Forum Moderators: Robert Charlton & goodroi
I looked into it and I cannot find the reason at all. I signed up for google sitemaps but it does not report any errors or faux pas'.
So I don't know where to look now. Any input very much appreciated!
[edited by: engine at 1:33 pm (utc) on July 21, 2006]
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[1][edit reason] No urls, thanks. See TOS [webmasterworld.com] [/edit] [/edit][/1]
What types of counts are you getting?
Frankly, positions in the SERPS have been a yoyo since BD was introduced - We are now in the "Everflux" decade! imo.
The last time i noticed the majority of data centres all serving SERPs that positioned your site in a similar position for your keywords that were stable for a reasonable amount of time was over a year ago now.
Gawd knows how we arrived here, but some of our sites have seen dedicated specialist authority pages move from 4 to 9 to 65 to 45 to 32 to 8 within a six week period!. We have seen 5 different sets of data centres serve and position an authority page 1, 8, 18, 27 & 32 respectively - now you tell me thats the old google of delivering the most relevent page to the search string - its not its about increasing adwords revenue.
Despite this, I genuinely think that Google is not broken, they like it this way and the issues of canonicals, 301s etc just add to the mix. As i posted the other day googles profits this year are up, so one could argue that this messed up index is in fact a very shrewd move on googles behalf - whos the mug here?
[edited by: Sunnyvale at 7:56 am (utc) on Aug. 1, 2006]
i would like to know what type of sites and how big they are have been effected
are they large or small sites, forums, directories online stores or information sites with original content, galleries - is there a common thread among the sites effected?
i had a wallpaper site with several hundered pages disappear and just come back - it was mainly reciprocal link exchanges but some natural links
another forum / directory site dropped from many number 1 - 5 type of positions then come back up a bit for many terms - the forum is in a subdomain and would have hundreds of pages but the directory isn't that big - but it has great organically developed links
I'll occassionally appear for these 2-word-terms in my local google.com server, so that's why I think it's not over yet.
Traffic is way down, and semi-panic has set in. Google surely doesn't owe me anything, but a little forewarning would have been nice :)
Anyone else have any comments on the above?
<edit reason: no tool sites.
See Forum Charter [webmasterworld.com]>
[edited by: tedster at 12:59 am (utc) on Sep. 2, 2006]
My 2-word-term does not show up on this server, but my 3+ keyword terms do, as they do on most of the MCDAR servers.
Funny, but on this server (72.14.207.104), the amount of spam from a particular subdomain spammer is much more prevalent here, for the keywords that I am checking. Actually, it's a bit out of control.
What makes you believe that this server is the one to look at?
Doug
Search for your business name. If you are not ranking at the top of the SERPs where you should be then look at the directories with your title in their title? are they ranking abnormally high for your title? Search for the other words in your title and see if they rank for those also. If so, check them out further.
I have one client site affected by "scraper directories" that put his title in their title which includes his city and state so that he won't rank for any words in that title now which are allllllll of his major keywords.
There are two tactics I've seen:
One is to take every word in the title and set up a separate page featuring this site under a different keyword and doing this on several pages with no link to the site.
The other tactic is to use the title, description and keywords of the ste about 6 times on the page and also in the alt or comment tags and again no link to the site.
I have managed to get whole domains removed who play this game by first writing to them and then Google Adsense policy violation (they usually use Adsense) and then reporting them to Google Spam and Yahoo Spam, MSN feedback, etc. and if that doesn't work then report them to their host. If they host their own site report them to internic and their domain registrar and report any illegal activities and how it has affected your site. Also let other sites listed there know what you found so they can report them also. It may help to report them to Yahoo Directory or DMOZ if they are listed there but I haven't tried that yet as the other reporting usually takes care of it in about a week or two.
Soon as those pages disappear your rank should come back barring other problems.
Second, i own a large website and am experiancing very similar but not exactly the same results. My largest website was ranking very highly for:
"Game Name" Cheats
e.g
"Halo 2 Cheats"
"Sims 2 Cheats"
"Runescape Cheats"
"San Andreas Cheats"
"Fable Cheats"
Ive never had a problem with these keywords, for well over a year and a half now, they have fluctuated but never dropped much either way...
On the 26th/27th i lost ranks for literally THOUSANDS of keywords alike the above... However, a keyword i have been attempting to rank well in since i started out on the internet "Cheats" i now rank 4th for, whereas before i didnt rank on the top 4 pages.... Coincidence? I think not!
[edited by: jatar_k at 8:47 pm (utc) on Aug. 1, 2006]
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[1][edit reason] no urls thanks [/edit] [/edit][/1]
- after command site:mysite.com, my index page is not the 1st result on the list.
After the responces from Matt earlier today I am very curious to see the percentage of people having problems after the 27th with extremly large sites.What types of counts are you getting?
I saw this basic question a couple of times in this thread.
My biggest site (~19,000 pages), which has been on its current domain since 1999 was devistated by the July 27th update. There are some phrases it has been on page one most of the time since 1999 and it is now gone for everything. I've lost around 80% of my traffic. When I do a site search many of my pages are returning titles and descriptions that look several years old. In fact I found one six year old title today. newer low to no PR tertiary pages are showing up in site searches above my oldest and highest PR pages. In fact my main pages show up around page twenty.
This is a pure content site that depends on advertising revenue (mostly AdSense). I started the site in 1995 and shifted it to its current domain in 1999. According to Yahoo there are 20,000 backlinks to the site and I suspect the number to be closer to 50,000 - 80,000. Backlinks include hundreds if not thousands of high quality links like .GOV, .MIL, .EDU and Wikipedia type sites. No link exchanges, etc.
These are domains (and sub-domains) that were created in the last month, and mostly scrape and do illegal redirects. These cloaking sites have somehow received benefit from Google's latest algo tweak.
Nothing amazes me any more, but it would truly be unbelievable, if GG let this stand as the norm.
I saw this basic question a couple of times in this thread.My biggest site (~19,000 pages), which has been on its current domain since 1999 was devistated by the July 27th update. There are some phrases it has been on page one most of the time since 1999 and it is now gone for everything. I've lost around 80% of my traffic. When I do a site search many of my pages are returning titles and descriptions that look several years old. In fact I found one six year old title today. newer low to no PR tertiary pages are showing up in site searches above my oldest and highest PR pages. In fact my main pages show up around page twenty.
This is a pure content site that depends on advertising revenue (mostly AdSense). I started the site in 1995 and shifted it to its current domain in 1999. According to Yahoo there are 20,000 backlinks to the site and I suspect the number to be closer to 50,000 - 80,000. Backlinks include hundreds if not thousands of high quality links like .GOV, .MIL, .EDU and Wikipedia type sites. No link exchanges, etc.
And I thought I had it bad ...
Does anyone know how often the data refreshes occur? Is there some sort of rotating pattern? I heard GoogleGuy said something about this "happening more frequently".
And I thought I had it bad ...
Does anyone know how often the data refreshes occur? Is there some sort of rotating pattern? I heard GoogleGuy said something about this "happening more frequently".
- I logged a spam report, for each an every offending site.
Did this precipitate their removal?
- Are there algo tweaks in place for the removal of such spam,
that were implemented as recently as last night?
In any event, this is a step in the right direction. Google needs to proactively (and algorithmically) rid its database of this garbage.
G just cant seem to get it get a universal fix for this issue.
My flagship white-hat site has totally tanked in the rankings this morning.
On June 27th, part of the site had tanked, to be restored completly on July 27th, only to have a devastating drop for the whole site in rankings today.
My hobby site had dropped in the rankings on June 27th, stayed dropped on July 27th, and has been completed restored this morning.
Oddly, the site: commands are functioning properly for both sites.
I've no clue what the difference between the sites are, so that one would tank and one be restored. Both sites had canonical problems last year, but a 301 redirect has been in place for over a year.
