Forum Moderators: Robert Charlton & goodroi
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]
When I first came I thought "no smoke without fire" and just assumed all those guys were baddies. But then I scratched the surface and read more, and they were not. Then my site was hit. Goodness me, I don't even know SEO from CEO, and I don't want to, so if I am a baddie where does it stop?
I found Webmasterword just because I was thinking about adsense to pay for the hosting. I have no income from this because it is an info site. Boring maybe but it is the main site on my topic, and real fun to me, which is why I do it. I do understand that others cannot follow what I have done, and I don't suggest they do if they need visitors for commerce.
My point was though that I don't feel it is right for Google to consume my bandwidth when they don't even list me properly anymore. The people who search will eventually decide whether they are right in chopping sites like mine, by deciding whether to use them or another search tool. I'm content with that.
That is all there is to it really. I think Google are making a real mess here with 'collateral damage' but time will tell. It always does.
But finally, and more importantly, I hope you and everyone else has a peaceful and happy holiday period. Bless you all.
or to have separate websites for each engines, or both of those reasons.
I'm not sure how to do that... care to explain?
When
I optimize for Y!, I go sh#t in G!
and when
I optimize for G!, I go sh#t in Y!
When I optimize for Y!, I go sh#t in G!
and when I optimize for G!, I go sh#t in Y!
I've found that Y! prefers pages with fewer links than G and MSN is very much the same as G otherwise...I dunno about Y! It just doesn't make sense to me since Y! visitors do not seem to click as much.
Some of my pages have come back to #1 in G however the most important keywords are still no where to be seen. It's amazing that the accepted defacto trade authority page on a specific subject has been bombed by a Uruguayan Alibaba page with a couple of images on it!?!?
What's strange, is that the site:www.domain.com command on all DC's yield Supplemental Results first for me. Is there some significance to this?
He starts by saying "A thread on WebmasterWorld started Dec. 20th asking whether there was an update". Yes: completely ignoring this much much bigger thread as if it wasn't even here.
I just wondered: why is this? Why would he pick up on that thread, yet ignore this one, which affects far more people and obviously has a much bigger impact on far more sites? Is there some logic here I am missing as to why he would evade this issue? It doesn't make sense.
Do it at this time of year when most of the West is on holiday and they'll probably have forgotten about it next week!
This morning I'm seeing further movement in my sector and apart from my trade directory site it is now totally dominated by alibaba, ebay, amazon, pricegrabber and nextag all of which are totally useless in my niche.
If, and realistically there is no if, why does he say:
Most data refreshes are index updates,
Then just why have I, and others, had so many pages completely drop from years at #1 to nowhere? Has that information overnight suddenly become invalid and useless, when, at the same time other pages have remained precisely where they've been for years as the authority pages they are?
If he wants to refer to MEGO then I would politely suggest that there are an enormous amount of very intelligent and capable webmasters who use this same expression when Google tries to play the three wise monkeys.
right now I'm not aware of any major changes yesterday, so right now I'd chalk it up to the normal daily changes in ranking as we refresh our index.
...and
frakilk:
Matt can you check if anything major happened on the 28th November also? Seems like a lot of webmasters noticed something significant on this date. Thanks.Matt Cutts:
frakilk, not that I know of. It's been a pretty quiet month as far as ranking changes go.
We've been here for years in this forum when sweeping changes rocked through Google. The outcry that such changes create is far, FAR beyond the level of report that we currently see. Plus, I work with a good number of clients, and only one of them saw any significant shift in December (several indented listings on the first page vanished altogether). The SERPs these clients appear on have not been through anything like an upheaval.
I do not post this to make light of the difficulties that clearly have shown up for some sites in recent weeks. But I do think Matt Cutts is reporting accurately when he says those changes are not widespread or indicative of major changes.
But I do think Matt Cutts is reporting accurately when he says those changes are not widespread or indicative of major changes.
Pardon? When 19 out of 20 SERPs change in a niche sector then I feel that's a major change.
If they consider it not major then I'll consider it not major when I withdraw my AdWords and spend that in an altogether different way:-)
How many companies are actually aware of what has happened this week since the 20th? Many European companies were already on holiday and quite a few in my sector in the USA and Canada too.
Maybe we're considered insignificant in comparison to the multi million visitors per day sites, if so then Google will rue the day they forgot who put them where they are now.
Since misery loves company, I successfully turned the hat-trick this week:
- Totally decimated rankings
- My wife's car died (transmission is gone)
- Major leak in my roof
All donations can be wired directly to my Paypal account.
Gotta love the Holidays!
Since misery loves company, I successfully turned the hat-trick this week
Hehehe...
1. Daughter cracked windscreen on brand new car!
2. Dog decided to eat a plastic plant pot and ripped its epiglottis- ouch:-(
3. Internet's as slow as hell
4. More e-mail spam than ever
5. GFU big time resulting in
6. AdSense earnings decimated
Anyone else care to add to the list?
Merry Xmas...bah...humbug
For those sites that are MIA, sorry, but I do not think it is because of any sort of big G update, IMHO there is no big GFU.
I know that this is not what a few here want to believe, do not be mad at me, I am just reporting what I see.
Back to watching,
WW_Watcher
All of them have a lot pages with numbers in the url. For e.g.:
www.domain.com/blue-widget-123.html
www.domain.com/green-widget-124.html
www.domain.com/red-widget-125.html
Is it possible that this characteristic trigger an error (or is it a feature) in the supplemental results algorithm?
Matt, maybe someone have to watch a little deeper into this error at Googleplex!
I am just reporting what I see.
Agreed, in your sector, however when stable 10 year old sites suddenly go MIA do you not feel something may just possibly have happened?
Unlike some I am not totally MIA, just some of my major pages have disappeared whilst others have remained firmly ensconced where they have been for years. Doesn't that ring alarms bells for you that if it can happen to someone else then it may at some point happen to yourself?
If not then you'd better start contemplating the unthinkable.
For myself, our 7,500 employees and as our Group Chairman, I instigated an IT/Board/Video conference today of all my directors and relevant personnel worldwide, that's how important I view this GFU.
Needless to say important decisions were taken since we cannot afford to sit here and "hope" that the GFU rectifies itself, plans have been made and expenditure allocated for those ventures, none of which will be directed towards Google whatsoever.
The SERPs ride's over so far as we're concerned, we've done well out of it, now to the next level for which we had been planning anyway.
Bye G
I just do not, and have not seen enough changes in the SERPs to be able to say there was any sort of big update of data, or change of G's algos. I did not want to make anyone mad, I am posting what I see, and what I have seen for months is the everflux of G.
Having said that, IMHO, G is in process of fighting spam & link selling for PR purposes. This will have HUGE trickle down effects (think of the butterfly effect), with sites & niches where many sites were effected by the PR boost. Think, if site(s) 10 PR brokers had G strip from them the ability to pass true PR (not just TBPR), and 10,000 sites they sold the PR to then did not get that true pr, and the 1,000,000 sites they linked to did not get that fraction of true PR, each effecting the SERPS in their respective niches, and so on. Add on to that the possible removal of 1000 scraper sites that might have been linking out, and the PR & anchor text signals that went along with them removed, with the same trickledown effect. Add into that the issues with duplicate content, some getting worse, some getting better & the trickledown effects as these sites get healthy, or sicker. All of this creating everflux, which is what I am reporting to have seen.
I did not comment to create anger, I am just posting what I see. I am sorry if I did not agree with what you told your "directors and relevant personnel" with the problems you currently have with your site in the G SERPs, but I calls em like I sees em.
Back to Watching,
WW_Watcher
Edited to correct grammer & spelling, but it is way too bad to fix now!
[edited by: WW_Watcher at 5:02 pm (utc) on Dec. 23, 2006]
All of them have a lot pages with numbers in the url. For e.g.:www.domain.com/blue-widget-123.html
www.domain.com/green-widget-124.html
www.domain.com/red-widget-125.html
Trying to take your observation to the next level, those URLs are almost definitely coming from a typeof URL rewrite approach. In particular, it's a method that inserts certain keywords into the URL, but also needs to keep the product number in the URL to do the database lookup so the page can be generated.
In my experience this approach is often in use where the website has converted to using a rewritten URL, rather than launching with the rewrite already in place and therefore native.
Questions that occur to me, related to this...
1. are effective 301 redirects in place, or do the old URLs still resolve directly too, creating a duplicate URL confusion.
2. do any URLs go through a chain of 301 redirects before they resolve with a 200 OK -- such as going from no-www to with-www first, and then from the "?id=123" form to the keyword rewritten form. Backlink influence and PR do not usually pass through a chain of 301s.
3. were all the old anchor tags in these sites changed over, or do some still hold the old style URL?
4. do these sites all return a true and immediate 404 header for "bad" urls -- or do they do something less direct than that?
5. have they tried to disallow old URLs through robot.txt or meta tags, but executed with some unforeseen errors.
I did not comment to create anger,
Apologies if you thought me angry, I'm certainly not with you:-) I may come across a little strong at times since I have to thrash people some times to listen to me!
We have a lot of very talented people working for us and we are all just astounded by the arbitrary (in)effectiveness of whatever it is that Google has done to our sector. Not just my companies, many others too.
A sector which until a couple of days ago was virtually free of garbage but which is now full of...errr...a total waste of computer processing time and effort.
Honestly, I've had to resort to other engines now to search for trade related stuff, it's that bad they even make Yahoo! look good. Incidentally, alltheweb's not doing a half too bad a job for me right now for my business/personal searches believe it or not.
Now I think I can go for that beer:-)
My site, like many others, is simply that. It is a basic website with genuine information: in my case much much more than anyone else on the topic. It's been around for years and has built up slowly with just knowledge of the topic itself, and none of the stuff you are talking about above.
If Google is going to chop sites like this, because the owners are not web techies and into the stuff you talk about above: then you know what? The problem is theirs and not ours. If they are demanding serious webmaster knowledge to rank a site properly then all they will have left are sites that have had 'specialist attention' from people trying to influence their results. Perhaps that is exactly what they deserve to have.
The only issue I had about Mr Cutts was the way he came on here telling the world nothing serious had changed when it clearly has. He would have beeen far better off not commenting at all, than spinning that argument.
Many many sites have obviously been hit here, and many of them will be like mine: innocent victims of some tinkering at Google. My 500 page graphically illustrated site has gone, and in from nowhere to dominate proceedings: you have guessed it - a Wikipedia stub! Obviously others here have witnessed similar.
It is immaterial for me at this point frankly, as I have moved on, but let's at least have the record straight.
In closing, have a good holiday despite this everyone.
If any of my sites HAD been hit, I'd be asking for several pairs of fresh, objective eyeballs to help me spot something I might have missed.
BUT
One big thing I have seen in that cache is the encoding. ITS WRONG! Can somebody back that up with cache encodings from their site?
Thanks!
itloc
Because your site is informational, your current situation is at least not causing you income loss -- but in their situation it did or it does. The basic fact is that a website is a technical construct -- it involves an exchange of information between computers on a network. While some can be successful without worrying about the technology, for others, well, the technicals birds do come home to roost at some point.
When I ran a group of brick and mortar stores, I did it mostly because it was in a field where I had some passion. In the beginning, I never dreamed of the kinds of knowledge I was going to be responsible for, even though I surely couldn't master them all. It seemed like I was regularly being blind-sided by demands coming from regions far outside my passion.
Architecture, electrical, plumbling, building and health codes, fire laws, state and national tax law, accounting and banking laws, unemployment compensation, local politics, and, yes, computer technology all impinged on my ability to pursue my passion. One year we nearly went out of business because we double paid our sales taxes and the accountant could not see the problem -- it was buried in our accounting software, and I had to find it or close up shop.
I learned then that being naive about technology was not a choice that I could afford.
I hope you can see the parallel to a website. Fortunately Google alone is not a do-or-die area for you, but for some it is. We have little choice but to pursue at least a degree of understanding, or else we will no longer be pursuing our passions.
So I shared the pieces I do know about to help find the pattern behind what we currently see happening for some websites on Google. It seems that this month on Google is not a "tsunami" for a large number of websites, the way the "Florida" updates were a few years ago. But that's no comfort to any website that was impacted. For some it is a matter of survival: understand and adapt, or perish.
So some cannot afford to merely complain or criticize Google, just blowing off steam and then moving on. It is for those people that I posted -- trying to contribute to the analysis and possibly understand enough to adapt to the current situation.
This month, fortunately for me, my websites did not suffer. But in the past they have, and this community has always been there for me when I had trouble to fix. That is why I posted what I did.
[edited by: tedster at 1:01 pm (utc) on Dec. 24, 2006]
For no reason whatsoever, our websites have taken huge swings both ways throughout the year, and we are just treating it as the cost of doing business.
And therein lies a problem for individual webmasters who look at "my site" and then outward.
Pamela2, something happened to you that has happened to thousands of other the past couple years. As Matt said, this is standard operating procedure for them, not something new. Now you could easily see that going back through webmasterworld looking at a lot of "date" threads, like 'changes on 6-30' or 'data refresh 9-23' or whatever.
Google is going about its business, and they often do a very poor job, especially if you look at specific sites. I have pages they are completely bumblebleeping, while others are ranked almost perfectly.
Matt is likely right nothing abnormal is going on, while it is likely he is kidding himself about how regularly inept in terms of stuff like this that Google is.
Imagine if you always drove through a toll gate (Google) and paid cash for years. Then they changed to ONLY accepting prepaid cards and you didn't know about the change. Nothing wrong with your car (website), but because you didn't keep up with changes, everyone else will overtake you!
Booth 1. Keyword in domain name.... No matter what #*$! you serve on your pages even if its all adverts we will make sure you rank because our algo has to use this to boost manufacturers and if we filtered your spam out it would be too obvious what we are really doing.
Booth 2. Trusted sites, Manufactures, Content Providers, We'll use this to boost your rankings if your a trusted site, manufacturer or shopping site that gives great revenue to adwords. We leaked the keyword relevence in url to the shopping sites about 12 months back so you could change your directory structure to benefit. Manufactures that were moaning about mom and pop this cures as well, and hey content providers start registering keyword rich domains.
Booth 3. Small business and Mom and Pop. Join the #*$!ing que who the #*$! are you to complain I just had "IBM" on the phone. You don't like what we doing then #*$!ing advertise. You complain too much I will #*$!ing destroy your listings on line. So shut the #*$! up, be gratefull of any listings you have and stop whinging you are nothing to us. We gave you a free ride for many a year but time to crawl back under your rock as your not the type of people we now associate with. Yeah sure a corparate company may use the same things we decided we would penalise your site for but hey there a corparate company and your nothing! NOTHING!
[edited by: Pirates at 3:55 am (utc) on Dec. 24, 2006]
Today is even more comical than ever!
I am now seeing stuff shuffled around so much that it is obvious it is out of their control. Checking keywords I am finding #1 ranking sites never before seen with three on page keywords with one image with alt tag, no titlebar keywords, no metatag description nor metatag keywords with the keyword, and I'm seeing this across hundreds of pages in my sector.
Some pages I have viewed with only one keyword out of hundreds of others on the page and obviously nothing else whatsoever.
It's G's Xmas reality joke on us all...they're telling us to stop fretting, find a real job and get back to doing something productive rather than screwing around playing on our computers trying to prove as though we actually know what we trying to accomplish for our businesses.
From now on all SEO is going to be outsourced to Alibaba sites therefore don't worry about it any longer, G is the new world order and if we don't like it then we can go forth and multiply in short jerky steps:-))
Whaaaaaat? What's broken at google? I can't for the life of my figure this out, why the site would suddenly go supplemental.
"G is the new world order"
No way. :-) Google is running tech - schtuff and has some relevance in the internet. Thats not the real world.
In two years they could be bankrupt. Or not. Who knows. ;-)
itloc
