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.
Google will continue to fiddle with their system without regard to the welfare of webmasters.
As I agree with most of your other writing, welfare of webmasters was never G target. As I understand it at first they wanted to search the net, now they want to make money. Hard to blame them on that.
They have a tremendous impact on our lives - but they are bulding highway through the Galaxy, beware lesser civilisations!
I think we should do as much noise about the ridiculous search results as possible - not necesarilly waving "we are lossing money" flag. Joe Public is not interested in our losses, but if the search results are stupid it may catch his attention. That's the thing he may check by himself.
[edited by: Borek at 3:22 pm (utc) on June 17, 2005]
>IMO it has reached the stage where we need to give as much feedback to the G engineers to help them fix it.<
An Online WebmasterWorld.com Google Conference is a possibility, if they wish to establish TWO-WAY communications with fellow members worldwide ;-)
Reseller
[google.com...] - Subject Canonical URL Problem!
Borek
Suggesting that they are not fulfilling their mission is the way to go (I have worked for companies that hold Mission Statements very dear to them)
But the be all and end all is that the problem is stopping them from effectively crawling, indexing and making available lots of websites from all ends of the spectrum - from the whitest to the white - through the greys to the blackhats (but no doubt blackhats have so many sites it does not even touch them)
Bark bark - he he - actually barking might work in light of the Cat Filter theory :)
>Reseller
[google.com...] - Subject Canonical URL Problem!<
But that is ONE-WAY communication. Better is the TWO-WAY communications I suggested in my previous post. ;-)
If it was two way it would be along the line of:-
---------
Webmaster - I have a Canonical Url problem - look here.
Google - OK, if you redirect your non-www to www our robot should be able to pick up the change.
Webmaster - OK, I know that but what are you going to do about it for other sites.
Google - Lets us worry about that.
---------
Google needs data to sort out the problem.
shouldn't we be leading google?after all, it isn't google that provides the (any) content.
You are 100% correct, sir. Tell him what he's won, Johnny!
You've won a twisted algorithm that will send your site careening into the depths of the serps where nobody will ever find you.
AND THAT'S NOT ALL! ding, ding, ding...
Now, you don't have to worry about scrapers stealing your content - they'll all rank higher than you. And those pesky emails that never get answered? Forget them. They'll be completely ignored.
Yes, Bob, our lucky winner will be sent on a one way trip to the........ UNEMPLOYMENT LINE!
I can smell a class action lawsuit coming to a courthouse near you.
Your posts are totally non-productive.
Abusive to GG and Google
And, they match my sentiments exactly.
Google is nothing but a monstrous parasite which feeds on and then devours whole web sites.
I can smell a class action lawsuit coming to a courthouse near you.
Yeah...that'll happen. You can sue on the basis of "Google doesn't display MY site on THEIR site the way I THINK it deserves to be displayed".
[edited by: Spine at 5:17 pm (utc) on June 17, 2005]
here you go, put this on your robots.txt, I'll save you a trip to the lawywer:
User-agent: Googlebot
Disallow: /
if this is isn't fast enough, check this:
[services.google.com:8882...]
works in just 24 hours!
Funny, isn't that what so very many of us thought when Yahoo went on their own from Google and banned site after site? Regardless of all the monies spent towards Overture?
As I mentioned in a previous post my site is #1 again for a 3 word search: VBA Blue Widgets.
Here's how inappropriate G's results are:
VBA does not appear anywhere on the page except on a link on the right and left side navigation, buried amongst 15 links on each side. Therefore VBA really has nothing to do with the page (directly)!
Page is listed above a microsoft page which is spot-on the subject.
<editted for clarification>
Also GG did promise that the reported domains would not be looked at for any other misdemeanors
GG - does this still hold true? As I am into Affiliate Marketing I have no idea where you draw the line regarding white/grey/green hats etc - as many others probably feel - so it may encourage more Canonical URL reports if this still holds.
This is one of those 'points of inflection' where outside circumstances are forcing me to totally change my life, and I'm just not too happy about it.
I have a mild handicap that makes it hard to get work, and the internet opened some doors to better income that would be closed to me otherwise.
I was making $ on the internet before Google existed, and if it weren't for my net business I wouldn't have moved to the town where I am (very little work here). Now the fact that so much has relied on one engine has come around to bite me in the ass and I'm screwed.
I have myself to blame, but I hate Google all the same.
Today I'm noticing a certain steady climb back to where I was. #1, #3, #5 and so forth for my terms.
I can once again find what had been missing from a couple of days back.
Cache shows the 16th on most, 7th on others and 2nd on just a few.
Though I agree with some here that Google is not going to set the market by their ever evolving algo's, I feel that in their young person minded way, they are attempting to rid the leeches from among us.
Not many of us here really use Google very much, for two reasons: #1 being that their results were not just the smashing success that they were a few years back, and #2, their conversion rates have been marginal at best.
I know that some of you here would count Google heavily on the monitary end, but we've never relyed on just one source to do our monitary bidding. And at present, Google only accounts for 12% of our overall monitary income. Granted that 12% is better than nothing and it is welcome, but here, being listed at the top for our associated key phrases is more to do with the bragging rights for our terms than for anything else.
[edit]
Added comment;
Our linking strategy has always been to the benefit of our clients and other sites are selected by us to hopefully better serve the ones who might visit us.
Our reciprocal links exist only at about 25% of our overall link total however.
And we have never linked to other sites based soley on their "Google Presumed Rank". We have "never" used any automated linking methods, as they are, to us, seedy and cheap in their own way.
Almost everything here is done by hand, including the inclusion of our links.
We are more a product(s) service(s) oriented site and all of our content is produced right here from a sales perspective. This is the first time that this young site (4 years) has upped and downed during any Google update that I am aware of, so it's evident that Google might be trying some things not tried in the past.
I don't think that Google is going all about to destroy the honest among us, even though it might appear that they are by this update.
Anyone else noticing this? These are template based pages, but with loads of content.
I'm wondering if it takes a while for the renewed clout of the home page to trickle through the site.
and enough about wishing car crashes and personal misfortune on google employees... we're all pros here right?
I think what we should hope for, is for the G employees that are/were/are/were responsible for our sites getting trashed to find themselves in our EXACT predicament (loosing their jobs, loosing their businesses)
I've said it before and I'll say it again....if your "business" lives or dies based on the free traffic you get from google, then you don't really have a business. What successful business owner in their right mind would base their entire revenue stream on antother business which prvides them with free advertising? If you're going out of business becuase you've (probably temporaily) been lost in google's serps....then this is just the shot of reality you needed. NOw maybe you might decide it's worthwhile to take a mosre sensible approach to building your business, instead of relying on the "google lottery" of free traffic.
In other words....as opposed to focusing your energy on hating google, channel it into finding alternative traffic sources that can allow you to give google the virtual finger at update time.
Our site disappeared for roughly 2 1/2 weeks at the beginning of this "update", which in turn caused about a 20% drop in business. Did we feel it? Absolutely. Could it have put us out of business? NO WAY. Too many other traffic sources (other engines/links/sites/bookmarks/forums, etc.) keep the visitors coming. Make your traffic multi-dimensional, and you'll be able to sleep at night.
I've said it before and I'll say it again....if your "business" lives or dies based on the free traffic you get from google, then you don't really have a business. What successful business owner in their right mind would base their entire revenue stream on antother business which prvides them with free advertising? <<<
You are exactly right on this point.
No business in their right mind could ever hope to succeed on such a liquid base as free Google listings.
Our little 12% is nice, and it is welcome, and yes, we could easily miss it if it weren't there. But losing it won't destroy our company at all.
I have lots of links from other sites, but not many people seem to come to the site that way. Yahoo and MSN don't like the site as much as G.
I'm now working on developing a unique product of my own that I can market using more conventional methods, with search engines and the internet in general being icing on the cake - but I have to find work to pay the bills in the meantime.
I am convinced all these little things add up to a scoring threshold that will get you penalised because all the sites I have seen are good sites.
I just hope Google re-runs bourbon very soon hopefully at the end of this month? GoogleGuy?
Spine some sites should NOT have to advertise ales where if it was’nt for the dangerous monopoly Google has. Googles monopoly is partly our fault because techies love it!
[edited by: Johan007 at 6:40 pm (utc) on June 17, 2005]
Depends what you mean by succeed. I would take 6 months top positions in a lucrative sector on google against 6 years of only12% traffic.
Were my business more traditional, with a product to sell, I would agree <<<
Our determination here with regard to Google, Yahoo or MSN, and the differences between them all, is that Yahoo is more oriented to those who would "shop for product" than Google is.
We here view Google as more of an informational listings and data search than, say Yahoo would be by way of their shopping results and listings.
Young people love to use Google, while the older, often times more experienced among us, use the others when they want to buy something.
Google is indeed alot of fun, because of their new gismo's and gadgets they keep churning out of developement......it's a fun ride to go on when you want to visit the carnival.
Whereas, Yahoo, on the other hand, may not be such a fun ride for the littlies.
Demographics not withstanding, Yahoo has provided the highest conversion overall for us. 2 years ago, Google provided an 8% conversion and so far this year, they are at 12%, so I think they are wooing serious shoppers to them, all be it ever so slowly.
Google strives to achieve many things and in that, I think they are working hard to pull the serious shopper over to their end of the park...I can see it in the numbers, but from those same numbers, they still have some distance to go.
Depends what you mean by succeed. I would take 6 months top positions in a lucrative sector on google against 6 years of only12% traffic <<<
These figures "have" lucrative (free listings) already figured in.
We tend to look at the "big" picture when we settle on any quarterly, bi-annual or annual figures. Google has only accounted for 12% of our (big picture) overall income. Whether they be free listings or otherwise, isn't saying much.
And, if you are making "lucrative" dollars in the Google arena, I can just now imagine that you must be indeed knocking them off quite well, or even better in other areas of the net.
Or, is Google your only source of income?
You should never redirect any error condition to your home page ever.
Doing so is one of the fastest ways of deep sixing a homepage that I know of.
I've seen a lot of sites do it, in additon I've seen a few use the wrong form of custom error ducuments sometimes sharing a common one from another site they run.
This is not good as it is a major duplicate content producer.
For the folks discussing basing a solid traffic volumn on google serp placement as not being a viable way of doing it, I fully concur.
However that still doesn't account for some of what has been going on.
Do I wish Google bad, nope, the job they do isn't easy, it isn't exact, it never will be easy, it is extremely time consuming, and like all automated systems one little mistooke can make it crash and burn.
Now I'm invoking rule 4 again and maintain the rule 5 is still in play.
Everyone have a great weekend.
Sorry this is the thread [webmasterworld.com...]
Updating the list of suggestions to deal with consequences of Bourbon Update:
- Do a 301 redirect regarding yoursite.com vs. www.yoursite.com (canonical url problem)
- Do nothing as probably more changes on the way
- Subtle page changes and monitor SERP changes
- 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 ..)
Keep working to increase non Google sources of visitors.
- 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.
Thanks for your generous contributions to our checklist (Google-Updates Survival Kit) ;-)
..and keep those great remarks and suggestions coming
[edited by: reseller at 7:12 pm (utc) on June 17, 2005]
