Forum Moderators: Robert Charlton & goodroi
We need to keep this thread focused on the followings:
- Changes on your own site ranking on the serps (lost & gained positions or disappearance of the site).
- Changes you have noticed on the new serps (both google.com and your local google site) especially in regards to the nature of the top 10 or 20 ranking sites.
- Stability of the serps. I.e do you get the same serps when you run the same query within the same day or 2-3 successive days (both google.com and your local google site).
- Effective ethical measures to deal with the above mentioned changes.
Thanks.
I do so hope they stay this way...
I won't get my hopes up yet but things are looking for much better for me today.
:)
Anyone else notice their serps coming back in Google.com?
Also note: I was one of the ones not showing up for my company name, etc.
This is showing on datacenter 64.233.167.104.
I think I'm screwed..
Oh, and I'm completely white hat.
As Steveb said - not much point looking at Google.com - you want to know how the dcs are shifting.
They seem to be shifting to the results first seen on [64.233.167.104...]
PS. Sorry everyone for getting so stressed earlier. :)
we now have evidence of at least one site with relative links which ranks well in the SERPs.
Mine is another.
I think there's a strong element of "doing something for the sake of doing something" in the current rush to change relative links to absolute links. Are your pages getting crawled? Have they been indexed by Google in the past? If so, you need to read GoogleGuy's comments about absolute vs. relative links in context. (He did not make an unqualified statement that everyone should rush out and change relative links to absolute links, or that doing so would solve ranking problems in Google.)
Fix what needs to be fixed, but recognize that some matters are beyond your control.
With all due respect yours was fixed with a 301.
How I read GG post was that new programming/algo/crawl process is not going to have the same problems.
Walkman - you have a 301 too?
And Shopping.com is probably big enough PR wise to get away with it.
I had a problem back in August or something, but I 301d in November or so. The site that was doing bad, has been rocking for a week now...on all DCs.
I don't know if it is:
a) Writing to owners of sites doing 302s to me.
b) Writing to Google to complain.
c) Filling Google Spam reports.
d) Writing to Google about cached pages with my site.
e) Doing nothing and waiting.
f) Help from several people (Helleborine, Japanese, TheBear, Dayo, EFV and others if I have forgotten, you are all the absolute best.)
g) Having an authority site that was put aside during the turmoil.
h Changing a couple of links that pointed to non-wwws to point to wwws.
i)Faith.
I'm a happier camper, for now. The thing that bothers me though is when is this going to come back and haunt me and others again. Is this just a once-off manual fix or intervention? Could it happen again? Was it just waiting? Did Google actually do anything?
The answer to at least one question is, I will probably be going through this again, hopefully later rather than sooner.
Another thing is, and it does not matter when it is does, everytime these things happen, someones busiest time of the year is affected. For some it is the Xmas season, for others it is the northern hemisphere summer, for others, spring, fall, easter, eid, hannukah, Halloween, valentine's day, mother's day, father's day, November, April. It doesn't really matter, it's always the busiest time of the year for some of us.
Let's hope things get better all around.
Love!
Walkman's experience with relative links echos mine and annej's.
Absolute links may be helpful on sites that aren't getting crawled properly, but they won't cure a site's other ills--or Google's.
I'm a little puzzled and disappointed by that datacenter, because it looks like some lower-content sites got moved back up the ladder. To me it really just looks like Google gave up and rolled back the results to what they were in the first place, but I don't remember exactly what they looked like previously, so I could be wrong. And I'm glad to see the MIA sites are no longer MIA, and the SERPs still look fine in my area (if not quite as great as last week), so I won't complain.
Yes - but the non-www and www issue may have come into play due to the relative links.
Anyway - I am sure if GG says it is not necessary anymore it is not necessary anymore.
I've ranked very well in Google for coming up on 3 years now, and being as honest or "white hat" as I could be about such things, I determined that I've been pretty fortunate.
I'll run various searches for our company, and it comes back with just the url and a "similar pages" notice next to that. Those who are linking to us show up as well.
Getting a bloody good amount of activity from G-Bot however, comes in every day and never looks at the same thing twice.
I am showing cache for all of my pages (95%) but the cache is sprinkled a bit with just the url instead of the regular title, description and all of that.
I also see results returning that have absolutely nothing to do with what I'm searching for.
This and just the url listed are two things I've never seen before.
as hard as it may seem, try not to worry too much for a few days. Sites may come and go when major changes happen. You might be back in 24 hours, or a few days. Are you indexed and not ranking, or totally removed from Google?
>>>
I have a question for all: has anyone ever got the fresh tags back, after losing them? I lost mine during the 302 wars ;) and I miss GB coming over daily and getting (at least) every page that was linked from the index page. I have PR6 (haven't had less than PR5 in years), so PR shouldn't be a problem. The index page changes substantially every single day, yet, the cache is from June 6th
Domain.com
Domain.net
Domain.org
Now I find if you type everyone of those into Google they all show up my domain.co.uk apart from Domain.org which has its own listing (dupe content?). I know it’s a long shot but it could be a contributing factor towards a duplicate content threshold because if you look at ant email spam programmes they score email’s based on many factors and if the score is greater than say 5 then the email is considered spam. Can the same be applied to websites?
I have nuked my .org
I'm even getting new sign-ups on my site's forum, which trickled to a halt during the Great Google Blackout of '05.
Yeah, I'm trying to remain calm, it's the first time this site has been affected, and considering it makes $10k+/month from adsense alone, I'm trying not to "fix" too much today.
Oh, also, there are still results for the site in google, but they are now buried deep in the serps. I used to have #1s for probably 50 or so different keyword combinations on various topics.. now none of them are in the top 100..
The only thing we changed recently was implementing a 301 redirect from domain.com to www.domain.com. Is there any chance that it might be the cause somehow? I'm wondering, because it seems to be a little late to be hit by bourbon just now. Anyone got an idea?
” Clint
>(Hypothetically) I think someone should come out with "Google SERP's Insurance".<
IMO, the best insurance is to create several "emergency domains" with one or two pages of content each and which are NOT cross-linked. Once you get hit by an update, you just move your contents to one of your emergency domains. Maybe an investment of less than $100 a year.
Such insurance is hereby called BOURBON INSURANCE ;-)Ӭ
Think of it:
1. Google may have databases of Tb size spread
around the world. Indexed (and archieved) pages.
2. You may have a very efficient DBMS to
synchronize / replicate these databases.
I think the central datacenter lies in the middle, and the other spread (more or less circular) around that center.
This may have happened before, and is perhaps (most probably) happening constantly. But this may be the first time it get this amount of attention.
Do you remember my previous post:
1.Set up a lot of small AD-sites that gets
new customers?
2.Make an extranet for your existing customers?
No problem with hijacking, copying etc. etc.
If it give you ROI, try to get an ADsite near every datacenter in the world.
The reason that other searchengines cannot compete with Google is not algorithms, but hardware.
In addition:
"Becoming an ISP would also make Google a global telecommunications provider. With the expected rise in VOIP applications, owning bandwidth is going to be tremendously important, much like ownership of telephone or cable lines is today".
Did anyone note this heading some months ago?
KBleivik
Good enough is best.
[edited by: kgun at 9:47 pm (utc) on June 16, 2005]
I think once the "good" SERPs propagate fully my growth will plateau. But I've learnt some good SEO information in the last few weeks that I can apply to my site and get better results overall. It's been (and still is) an education.
Site A,
Before Bourbon 2,500 visitors a day,
After Bourbon 7500 visitors a day,
But TODAY (estimated) around 4000!
BTW, we got hit by Bourbon hard on another site B
Site B, before Bourbon 10,000 visitors a day, After 3500
And the bottomline through these 2 sites:
Adsense before Bourbon $20k a month, now $8k a month!
Same here, it just started this morning. I'm trying to stay calm, but my suspicion is that it's a highjacking / 302 redirect issue.
Peter
Something is brewing today....
Sure is - I went up by 40% after Bourbon now today down 40%... they doing a rollback or what.
Can't say I see massive changes in the SERPS though? Wierd.
I think that somethign big still needs to happen - I know one site up over 5,000% and into top 10,000 ALexa from almost outside 100,000....
That traffic didn't disappear today though....
I've determined to do nothing.
I have my product(s), service(s) and all of my pages are relevant to the business that I do online. I've been honest about all of my dealings online and off.
I know as well that there are alot of crookies out there that might try, and possibly succeed, in ridding Google of my top listings, but I'll leave that up to Google to worry about.
People by nature, are a smart bunch as I can see. They'll go to places where they will be able to find a good relevance to their search.
Probably the only reason why I post this now, is because after so many years (over 3) I've been good in Google for my terms, I've made it through many updates and algo changes and this is the very frst time that I've seen it different.
This is trip number three through the grinder for us.
Watch your backside, this kind of a mess can cause waves due to PR splits.
Ending a busy day by what this thread all about ;-)
Updating the list of suggestions to deal with consequences of Bourbon Update:
- Do nothing as probably more changes on the way
- Subtle page changes and monitor SERP changes
- Do a 301 redirect regarding yoursite.com vs. www.yoursite.com (canonical url problem)
- Removing 302 redirects
- Removing duplicates
- Create and submit a Google Sitemap (You want Google to crawl more of your web pages)
[google.com...]
- Optimize your site for other search engines (like Yahoo, MSN ..)
- Transfer your affected site to a spare/emergency site
An emergency site is an additional site with 1-2 pages of real content related to your affected site. You create the emergency site in good time, submit it to the majors (also maybe local directories) and leave it to age for at least 6 months before moving the content of your affected site to it.
Good night and God bless..
