Forum Moderators: Robert Charlton & goodroi
A very interesting article (including comments by Matt Cutts) has been posted over at PBS. It may be possible that it is related to the December/January changes
[pbs.org...]
[edited by: tedster at 8:00 pm (utc) on Jan. 11, 2007]
sudden hipe in traffick for a 10 days then sudden drop..dramatic changes in SERP not much hipe as previsouly I ranked at better place but today I have suddenly lost them from 3rd rank to 50th.
I have noticed significant changes with "supplimental index" has anybody have noticed any changes with this index.
Sandy I agree with that. Ironically, we are seeing our best traffic ever at MSN and are doing well on Yahoo, as well. Our issue is with Google alone, once again here...starting last weekend.
Recently a designer who used to build the templates for a site in a highly competitive sector - a niche where you definately want to stay whiter-shade-of-pale hat - used some code close to this:
<h1><a href="/"><span class="hide">Buy Blue Widgets</span></a></h1>
Lovely.
The site is about blue widgets... keywords are there...
H1 and all.
Only problem is that with the css applied the text is NOT THERE.
With the class "hide" and the css applied,
An image replaces this part.
Non-selectable, not in the source code so no ALT attribute, for - as far as the browsers are concerned - it's text, not an image.
The source shows the above line, a pure text link.
The browsers show an image.
Turn off the css and the text is visible.
All headers, and all image based links are used in this way.
The nav links for the homepage use this, on all subpages.
If this isn't a case of hidden text, I wonder what is.
But...
Do try to enlighten me, what do you think?
For CSS can't be read by Google as far as I know.
Yet this looks definately wrong, and if nothing else, a manual check will get the site a penalty or even banned for good. Does any of your sites' pages use something like this?
I mean how many of the sites used heavy css based design, and I don't mean font and link styling.
Layout, images, and the hidden text practice above.
I wonder if Google is still blind to this.
Haven't checked lately.
But right now... I'd be great to know what it's implications are in the SERPs.
You would think that all sites that I have should have been affected but it is my main site that has been hit! All other sites that I have on the same IP are not affected at all, not going up in SERP's and not down either so this leads me to believe, like I have posted about earlier, is that Google are doing this by "theme" or maybe "spam theme"....
Primary Keyword 1 = #2
Primary Keyword 2 = #5
Primary Keyword 3 = #5
1. Sudden and severe drop in all important rankings
2. Lost all our keyword combination string terms rankings even with our site name included
a)site name is a 2 keyword term with URL #5
b)site name put together (sitename)no URL #1
c)site name put together (sitename)with URL #6
d)site name with up to 13 targeted keywords in our search term string #15+
3. Home page only moved from #1 to # 5 lost for 6 weeks prior
4. Searched for Ourwidgets.com located at #5, news sites at top that covered us #1-2-3-4
5. Searched for www.Ourwidgets.com #5 also with news sites again taking the top spots.
I hope that helps.
[edited by: Patrick_Taylor at 3:03 pm (utc) on Jan. 18, 2007]
It's just that I wonder how much of a difference it would make ( or is currently making ) to the SERPs if Google started to crawl CSS files and automated the penalties that used to be manual.
And Patrick, thanks!
But there's another thread as well, which is exactly about what I've been saying: [webmasterworld.com ]
But to stay on topic, or rather, add to the discussion.
It's obvious that many have missed the single most major factor of why the SERPs changed. Even though Matt Cutts more or less gave it away in the agony of having to say SOMETHING. You'll need to read between the lines.
To help you out where you should look, check your inbound links.
Make a list of the sites you were most happy about when they linked to you.
And see where those ( some of only former ) authority sites are ranked right now.
Should give you a clue if nothing else will.
Then if you must, although I don't think you should spend any more time with this, do a checklist of the anchor text these sites used to refer to your site, and match it up with the things you lost your positions for.
- This applies only to those who don't have any on-site problems. -
- And never initiated a link building campaign where ten thousand links pointed to them from the same domain. ( Sites with such issues should never be too surprised when they tank. ) -
There's nothing on the net that's cast in concrete.
c'mon google shake it out
on 7th place is who if not Wikipedia!
on 7th place is who if not Wikipedia!
2nd on Google.de ..
But who cares for wikipedia, when we'll come back?
I am out for 22 days already
? can you elaborate on that? You deleted a webmaster account and it came back?
? can you elaborate on that? You deleted a webmaster account and it came back?
In my webmaster account I had 3 sites.
Two of them recovered 3 days after deletion from webmaster account.
I'm not sure that deleting them produce positive effect.
What I know is the fact that I have last unrecovered site listed in webmaster account and I'm thinking to delete him too.
has anyone that has gotten hammered lately by google switched registrars in the last few months
given the target audience and timespan the answer will of course be yes many times over. You could also ask
has anyone that has gotten hammered lately by google NOT switched registrars in the last few months
and of course the answer will be the same...
[edited by: tedster at 11:34 am (utc) on Jan. 19, 2007]
Parents - surely - should teach their children that much of what they see on the Internet is lies, rubbish, stuff to fool SEs, etc., etc.
We know that; even the people publishing the dross have children - you can bet they warn their kids to avoid the trash.
Equally obvious that any parent will warn that wikipaedia is hardly to be trusted at all.
I'm surprised that a teenager would believe anything they find on the web. Impressed, really.
and yet peer reviewed tests of the legitamacy of wiki articles shows it stands up very well against recognised trusted sources such as britanica...surpassing them in some areas....
Ask yourself do you want to be operated on with a WP trained doctor, seeing Grays anatomy from 19something.
Anyway: One site still suffers with the faulty ISP Geotargeting algo delivering english pages to Germans. The German site seems to go back to pre January quake traffic.
[edited by: mattg3 at 1:40 pm (utc) on Jan. 19, 2007]
I had my website listed there and did nothing. The website is now back as normal before 1/14.
