January 2007 Google SERP Changes - part 3

[concepts99]

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

I have a few terms left in google that rank well, I wanted to find out why they still ranked well. Here is my conclusion so far,

using a site:#*$!x (keyword here), I search for keywords that used to ranked well in google.

Some keywords pull up as much as 15,000 pages, some 11,000+

For keywords on MY site that was UNDER 400 result or so (not a few thousand), the results REMAINED in Google ranking, top 10 or so.

For internal searches on keywords with more than a few hundred, it dropped off the chart.

I think I am being penalized for heavy internal linking or keyword usage on my pages, but I am not sure how to overcome this since I have a large site and I am using product titles to navigate

for example

home : department : Product a:

product b
product c
product d

and product b would be

home : Department : Product B

product c
product d

Now if you multiply this by a couple thousand products, you can see why there will be a lot of links to any particular keyword and I think I am being penalized for it.

IS google tell us to kill good navigation to get ranked

Basically, all the pages will be

home : Department
Product (x)

and NOTHING ELSE

I guess they are trying to get rid of affiliate farms, but legitimate sites are getting penalized.

[edited by: tedster at 9:13 am (utc) on Jan. 22, 2007]

[sandyeggo]

Well I contacted the cob-web.org folks this weekend and they say that they are going to do a manual removal of their site from the search engines. I think this is the core of what caused my problem.

I have a 10 year old site. Is not a cookie cutter site. It is all unique as to the content, most of the product numbers, i hand edit the databases so the product descriptions are unique, i do not serve adsense, i do not have mirror domains and try to make each of out 10,000 pages different. I was even reviewed by the panel of search engine engineers including matt and tim. I had good positive feedback. So I dont understand. Not every section is affected on my site, just most of it :-) some sections i still hold #1 position, others are gone. But i know it is a penalty. Search for "Blue Widgets" and i am not found. Search for my trademark with it and you would think that would be a unique search for my site, but "trademark blue widgets" is found in position #104, behind all of the sites that link to me that way, behind scraper and hijacked sites as well. This is NOT a normal adjustment. If it were a normal shift and i would still rank very well with my trademark usage. It is a penalty somehow.

Im just hoping matt gets back from his vacation and helps us solve this mystery soon.

[outland88]

>All these detail-pages of the directories and the directoy category pages rank very well for my keyword.<

That’s what you quickly learn with many of these directories. I’ve seen a few that will create as many as eight competing Adsense pages from a simple submission. A lot of the pages are hidden and not directly accessible with the search box of the directory. Most will remove your listing quickly if you request it. They don’t want to loose that Adsense income. After that they usually disappear in a week or less from Google.

[MHes]

Anybody else seeing big serps changes since 5pm UK time?

[Bewenched]

I've seen huge changes here in the US.

[sandyeggo]

i am not seeing any differences in my market today un the US
no movement

[jetteroheller]

Just a small change at me.

After 13,14 Jannuary 6 from 10 of my subdomains escaped the filter, after this only 1.

Now just a hour ago, a second subdomain came out of the filter.

[chelseaareback]

not me mhes

look the same

whats yr sector?

[mahoogle]

I've noticed that some pages moved out of supplementals today and we are seeing an uptick, but it's only on a few data centers.

[sandyeggo]

I apologize, i do see some movement. For one of my main keyphrases, there is a site now listed on page #1 is a site that is hacked by a Turkish group called ¦¦OWnZ¦¦

This site has seen much improvement over last couple of days - No content, just an image of a Turkish guy on the main page and notation that they are the "Turkish Cyber Army"

Absolutely rediculous

[Undead Hunter]

I've seen one term move up from Page 4/5 to Page 2/3. Traffic wasn't quite as bad as I thought it would be yesterday, maybe lost 2/3 of it. Be interesting to see what happens by the end of tonight.

Weirdly, CTR and eCPM is really down. But I guess that just means whatever articles rank are the low paying ones.

[steveb]

Pretty major data refresh today. Seems better than usual.

[Eathan]

Looks like a few more pages have come out of supplemental and a few more have been indexed, but that's been happenning every other day for at least a week.

[gehrlekrona]

Nothing is happening in my branch. Still a mess and most of my competitors are gone too so I guess that's good :) (:

I've got a UK site also and don't see any changes there either but it's probably what i have posted about here before that Google do updates by "theme" so if Auto/Cars is the first ones to disappear then they are usually the first ones to regain.

[andrewshim]

Don't see much happening except backlinks seem to have rolled back to 9 months ago...

In any case, serps stable for me... for now!

[concepts99]

came out of penalty 12 o clock est, now at 6 o clock, half back in penalty, half out, expect the worse soon. Who knows.

[ABommel]

My site came back for three days, traffic increased 300%. Yesterday in the late evening here in Germany my results started to get worse.

Everytime I checked the DCs, they showed other results:
1st check: #3 112 DCs, #21 256 DCs
2nd check: #3 128 DCs, #21 239 DCs
3dr check: #3 109 DCs, #21 259 DCs

Now all DCs show my site at place 18. That`s absolutely rubbish, my site is one of the strongest and best about that topic. I understand people in Germany saying that they will start spamming, because otherwise they will loose their job or company.

[zeus]

could it be that those who have lost there main keyword in serps, is be cause the index/domain main page dont have the power yet, be cause I see sometimes that a internal page ranks for my main keyword on pag6, normaly my index page rank no3 on page 1, but the index page is nowhere to be found under a main keyword search.

[madmatt69]

I'm still down in the dumps. Traffic is about a 1/3 of what it should be. Haven't noticed much, if any, fluctuation.

[c41lum]

Know how you feel Matt.

No move here in the UK yet but fingers crossed any changes will filter through.

[tigger]

>Anybody else seeing big serps changes since 5pm UK time?

MHes

yep moved from 60th to 3rd for my main keyword and traffic has increased 4X - not holding my breath it lasting as I know what G gives it will just as quick take away

[northweb]

tigger....great news.

do you can any changes to your site?

[tigger]

I've not touched the site in 6mths - nothing added or any new links set up

[almir]

Yeah, I see one of my keywords is back to #1 in UK, but as this is Myspace site I have 1 % of UK visitors, so I dont expect more than few visitors from it.

[shogun_ro]

Still no change.

[itloc]

have the impression it's getting even worser for me...

[gehrlekrona]

Yes :( It seems getting worse and it looks like January 15th was just the beginning of this @@#%$#@$#!...

If this is what it's going to be like, then Internet is dead and you might as well get a stupid blog and write about your life that nobody's interested in and get 1-2 visitors a month except for your closest friends.

[itloc]

one question to all of you:

How synchronized are your website (site:) counts throughout the datacenters?

Thanks

itloc

[Genuine1]

Huge traffic here!

[zeus]

I still see this as a update nothing finished yet, be cause I see a lot of good sites gone, specialy there index page and some internal pages.

[skweb]

This thread is starting to die now as I see so few responses now. It seems that most websites have recovered (as has mine after a big dip for three days on the 14th). Is that true? Or is it that those whose websites have recovered are not even visiting WebmasterWorld any more? Even I came after a while.