Forum Moderators: Robert Charlton & goodroi
[webmasterworld.com...]
My website has plenty of outbound links, but they are on relevant pages. The problem my site has always had, was a lack of "inbound links." I got tired of searching for people to link to me (with all the spammy sites around) and gave up. So my pages have acquired some links naturally I guess(and I'll bet I still don't have more than 30 inbound links for the whole site) Still have a PR4, which I've had since it disappeared in Nov.
[edited by: Brett_Tabke at 8:54 pm (utc) on May 27, 2005]
All the while, my RELEVANT site is getting trashed further and further into the bowels of cyberspace, along with my LIFE.
Google is trashing your life? Wow....time to find a new source of income and stop letting google trash you then.
Bring on the FTC.
Many of you are going to hate me for this but...Any site that carries Google Adsense on the front page should never be allowed to list in the top 10 positions of any natural google listing. Seems to me this is a HUGE conflict of interest that Google can manipulate to its own ends just like so many other issues they currently sweep under the rug.
And what would the FTC say? You're not allowed to manipulate your own product? Give me a break...google doesn't owe anyone a damn thing. If they wanted to make the first 100 listings all adsense sites, they are perfectly within their right to do so. A company can do anything it wants to its product. The fact that so many people put their fiscal lives in google's hands is not their problem - it's yours.
Seems to me they are going head long into so many different media avenues they have become a marketing entity and therefore should be REGULATED based on market share similar to how AT&T was regulated at one time.
Apples and oranges. At & T was a M-O-N-O-P-O-L-Y, Google IS NOT.
The fact that they have the largest market share has to do with the fact that they built a better mousetrap, not the forced exclusion of competition. Anyone in the world is free to build a comptetior to google and steal their business, just as they did to altavista/yahoo etc.
Don't worry if the feds get involved the SEO game will still be afoot but this time there will be some set of rules a search engine must abide to be a search engine.
Yep...that's just what we need...rediculous government rules dictating the method in which a search engine can disply it's results. And who would be the judge of that? I amy have a vastly different set of criteria to what I consider relevant to a search than you do, and so will the next person.
If we're going to start recommending rediculous government intervention, shouldn't we also consider mandatory fines for search engine spamming. As well as making it a felony for someone to hijack a site and/or scrape a sites content. Where should we stop with your government intervention?
YAWN.
Maybe I'm crazy.What's your take on this?
Yep. You're nuts.
it is only perceived as such by those who are obsessed with google to the point that it is monopolizing their life.
it would be best to let this thread rest for awhile until we can identify commonalities in the serps. In the meantime...to all those that need to vent their frustration, start a new topic and do it there.
As expected and told by our good friend GG, I see some movement on the DCs. Maybe the addition of that famous 0.5 improvement is taking place right now.
I have noticed during this update that google UK is the one most sensitive to changes on the DCs.
Any of UK folks can update us?
Thanks.
Ready, set, go!
Not seeing much movement - off to check a bit more. - It is the time of day that things happen (typically almost bedtime UK time - & I dont stay up to gone pi 0 clock ;))
Yep Google UK does seem to be a bit different (yep everyone who knows these things - I know it is just a dc - currently 216.239.39.104 for me) - but is slightly different to this dc due to local targetting - or whatever.
In the meantime...to all those that need to vent their frustration, start a new topic and do it there.
Right.
Well, although I was not frustrated I did exactly that, started a new thread asking for opinions about Google's "mindset".
That was on May 31st. It is still on hold and I can't even delete it as it is pretty old now.
Topic? What topic?
Oh yes: the results on all datacenters are still weird. ;)
>It is the time of day that things happen (typically almost bedtime UK time ..<
The same here, but we i northern europe have the advantage to exchange posts with gg in "real-time" early in our mornings while our north american friends are still in their warm beds.
>currently 216.239.39.104 for me) <
Me too my friend. Me too... as you know ;-)
>Funny... in my corner it looks like a perfect alignment of the planets... all the DCs are finally lining up!<
Can you see your site anywhere on those DCs?
I am seeing all the datacenters starting to syncronize...is this the beginning of the end? At least for me its good
Ellie
>Yes reseller, even worse, from page 15 to 16!<
We are just at the 2.5 out of the 3.5 of Bourbon. Next week shall be the week of the next "major improvement". A nother chance for your site ;-)
was the 0.5 done already?
If the results of data centre 216.239.39.104 are being rolled out God help us. This .5 factor has just let a load of older sites with poor content back in and second rate directory sites and sites with re-directs etc.
Number of posts throughout bourbon thread talked about affiliate sites vs. manufacturer sites issues this update brings.
If possible can you please confirm that the update contains any such element(s)?
If so:
. Does it put distinction between affiliate sites and sites with affiliate content?
. Is the issue part of duplicate content problem every indexing process faces? Is there more into it?
We work closely with a company which supplies us detailed product information that does match many, if not all, of the other affiliates they work with. I also noticed that once this update started, our site has been hit severely by our index page going from #5 to anywhere from 300 to 800+. Our lower pages naturally have fallen drastically as well.
When I do specific product searches where we used to rank well, we are now very low. However, I notice that many of the others working with this same company are also down with us on the search results. They were once also in considerably better positions.
Could this be a hint? Is there somewhere that says specifically that sites working with affiliates are now going to be punished? My site is 5 years old and sat in the same position during that 5 years and only recently have we started working rather closely with this particular company to offer goods that work well with our site.
We have abided by rules, we have kept our site up-to-date, continued to add content over the 5 years while many of our competitors haven't touched their sites after release and yet this is what happens. I am starting to think we should have just been a link farm with no unique content and I wouldn't be sitting here now wondering the fate of my business. :/
Any thoughts would be greatly appreciated.
Ellie
P.S. I understand its premature to think that anything is said and final at this point as the update is still going on. However, as each day goes on, our datacenter results keep getting worse even though Google keeps recaching our site daily and adding pages to its index. It's making me more concerned that we will not recover and I need to look into all options.
[edited by: confused_ellie at 11:23 pm (utc) on June 2, 2005]
A lot of people fear this might happen once GOOGLE becomes a public company. Now, less than 1 year after becoming a public company, Google has lost it's excellence and soon I can see MSN taking over. Google is diverifying its products and services portfolio. It's just a matter of time now before Microsoft takes over, the first move is right now, MSN results will get better and better, the official take over will be the day the Search bar is integrated into the Longhorn OS and every average joe goes buys the next upgrade.
It's fine, I suppose, to inconvenience everybody while G rolls out whatever it is they're planning.
I would be more than satisfied with the results from before May 21. These results are not only horrible, but irrelevant and bordering on stupid.
Hoping for miracles after two weeks, like one is going ot occur in the third week, borders on hysterical.
The similarities to ebay are stunning. They did the same thing - rolled out changes live without testing and everybody was forced to just "eat it."
Enjoy your stale cake.
It's just a matter of time now before Microsoft takes over, the first move is right now, MSN results will get better and better, the official take over will be the day the Search bar is integrated into the Longhorn OS and every average joe goes buys the next upgrade.
If that's the case I hope MSN keeps improving their engine.
Is there somewhere that says specifically that sites working with affiliates are now going to be punished?
GoogleGuy said earlier today that affiliates needed to think about their "value add." He pointed out that having a bunch of identical affiliate pages high in the search results isn't beneficial to users.
In discussing "value add," GoogleGuy mentioned at least one example: a comparison of cellular-phone plans. In the travel sector, which is littered with boilerplate hotel-booking sites, I can think of one affiliate site that has risen above the clutter with an attractive, informative site that has original content and inspires trust among users. That site has ranked high in Google's SERPs for a long time, through any number of updates. That tells me that affiliate sites (including "pure" affiliate sites, not just editorial sites with affiliate links) can do well in Google if they avoid the cookie-cutter syndrome by having valuable content.
Also, wouldn't it just then lower those pages rather than destroy the index page?
Thanks again for the input.
I then tried some other searches and found same horrible results.
I stopped using Altavista in favor of Google because in altavista you had to type +wantthis -donotwantthis then add "precise phrases" and so forth. Google was able to find the precise result without any of this due to the revolutionary PageRank.
Now I'm back at using + and - and quotes and all tricks because the results plain simply suck.
Conspiracy theories continue in this thread - too bad.
Do I think that there is a sandbox - yes.
BillyS:
Those two statements are somethat incompatible, because Matt Cutts from Google has officially stated that there is no sandbox.
What I would like to see in your closed thread is an explanation of what the changes in this update were intended to accomplish.
What are the new rules? How do they differ from the old rules?
Also, wouldn't it just then lower those pages rather than destroy the index page?
It may have nothing to do with your affiliate pages. Quite a few information sites have lost up to 95% of their Google referrals at various times in the last half-year or so. Some, like mine, have come back (at least for now), and I know of another that plunged, came back, and plunged again.
I supposed I should just really try to stay patient then and see how the chips fall. We lost our position in Feb and came back in March so maybe the same will happen here. I sure hope it's not that we chose an affiliate. We can't afford to start a full blown store and this was a great alternative. A lot of our site visitors said they were very happy with the implementation. I would hate to have to take it away.
Maybe the datacenters are just as confused as me. Let's just hope they don't stay confused.
Right now, again, it looks like things are getting even worse. I sure wish they didn't have to test out their updates on live servers.
Ellie
It is getting worse!
Check DC 64.233.171.147
Yes! When I search for my domain name, I got some spam results!
01 = my big competitor!
02-04 = spam
03-06 = related sites
07-10 = spam
11-44 = 50% spam, 25% useless sites, 25% related sites...
45 = My site...
too funny...
