Forum Moderators: Robert Charlton & goodroi
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]
We have always had affiliate links and Adsense on many of our websites and we have been thriving. And in the Jan debacle, the one site that was totally gone for three days had no affiliate links.
I think Google may attack those websites that are just designed to bring search traffic to a page so that they click on to an affiliate link and move on. That is clearly a bad user experience and Google does not like it.
If your having an issue with a proxy web search site causing some duplicated content, find the ip and block the ip. The pages will drop out of google.
Google is getting rid of sites with affiliate links over time, that's true.
I'd be very interested in the source(s) of this statement. My belief is that there is no penalty or negative consequence if a well constructed site with original, compelling, value added content contains affiliate links pertinent to the theme or topic.
To think that Google would toss all sites with affiliate links is stretching things beyond all reason, IMO.
A good way to find out is to take a unique sentance or two from your homepage and run it through google, msn and yahoo and see what results are returned. That is the best way, but make sure its unique to your site.
I agree with you. If you have unique content that adds value to the user, they you should be fine. It is the affiliates who have no added value that are getting hit very hard.
Does anyone else here see sites that you link to getting better ranking in thei downgrade from Google than yourself?
Beginning to wonder if this update is an IBL update and a PR update and if I (naughty thought!) should start using rel=nofollow
I have a site (approx 1,500 pages) that tanked recently, and I couldn't find the index page in the 1,000 pages returned on a site search. Over the last week, the number of pages indexed fell from about 1,350 to about 800. Its an older site (since 1999) and I'm in the midst of doing a cleanup after allowing it to languish.
I sent a reinclusion request to G asking that the index page be indexed, assuming it was not. Voila! Today, it shows up #1 in a site search. Also, the page count has now risen to 1,440 (no supplementals). Whether these developments are related to the cleanup, the reinclusion request or other factors, who knows?
I just thought this may indicate that something positive is afoot with Google. We all know, though, that the Google weather can change with blinding speed, and, as I said earlier, I hate to speak too soon.
A week ago (1/15) my Adsense impressions went way down. However, the traffic still remaining good. On Friday (1/19), my traffic dropped almost 50% off of normal and has remained this way since)
Question #1: Could these two down-turns be related?
Also interesting stats - I had an article on one celebrity with all original content. The has been #1 in Google results for her name for over a year. Now, it is #161 in a Google search and another mention of her in an album review that never really ranked is in the 110s. I should not be penalized for duplicated content on this page, however, as shown above, at #161 it is virtually non-existent.
Question #2: With this latest Google update, could the above celebrity page be considered duplicated content for being on the same site with other articles "licensed" from Wikipedia?
Question #3: Is Google considering content copied by Wikipedia duplicate content?
Question #4: Myself and others on this thread mentioned a spike in traffic in the early part of January -- Was this caused by a Google tweak or mishap? If so, was this last announced tweak to try to fix that? "If" there is another tweak, wil the next one be announced?
I hope my above situation and questions helps with this discussion.
We noticed the same thing. We found we lost all of our traffic from the midwest US ice storm. That was about 1/4 of our traffic and page views. That traffic will return when everyone in the midwest gets their power restored and back to work.
"We see what I think is the same issue with affiliates sometimes, many of whom are upset that they no longer garner the same traffic from Google that they used to. Our algorithms take a look at their pages and (computerwise) ask, "What value is this site providing that users can't get from other sites or even the 'mothership'? (originator of content)"
"So, taking a brief detour... I've witnessed a sea change in the way many Webmasters treat affiliate programs. Back in my younger days, when t-rexes still roamed the earth, most affiliates seemed to be starting with good content and then adding affiliate links to make a spot o' cash to pay their hosting bills. The affiliate links were an afterthought. Nowadays, though, not only are many Webmasters *starting* with affiliate "content" as the foundation and then adding other "content," they're incensed when their rankings fall in Google. I'll be blunt and say that I have little, if any, sympathy in these situations and I'm guessing that my colleagues who write algorithms feel similarly."
You can find it on this webmasterworld thread:
[webmasterworld.com...]
This is REALLY interesting and might fall under my suspicion (spelling?) that something big is going on with Google.....
What if you take that a step further? What if sites that link to other sites, like a hotel review site, is deem "not worthy" because it is just a review site and the linked site is deemed more important since it "is the originator of content"?
What if advertising sites linking to advertiser sites is demoted and the linked advertiser sites is deemed more important and raise in the serp's?
is it time for a rel=nofollow or will that be suspicious to Google?
Affiliates have been hit hard and will continue to be hit hard this year.
[edited by: trinorthlighting at 10:04 pm (utc) on Jan. 21, 2007]
It looks like in the gold rush days when people have been allowed to do stuff and everything was easy, and then all the bureaucracy was developed by people that wanted to control everything and make money from controlling it.
Now it's Google who want's to control everything (yeah, yeah, I know.... if you don't like Google and so on.....), soon we'll have to file an inclusion in Google, fill out papers and send them in and pay for it to be included.....
Why diesn't google go into the web template business? Then we can just buy a template from them, put our name on it and they can fill it with whatever they think is appropiate. That way there won't be any duplicate content penalties, no adsense click fraud, no fun!
How do you bring down a chinese rocket? Put affiliate links on it and Google will do the job.
How do you bring down a chinese rocket? Put affiliate links on it and Google will do the job.
THIS IS FUNNY!
strange things happening in the serps...
Right before christmas I decided to promote a site of mine again. I didn't promote the site because I didn't have the time at the rest of the year, but the content was up to date all the time.
During the promotion process I always look for directories and add my site in the applicable category.
Some directories have detail-pages for every entry where only my link and the description of my site (and maybe a screenshot) is shown.
Now guess what happend!
All these detail-pages of the directories and the directoy category pages rank very well for my keyword. My site to which these pages link to is nowhere to be seen.
I can make nothing of it. It makes no sense to rank sites which link to a good site higher as the site itself.
By the way my site has a PR5 since years and most of these directory pages don't even have a PR.
I can remember that this topic came up earlier in the forum but I can't remember a solution or explanation.
Maybe somebody could jog my memory.
greg
