Forum Moderators: Robert Charlton & goodroi
No, that is zero sum game. The most useless posts here are from people saying the serps on some datacenter suck or are good because their own stuff ranks bad or good on that datacenter. Not only does nobody else care, there is someone thinking the exact opposite due to how their stuff is ranking.
In any case (repeating mantra from past several updates), a lot folks should consider that screw ups are not deliberate policies. Google has been a technical mess for more than a year now, just over two years really. Allegra was just a blip of an update, but was a huge technical disaster. Google also has a horrible time figuring out canonical pages, particularly when webmasters deliberately do inconsistent things.
This update seems to me to be another minor bit of shuffling, with the added "bonus" of a lot of anomalies, most caused by lazy or uniformed webmastering (meaning if you have been reading webmasterworld and haven't had a 301 on for non-www and www since at least last summer, you only have yourself to blame).
I see almost no changes in my niches, except... a HUGE increase in straight redirect domains. This tactical trash gets discovered fairly quickly but apparently a new tactic has been discovered and needs to be squashed; authority sites performing same as recently; sites still in the sandbox dumped back to pre-Allegra levels, while sites that got out of the sandbox with Allegra doing a bit better.
Also the fact that webmasters themselves are starting to manipulate Google.com has to be pretty scary if you're at the 'plex. I have to think to myself - What if Google has gotten so complex that the engineers themselves are having trouble understanding or controling this monster?
Weird how they showing different countries different results.
There proves the theory of running multiple algos at once.
Way before Allegra: #1 and #2 (indent)
Pre-Bourbon: #3
In some DC:
- #5
- #1 and #2 (indent)
- MIA!
His page consists mainly of interminable lists of links, affiliate and recip links, popunders, and affiliate content like Amazon and Fastclick.
I thought it interesting that he suffered so little in Bourbon, while me, with actual unique content, took such a hit.
The MIA is intriguing.
It looks like you are being hit hard with this update. With the last update and this one, a few of my sites went down. These were my cash cows and had affiliate links in them. In the both updates, a few of my sites got in as well. They all have huge unique content and offer good value for searchers.
I dont make as much as I used to but its still good.
I think thats the way things are moving here now.
So when I search for "Red Widgets" and the top ten listings are for "Green Widgets" (with only a passing mention of red ones), but the Adsense ads on the left are all for "Red Widgets", what am I going to click?
The money making Adsense ads of course.
I think Google and their shareholders have got the algo exactly the way they want it.
1) If competitors offer a better search product, Google will have fewer eyeballs looking at its AdWords over time; and...
2) For many searches, there are no AdWords, or AdWords don't supply the answers that users are looking for.
3) If Google were intentionally corrupting its search results to boost ad sales, we'd have heard about an exodus of search engineers by now. [Of course, some here might speculate that GoogleGuy's "vacation" involves a job interview in Redmond, so if an MSNGuy suddenly turns up on Webmaster World, maybe you'll be proven right. :-)]
Something else happening.
Not only am I getting no referrals from Google whatsoever, but the amount of referrals I receive from other sites has also declined significantly.
Google brought in 30% of my page views.
My overall traffic, however, has been halved.
Are the people that bring in the traffic to my site also hit? Link pages in particular?
He's been seen gloating about my disappearance from the SERPs in a forum. He stole my content. Nicest fellow you've ever met.
I'm up 20 positions at #128, but slimeball is not in the first 25 pages.
This DC is the lesser evil. I'll take it!
But seriously...
If I look at the allinanchor, and allintext results, they look very much like pre-Bourbon to me.
Maybe the weight given to the "allin" rankings is reduced, or hasn't yet been factored in to the new calculations?
Anyway, I don't think Google is broken...nor do I think Google is crap (just because I don't rank anymore). I still use Google as my only search! Heck, I used Google to find this wonderful forum!
I still think its the best search engine (by far better than MSN...MSN is so....simplistic) and I don't think they are doing anything on purpose like unranking websites for their own benefit, etc.
However it does suck that so many good websites took a hit, and some crappy geocities, lycos, or spam site outrank some really popular or somewhat authority sites. It's hard to understand how it happened, but I learned a good lesson from this...that I cannot rely on Google as my only traffic. Yahoo and MSN still make my site profitable, and enjoyable to maintain. Google for sure broke my site about %60 percent, however I know I must be doing something right, because I rank well in Yahoo (2nd market leader, and a very good search engine) and MSN (the 3rd market leader).
I'm still seeing ancient (cached more than a year ago), supplemental, currently non-existent pages as indented entries on 216.239.59.104.
What I am seeing as relates to my site is this, and it makes perfect sense, from Google's business standpoint:
If you are an authority on a KW, but you are NOT an adwords advertiser, you are sunk, and especially if you are an Adsense publisher and don't carry Google Adsense search.
All of the advertisers who appear on my site also appear highly ranked in searches under various keywords, and, lo and behold, their ads appear there as well.
So, the solution, according to Google, is spend money for adwords and you will be rewarded with better ranking.
Makes perfect business sense to me. However, Google, as an impartial search engine, is no more. It's all about the money.
This should work for them short term, but longer term, webmasters will not be adding Google ads at quite the pace as in the past as Google has not rewarded them for being good publishers. Rather, they have punished them.
Is there any Adsense publisher, who DOES NOT also spend on Adwords, see this update as positive?
On to the next struggle...
HAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA!
THAT'S RICH!
Yep, this is the best update for me in a while. Although I did redesign my site a few weeks back as I thought I had some sort of keyword penalty. I removed my keywords from my URL's, massively reduced the amount of links in my navigation, and generally reduced my keyword count and bingo in the top 5 for a broad range of terms this update.
Google has finally accumulated enough reliable data for specific searches and google adsense.
This data has been analysed to the point where they can determine the highest click through rate for given adsense ads on a site dependent on the search query used to get to the site.
For example. For search A, site x is 1st but the click through is only 1% yielding $1 revenue. For search A, site B is 2nd, with a click through of 10%, yielding $10 revenue. Make Site B 1st, increase visitors, increase total click throughs, increase revenue.
This is very doable. As a webmaster, if ad A did that for you over Ad B, wouldn't you display ad A more often?
I would. So should Google unfortunately for me and others here. I'm not paranoid or a conspiracy theorist, it's just business at the end of the day.
Maybe a simple tool that says "YES YOUR SITE IS PENALIZED". They dont have to say what the penalty is, just a red flag.
If you are an authority on a KW, but you are NOT an adwords advertiser, you are sunk, and especially if you are an Adsense publisher and don't carry Google Adsense search.
Another, even older, website I operate did even better. We use AdWords for one section on the site but for the most part we sit steady between #1 - #5 for targeted keywords and have for some time.
Sure, two of my websites took a hit with this update although one has crawled back nicely today the other is still languishing. AdWords has replaced the lost sales there so it's not that big a deal.
It would be nice to know when it'll be over. I could cover my eyes while it happens, and only peek when I know it's finished!
Here;s to going from #1 to #300 for several phrases.
What a load of $%&*!
Maybe they're re-building from scratch...
Maybe they're implementing a new tool... A 'Try Alternate Searches' button, that takes you to a set of 'mini' results for 3 'alternate' searches, just popped up at the bottom of the results.
I don't see it on all searches yet, but somehow I'm sure it will be soon.
Justin
1) A blogbomb had been falling (as it should) in the results for a couple weeks rocketed back up to a higher placing than ever. Blog links greatly increased in value on that DC.
2) In line with (1), many redirects based on blog spam ranking extremely high. Redirects of any kind are junk of course, but ones built on blog comments are the dregs.
3) Sandboxed sites do to move up are dumped deeper into the sand
4) Previously hijacked sites improving a bit on other dcs drop back some on the ones I mentioned.
All in all, all bad quality developments make the mentioned batch worse than some others out there (though certainly nothing is particularly great).
[edited by: steveb at 8:07 pm (utc) on May 25, 2005]
here's why:
A search for MYSITE is no longer yielding supplemental, non-existent, ancient pages as indented results. Instead the indented result is another key, DMOZ listed section of the site. The main result is the home page (www version, which is the primary).
A search for "unique text from home page" no longer yields a non-existent, legacy cobrand that had long since been 301'd to the www.mysite.com as the first result. It now yields our home page as the first result.
Guess what site comes up #1 with my "company name"
Slimeball websmaster's - the sweetheart who was placing "alternative lifestyle companion ads" with my email address all over the internet. I had the adverts removed, but my mailbox has not been that much fun ever since. BTW, my areas is crafts...
His page comes up because he has my company name on his page with the mention "link disabled" - I don't even have a link on that page!
Someone shoot me.
Slimeball webmaster has been gloating about my disappearance from the SERPs on a forum.
He says...
He made a few well placed phone calls!
Mystery solved, LOL.
