Back from Bourbon

[history]

For those of you who have given up on the damage done by the Bourbon update… there still might be hope. My site (400+ page history site), which was badly hit by Google’s May update, just came back late last night to its original standing in Google. I was originally on page one of Google with most of my keywords and keyword phrases for years. After May, the site was still page one with Yahoo and Msn; still indexed with Google, but in “no man’s land” in Google searches. I had about five duplicate content pages left over from a recent renovation; also 4 or 5 pages with the ‘http://www.mysite.com/’ and the ‘http://mysite.com’ problem. I contacted Google and was told about 3 weeks later that there was no penalty, but I still lost 95% of Google traffic. The only repairs I made were to eliminate the duplicate pages, but these pages really weren’t an issue in the loss of traffic. I now have 9 pages with the ‘http://www.mysite.com/’ and the ‘http://mysite.com’ problem. Other than that everything is back to normal.

[Chico_Loco]

Not back after bourbon - so - does anyone care to guess as to when the next update might be so that I can look for changes? I know it's impossible to guess exactly, but are we a week off or a month?

[stu2]

HarryM

But instead of just blaming Google, I am trying to understand what is giving my site a problem, so that if I ever get my traffic back I am not going to lose it again.

With the G's forever changing algo, I'd postulate that you will never know what you've done to regain your traffic and indeed it's highly likely that it isn't anything you will have done. It'll be the same when you lose it again also.

[stu2]

arthurdaley

Every month I read messages from countless webmasters scrambling around trying to change their site because it loses most of its traffic. It's pointless, next month the algo will change again. You will either go up or down again regardless of whether you make any changes or not. You may as well sit still rather than chase your tail.

I just said that... err... well you said it first :)

Take up meditation and focus on your breathing rather than the PR meter in your toolbar.

Good advice.

It is also not in the economy's interest that a search engine index like Google's is so volatile. It is absurd that sites can go from number 1 to not even in the top 1000 and vice versa.

Agree

It's bad for businesses to have such unpredictable traffic levels. Hundreds of thousands of people have invested years building up their sites and their businesses only to see their traffic levels fluctuating erratically while Google play games with their algorithm, making it super-volatile to pressurise more webmasters into relying on steady traffic from Adwords.

Whilst I agree with your conclusion I think it has proved to be a bad business model to rely on such a narrow source of income by putting all your eggs in G's rotten basket of serps.If you've been hit by all these algo changes then you should diversify away from G's serps. I cringe away from being a soothsayer but I think we've seen the last of the stability in the G's serps. This is the new paradigm (?sp).

[max_mm]

night707, I have some cute banners for you, or anyone else that's interested.
Just sticky me.

helleborine, could you please sticky me the url.

I've spent countless hours promoting google to my clients during my years in this business. Don't mind spending a couple more hours informing them all about what it has become.

[Spine]

Poogle.

[woodagain]

no h1s, h2s, h3s, etc.

So let me get this straight H tags are "black hat"?!?!?

What next? <div> <center>

Give me a break.

[night707]

Almost two months after "Bourbon" it has become an obvious fact, that Google search is no longer aiming to list the high quality content sites.

Google support does not care at all.

This hits primarily white hat webmasters, that have invested in creating valuable websites with real content and it also downgrades the quality of search results for each Google user.

Instead of complaining or trying to understand Google`s concept or requirements publishers will have to get organized in order to gain some real weight against allmighty G.

Google is abusing it`s position and something against that has to be done by thsose, who create the content, that makes the Internet valuable.

Trying to bow forever just to match all of their secret and silly requirements makes us publishers weaker day by day and of course they will tighten the screw as much as possible.

With no more traffic from Google publishers can now even afford to say "thanks Google, go to hell!" There is nothing to lose.

Our sites are ready to bounce back and things have been prepared! Who`s got the courage?

[DevInteractive]

hello,

you know i am curious to know this..all those that got hit and the site hasn't returned to its orignal place on google..did u guys also advertise on adwords?

i am simply trying to figure out that perhaps G wants people to spend money on adwords?!

funny I can see some pr2 and pr3 sites ranking within top 10 for my keywords not to mention the age of my site along with good pr5-6

[MLHmptn]

Laugh :>~

MSN is eating this up!

[Swebbie]

i am simply trying to figure out that perhaps G wants people to spend money on adwords?!

Ya think? Is it becoming clearer now? Can we all say a collective "DUH!" please. Poogle's got shareholders now, baby. They need those investor dollars. And what to investors care about? PROFITS! And how does Poogle get revenues to make profit? ADWORDS, BABY! F up the SERPs to keep all us poor websuckers off-guard, and pretty we all pay up to guarantee top rankings. It's gotta be SUH-WEET to be counting the bucks at Poogleplex these days.

[peter andreas]

We are back in the top 10 for the search term I was watching so maybe they are still fine tuning.

[ciml]

This thread is going in circles, and is closed.

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