
Data is moving in and out on those dcs though.
lost 55% of traffic with allegra and another 50% with this update....down to 20-25% of pre-allegra traffic now.
hundreds of high quality .org/.edu incoming links (from sites like bbc, guardian and british council), home page pr6 plus many deep pages pr6 too, four year old domain.
white as snow hat, pure html and css, 100% standards compliant, 301 to www for two months now (and results of that showing in all search engine), using code claus posted years ago.
I don't deserve to be number one for my niche...number four or five would be just....but not 39!
I have always considered, like someone else said earlier, that my site was on a par with those like EFV's and danny's...and we are all hurting now.
anyway, I made the decision after allegra that I was going to open up a pay section to the site...gotta take the power out of G's hands. Will use CPC campaigns to promote that and get $30-a-member and not worry so much about free traffic clicking adsense and the like.
feeling utterly powerless. I wish they would return to the algo of two years ago and get an anti-spam team to hand filter the crap out of the index. 500 sites manually removed a day for a fortnight would make the world of difference.
over realiance on automation is now removing not only the fat, but the meat too....and in some cases penetrating down to the bone.
3.5 year old site, 100 + pages, clean SEO, original content, some reselling of products.
The only thing that I can pick up is that I just created about 30-40 new pages over the last month prior to this update.
I have adsense, amazon and some other affiliate links but nothing over the top or syndicated content.
What is this all about really?
What really annoys me is the fact that my own site is not listed for some phrases used in headlines, while the SERPs is showing every other site syndicating my RSS.
I've seen a few of those... And my definitive "Australian warbling" directory now ranks 25th for a search "Australian warbling" - with half the pages ranking ahead of it having no relevance to the topic at all except for a link to my site!
The one thing that is a given is that after every update you will have a certain % of the people happy and a cetain % unhappy. But in the end, there is always another update a few months later and usually the emotions switch. Maybe that's how google tries to be fair to all of us. We all can't be number one all of the time.
Comments like this illustrate the real problem. Webmasters who take on the role of the abused victim, rather than the proper role of the content originator and backbone of the internet, have their roles reversed.
What is Google but nothing more and nothing less than the mother of all scraper sites? They've made billions off the backs of webmasters worldwide and now play god.
I suppose we could all just disallow the googlebot to crawl our sites via .htacess, and maybe they'd get the message. I may do it now that I have little to lose since G has absolutely crushed my traffic.
From the results I am seeing, this update is nearly complete, so we should all just live with it? Now would be the perfect time for Yahoo to lauch their publisher's network. The movement from G would be massive.
[edited by: esllou at 12:32 pm (utc) on May 23, 2005]
Iam not to sure this update is finnish, we have seen this before. And yes we have to live with it, but dont forget what seo´s do for a living, take a look what other people have done and then they make a better site, a better plan and a better strategi.
We all think the search engines are bad when we not are in the top ten, is it because we dont understand the algo? yes propably, let the update settle down and do something about it when we know its stable. This is whats make seo fun.
/Ove
I suppose we could all just disallow the googlebot to crawl our sites via .htacess, and maybe they'd get the message. I may do it now that I have little to lose since G has absolutely crushed my traffic.
Sites bounce back all the time. I know waiting around for google isn't ideal but why turn a (possibly) temporary problem into a permanent one?
Sorry to disagree, but when it negatively affects the bottom line it's no longer fun. Like going to the race track and losing, not a great time.
Besides, having to make changes all the time keeps publishers from creating new, relevant content and increasing the world's store of knowledge. Google is doing the entire world a disservice by changing their algo so often.
Where is Steve Jobs when we really need him?
I don't think this is fair or right or moral for G to control our world so much. Moreso, I blame myself for putting so much effort, faith and trust in a company that is so enormously secretive.
Off to plot my revenge...
I suppose we could all just disallow the googlebot to crawl our sites via .htacess, and maybe they'd get the message. I may do it now that I have little to lose since G has absolutely crushed my traffic.
Same here. ZERO traffic from Google NOTHING to lose. But banning their bots won't help. "Yahoo is better" will.
From the results I am seeing, this update is nearly complete, so we should all just live with it? Now would be the perfect time for Yahoo to lauch their publisher's network. The movement from G would be massive.
As far as this update goes... my site is THE one, the ONLY authority site in my little area. I went from #1 to #145. I sank 144 positions from one minute to the next, and haven't budged since.
I'll move my business to Yahoo in a heartbeat. I am begging them to start a publisher network ASAP.
This may sound heartless, I promise that’s not my intention but, its exactly like wagering (to some degree). No one made you buy this ticket (web commerce/promotion) it was your choice to play by Google's rules, sometimes it bites, sometimes its win win.
Seeing a bit more movement between the DCs at the moment.
No sign of the results on google.com here in the UK yet.
I, like many here, understand that sites come and go and change postions in the search results but there is no reason that a quality site should go from #1 to #150 in the blink of an eye. That is not bending the stick, that is breaking it.
Sites should move through the serps in a natural progression. As a site becomes better, for whatever reason Google determines, it should slowly work it's way up the serps.
With main keywords, in my niche, there are sites that are now in the top 5 positions that were not in the top 1000 2 days a go.
>No one made you buy this ticket (web commerce/promotion) it was your choice to play by Google's rules, sometimes it bites, sometimes its win win.<
But it seems that no one knows for sure at present what are Google´s rules.
Maybe in future everybody play by his/her own rules, and only then the folks at Google will get really busy to the extent that they themselves will come here asking for forgiveness :-)
post number 52, 64 and 93...
I called this last year and still stick by it. I personally believe this will get worse as time goes on.
I was right on a few predictions of mine so far
1."Massive swings in the algo will be constant now to stimulate adwords sales which is there sole source of revenue."
2."I wouldnt be surprised if in less then 18 months G closely resembles Yahoos business model, its on the way there already."
This is now happening on schedule.
3."G is very smart, they do things that usually have 3-6 immediate benefits with several longterm benefits. Change the algo, adwords sales go up due to webmasters loosing free traf, clicks go up due to less then stellar results, adsense runs on the spam so if they do clicks the "natural" results its still money to them."
Oh and for anyone who thinks G makes money any other way then advertising
"We generated approximately 97% of our revenues in 2003 and 98% of our revenues in the six months ended June 30, 2004 from our advertisers"
[sec.gov...]
We have lost so much potential money in the last year plus from this stuff I care not to think about it, it is just the way it is.
[edited by: drall at 1:51 pm (utc) on May 23, 2005]
Edited - best not to post specifics
[edited by: Dayo_UK at 1:52 pm (utc) on May 23, 2005]
I took about a 50% hit in traffic, so I'm not happy either. However I've already taken two steps to gain some back, better control of my sites use of non www and www handling, and better title description. The latter is (to me at least) a place I was falling way short on, based in part by what I see in the serps.
I would say that while yes, everyone can look-up the rules to roulette or blackjack, knowing those rules still doesn’t remove the chance factor of the game. Or rather (in my case at least) I was being given a few extra cards, now their (Google) playing by ‘rules’ hard and fast.
Those DCs show the same results that I am currently getting on Google.com. Hope they stay.
<removed quote>
[edited by: novice at 2:00 pm (utc) on May 23, 2005]
Yes...sites back on those DCs
Dayo_UK: On DCs - 216.239.39.104 and 66.102.11.104 ...you will see our friends site doing well
Those looks much better for me as well, so I guess I'm in the same boat as EFV.
LisaB
It looks like the algo for determining how ontopic inbound links have been changed / tightend.Im sure this is mixed in with other variables such as age, pr(?), and others im sure.
This I would say is only a small part of this update - but soemthing to have a look at.
(This was only took note from around 10 websites so open to comments)
Some up & some down but since I was diversified in topics everything was balanced out in the end for me. I haven't had the oppurtunity to analyze the pages that got knocked down yet.
