Dec 7 - sudden drop in rankings (part 2)

[Trilitech]

< This thread continued from [webmasterworld.com...] >

I was hit hard by the Dec 7th change and I know several others too. I'd like to get some feedback from those affected hopefully track down what our sites have in common so we can hopefully do something about it. Here's what I believe to be the relevant stats about my site. Please post some stats about yours and whether or not you were affected (positive or negative) by this change.

Type of Site: credit cards
Age: 2.5 years
Inbound Links:
- 50% from syndicating articles
- 20% bought
- 10% from link directories
- 20% "natural"
Outbound Links: Only one, but ROS exchange with an Australian credit card site
Has outbound affiliate links: Yes
Does url re-writing: Yes
Sub-Domains: One for a forum
Rank before: 1-5 for primary keywords
Rank after: 18 - not found for primary keywords

[edited by: tedster at 3:34 am (utc) on Dec. 14, 2006]

[fibalogger]

I've never done much SEO, I am not gonna start now.

To late... ;o) The best way of optimazation is no optimization. To good links are bad links, the whole seo world headstands at this time.

The fundamental indicator of a bug is for me:
I've still very hard keys, which are on #1 on the same site.
If the domain would be penalized, the whole domain would drop back and not only easy combis without some very hard singles. On other subpages the single keys are dropped back. The calculation of the ranking resp. the valuation of keywords and combis are completely destructed at the moment.

[Fox_Mulder]

My 7 years old site was also hit hard at December 7 and lost all traffic from Google Serps.
Most pages in Google Serps are marked as "Supplemental Result" now.

What i have seen is if I change the Google Preferences "SafeSearch Filtering" to
"Use strict filtering" all my Pages are at their normal Serps position and there is no "Supplemental Result".

So maybe this "Update" is a glitch in Google's SafeSearch filtering.

Anybody else see this?

[norbiu]

Why do we have to go through this every 2 months? Can't Google just let it be?

[foodstyling]

So maybe this "Update" is a glitch in Google's SafeSearch filtering.

I made a posting on that subject,but nobody reacted.
see: [webmasterworld.com...]

[indias next no1]

My website is dancing on google SERPS from June 27th, my content are unqiue and originall. most SPAM websites copied some part of my contents and placed in their webpages specially created to display adsense. i am not even able to contact them to remove ( because hundreds of websites done the same content copy ) now my keywords is getting affected and is somewhat available only after 100... and all the SPAM websites getting high rankings ( even a website not updated after Feb 2006 is at top 5 position ). i can't understand the google's theory. nearly 75 % of my traffic is down.

What to do :(

[fibalogger]

Google kills itself at the moment. They are unable to fit the problem and the results are very scary at the moment. Most spam sites are listet better than serious sites. They are punishing serious webmasters an seos, but not the spam.

I think, it will be the end of googles search engine, if they don't correct the last changes. The present results are like at baby search engine, programmed by a very young student.

My spam free site continues dropping (from #7 to #38 and now #65).

I could cry...

[Inspired]

Obviously they are hopeless at detecting the original owner of content.

I search for a line of text which I wrote for one of my articles and there are 5 results, all scrapers.

[steveb]

They aren't hopeless at it. They are just not very good at it. Sometimes they get it right, but very often they get it wrong, and stupidly so too. For example, if they used pagerank as a determiner, it would be almost impossible to get it wrong as crooks generally have PR1 or PR0 pages. Unfortunately it seems like once again Google instead bizarrely looks at volume of blog links rather than quality of links or PR of links to decide what is the canonical content. It seems the updates of the past few months have made the problem worse.

[SEOPTI]

10k Blog links for sure will help ;)

[frakilk]

To add insult to injury I now seeing site:www.domain.com returning only supplemental results for my site. I have a headache.

[fibalogger]

Completely desperated I've changed back some modification I've done in the last few weeks (in the internal linking system), because I hate to do nothing during my pages kick the bucket.

[Jez123]

Completely desperated I've changed back some modification I've done in the last few weeks (in the internal linking system), because I hate to do nothing during my pages kick the bucket.

I would seriously steer away from doing anything at all. This has happened time and time again and 90% of the sites come back on their own. The 10% who don't I assume are the spammers that google are targeting or they just never report whether their site came back or not.

Unless your site has some real glaring issues such as hidden text or other obvious stuff that you think that you should change anyway, I would leave it. If your site doesn't return with the majority or a week or two after that *then* maybe start to panic and change stuff!

[foodstyling]

Since yesterday a lot of pages from my site lost their positions in the serps. Someone told me that my navigation menu (ccs/javascript) could be one of the reasons for that drop because it hides submenus with diplay:none on loading. Could that be a reason for that drop in rankings?

[fibalogger]

There are a lot of other guys with the same problem and without css such like this. And also there a lot of pages with css and without dropping back.

And since yesterday the rest of keywords, which has remained still in good positions, are also beginning with dropping back. It's a real nightmare... :(

[zegiv]

And since yesterday the rest of keywords, which has remained still in good positions, are also beginning with dropping back. It's a real nightmare... :(

Same here, we are in the same nightmare ;(

[DConductor]

Is there a significant difference between the dropped sites and the sites are listed in the top10? Can anyone check this?

if this is a filter, it must be replicable.

So, guys, come on! Analyze it!

Best regards
DConductor

[tahiti]

DConductor,

I used to analyze a lot on those who rank top and those new comers on my industry but now it seems its pointless coz there are NO PATENT to be found. there are good quality websites who rank high but there are some who sink without a clue. same situation for those who implement link exchange, or purchase massive links, or articles links, or do nothing...any websites with the same SEO techniques can either rank high or sink deep in Google.

So, where do you get started when you analyze those who rank well and those who doesn't rank well? (assuming that you have done your part of analysis.)

...and by the way, unlike last weeks, i dont see any major differences in all Google DC right now. any one of you guys came back after the sudden drop?

[Fox_Mulder]

In between I have watched at three different sites from different people which are show the same symptoms since 7. December: Supplemental Results. What should I say? There is nothing in common. Three totally different Sites. I have no idea at the moment...

[DConductor]

I mean google is a machine with a programm to rank and sort SERPS.
This machine comes to the decision to drop sites down and others not.

For this decision there must be a reason.

I can't believe, that here is "programmed randomizer".
For that, the results are too constantly.

I think, when "only" a few sites are affected and not the whole domain, then I would compare these sites to track differences.

e.g. lot of non-HTML-text, keyword-density, incoming links and link texts.
What gives the high ranked sites this rank? There MUST be a reason to decide (and this for a machine with a "static" program)

if there is really nothing, then lets think about a data-problem.
Are all backlinks still in the google-index? Maybe, is the index a very old one? Whats about PRs of incoming links?

You are SEOs. You managed it to rank high. You know which factors count. So check it.

It's only a hint for searching...

Best regards
DConductor

[ozric]

My site lost 50% of its google traffic on the 10th, but full traffic returned yesterday. So maybe others will get their traffic back too?

[netmeg]

Losing traffic is one thing - but I wouldn't rely too heavily on what the site: command is telling you - every time I run it, it seems to be reporting from another planet. I've got sites that site: reports as being all supplemental with no loss of traffic, and at least one client site where traffic is way down but there's no supplementals anymore at all. Down is up and up is down.

[fibalogger]

So maybe others will get their traffic back too?

We still hope so and as soon as possible...

One further question: Is it possible that these pages has earned to much money with adsense in the last weeks or the CTR was to high?

Are there also dropped sites without adsense?

[fibalogger]

By checking site: mydomain.de, on first position a subpage appears wich has been deleted 2 years ago... :o/

It's not a bug - It is a damned virus.

@ Matt Cutts - Restart Google please...

[netmeg]

Are there also dropped sites without adsense?

Yes; one of my client's ecommerce sites seems to have dropped to about 50%, and they don't have AdSense nor have they ever had it.

[Fox_Mulder]

One Question:
Are all sites which are showing the "supplemental result only bug" located in localized google Serps for e.g. google.de, google.co.uk?
Are google.com results and sites also affected?

[edited by: Fox_Mulder at 4:06 pm (utc) on Dec. 18, 2006]

[Inspired]

None of our dropped sites have any supplemental issues. If some changes were made, it may have been multiple factors at once. This would explain why most of our sites have nothing in common.

A whole bunch of threads, some 500 posts, and new sites being affected and we still haven't heard back from Mr. Cutts since has was last here to tell us that everything is "normal".

[fibalogger]

One idea: Have anybody WS-FTP logs on the server side?

After checking site: I'm sure google follows these files and also the links in it. Terrible, these log-files are listed in google and are influencing the validation an weghting of the whole domain.

Supplemental I've noticed that google has follown a hyperlink, which was sent only by e-mail (from my proggrammer) and is definitely not exiting in the web. The link shows to many of database lists consting of links (only for internal using, not determined for spidering), which had maybe influenced the results too. Now we have disabled the complete admin-surface and all relevant parts by robots.txt too. That would be spying pure. I've not google desktop search, but the toolbar.

Essential is to look for "site: command" and watch all over the sites, maybe there undesired pages listed by google. Further a lot of .swf animations are listed as pages with site:

Could they influence the serps too?

[simonmc]

That's because everything is normal ;-) How many times does he need to say it.

Seriously, this is normal for google of late. Completely normal. This is what normal means to the big G now.

[mattg3]

So, guys, come on! Analyze it!

I have two similar sites. The English one has tanked 1/3. The differences are language and PR. Given that fibbalogger is from the same country that the untanked site comes from, it might be a readjustment in how PR reflects on your listing.

[madmatt69]

Mine tanked too, about 50% of traffic. Anyone using adsense notice targeting has gone a little worse than normal?