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]
And I think part the the tragedy of this update is that there is some kind of "all or nothing" effect. People who ranked highly, and whose livelihood depends on a decent ranking, suddenly find themselves obliviated on page 37, and won't even show up for their company name.
I don't subscribe to a grand Google plot to grab more AdSense money. They might want to maintain the integrity of the system, which in theory should benefit us.
But until they restore their results to be at least as good as Yahoo's, they have s serious public relations disaster brewing. They have given themselves 2 more weeks to restore the SERPs to some semblance of relevance. But in the end, what's more important? An algo that maintains the integrity of the AdSense publishing network punishing scrapers, or relevant SERPs?
I suppose, and reseller will blow me kisses for posting this, if Google is not really sure which is best, it can rotate its algos.
Everything still looks fabulous in the allin's, which appear to be completely ignored.
Yep, same here, allin's good, although some of the non-relevant results are slowly trending down. We're still stuck in the basement.
LisaB
I'd expect that things will be back to their normal level of everflux by New Orleans.
Thats the from his post.
He may be being cautious - but we have probably still got a bit of dancing to go.
hellebourne,
Validate your code, this could only help your situation. You have a few errors that would be considered fatal when a bot crawls your site. I am sure to save bandwidth during this update, the googlebot is making an early exit when it hits a site that it has to make accomodations for. This could explain your drop in the serps
Hello, removal from G also has nothing to do with HTML errors. I currently have 5 websites. 2 are for my business. 3 are just domain names for sale. They are all "coded" the exact same way, meaning; if certain HTML "errors" are on one, they are on all of them (since I did all of them). My 2 biz sites were trashed, where as the 3 domain names for sale sites shot up to the 1st page, and one even in the 1st position. This is in a search for the fields they represent. One, (the one in 1st place), is so screwed up HTML wise (by some free hosts) that it is not even displayed properly in a browser! It's loaded with JS errors, script errors, HTML errors, etc., generated by their PopUp BS and ad banners--some static and some dynamically generated. You can also run any of the sites appearing on the first few pages for a G search through a validator and see tons of errors. (Recently one of these other 3 sites has also been trashed but it was not the one with all the errors).
No one is saying that it's not good practice to avoid HTML errors. Of course it is, no one denies that. Can it affect SE rankings? No, at least not in G.
I, WE are still awaiting on GoogleGuy's response as to why were certain sites targeted! What are the commonalties shared by the targeted sites?
Clint, I see no such movement in my keyphrases.
Still dominating the top positions are very ancient, dull sites that have lost backlinks, and some poor quality directories/linkfarms with aggressive reciprocal linking policies.
Neither have I, and same here. I still "no longer exist on this planet" according to G. I've had my "identity and life erased". I think all those in our position AT LEAST deserve an explanation.
But until they restore their results to be at least as good as Yahoo's, they have s serious public relations disaster brewing.
It's the old question of "why are there so many Windows viruses, and so few targeting the Mac?" Because the market leader is the juiciest target. If Yahoo! displaced Google as the market leader in search, the spammers would focus their efforts on Yahoo!, and people affected by Yahoo's anti-spam efforts would surely come here to whine that Google (or some other rival service) is better than Yahoo!, because they do better in the SERPs of that rival.
Now, there is little question but that some legitimate sites will be affected by any attempt to diminish spam, because spammers work hard to trick search engines into believing their sites are legitimate. The criteria applied to eliminate spammers will almost always affect some of the legitimate sites they imitate, as well as legitimate websites which use certain SEO techniques preferred by the spammers. If you're among that minority of sites, sure, you have grounds to complain. But Google is looking at the forest - with billions of pages at issue it has to look at the forest - not the individual trees.
Personally, I find Google's SERPs to be markedly improved in recent months for searches on commercial subjects, and to be pretty much unchanged for the academic subjects I most often research through Google. So I won't get bent out of shape until it's my ox that's being gored. ;-)
1) Reduced boiler plate html by 60% on all pages
2) Reduced internal linking structure
3) Did the W3C validation so I'm left with only a few attribute name issues.
So now I'm left with 200+ pages of unique programming technique examples/discussion
And, 10-20K of scrapers linking in.
Only 15% pages now in index with description and no rankings for any keywords including company name.
Used to get 3-5K Google visitors a day.
I am happy for those who are doing well during this update but more information as to why would be more beneficial to us. All we can do is compare what sites are going down to the sites that are improving and figure out why. Obviously not quite that simple but if there isn't at least a little bit of a pattern, then wouldn't it just mean that Google has absolutely no clue what they are doing and what their point is here for this update?
I am trying to find a pattern here or something to make heads or tails of this. I keep going over and over about possibly being punished over being an affiliate for one store and really struggling with that concept since most of the site is content. I can understand link farms and spam sites getting hit but valuable sites with content and offerings seems crazy to punish. A lot of my favorite sites are falling quickly and being replaced with useless sites. I am thinking I need to find a way to start my search at page 30 just to find anything useful if I use Google. They were once so great. :/
Ok, so then I focus on content... Well, if affiliates are being punished for similar content, then sites with similiar content to others that do not have affiliates must also be getting the hit.
In my keyword area, that's certainly not happening...
For example, under my primary keywords, the first site that shows up would be a government site. Makes sense to me. Second site that shows up is an EXACT duplicate of the government site. huh? So, Google can't be punishing for content duplication. It just can't. Third site, links, links and more links.. No content on their intro page and lots of Ads. After that, confusing results. Then down to page 68 you can find us. Not our index page, mind you, but we are there! Woohoo!
Moving right along, so if duplicate content sites don't get hit, why should affiliate sites get hit just because they use the same information? Who are they to decide who you can trust to buy from? Isn't that the responsibility of the site visitor to decide where to buy from? They don't have a fool proof way to filter out scam sites from true and honest sites so they should watch themselves more carefully here. I don't feel it is Google's responsibility to make sure I don't purchase from the *wrong* place. Because according to them now, many of my old favorite sites to shop from which I have trusted for years, are bad. They are being replaced with places I would never consider sending my money to. My decision, not thiers.
So under my primary keywords, it seems that I should have created a link farm with duplicate content and tons of Ads and I would be sitting pretty right now? If I had known that, I could have saved myself so much time and skipped doing any unique work on my site. All the money I would have saved traveling to gather information just to make a site helpful to site visitors. *rolls eyes*
If anyone is seeing any patterns, can you fill us in? Are you seeing similar patterns in your keywords or the opposite?
Ellie
P.S. I am also noticing a lot of unrelated sites not under "links to" but "contains the term" "www.mysite.com". Is this damaging? I don't recall seeing them before. They are a bunch of "Consulting" companies and yet they say they are topics about jewlery or a town or something else. Very confusing!
I should have created a link farm with duplicate content and tons of Ads
Hey ellie, the guy dominating my SERPs now has *NO* content, and tons of ads. Save yourself some trouble.
I, WE are still awaiting on GoogleGuy's response as to why were certain sites targeted! What are the commonalties shared by the targeted sites?
Well that one's for you to work out!
You can't expext GoogleGuy to tell you, as that would defeat the object of the SPAM filter.
Talk (not publicly) with other members who have had problems, examine their URLs and try to spot a pattern.
