Forum Moderators: Robert Charlton & goodroi
That hits the nail on the head and is definitely the only thing one can do to get more visitors from Google and other engines: increasing the relevance of a page.
And how good - the users will also benefit from this :-)
Btw: I like to mention that I am quiet happy with this update so far. My traffic went up significantly during phase I, went down a little with phase II and I hope it will go up again with phase III. I have found more URL - only pages after phase II. Hope they will be read from Gbot and dissappear with phase III.
Regards
itloc
Here's what she said: "Today I was really annoyed by Google, I did not find anything I was looking for. For example, I was searching for the homepage of a well-known industry event and Google just did not manage to find it, at least not on the first few pages. Gosh, what's going on?"
Just as badly as this update is hurting us that have dropped, I'm sure G is not liking this type of comment either. Believe me, my site dropped and my sales have taken a dive. I'm waiting for Jagger3 before I start panicking. I do believe that G is not trying to purposely hurt the little guy, and that they're honestly trying to improve their "product".
It's more a problem of relevance. Granted that we were previously #1 or #2 before (now we're #12 in our main keyword), but those that moved up are big corporations that have little to do with the 2-word keyphrase "red widgets". It's just that the word "red" and the word "widgets" are found on the new top sites, with "red" a very common term used by every website on the web. I don't mind being pushed down if I know that those sites are more relevant to the keyword, but these are just big corporations that have little to do with "red widgets"
[edited by: tedster at 9:33 pm (utc) on Oct. 27, 2005]
[edit reason] fix side-scroll [/edit]
Interesting to note that (flawed as it is) the number two and number three increased sites on this list:
[alexa.com...]
are Matt Cutts site and searchengineworld.com which are both providing update info.
If we launch this make-over, I am wondering if it will raise the G flags as if we are tweaking our pages to better our SERPs (chasing the update sort of thing). Our site is clean and does not exercise hardly any SEO (if anything white hat)... Just lots of content that generates plenty of user clicks. I strongly believe the truth will set us free, however, G is playing too much godmode these days.
What do you guys think? Launch or wait?
[edited by: Yippee at 7:05 pm (utc) on Oct. 27, 2005]
and searchengineworld.com which are both providing update info
Maybe it's related to the temporary relocation of WW?
When I look at most competitive terms on Google.fr I find REALLY a lot of cloaking pages and keyword stuffing.
For example "voyage pas cher" (cheap tickets) or "agence de voyage" (travel agency) #1 looks like cloaking as far as I'm concerned and extending research throughout the french competitive terms I find a lot of those.
I wonder if spam report works over there in europe? Maybe googleguy can tell?
Of course, and next week WebmasterWorld.com will be in the top 10 movers...
I thought is was strange but my traffic from msn and yahoo has gone crazy since the update as well I think that shows me the general population are really not going for this new update and looking for better searches.
How does an increase in MSN and Yahoo referrals indicate that people are using Google less? What's more likely is that it's either chance or they are fiddling with their backlinks or algorythm at the same time Google is and if you check the other forums here at WW you will see that they are doing some of their own updating. People giving up Google is way down at the bottom of my list of explanations. The general public doesn't even know about these updates and if they did they could probably care less.
But I have been seeing some jumps in yahoo referrals, as noted above, that can simply mean you are ranking better on more pages in yahoo than you were.
I've seen no increase in yahoo or msn at all, percentage and absolute count wise.
Although in a week or so maybe there will be some changes, we'll see how the real world users (otherwise known as people who do not know seo exists, non-webmasters) respond to these changes, that's what google is watching with eagle eyes, they know what happens in real time, and they know when an update has worked in terms of catching seos by reading these threads, the more annoyed people, the more it's worked, if the real user numbers do not really change but WebmasterWorld posters flip out, the update is a success. If user numbers drop, then they'll roll back the update, or parts of it. Complaining about the serps is pointless, google knows what is happening with its traffic, you don't.
If we could get this thread back on track, compare notes, see what is making sites drop and not drop, that would be great.
The general public doesn't even know about these updates and if they did they could probably care less
A few days ago I would have definitely agreed. But since then two non-technical persons independently complained about bad Google search result quality wihout being asked! And I noticed some questionable results myself, especially with Jagger2. If this is the upcoming quality, we will see and hear increasing complaints.
For certain niches, or if searches repeatedly fail, I imagine that people indeed try "something else".
We as webmasters know that we should try to increase our sites' stickyness with our quality services and/or unique quality content. Otherwise people will not return to our sites for about 4 to 6 months. Why should Google be any different? If SERPs quality is way below average, people WILL look somewhere else.
And, let's be honest, yahoo.com is as easy to remember as google.com
GoogleGuy's effort to open the door for communication and share information with webmasters is a clear indication that they are actually willing to help the little guy, as long as they don’t reveal secrets that black hat SEOs can use to spam them even further.
That's why I'm taking the time to report spam sites, as GoogleGuy requested in an earlier post. There's just no way that they can see all of the "black hat tricks" that we see in our own "network neighborhood" and I recommend that all of you other webmasters in this forum do the same. It may take them a while to automatically filter out all of the spam, but it can only help to improve things in the long run.
I have been lurking in these forums for years, trying to learn as much as possible about SEO/SEM, while working at perfecting my “white hat” skills. This is my first post, and unless you all flame me mercilessly, I will begin helping you out with advice that I have learned from many years of experience in this field. We all might learn something in the process.
So, if your site has been hurt in the jagger update, then it’s time to stop whining and learn why, fix it, and move on.
P.S. Thanks, GoogleGuy!
P.P.S. Let the flames begin!
Yes..it's called Adwords...
if your site has been hurt in the jagger update, then it’s time to stop whining and learn why, fix it, and move on.
Ummm ... I don't think I've whined here, it's just that nobody as yet could give an answer as to the whys and hows of jagger. Everyone says to wait till the 3rd phase ends before doing anything. It's hard to fix something when you don't know what's broken - as many white hat sites here have said
[edited by: alika at 8:05 pm (utc) on Oct. 27, 2005]
It's hard to fix something when you don't know what's broken - as many white hat sites here have said
Or we can complain about stuff we can't change, that we don't know, that simply doesn't matter in terms of getting our sites fixed.
There's always a lot of good insight in these threads, but it gets buried in prophecies of google's impending demise. For those of you who don't follow update threads through the years, all big updates feature this prophecy, it's like clockwork. As I noted, despite years of such prophecies, google has posted record income and profits this quarter.
I'm with Brian_M and reseller [post 518 I think it was] on this one though, I want to see junk seo go, I hate it, it's time for halfwit seo work to vanish from the web, and its time for that sleazy industry to suffer a serious hit. If google is even hinting at being serious about doing that, then good for them.
[edited by: 2by4 at 8:15 pm (utc) on Oct. 27, 2005]
The pages/content of this site (it's large) have been mostly static for ~6mo., and the rankings on the jagger2 DCs are solid. The biggest change in the last 4mo's is the number of solid one way back-links (~50).
I expected it to make an emergence soon, but not where it is... I thought it would take some more time to be in competition with some of the other large sites in my niche.
So, my speculation, is my one way links are counting for more than some of the well-aged BLs the other sites in my area have -- they have a greater spread and age in quantity, but the quality of the ones I have seems to be playing an important part...
Justin
OR maybe GG got my reinclusion-request/suggestion and is way cool =)
jd, I've seen the same thing, congrats on your site getting desandboxed by the way.
OMG - I just realized something. I have turned into one of those SEO guys who checks the SERPs every half hour for various datacenters! Anybody know how to get this monkey off my back?! :-)
For us, after holding the top spot for years and disappearing in many keywords, one of the first things we did was to stop linking to others. We removed our Add URL page. After years of not engaging in exchanging links, we started again -- only to disastrous results. We also stopped accepting article contributions (we use about 5 a month at most) so the site will purely be original content.
But it is difficult to watch your site pushed down, especially if it seems that YOU'RE the only site being pushed down in your sector.
There's a certain keyphrase that I monitor daily. This phrase always returns 4mazon for the first two links followed by hundreds of its affiliate sites. Today, on my standard google.com search, the affiliate sites have completely vanished. The same search on 66.102.9.104 still shows the affil sites---still in the same position---but marked as supplemental. The changes for this type of site surviving in the G index are looking very slim.
-S
did you really send a reinclusion request?
Yes, it was actually more of a thought, that had to do with links that cannot be bought. When I said the links I picked up were strong... that was not a joke, I actually have more of them than anyone else in my niche, except .gov sites, and major organizations.
I did not know if G was already taking into account the fact that to have a link on some sites (or sections of sites), you have to be correct in what you present or they can't link to you -- not that they may not want to, but really can't.
The only way I knew to get the message anywhere was to send it in a reinclusion request.
Justin
Added: I would guess they already did this, but was not sure.
Added2: Thanks 2by4 =)
