Forum Moderators: Robert Charlton & goodroi
In further research last night I (think I) came to the conclusion that the pages that we lost were over optimizised. But in what way and where are the questions. I could only compare who is listed, and who is not.
On one of my main search terms, where last week I was numbers 2 & 3, I am now # 59. (other sections are worse, but sticking to this problem for my research)The result should be one of my deeper pages, to the actual related page of the site. But what appears here is my main index page. The page that should be here I have not found yet.
So if i am thinking i am over optimized, i want to see what others on the google results page are having success with. Guess what? They are way over optimized. But this is the difference that I can see so far. In the unlinked content on the page, they repeat the search term over and over - key phrase density probably twice as much as i have, maybe more.
But I think the difference is that where I repeat the term, it is anchor text internal links. I think I repeat the phrase in the anchor text equal to or more than I do in the content on the page itself. It does not appear spammy, it is basically the navigation links that I speak of.
So, is it possible that google is looking at the anchor text links and weighing those phrases more than what is in the content itself and considering repeating phrases within the link as spam? Could it be the anchor text density verses the density of the content itself?
Am I making any sense to anyone?
[edited by: tedster at 9:20 pm (utc) on Feb. 27, 2008]
FWIW
I was staring at a position a site of ours is in for its main key word; # 997, and what’s right above it at # 996? A two billion dollar a year company that’s one of the largest manufacturers of the product our site is about. Beautiful site, 2,000 back links, nobody “optimized” it. All this talk about over optimized; key word in the title, key word in the H1!, to many on page links with the key word, ect, ect. This thing doesn’t have one element of that. Type in the domain of this company and it comes up with all the nice sub links under it, (100,000 returns) just the whole 9 yards. (Don't get me wrong overoptimization of specific keywords is what we have been focusing on but then you see something like that and it just makes you scratch your head)
I understand the concept of collateral damage in the name of progress but Position # 996 for this site?
Like I said, I’m sure there’s a reason for all this, but the more you dig into it, the more confusing it gets.
Your showing a cache date of yesterday. Your site will definately shoot up...
Can't tell how long it will last though. I'm just going to sit pretty and keep things normal, not make any major modifications and see how it works out.
Some guys escaped untouched but others sit there for multiple terms in the high 900’s.
Randle, those that are escaping... are there any similarities in domain names?
I am seeing a lot of .co.uk sites now.
EDIT: I just did a search after posting this and I am back to the top. If it sticks, I will let you know.
[webmasterworld.com...]
Considering that themed, niched sites are getting hit - but not all of them, how many pages with related phrases are on your sites, and how many are "average" for the niche for the particular phrase? Also, how about the number of IBLs and OBLs with the phrases in the anchor text, especially within the site and sometimes anchor text repetitions on the same pages?
Sometimes things can be perfectly legitimate, but aren't any more if they go over a normal threshhold of acceptability. Like eating a slice of birthday cake is fine - but eating 10 slices out of 12 is cake-stuffing. What's normal for a particular site, and what would seem to cross the line over into page stuffing or anchor text stuffing (within the site)?
They pop in and out all the time. Coming out of the penalty means nothing... except I made a year's worth of grocery money when three pages popped out for Monday and Tuesday. You can expect penalized pages to be non-penalized periodically, but it doesn't mean anything permanent. They will likely get penalized again days or weeks later.
Unfortunately previously the healing would last a month till the next data refresh, now you likely only get out for a couple days to a week.
Lets just take a look at the famous George Bush (and now Michael Moore) Google Bomb. If you dont know...do a search for Failure in Google and then view the cache to find out the Keyword Density for those pages is a big fat 0.
Perhaps this change might affect our problem as well?!
Perhaps this change might affect our problem as well?!
That's exactly what I just posted in the thread about Googlebombing. However, I wonder if this change could be the reason for the 950 Penalty. You know, fix one thing and create another problem somewhere that nobody could have possibly anticipated.
So, they fix the Googlebombing issue and create a totally new problem that they didn't expect because of the changes they made.
I'm not sure that this is the same thing as being described here (if this penalty is a new thing) as I have experienced similar before.
My initial feelings are that my problems are one of two things. The site has undergone a domain name change and this is a delayed reaction to the change (the 301 redirects went into place at the beginning of November 2006).
The other main change I have made is adding keywords across into the title many of the pages on the site (previously it had just been "domainname" and it's been changed to "keyword keyword domainname"), though some subpages appear to still be ranking well despite this change.
For general reference I first noticed the problem around January 7th 2007 and it hasn't appeared to change since.
First of all, it's impossible for someone to just unilaterally say this is what happened unless they look at a large number of sites involved. That hasn't happened.
These sites are considered authority sites in their niche, linked to by .edu and top corporate websites. They are not junk or garbage or low quality sites. For instance, my site that has been hit with this is linked to directly by several Fortune 500 websites. Hardly an unworthy site.
These sites appear to be retaining their PR, another indication that the site is of good quality. If you have a PR5 or 6 home page, that pretty much indicates that lots of other quality sites find yours worthwhile. So, Google is going to intentionally trash them, but leave PR intact and overlook incoming links from hundreds of other quality sites, each endorsing your site?
Google is going to disregard Wikipedia links that have been in place for years? ODP links in place for years? .edu links in place for years? Sorry, that just doesn't make sense.
Plus, I see lots of spam and other low quality sites that add nothing of value to the SERPs still ranking highly. They have no unique content, just stolen content from other sites. Google is going to keep those sites and trash the original site that first published the content?
No, there's more to it than this. I just love it when people come to conclusions without knowing all the facts. If the "SSA Penalty" were true, look for the size of Google's index to drop by about 50% in the next couple of weeks, because right now there are a lot a cr@p sites listed where they shouldn't be.
For instance, at various times since this started, I've seen pages from Consumer's Guide, Ford Motor Company, IBM, and yes, even a few Google pages down there. So, the SSA Penalty as they've called it really doesn't apply, unless Google is saying they have garbage pages on their site as well. No, there is more to it than that.
Plus, that still doesn't explain how other pages on the very same site, with similar construction and optimization rank #1 for competitive terms. If the site sucks, it sucks. I don't see how Google could just nit pick certain pages, and give a pass to others. I've even seen pages on my site that were lower in the rankings move up while others hit the bottom. If the site is garbage, why the improvement?
[edited by: tedster at 8:35 pm (utc) on Jan. 26, 2007]
They have no unique content, just stolen content from other sites.
its been the most common factor of late.....
1. Over 100 links on a page
2. Affiliate links
3. Major html errors
4. Very little content on homepage
5. HTML outweighs the text
6. Real content of the site takes 2-3 clicks to get to
7. Crawling issues!
8. Links to bad neighbor hoods
9. Involvement of paid links
10. Link echanges
1. Over 100 links on a page - NO
2. Affiliate links - YES, some, but 90% of the pages have no ads of any kind at all
3. Major html errors - NO
4. Very little content on homepage - YES
5. HTML outweighs the text - YES, on some pages and I am currently reducing that now, so far no difference on "fixed" pages
6. Real content of the site takes 2-3 clicks to get to - YES
7. Crawling issues! - NO, at least none that I know of. (Xenu finds no errors.)
8. Links to bad neighbor hoods - NO
9. Involvement of paid links - NO
10. Link echanges - NO, there are a few recips, but they are to quality sites only, and keeping with the narrow theme of the site
Google Webmaster Tools says that I have anywhere from 6-24 pages that they can't crawl due to "Network unavailable." I have site monitoring, and it has not indicated my site has been down for any long periods of time. I have also asked my web host about this, and there have been no server issues or downtime issues. Would this alone be enough to cause a problem?
This is a relatively small number of pages in my site.
11. Keyword phrases in intersite anchor text are repeated in page titles, h1 and metadescriptions > yes
12. use google sitemaps > yes
[edited by: PhattusCattus at 5:33 pm (utc) on Jan. 26, 2007]
I too has some, but no all of these:
1. Over 100 links on a page
---Yes, on some pages, including home page
2. Affiliate links
---Yes (but this should not be an issue, since GA is my largest affiliate - and is sometimes the only affilliate on a page)
3. Major html errors
---None
4. Very little content on homepage
---No - Because of the nature of my site, I have a lot of content on my home page
5. HTML outweighs the text
---Not on main article pages which are a majority of my site.
6. Real content of the site takes 2-3 clicks to get to
---Most real content takes 2 clicks
7. Crawling issues!
---None
8. Links to bad neighbor hoods
---None, all links are to specifically related pages (e.g. links to violet-blue Widgets on my violet-blue widget page)
9. Involvement of paid links
---I do have four, but to a related industry site.
10. Link echanges
---Only with a half dozen sites that are all related, and all are one-to-one page links regarding the topics of the specific pages.
If we can get a few more of these, maybe we can begin to see a pattern.
1. Over 100 links on a page > no
2. Affiliate links > only on a few pages + just adsense
3. Major html errors > yes...page does not validate...never has
4. Very little content on homepage > no
5. HTML outweighs the text > yes in some cases
6. Real content of the site takes 2-3 clicks to get to > no
7. Crawling issues! > none that I am aware of
8. Links to bad neighbor hoods >no
9. Involvement of paid links > no
10. Link echanges >only 12 links exchanged...none in 6 months
11. Keyword phrases in intersite anchor text are repeated in page titles, h1 and metadescriptions > yes
12. use google sitemaps > no
I'm at a loss, both mentally and financially.
11. Keyword phrases in intersite anchor text are repeated in page titles, h1 and metadescriptions
--- Yes (but not all pages with this keyword meta structure were hit with the penalty)
12. use google sitemaps
---No, this site has always indexed w/in 3-4 days, so I saw no point in using it.
Because of this structure, the listing page has frankly very little content...it is a telephone directory so it provides company name and address...
What am I doing?
I am putting new fields in cat and subcat tables of db for title and description, so that there will be unique and more descriptive titles and metadescription without all the repetition.
I am seeing a similar site that has not been hit. What these guys do is include like the last five records and the next five records on the listing pages, which would seem to provide a lot more content on the listing page, and could keep people on the site longer as an added benefit.
I am going to do that, too.
I am also eliminating a lot of inadvertant duplicate content issues.
I am eliminating repetition of keyword phrases where it seems to be unnecessary or spammy.
When I am done I will submit reinclusion request and new sitemap.
This will do a few things for you:
1. Make your site 100% crawlable with googlebot! If all your pages are compliant, googlebot will have no issues crawling your site.
2. It will make you actually read your code, you will know when your html outweighs your text. This will help to add content to your site.
3. It will catch any serious errors on your inner pages that might be causing some issues.
4. You will be able to see any rogue scripts that a hacker might have put on inner pages.
5. You will know that your site will display properly on every type of internet browser.
6. Being w3c compliant, you will 100% be sure that your links pass that tool bar PR, PR we do not see and trust rank as well.
I know its a long and slow process to get a site w3c compliant, start with your homepage and work your way down. Some people on webmaster world will say its not necessary to get a site compliant, but trust me, when you do you will improve on the serps. The only things that are not compliant on our sites are some adsense code. We can trust that google does still read the code since google creates it.
[webmasterworld.com...]
Not really sure if its the 950 penalty because many of my terms can't even get that far in the results, nevertheless we are in the bottom 20 results for a majority of our keywords.
The weird thing is that almost every data refresh finds a new section (directory) of our site ranked, with the previous ranking one dropping into oblivion. The index pages of the dropped directories stay decently ranked (usually 21-40), while the actual pages in the directory are pushed from the top 10 to 50,60,70...bottom 30.
This "jumping" has been happening since November and involves almost every major directory on our site. One, and only one, ALWAYS ranks high, and the others are pushed back. Most of our directories have less than 50 pages, although 3 of them have over 200 each. Those 3 directories NEVER get chosen for the top and their pages have been penalized since June 27th.
We still rank very well for a small number of keywords, these have been a rock and have never been phased by data refreshes. Our PR has not been affected and all our problems started on the infamous June 27th refresh. We did have some duplicate content issues that were resolved in October 2006.
1. Over 100 links on a page > no
2. Affiliate links > no
3. Major html errors > no
4. Very little content on homepage > no
5. HTML outweighs the text > yes in some cases
6. Real content of the site takes 2-3 clicks to get to > no
7. Crawling issues > no (although good still tries crawling pages that were 404'd years ago)
8. Links to bad neighborhoods >no
9. Involvement of paid links > some (all relevent sites that actually generate traffic)
10. Link exchanges > no
11. Keyword phrases in intersite anchor text are repeated in page titles, h1 and metadescriptions > yes
12. use google sitemaps > yes
