Forum Moderators: Robert Charlton & goodroi
Does anyone have any input on why if this (June 27) is a mistake it is taking so long to fix?
[edited by: tedster at 7:44 pm (utc) on July 18, 2006]
[webmasterworld.com...]
I bet Google lost a lot of revenue over the last month and reverted back to pre June 27th.
I'd guess that Google didn't lose a cent of revenue over this. It's not like the vacated slots we're empty.
Also, there are an unfortunate few of us, who have not seen any kind of recovery. So, I'm certain that they have not simply reverted back to pre June 27th code. It looks like they have fixed one of the bugs introduced on the 27th of June and completely missed one or more others.
I still see the screwy language and country partitioning, for example.
Interestingly, yesterday someone had posted a very polite question on the Matt Cutts blog, asking Matt if Google had changed their default behaviour for delivering targeted language and country results to users based on IP address. This morning, it looks like Matt deleted the question. Maybe they know they have a bug in this area also?
Great to solidify that this WAS googles mess-up since many webmasters have not touched their sites and have recovered - proof positive. Would be nice finally for the self-righteous posters on here and cutts logs to stop accusing us of black-hat and open their eyes.
Keep the great news coming everyone!
I am now seeing more link farms, duplicates and redirects from people who use another keyword laden domain name and the put up the "This page has moved" garbage, in order to hog the serps.
Are you telling me Google can't spot those?
I suspect the dance will continue...grab yer partner round n round...etc...etc...etc...
- One dropped out on June 27th and has begun to make a comeback as of today through most datacenters. Still supplemental listings abound, but it has returned for its competitive search terms.
- Somewhere between June 27th and the middle of July, a second site went all supplemental for its site:www.domain.com search, but not its site:domain.com search. A 301 has long since been in place and I've had no non-www/www listings for some time. Its competitive search performance has remain unaffected.
- A third site of mine survived June 27th and went supplemental today - July 27th. This has mildly affected its standings in the search results for its competitive terms.
I don't intend to change anything - clearly this is an issue on Google's end.
It makes me wonder if there is something in common about the sites that fell.
What program did you all use to make your webpages? Are they htm pages or php pages? Are all of you using meta tags?
Google did fix the supplemental problem about 2 weeks ago, but that did not bring the site back. Today the site is again showing supplemental pages first with the site command, pages that haven’t existed in over 2 years.
Also new today, is that 2 domain parkers that own similar domains are now on page one for my test keyword. They simply show ad’s and they are now “amazingly” on page one.
The only reason I can think of for this continuing problem with supplemental pages, is that perhaps the supplement segment of Google’s database is used in some part to achieve a trust rank. I think my site is lost from an incorrect trust rank caused by some bug with supplemental history.
I think they are just messing with the algo.
After more keyword testing, I am finding some REALLY bad results.
I do notice that the Google adwords-farm sites are doing very well. No content, just tons of Google ads and affiliate garbage.
Stay tuned, I for one expect to see more changes before this all settles out...
I did notice a drop in my positions, some, just a little, since this morning and then back up again. For example, I returned today for the first time in the number 3 spot but then moved to 8 around mid day and now I am back to number 3. So there appears to still be at least some juggling going on.
So, I'm still a little nervous as to if it will all hold, but that aside, I am a very happy camper today indeed.
It may take another ten years to not have black helicopter threads every time it happens, but hopefully a few more people now understand Google is more inept than sinister.
One thing I noted on my own site:
Pages with no meta tags have been bouncing all over the serps
Pages with meta tags, have been remaining steady in the serps
I am not listed in the ODP, so that is not a factor.
Hand coded (clean) and tested to ensure no errors. A mix of htm and php pages. Meta tags are in use. Very standard stuff.
FYI, the first page described in my previous post that went supplemental on June 27th has been around for 7 years. The second site that went supplemental midway through this month is 8 years old. The last site that JUST went supplemental today is a little over a year old.
Keep it coming folks..
The site is a real estate site, PR3. Not related to the other sites we have. There is no pattern here and check of the DC's shows that it's in trouble on all of them. I guess the data push that was promised has finally arrived and we got pushed - again. There goes another 6 years of history until G gets it's act together. These are only our own sites so I don't have to explin this to anyone else. I would have to think of the heat that must be coming down the pipe at SEO companies right now, imagine trying to explain this to an angry client who's just dropped a packet on "improving their rankings" - Ouch.
After having one 7-year-old PR6 website go the wayside of supplemental lameness on June 27th, it returned today (for competitive terms - still supplemental) while another PR4 committed supplemental suicide (perhaps it was G-poisoned). At least they appear consistent.
Despite the extreme inconvenience, it's just not worth losing sleep over. So long as you can make ends meet, use this time to educate yourselves on other fine methods of web development, marketing and promotion. I don't subscribe to messing up a site with changes when your gut tells you there is nothing wrong with what you created.
Based on my historical experience, I fully expect my PR4 site to be back within the month (i.e. the importance of multi-site diversification). Google is suffering from something - perhaps growing pains.
Im obviously having some sort of penulty imposed on these pages Probably because the page title says its a "blue widgets" page, it has links to it saying "blue widgets" and has onpage content about "blue widgets" - I call a spade a spade but obviously to rank now google wants me it call a spade a shovel!
Its one thing losing position but it really gets under my skin when i see non relevent sh@t ranking ahead of us - now that grates.
Frankly, im leaving my pages as they are - F'ck Google, my users need to know what my pages are about and if google doesnt like the fact that a page clearly states what it is then so be it. I dont like the loss in traffic but im not buying adwords from them now, im buying from elsewhere - if im going to suffer, so can they. If other webmasters did the same google would stop F'cking with us.
I can see what your saying. What sets this apart though is that the data for this one part of the algo has to have continually refreshed data at more and more frequent intervals..why?....youd think a keyword filter would just need the normal data set...why would they try to refresh it more and more frequently?..does this mean its tripping from a baseline that keeps changing?..its quite intriguing!
If Google would be smart and interested in true search quality they would simply have to hire some folks to work directly with leading publishers in order to keep the best results alive.
Right now, Google censorship is based on faulty engeneering and poor communication with publishers.
Would be great, to have more competition within this search business.
Still, I am not complaining too much as a 95% return is better than the pit that the site was in. :-)
Good luck everyone that hasn't returned yet. Sit tight and wait - mine took six months to return in last years episode of whatever google does.
An allmighty search institution should not only be based on buggy algos. At least not as long as they produce such junky results for so many elementary keywords.
Traffic appears to be back to normal (apart from the % decrease from the Google re-indexing of their image database).
With zero changes on my part throughout this event, if this doesn't indicate a Google hiccup, I don't know what does.
Yet a couple of days ago it was the ones that had very very little copy and either 1-2 links inward and maybe a dropdown menu to go forward.
Could it be that they are running a randomizing program between multiple algos?
I do think there is something up with the locations as I see UK and Swedish sites popping up to the top when I'm clearly in the US using a google toolbar. However many US and local companies are showing up in their google adwords spots.
And probably the strangest was a site and the first few lines of code go like this
<html>
<head>
<title>TITLE CHANGED TO PROTECT THE QUESTIONABLE</title>
</head>
<body>
<!doctype html public "-//W3C//DTD HTML 4.01 Transitional//EN">
<html dir="LTR" lang="en">
<Head>
<title></title>
Anyone else see the problem with dual title tags .. the second was left empty
the ending of the page went like this
</body>
</html>
</body>
</html>
Not only the duplicate title , but also it doesn't even validate .. over 359 html errors. And their ssl certificate expired may of 2004 and even their copyright statement is for 2005.
Worse part is that they have not lost position .. not one bit through this whole thing. And they are running yahoo ads.
But none of our sites have recovered. Of six websites, via Google.com -
keywords - effect:
taj mahal - our site dropped from #1 to #8, and has wrong supplemental results
kew gardens - dropped from #3 to #700 or so
st paul's cathedral - dropped from #8 to #800 or so
virtual travel - dropped from #1 to #3
gardens guide - still at #1
It's particularly the Kew and St Paul's websites that I cannot figure out. Both are non-commercial, have excellent content, have many inbound links from quality sites, include AdSense, have many photos and good text, and include Flash virtual tours.
All the Flash content is also listed in Google-accessible HTML-only pages with pictures...
We moved our servers from the USA to the UK on 10 July, but that made no difference at all. The most recently cached pages for all sites are on the 25 - 27 July 06, so they are being regularly crawled.
Does anyone else with Flash content see a disastrous penalty since 27 June?
