Forum Moderators: Robert Charlton & goodroi
Now I'm wondering whether the effort is even going to be worth anything whatsoever with this crazy Xmas debacle occurring.
Will they be spidered, won't they?
Will they be see in the SERPs or won't they?
Will they have a penalty against them since they're too new and not considered authoritative even though I know they will be the ONLY such pages on the entire Net?
These pages are/were being created out of my love for my trade and I am personally paying for them and expected over many years to recoup this cost by the small amount of AdSense revenue they would possibly generate.
These pages were not being built to make a fortune, they were being built for informational and educational purposes, HOWEVER if there is no chance of them ever of deriving any kind of income (from AdSense at the moment) then I may as well stop them right now.
Google is now acting in a similar fashion to a government when it tweaks interest rates to curb consumer spending and it is having entirely the same reaction.
Do I bother to invest or not?
Personally I have no financial motive to do so therefore, like governments, Google ought to take much more seriously and responsibly the effect an algo tweak may have on investment decisions.
I have to admit, following these threads has never helped me. Except maybe to increase my anxiety.
And to keep the thread on track, yes, I would continue to add new content.
You can't base business decisions or any decision on what Google is doing. I've learned that many times - the hard way.
pageoneresults:
I'm not too certain what I'm apologizing for
Now Opti, Ann, doughayman, castar, et al..
Put up the bottle and take a long break, looks like you really need one, even Google takes breaks!
Why? Because Google has goals similar to yours (maintaining good rankings for useful informational content), and you should benefit in the long run if you're delivering quality fodder to your readers and to Google.
It's funny how everyone thinks Google's systems and practices can scale and keep pace on the internet.
Yes, I used to get severe heartburn issues when the changes occurred. I would bemoan the fact my sites went down and I would scour every post here looking for answers. Guess what? There are none.
No one from Google is ever going to treat webmasters like partners and help explain their practices. The best you can hope for are cryptic replies and conjecture. Why should they explain anything? The more they obfuscate the better for them.
Anyway, the best thing to do is diversify and not rely on Google that much. Eventually they'll be replaced by someone else and we'll treat Google search results as we do Yahoo.
A positive effect was they cleaned up the serps that are flooded with thin affiliates. A negative effect was many legit retailers who are "thick" affiliates were harmed during the season when they do a lot of business.
The downside, as with any new algo, is it mostly worked but needs a lot of tweaking. Google does this periodically as they try to improve their performance. They do it with good intent but their youth and lack of experience shows every time.
As always, focus on your target audience and ignore Google. You will do well and be very visible on the Internet. Run Adsense or whatever works for you.
They do it with good intent but their youth and lack of experience shows every time.
I would say the youth of web search altogether is at play here. It's not like there's some grand hisotrical benchmark that we can point to for excellence in web search -- the entire field of web search is in its pioneer years.
