Forum Moderators: Robert Charlton & goodroi
1. One of my domains, a 6 year old pioneering website with lots of pages of semi-unique content with a reasonably good PR dropped from receiving approximately 40 thousand users a day to somewhere in the neighborhood of 15 thousand within a month and a half of adding a sitemap to Google base. I experienced somewhat similar fluctuations with other domains.
2. I have been attempting to gain the "trust" of Google for over two years with one of my sites to no avail. Sites that have existed at the top remain at the top and new sites that show up appear to be pushed there almost entirely by artificial Myspace and blog links that are created entirely for the purpose of promoting the website in question.
3. Google's "filters" have become self-defeating: They have, according to me, passed the threshold that all "policing" must be wary of... policing and being so adamantly geared towards removing crime that they clearly, clearly are knocking off lots and lots of innocents on the way. The primary method in which they have done this and continue to do this is penalize new sites for being new.
4. As a result of most of the above, their search engine results are no more relevant than Yahoo or MSN. In fact, most keyword searches on Google lead to a smorgasbord of keyword stuffed URLs, Titles, and descriptions that all say the exact same thing giving the user absolutely no diversity. Therefore, despite its attempts at policing bad websites, its algorithm is still manipulated. In a lame attempt to offset this, it creates "authority" websites such as Amazon or Ebay and stuffs those results in as they are most likely non-spam. This results in exactly what we see: Results that contain listings or sub sites from the same authority domains + spammy results that clearly found the sweet spot in manipulating Google results.
5. As a company, their business decisions have been poor. Their purchase of YouTube for the exorbitant price they paid was the beginning (in my opinion) of their desperate need to try to be innovative. Froogle was a failure, Google Answers was a failure, Google Maps provides no income, Google Groups is stuffed with spam, Google Images is also stuffed with spammy images that often do not even exist anymore. In the end, all they have left is Adwords and their search engine.
6. AdWords is probably the most intuitive keyword control panel I have seen, but as far as I know the conversion rate with it has done nothing but drop as time has progressed. It seems that consumers do not as readily purchase things by clicking on those ads as it may have been in the past.
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Google, unfortunately, seems to be holding onto the lead when it comes to search engines and as a result of this I will probably still use AdWords as is necessary. But I will no longer think about pagerank or optimize for the sake of Google as I feel this is an unreliable and losing battle. Too many large changes occur that threaten the very livelihood of small businesses with absolutely no explanation, and this is an unfortunate effect of Google's poor attempts to police their results.
It has become far too normal for online businesses to spend more resources avoiding being penalized by Google than innovating their own products.
One of my domains, a 6 year old pioneering website with lots of pages of semi-unique content with a reasonably good PR dropped from receiving approximately 40 thousand users a day to somewhere in the neighborhood of 15 thousand within a month and a half of adding a sitemap to Google base. I experienced somewhat similar fluctuations with other domains.
Check for duplicate content. I don't mean looking to see if you have identical pages, rather look at .htaccess
Do all non www point to www? Are index.htm and index.html in your root?
Did you change index.html to point at ./ ?
I optimised my sites from the GREAT info here in WW and saw an increase.
Search here for "duplicate content" see if that might be the cause. It is EASY to do unintentionally.
As a company, their business decisions have been poor.
The people on Wall Street (very smart people) would greatly disagree with the above statement and a look at the stock price for Google right now would as well.
I can understand your frustration, however, if you are relying on a mechanism, of which you have no control over, to drive your business, you have a poor marketing plan.
This should be seen as a reality check for you instead of a complaining session against an entity that in all honesty owes nothing to you nor is required to list your site in their index.
Cabo
While there are some analogies and metaphors for Google that may be of some value, today's search situation is an enviroment without real precedent. So much information, funneled essentially through one pinch point! And as a result, so many attempts to siphon off at least a piece of that power.
It is very difficult to make sense of Google from any point of view that is not fiercely disciplined to be "in the present moment." It is tempting, without even noticing our assumption, to want Google to be a big software application. With software, you may not know exactly what it is doing, but you think of it as a "black box". You expect some predictability for the output when you input something.
Well, I trust Google not to match that expectation. They are more transparent than their competition, and indeed deserve much praise for their moves in that direction. But there is and always will be opacity at some point -- an absolutely required limit to transparency, given the fact that search is a competitive-cooperative game.
What was the case 10 years ago, 6 years ago, 1 year ago -- and even last month -- will never be the case again. I trust Google to maintain that uneasy (for me) situation, because I know their survival depends on it. If by some chance a new comer takes the lead in search, I would trust them to do the same.
I trust Google NOT to be my friend. I also trust Google NOT to be my enemy. They can afford to be neither.
[edited by: tedster at 9:46 am (utc) on Dec. 5, 2006]
Many quality publishers have suffered badly when dubious updates and refreshes had demolished their ad revenues as well as Google users were discouraged with poorest search results.
In many cases also Google support has caused utter frustration with webmasters so that vast resentments among content producers have been triggered.
To me it looks like a normal disease when fast growing companies and market leaders do not to care of there roots by making mistakes and becoming arrogant.
It is not a matter of trust, it is a matter of just doing a good job. Hopefully Google is now not going over the top by not coming up with a solid solution for their obviously faulty algo structures.
The best sites, the best content needs to be on top of results by any means! Even if massive amounts of staff will have to do directory work.
Algos ain`t good enough for that as well as this linking policy turns out as fragile.
In many cases also Google support has caused utter frustration with webmasters...
I know that is true, no argument. And yet, what search engine in the history of the web has done even so much as Google has in this area? That's part of what I point to when I say that the situation is without precedent.
Also, our very own archives here are testimony to people having "issues" with Google long before 2005. But in spite of people's predictions of Google's demise, they have continued to thrive.
I just was perusing the 2002 archives - a good reality check.
google is concentrating on their paid business and have grown quick but they can still be kicked out trust me. its a shame the effort we all put in will go nowhere
This is total Voo-Doo. I feel like I would do better to throw some chicken bones on an old oil drum.
Who do I beg to, or bribe, to deal with this mortifying situation. Egad
there is a lot of paranoia on duplicate content and rightly so. I wish Google would be more clear about these things.
This entire year I too have been trying to gain the trust of Google. I even submitted all my websites with IP addresses to them. I never heard back from them and my websites continue to languish and not be recognized.
Google's system is by no means perfect. Any system that is based on popularity links is flawed. Popularity, in my opinion, is so high school-ish and is subject to manipulation by those who choose to take that route. Unfortunately, Google has done very little over the past year to solve that problem. Likely because it simply cannot do so with the explosion of more and more websites and limited resources to determine quality. Realize that sometimes poor quality and crappy websites make them money as well (Adsense). You can make money both ways - finding something and not finding something. Its the best of both worlds.
I have to disagree with you that their business decisions have been poor. Google has been very innovative and has given substance and more credibility to the Internet. Just because some business units aren't doing well, doesn't mean you can give a sweeping generalization on the company as a whole. Search and PPC advertising are their strengths. Besides, aggregated, searchable information does have value in the long run. Last time I looked, Google had over $3 billion in cash and another $7 billion in securities as assets. Liabilities are low and controlled. This year they have brought in $2.5 billion in income. That is not poor business decision making at all.
Perhaps your frustration would be better off devoted to pretending Google did not exist and to return to why you enjoyed creating your website(s) in the first place. Believe me, you'll feel better about things if you approach it in this way.
And yet, what search engine in the history of the web has done even so much as Google has in this area?
I love this quote.
How old exactly is the "history of search engines"?
Come now, we're not talking the Banking here.
Speaking of, can anyone here name the first successful railroad company off the top of their head? Didn't think so.
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The people on Wall Street (very smart people) would greatly disagree with the above statement
As far as Google stock prices. They reflect absolutely NOTHING on the quality of their SERPS but reflect FULLY on the fact that the Internet is still very NEW (see above satirical remark) and new users and, more importantly, more BUSINESSES are discovering the internet for advertising. Internet buying has a ridiculously low market penetration in the grand scheme of ALL things bought.
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If we're going to have "reality checks", let's also have a "perspective check".
The original posters points are fully valid and not easily dismissed by pointing out stock prices or what people said in that "ancient history" of a whole 3 years ago.
I have been an avid researcher of Google information, as a search engine and as a company and it is surprisingly clear what their intentions are, and were, and where the "music died". It was in 2004, before their IPO.
They introduced the sandbox and for almost an entire year demolished innovative small businesses by prioritizing established sites for the sake of a problem free offering. They attempted to lessen the effect of this as time progressed, but have still not succeeded.
There is no neutral standpoint: Google is the primary distributor of electronic information, and as the distributor it demands responsibility, just like government does. To believe that corporation is any less "in control" of peoples' lives than the government is, is absolutely naive.
I am baffled that people still rant on with the "if you don't like it, leave... they don't owe you anything" attitude. Sure, we know that... pointing it out doesn't help determine whether Google is in the wrong or not. I feel it is important for webmasters and the public to be aware of what they are exposing themselves to, and more importantly, to help demand innovative products.
Google is not innovative any more, and has provided no innovation since their IPO. They have provided temporary "hacks". Hacks are easy... they are less noticable and do not threaten the security of the company's income. Innovation takes risk.
What has Google successfully risked since the IPO? YouTube? Ha!
Sitemaps was the final straw. I've read on numerous different websites and experienced myself the agony people have gone through with unforseen drops in traffic after submission to Google Sitemaps. Google tells us to submit a sitemap because it will "Help us crawl you better".
This, along with "trustrank", is ironically a really effective way of forcing lots and lots of small businesses to use AdWords. Ironic, don't you think?
Semi-unique content?
How much of that semi-unique content is shared by others? How can you reduce the percentage of that semi-unique content? Can you do without that semi-unique content?
But I will no longer think about pagerank or optimize for the sake of Google as I feel this is an unreliable and losing battle.
However, I do agree that they lost their focus on being just a great search engine and diversified far too much too quickly.
I just go directly to Wikipedia, and do a search on the subject.
Most of the time, the article gives me just what I want.
If I am looking for relevant websites, they are more likely to be found at the bottom of the Wikipedia article than in a SERP.
Don't bother telling me to check non-www www, duplicate content, unique titles, unique meta-tags, useful content, inbound links, etc. questions.....I've been through all that over and over again.
They have another agenda with sitemaps...... I Haven't figured it out, and I don't think anyone else that frequents these forums has either.
Many seem to think they have figured it out, but I don't think so!
My submission to sitemaps destroyed the rankings of several of my sites.
Maybe a webmaster's use of sitemaps is itself an indication to Google that you are overly-concerned with what Google thinks of you...
Of course they purposely connected webmaster tools to the sitemap feature trying to get more of us to sign up.
I refuse to get involved. I set up my own sitemap.
I trust Google NOT to be my friend. I also trust Google NOT to be my enemy. They can afford to be neither.
Probably the wisest words on this forum. I've really learned what this means in the past 3 months. Thanks Tedster.
No matter how much money Google puts in your bank account month after month, they are not doing so because you are their friend.
No matter how long you rank poorly, Google is not penalizing you because you are their enemy.
As the managers of legitimate businesses, we can not afford to be mistaken in this.
After all, that *IS* what Google is supposed to do. They should heed their own advice, and build their site for their visitors. And that means making sure all the pages appropriate for a given search are indexed.
If Google takes down good sites in their attempt to rid the index of spam, they are doing a disservice to their visitors. And people will eventually notice that all the best pages are not necessarily listed on Google.
And when that happens, well, we all know about Alta Vista...
Do I like Google right now. No! as Tedster knows I am at the point of walking away from the industry as these are the worst set of results I have ever seen. It seems that spammers have won and whatever Google say I do not believe this set of results would have happened under the consultation of Matt Cutts and now he's dealing with the aftermath.
Hijacks are running wild. Sites with keyword in domain and #*$! content rank above authority sites. Scrapers are benefiting enormously I see shopping sites often owned by people that fund the hijacks and that use there databases to create a search term specific page for every result when the only thing changes is the keyword are dominant. Its crap its bull#*$! and its called........... Google.
Its not the Google I respected and loved in the past. Its just like the old altavista.
yes, a good point. When will Google acquire them and convert it into their own directory?
Their Internet TV venture lost the race against utube by far and more users will use wikipedia and perhaps also other forthcoming directories when their Google`s algo experts will cut off more and more authority sites from traffic.
... Links and kws ...
Our 7 year old authority site with loads of rich multimedia content has been going in and out since 1,5 years. At the moment the site is back on page 1, but all sites right next to it have nothing to do with our prime biz and kw. They just jumped on the bandwagon, copied our kws and benefit from putting together a bunch of links.
Our site is listed almost everywhere, often even getting named as one of only a few pioneers inside a now fast growing industry.
But with this link/kw algo "experiment" it is easy to buy a bunch of links and to climb up to Google page 1.
Trust in Google ...? They pay in time and are certainly much more reliable than most other IT advertisers and affiliate operators.
Bur also i am certain, that one should better not rely on the abilities of their algo engineers.
Since a while they seem to do a lot of damage to the new media industry whilst blackhats receive easy opportunities to make money.
Or, thinking very negative :-) Poor search results may produce much more clicks on their sponsored links and their own adsense which they do not even have to split.
... wikipedia search ...yes, a good point. When will Google acquire them and convert it into their own directory?
I am absolutely certain that they would if they could.
Fortunately, Wikipedia is run by a non-profit organization.
Probably the world's most valuable non-profit organization.
The only risk is that they might decide that they could take the money and end war, cure AIDS, AND end spam.
Google does place Wikipedia very highly on most searches these days. I think they do so because it gives Google credibility...
But also i am certain, that one should better not rely on the abilities of their algo engineers.
It is the curse of any large bureaucracy -- people get hired and have to justify their good pay so they tinker with the things that aren't particularly broken, make them worse, then get paid more $$ to fix their meddling. It constantly happens in government, it happened in the auto industry, it's an ugly fact of life. The great Google of past years is sadly the mediocre Google of '06. Let's hope they get off this bizarre "punishment/penalty" phase ASAP, and once again start delivering quality serps based on quality content. And if they don't, they'll fall into bureaucratic stagnation just like GM, Ford, and so many other one time market leaders.
But the fact is, the bigger the ship, the harder the turn in direction, so don't hold your breath.
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mostly dead fish starts becoming smelly at the top :-) Perhaps the many fresh billions of $ have caused some confusion.
Once upon a time the Japanese car builders strengthened their "quality control" department. Since that moment they became competitive.
Google has reached the size where that has become very much necessary.
Poor support quality and weak search results now require improvements and corrections badly and they might better look deeper into their roots and core biz in order to regain more trust.
Customer relationship is the most important key factor and at this moment Google only stays on top because search experts at MSN and Yahoo enable that monopoly position since they had not been able to even reach G`s previous level.
Tedster is doing kind of a decent job despite some of my writing had also been erased ... i am certainly also not amussed by Google since a while and some of my posts are fairly critical.
just let`s be constructive and seek facts.
perhaps u can re-write your comment on "trust in Google"
Poor support quality and weak search results now require improvements and corrections badly and they might better look deeper into their roots and core biz in order to regain more trust.
At the beginning they made a LOT of smart decisions, beginning of course with an innovative algo; getting a brilliant domain name; the format of AdWords (and AdSense); introducing the "Google Bar" (which was downloaded by millions of people -- including me -- so it is now installed on millions of desktops and thus easily used); and no doubt more that I'm not remembering. For all of that I sing their praises.
But now Google's current path is characterized by 2 key decisions which are at the heart of the problems that so many people discuss on this forum:
- Their stated policy of penalizing an entire site because of violations on a few individual pages;
- Related to the above is Google's refusal to notify siteowners when they are about to experience a major penalty, which as often as not leaves the siteowner totally in the dark as to why their listings are gone from the SERPs. One day you're OK, the next you are invisible, with no idea what to do to make things right -- a terrible position with no obvious recourse for remedy.
If they ever fix those 2 things then there would be much jubilation in these quarters. We can only hope.
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.... Google's refusal to notify siteowners when they are about to experience a major penalty ...
being whitehat and fully cut off from Google traffic all of a sudden and without having the faintest clue about why is hard to swallow.
And then in and out again for no obvious reasons, with the same site, same content makes Google come across like mad sniper :-)
Since that has been going on i have dumped any feeling of loyalty or trust in Google which was there in the years before 2005 and that Jagger update/refresh.
Not being able to communicate even with respected sites makes Google even more look like sniper ...
Now it seems, that only tough pressure could make them become aware of the fact, that many publishers have lost their respect for Google. Many world class publishers have added Yahoo search instead of G.
They are certainly not as untouchable as Gates`Microsoft ...
Chances are, whatever has caused the problem was not done intentionally to manipulate the SERPs. These are the very sites that have unique quality content that can't be found on Google right now, and Google searchers would be delighted if they could find it, instead of the predictable results like Wikipedia, Amazon, and eBay.
I happen to be one of those people. I'm not making changes I want to make to my site, or adding new content, because I don't know what I've done wrong and I don't want to add to the problems. So, my site is somewhat stagnant and any changes are aimed solely at fixing the unknown problems with my site.
If I knew it was a linking issue, lack of meta tags, code bloat, etc., I could then know where to start implementing a fix. As it is now, I have no idea if what I'm doing is helping or hurting.
If Google is sincere in providing the best search results, they need to address the issue of sites that aren't spammy being buried in the results.
This isn't about conditionally miss-trusting Google: It is about the trust being lost. Google is a company, a large company, that now has shareholders. These shareholders decide how much money all the top execs at Google have (for their equity is decided by the value of the shares they hold, not their yearly income) by the demand for their stock.
Stock demand in Google, and the immature nature of the majority stock market, is determined by hype and profits. A Google exec, about six months ago, said one phrase about AdWords that suggested that AdWords income was going down... Within 24 hours Google stock price plummeted like 30 dollars a share (that was about ten percent). Within another 24 hours they made a press release taking that statement back, or revising it.
Can you imagine what would happen to Google stock if:
1. The search engine suffered a bad algo change that made their results less static? Whether this be good or not, people in general will feel uncomfortable with these large changes and complain about it. This negative hype could dramatically affect the stock price.
2. They made effective changes to the search engine, specifically not penalizing new content. Adwords income would slowly begin to drop. If a trend was discovered or published, negative hype would destroy their stock price.
The heads of Google are no longer willing to risk a drop in the stock price because the price, as it is now, is super-inflated. Therefore, any suggestion of negative hype could drop the price to a more realistic level, which will be quite a lot smaller.
AdWords income is not reliable... Google knows this. This is why they are protecting their stock price while they try to create alternate revenue streams... and by having an inflated stock price they have the ability to acquire other companies that may provide this.
The end conclusion is this: Will Google succeed in providing an alternate revenue stream before they lose the search engine market? It is very unlikely based on the fact that they have desperately tried to achieve this in so many ways, and failed in each and every one of them. The YouTube acquisition is an act of desperation, and a poor one at that.
To miss-trust Google you have to change your perspective from a suffering webmaster to a company that is holding onto their stock price by a thread.
