Forum Moderators: Robert Charlton & goodroi
I seem to be able to confirm across most all of the data centers that terms I was in the top ten for are now nowhere to be found... not even in the top 200. This is going to make for a really bad holiday season for my product orientated site.
So something definitely happened.
That's about the only huge change I see on this particular data refresh; the previous one knocked a couple sites back into the sandbox (I may have added some poor quality inbound links too quickly to some older sites...it was an interesting test).
Anyhow, back to this refresh...subdomain authority spam is on the rise...again...just in time for the holidays...again.
Cygnus
&filter=0
to the end of the address of the google result page. You'll probably see the page reappear exactly where it should be ranking. (Also, don't look at the datacenters as they will often show sites that are lost on google.com when viewing the results in the search? mode.)
Google has had this screwup many times before, and unfortunately it usually takes awhile for them to fix things.
They have almost totally lost control of the results now. So many legit pages are being penalized/lost in oddball ways while the amount of freehost blogspam is at an alltime high.
&filter=0
One of my sites didn't disappear, it just dropped from 9 to 530 for the main keywords, with similar drops for all other keywords for the site. Add the filter=0 above, and it's still the same.
I guess I saw it coming, but didn't realize it, because it was ranked 9 on most datacenters, but a few had it around 530 for the last few days. I kinda watched it propagate from those few to most of them today. Now, I see it ranked around 530 on most datacenters, but 9 on just a few.
My other sites seem unaffected. The website that took the hit is just a little over a year old, so maybe back to the sandbox?
Unfortunately today I also noticed a drop on one of my personal sites. Looks like some sort of penalty like the -30 described in another thread on here.
Had a few brought advertising site wide links pointing to the site, getting these removed, but I don't think this was the issue. Hopefully it's just Google's XMAS SERP'S.
Wishful thinking. ;)
Different phenomenon. That is more of the standard data fresh behavior, rather than the filtered result thing.
The list of jargon for specific "google screwed up" errors could fill a telephone book.
"If you see a page disappear from ranking, add
&filter=0
to the end of the address of the google result page. You'll probably see the page reappear exactly where it should be ranking. (Also, don't look at the datacenters as they will often show sites that are lost on google.com when viewing the results in the search? mode.)"
..........Hmmmm had no effect at all for me, in the stuff I track.
Something needs fixin'. Who got a wrench?
One of my sites didn't disappear, it just dropped from 9 to 530 for the main keywords, with similar drops for all other keywords for the site. Add the filter=0 above, and it's still the same.I guess I saw it coming, but didn't realize it, because it was ranked 9 on most datacenters, but a few had it around 530 for the last few days. I kinda watched it propagate from those few to most of them today. Now, I see it ranked around 530 on most datacenters, but 9 on just a few.
My other sites seem unaffected. The website that took the hit is just a little over a year old, so maybe back to the sandbox?
The same situation append for me, my website dropped from the top 10 to 250 on many keywords and lost 90% of is traffic.
This appear on the 18th November 2006. It is on the top 10 on 6 datacenters.
The website is just 1 year old (the next mounth it will be).
I've make severeal change on the last month and this month, so maybe it's the reason of that... :/
Good luck for your situation.
Of course Google will never really admit anything to anyone about this phenomenon, but it does make it very hard during this period if you are an active webmaster who monitors web sites to believe facts from fiction per se.
Once your in this industry for a while you will quickly understand that it's best not to do anything during these periods and simply wait it out, if you feel that it's Google's problem and not yours.
I was penalized too on 19 November and lost 95% of my traffic :-)
I did big "footer" inbound linking from 2 or 3 subdomains and added 200 pages at a time.
On 19 Nov ALL PAGES from my site, contentful pages too, were penalized from top 10 positions to 400-500 positions.
It is a very sad christmas but...who cares :-)
... O__o
Off-topic authority sites with single on-topic pages and blog spam sites appeared instead.
Since 28 Nov, results look much better (for us at least), which our site and many competitors' sites back, mixed in with fewer off-topic authority sites and no blog spam.
It seems un-natural in the eyes of Google, however crap that may sound.. they may not like it.
I personally do not like what I am hearing about adding so much content at once, as I am of the opinion.. what about a new web site with a huge product catalog in production? Obviously they are not going to send it live until they fill there product catalog with the content. What happens then?
Are you using Sitemaps for these pages? Maybe that may help.
Also duplication is a big thing at the moment. If you are an affiliate or have content which is likely to be re-hashed, you may have a problem.
what about a new web site with a huge product catalog in production? Obviously they are not going to send it live until they fill there product catalog with the content. What happens then?
In fact it should be perfectly legitimate...
Also don't misunderstand me, I added 200 pages only ONE time.
Are you using Sitemaps for these pages? Maybe that may help.
I do, but as other people here I can read the "old" rankings for query searches...
Also duplication is a big thing at the moment. If you are an affiliate or have content which is likely to be re-hashed, you may have a problem.
Do you think that "empty content" is similar to "duplicate content"?
I mean that I tested 100 pages with "empty content"...but this test penalized ALL PAGES from my site. I think it is not so good...
One of my associates also believes that pages that are too similar like alot of content management systems spit out, can cause issues for product catalog web sites. I am yet to research this to any certain extent.
I believe that some of the lost sites might have to do with that influx of ranked blogspots...the majority that I've found so far are clearly scraping and redirecting, so it is possible that they are being classified as the higher trusted site, causing the other sites to get temporarily filtered. It is of my opinion that it is temporary, given that individual splogs rarely last "that" long -- whether or not Google cracks down on them or if they pull a MSN for the new splogs as they are created, well, we'll just have to wait and see.
Cygnus
It looks like many young sites have been hit. Just wondering if that was an intentional algo change or a temporary thing that is gonna be fixed soon... I hope for the latter.
BTW, if I use quotes in search query (like "blue widget") my site is still on the 1st page.
The only thing I did notice was that some of my new domains (actually 2months old) have finally gotten indexed on some of the DC's, but only the index page.
Have you made any recent big changes to your site?
No, not really. Reading the other reports, it does seem to me that it's a newness thing. I wasn't really expecting this site to be doing so well so fast anyways.
