Forum Moderators: Robert Charlton & goodroi
While investigating the cause I first checked my Google sitemap statistics particularly "Top search queries" It still reports that the site averages within the first 10 results for a handful of search terms. However, when I search on these terms rather than finding the site on the first page of results - something I have been able to do for a long time, several years at least - it is now nowhere to be found.
So I have two questions for the Webmaster World community:
Did anyone else notice a big change in search results beginning this weekend?
Can anyone suggest or refer me to methods of figuring out why my site is no longer listed in the results for search terms it traditionally ranked well with?
I have to disagree with this due to the fact I am seeing sites in the serps with no PR and 1 or 2 backlinks from spammy sites.
I just checked the backlinks from one site it is a purchased link from a forum Link is site wide and Google is really sending it up.
There are also sites with site wide from the same server exchanged with one another getting all kinds of listings so I am really thinking what in the world is happening, all the things that use to get you hammered are now what gets you in the serps for google.
My PR stayed the same backlinks dropped guess I need to get me some sitewides and purchase them to boot.
Best I've seen in a while.
Er...okay. Naturally, this is only showing for me sporadically (pinging brings up 72.14.207.99, but going directly to the DC didn't give the same result), so it must be a datacenter thing, but even checking McDar's tool, I haven't been able to duplicate anywhere.
Anyone else seeing something similar? It is almost as if for this query the result set was dropped and is in the process of being rebuilt (31,700,000 results instead of the roughly 34,700,000 most of the datacenters are reporting).
[Edit]I see the strange result on gfe-ro.google.com[/Edit]
Cygnus
[edited by: JoeSinkwitz at 2:53 pm (utc) on July 21, 2006]
I'm seeing pretty much the same, except for two big sites that I monitor - both new and very big. They've done no real linking but the backlink update shows one of them climbing from 16 to 92... has it slipped through the net?!
Shame there seems to be no real consistency...
There was another huge change on the 16th.
So that makes the story April 26th 50% traffic drop, then June 17th 25% traffic drop.. and now the 16th of July the final 25% of google traffic to drop. I now have 100% loss of ALL google traffic.
100% white hat, been around since 2000.. always fair, unique, updated and informative info for surfers. Now spam is above again.
Go figure.. maybe next month google can take it even further and get yahoo and msn to drop me as well.. I wouldn't be surprised at the rate they are going....
I am offering to do conplete analysis of ONE page and do all the Big Daddy, LSI bla bla testing to see what we get. I shall then post the results.
Along with the Tool Bar Page Rank (TBPR) export there was also a Back Link export. While it answers few things, more research must be done.
Any takers? Give me a page and the symptoms of recent problems.....
Guys, explore GDCs as well for more findings.
Note : "keyword"(with double quotes)is showing old(traditional) results then without quotes. :(
Google has 39 Class-C IP blocks in use.
Which 3 blocks show the totally different results? What results do you get in the other 18 that you haven't yet looked at?
YES! I see the same thing here..
I am seeing a 40 000 page site that has always been fully indexed as www, and has never had a non-www to www 301 redirect, now have most of its pages additionally indexed as non-www.
My index page has never had a non-www to www 301 redirect either (since 1999). The non-www always reolved to www in Google with same # of links and same PR5. Just recently the non-www stopped resolving to www, the PR went to PR1 and the links reflect just those that link w/o the www.
Today the www page has dropped from its perennial top spots and google has the non-www instead, but nowhere near where it used to be.
Earlier these three datacenters were showing old results.
GDC: 72.14.203.104
GDC: 72.14.203.107
GDC: 72.14.203.99
Now when I checked today, there are some improvement in SERPS (for my targetted keyword). Now only, the following GDCenters are showing different results:
GDC: 64.233.187.104
GDC: 64.233.187.99
GDC: 66.102.11.99
GDC: 216.239.59.104
GDC: 216.239.59.99
What about others? What do we name this update?
What I mean by a block is 72.14.203.*
Three other blocks are: 64.233.187.* and 66.102.11.* and 216.239.59.*
Google has over 600 active IP addresses in 39 such blocks [webmasterworld.com].
"Note : "keyword"(with double quotes)is showing old(traditional) results then without quotes. :("YES! I see the same thing here..
It's good to know I am not going insane. I did a test today on a phrase that used to bring my site up in the 3rd or 4th position on the first page of results. (It's now dead last on the bottom of the last page of results) But here is the real burn. The new number 3 site for this phrase, except for the domain name itself, has NOTHING WHATSOEVER TO DO WITH THE KEYWORD and when I click on the result link it cheerfully redirects me to a totally different domain name, that (surprise!) looks like one of those domain parking sites.
I don't really know much about this scam but I do know that parked domains [google.com] have become part of the Google AdSense offering.
Could the current algorithm be conferring some kind of advantages to parked domains with Adsense over plain old, white hat web sites? You know, the old fashioned kind ... with content.
Anyway, the world is really upside down now. Luckily, my sites have traditionally received about half of their traffic from bookmarks, and most of the rest from G. In my case, were it not for those loyal direct folks, I would be dead in the water.
What is especially interesting is that the other top sites that traditionally returned top results for those same phrases have also disappeared.
All these sites are totally white hat.
I've also checked this assumption for other sites/categories I am familiar with but which are not competitors and found similar results.
Sometimes very old sites which have not ranked well in the past several years are now at the top.
Makes me wonder if there is some kind of algo change which is inadvertently (or purposefully) penalizing older top sites in favor of newer ones.
[edited by: nancyb at 7:00 pm (utc) on July 23, 2006]
FWIW, other authority pages took major dives, so I dont believe this is over by any stretch.
(1) Ensured home page content was freshened automatically.
(2) Added more links.
I suspect, loss of pages was because of removal of back links, and lack of freshness of home page content(perhaps) meaning google decided my site was less important than it was, and thus only deserved of a small number of pages in the index.
I quickly got more links added, and I figure Google has allowed the pages back in, as it has simply recounted incoming links, without yet placing a value on them. I may well lose all pages again, in the next few weeks.
For now, addition of links seems to have saved me. I am certainly not one of the beleives that recip links are bad, but yes, they must be ontopic.
I have been top ten for a single KW for a couple years, the KW is a 4 letter place name that is not in my Domain name.
With this update, my homepage has dropped out of site but a couple of back pages that DO have the KW in the URL have jumped up into the top 30. Also, the 1st 9 places are now sites that contain the KW in the URL including a couple junk sites, IE:
www.somewayofftopicsite.com/junk/crap/-KW-
Has anyone else seen a turn to KW's in the URL?
I know exactly what you are talking about, it happened to me overnight. Some sort of new filter that is being slowly rolled out.
There is a discussion on this subject over here:
[webmasterworld.com...]
If you ask me it is a significant development that deserves front page coverage here. As its rolled out it is going to affect more and more long standing sites.
www.somewayofftopicsite.com/junk/crap/-KW-Has anyone else seen a turn to KW's in the URL?
This is very similar to my results. Where the title was the thing, now it's the URL? Bad Google! *bad*
While my main site remains unseen, a subdomain that DOES have my KW in the URL has been moving up, 30 then 25 now 13..
All the results for this KW have been shaken up except the #1 result which is and has been the .net of the KW.
I am not sure when the change took place but I first noticed it after seeing this thread [webmasterworld.com...] and checking my results again.
Looking at my stats for the last week (Sunday to Sunday) the number of organic referrals doubled over the previous week so unless it is just coincidence I would say whatever was done may have taken place several days prior to the 28th on some datacenters.
