Forum Moderators: Robert Charlton & goodroi
The net effect of this is that Google has in my opinion thrown the baby out with the bath water. As discussed in many of these threads recently the serps are now sort of in the ball park but not 100% on target.
I now believe that the serps are worse than ever as a result of the changes.
Many results that are 100% specific to the search term are no longer listed – a lot of the time its because this new OOP has been triggered by either the site being knocked down for simply having the keywords in say the title or the meta description or some other combination it thinks is bad for the serps, density to high, too much mention of the keyword yada, yada yada - what ever the case the serps are now not as relevant with longer tail searches producing junk in a number of examples.
Today I was looking for information on a business but couldn’t remember its website, I remembered that at the start of November I had gone to Google and typed the name of a staff member that had a profile on the site and a division name that was part of the company in the example we shall say the search was “Tedster Ted forum site” and im looking for webmasterworld.
The result I wanted was no where to be seen – the serps were for “Tedster widget widget Forum” “Widget Site widget Tedster” etc etc etc – various permutations of the keywords in results but nothing on target. At first I thought perhaps the page was taken off the site but a quick search on Yahoo had the page I wanted at 1 in the serps.
Over the last few weeks more and more search strings I do in Google have been like this and im now using Yahoo more than Google for the first time in five years! – Is anyone seeing similar and having to go elsewhere for what they now want (a lot more than previously) or is it just the types of search requests I do?
I think that Google may only in fact notice and do something about the serps relevancy quality if Q1 results come in worse than expected. I think that we could be seeing a slow migration from Google which will take a while to show in googles results.
At the end of the day whilst Google needs to increase adwords sales and revenues quarter on quarter it must not lose sight of the fact that users go to Google for specific search information and its that accuracy that helped Google gain the pole position that it currently enjoys – the point im making here is that on the face of it I think that the accuracy is no longer on target and the search engine is now not as relevant hence it could start losing market share if its not careful.
I'm not a conspiracy theorist, but you definitely took the words right out of my mouth.
AND .. this will be very sector specific...some of the sectors I have worked in recently are extremely relevant in the organic listings...because the CPC is not that steep (yet!)..
BUT .. with sectors where the CPC is steep and people are willing to pay...watch out on the organic side ... it won't be pollution free...
I'm not a conspiracy theorist, but you definitely took the words right out of my mouth.
I was stating what I think is happening, not a conspiracy. This might happen unplanned. In life, I think, usually if things are bad things run against you and if you are the market leader the opposite.
Bit like Microsoft promoting Vista, whatever they do and how abysmal the uptake is, ultimately most will install it sooner or later or get with a new PC.
I'm surprised people are just now mentioning the impact of / relationship of the SERPs with AdWords.
Since late last year, analytics have shown that the organic SERPS (#'s and CTR) have been dropping while the AdWords #'s and CTR have been increasing (as has been the monthly budget for our AdWords account).
It looks like G has made a decision (it couldn't have been an oversight, could it?) that consistency of the results is not important. Even if AdWords can add a consistency factor to the results, I doubt if it's enough to retain the average user / searcher. Penny wise and pound foolish?
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Isn't that what is meant by EVER-FLUX? The results are always changing?
Yes everchanging.
But dynnamic is only good if you are the creator of the dynamics, if you have to react to the dynamics you are damned as you don't know the rules.
So we and the users can in end effect only react with dynamically changing websites and search patterns to dynamically changing serps reacting to dynamically changing web users and websites.
Argh. It will get a lot messier now that's for sure. Hopefully they haven't pulled the thing over the edge where chaos follows. Mathematical chaos. Let's hope they built enough buffer algorithms in.
It's already well established that with Google's very tight editorial requirements for their PPC advertisers...it's a no brainer to "pollute" the organic SERPs to drive more traffic to the revenue side ...
That's the kind of shortsighted thinking that makes sense for the "If it's Tuesday, I must be [a datafeed affiliate marketer] [an AdSense click arbitrageur]" crowd. It doesn't make sense for real companies like Google that want to be around--and still in the same business--a year or a decade from now.
If you don't like Google's search results, blame it on the polluters, not on the people who have to try--against all odds--to find the gems hidden in the #*$!.
If you don't like Google's search results, blame it on the polluters, not on the people who have to try--against all odds--to find the gems hidden in the #*$!....
Never said I didn't like Google's search results...just the opposite...I find Google's results many times to be exactly what I need for what I am looking for...
Google will be around for many years to come...they will simply find ways to apply a supple hand to the organics for their own purposes...(the gray area has many shades)
In the last two years I have seen at least a hundred threads just like this. "Google's serps are worse than they used to be...." type stuff. The title is not apt. Google is as relevant as ever. It is a household name. Google is synonymous with search.
Maybe it is and it isn't. For some it doesn't seem to be relevant for others it is. Which is probably a fair reflection of what is happening
In the last two years I have seen at least a hundred threads just like this. "Google's serps are worse than they used to be...." type stuff.
LOL! It's not just the last two years, it's been pretty much since the founding of this forum. My own point of view is that you can't say an army is losing the war just because they are still being shot at.
If Google's results become less relevant OVERALL, then they will gradually begin to lose market share. They will know this long before we do - and it's not happening yet,at least from the most recent 3rd party metrics.
I am one of those who found Google so solid that I drifted away from using bookmarks for the most part. No search engine was ever that good before. Recently, yes, I have been bookmarking more frequently, because things are clearly more volatile. But the sky is not falling - there are some local disturbances in the relevance of the SERPs, but nothing global as far as I can see.
This is my first post here, so hello to all I've found a lot of nice information here but this has drove me nuts for endless months and I want to add some of my own 3 pennys:
My site is a commerce site like most everyone who reads these forums have. My market is not something the general customers want to advertise they buy (it's not adult, but it is frowned upon by the community itself if you pay for what we provide). That said, getting "natural quality backlinks" is not going to happen. That is how I started "SEO". While I've had other service sites in the past I was an authority figure on one of the largest internet forums in existance; being a moderator there was better than #1 premium rank in adwords and yahoos program so I never had this problem.
Anyways, week in and week out we go up and down and all around Google. I do add stuff to my site often, but we are what we are: a commerece site. We have many mod_rewrite pages that sell products. We are a normal commerce site meaning we don't manually make all 1300 products we sell, they are dynamic based off our database. They are well laid out, and the pages themselves are not 100% identical because each product has many varations. One subcategory may have one product only for sale and that's that. Some have multiple products, and in that case they recieve on the top of the page a link box to each product (#links, not new URL) so they can jump straight to it. This is not given to single product only subcats so they are unique in that area. Also, some subcategories (ie, Computer Cases -> Thermaltake) might have 12 different cases, but Computer Cases -> John Doe might only have 1 [we don't sell computer parts, but yeah). Another example is that some categories have parents for further hierachy and ease of navigation, but very few do [Cooling Solutions -> Liquid/Phase Chase/Air -> Final Product] if this is true then the entire meta descript and also title are generated differently.
All that in consideration, we make use of the best advertising we can. "Topsite" type lists, which most are PR 4-6 [we are PR 2], these are quit common to our market becuase they are only for stores in the industry we relate to. Most we tracked brought little business, but a few hundred is a few hundred dollars and it was free. We use Yahoo ads and Google Adwords, but time and time again we can achieve front page on Google but it disappears as fast as it gets there.
We are not a "new" site, but we're not an "old" one. Online since 09/2005, and averaging 500-800 hits a day uniquely, non-google/yahoo/msn/ask figured in to that, and average many thousands of dollars in sales a month. Please understand one thing. Stores in my market are hard to make successful. Most pop up and die within 3 months. We are considered the #2 or #3 store in this market. Our competitors that are "better than us" are dubbed that soley because they are more known; only one out ranks us though. However, like most of you, I am getting very sick and tired of losing rank constantly and being penalized for not a damn thing. We were excited to see after 14 months we made it to DMOZ, horray, we thought, but no. Google apparently doesn't re-index DMOZ, atleast where we're listed, often because it's 19 days old and not picked us up yet. That's okay, but apart from about 10 pages (this happened no more than 3 days ago) the rest of our site is upplemental. We used to be ranked #1-3 on google for EVERY product we sold now we're lucky to be on page #3.
I am so frustrated that people who simply run spam sites [by spam I mean they have old expire domains that just run ads], and other CRAP pages(not even SITES) are eating the top serps. One page we put up in 05/2006 that has been deleted for a long time (the people who owned the domain has the subdomain just show their site now) has rank of #5-6 (and this page has had this consistantly for 6+ months) on a keyword phrase we target which has 3 million+ results. Guess what, it's not really a site either. IT's even cached with "Site disabled" and that's pretty much all.
I have been noticing that we have always done well in Yahoo, and some of our top customers come/came from their organic results. I noticed while the "for the better long term" changes I keep making seem to push me farther out of google we've only now, after 15 months, got more than our homepage indexed in MSN. Infact, in all 15~ MAJOR keyword phrases/variations we target (as do thousands of others) we are #1 on msn in all of them except 2, which we're #2 and #3. Same in Yahoo.
So, as I've shifted more focus on what my users need and what I like when I shop at online stores we seem to be picking up steam from Yahoo and MSN but google hates us. I gave up optimizing for SE's in November but still get penalized. I might get flamed, but I've went as far as installing Yahoo toolbar.
I use google site maps, have for a while. I noticed sometime 1 - 2 weeks ago my site was PR 2 across my internal pages which shocked me as only my homepage has been PR2 for 8 months. Not only did most my internal [about us, feedback comments, sitemap, news archives] go to PR 2 but even 3-4 directory deep pages which were main root cat/subcat product pages were PR 1. PR1 over PR0(since we launched) again made me happy. Finally I did something right; it dissappeared 2 hours later and I've never seen it since. Again only my homepage is PR2. I do not rely on PR to say I am ranking good, but when I search my company brand in google and my #2 link is one of my internal pages with customer commments quite unique many paragraphs and it's PR 0 I am baffled.
Anyways, enough rambling. I won't cry to google. I have hit them where they will care though. I stopped my Adwords completly. We only paid around $1000-1500 in adwords which is a joke to Google, but I imagine I am only one of many. I will NOT pay hard earned money, which is very hard earned now that google basically blacklists us weekly (might as well delete our domain sometimes...) to buy traffic I "when google is in a good mood" gave me free. Adwords was only used to target extreme (10+ million result) keyphrases that competitors had major factors over me and I couldn't outrank in organic like domain age, PR, .edu backlink.
While we continue to try to add more content to our site like how-tos, and stuff we hope non-customers(keep in mind, customers don't want people to know they are customers so they will not link to us, same in our competitors unless they are personal sites the staff their own (like the edus)] so we are hoping these articles will product links from people who run help/info sites for our market. They will be free, so we will be happy people find them useful and ecspecially if they link us.
What I do not get is what causes my drops. Are we triggering filters. Does google make up filters daily and really not know jack about the web anymore? Have they been infected with Microsoft fever and want to try to get you to pay for everything with their ads or use their software... what is the deal man.
If this does not change by mid-March I am going to completly remove my sitemaps area and forget about Google and try to promote Yahoo or MSN. It won't help much I'm sure, but many online stores have problems getting backlinks due to customers not linking to them for various reasons and if Google wants to put much emphasis on that then kill common sense and common SEO to boot I doubt people with money, you know, the stores, will continue to support them. Atleast, I hope not.
People make fun of Yahoo or MSN all the time. I can see why and I am guilty too, but remember, Google was not always the king, and they only became King because the prior throne holder continously engaged in similar activity and pissed off their loyal users. Go google, since it makes it funner, various penalty/supplemental/etc type questions as if you had a problem and see how many people within the last 6 months, even as much as 2-3 days ago have multiple articles or forum threads about Google becoming a pile of crap. If Google doesn't listen up and quit shipping out products at light speed and actually take care of what they already have then everything will continue to suffer.
I'll close with this: Ironically, google says if you have 50-100+ sites it's unlikely you have time to provide unique content to them and keep them updated and relevant. Well, Google, if you have 80-100+ products (which you do) it's probably unlikely you have time/staff to continue to keep them updated and relevant, and apparently you don't.
Quit trying to be Youtube/MySpace/Search Engine/etc all in one and stick to what you do best before it's gone.
Sorry for the very very long post, but since I don't have much time ot check here I wanted to provide as much info to our site setup and history as possible incase someone can figure out some common link or theory to why my site and theirs, if similar, are suffering randomly and continously
Have a good day
I have hit them where they will care though. I stopped my Adwords completly.
It is simply unwise in an unpredictable scenario as everflux brought it to invest any funds in anything, sadly. Adwords is obviously one of the first expenses that are up for the chop. Maybe if you sell swimming pools or hummers, there is a sensible ROI, otherwise it's just a waste of money, imo.
The deal with google is you just don't build a sustainable business based on organic search results - It's just a sad fact of life on the web.
Is that's what's going on? Google trying to get rid of people that make money on Adsense? Then why create Adsense in the first place?
It's already well established that with Google's very tight editorial requirements for their PPC advertisers...it's a no brainer to "pollute" the organic SERPs to drive more traffic to the revenue side ...
That's the kind of shortsighted thinking that makes sense for the "If it's Tuesday, I must be [a datafeed affiliate marketer] [an AdSense click arbitrageur]" crowd. It doesn't make sense for real companies like Google that want to be around--and still in the same business--a year or a decade from now.
The fact that it doesn't make sense doesn't mean the're not doing it. They may be a real company, but the're still people.
Is that's what's going on? Google trying to get rid of people that make money on Adsense? Then why create Adsense in the first place?
Google isn't trying to "get of people that make money on AdSense." Google may be trying to get rid of sites that make money on AdSense arbitrage, but--if that's the case--it's a different matter altogether. (It also could be a smart thing to do, because the future of the AdSense network depends on users not being disappointed or annoyed when they click on ads.)
Getting back to the argument that Google is somehow screwing up the SERPs to sell more AdWords, that doesn't hold any water with me for a couple of reasons:
1) Many (most?) search results are as good as they've ever been, and in some cases they're better.
2) If Google really wanted to force businesses into buying AdWords, I'd find only non-commercial results when (for example) I went searching Google for information on bathroom materials and fixtures, as I've been doing this weekend. How hard would it be for Google to knock any page with a shopping-cart link or a booking button 50 places down in the rankings?
Its logical to assume that Google will want to increase hits on adwords as much as possible.
Maybe im being cynical but weaker non relevent serps may well be helping increase the hits on the adwords that may read more relevant.
Its not good for longer term search quality but Google now control this market and despite the market now being wide open for a better quality more targeted search facility to take this space, lets face it Google dont have any competition - do they care if the relevancy is no longer there?
Despite MSN and Yahoo increasing market share they are still doing little to exploit googles current weak serps and take advantage of the situation.
Yesterday i did a search for my son for lyrics to a pop song he wanted. I put the artists name in and the song title with the keyword Lyrics at the start of the search quote.
Google returned a mix of results, some nothing to do with the artist, some with the surname of the artist but a different person and nothing to do with music and others nothing to do with the song.
6 out of 10 results were junk and the pages that were in the ball park i had to dig down in the sites offered to find the right page.
The same search on Yahoo produced 1-10 the right result with the right page in every case!
I conclude that googles serps are for most searchs now producing results that are in the ball park but not 100% on target. In the past G was always without any doubt been 100% spot on, now it is not - this is what im seeing.
In the past G was always without any doubt been 100% spot on
That's never been my experience. Two or three years ago, for example, SERPs for nearly any travel destination were cluttered with boilerplate hotel affiliate pages, a search on drug side effects or interactions would be littered with identical government- or manufacturer-supplied copy on a host of pharmacy sites, and a search on a digital camera would yield a long list of dealer catalog pages. The situation is much better now, at least for most searches that I conduct. Obviously, though, some topics are better (or worse) than others, as your experience and my plumbing searches tend to show.
However, to judge Google I still think you have to go back to October 2006, before Google's attack on Adsense users began (if that's what it is). If that's what it is, fine! It's not my Google, I have no Googstock.
Now that push comes to shove, things are beginning to get interesting and the boys are being separated from the men. Who will rule the roost in 5 years? If I only knew, if I only knew! The ability to take corporate responsibilty will be the key.
[edited by: Martin40 at 7:25 pm (utc) on Feb. 18, 2007]
However, to judge Google I still think you have to go back to October 2006, before Google's attack on Adsense users began (if that's what it is).
What attack on AdSense users?
It's certainly possible that Google rankings could be affected by some AdSense practices (e.g., click arbitrage, multiple ad units above the fold, and/or a high AdSense-to-content ratio), but as a publisher who uses AdSense, I haven't seen any signs of an "attack on AdSense users."
I totally agree for the first time ever I have started using Yahoo as my first port of call when seaching for something.
I have seen the result get a bit more relevant in the last week but still way off the mark compared to the old pre tinkering google.
Hope someone from google actually wants to find something on the web soon (they will have a shock when the see how unhelpful there results actually are.).
It might be an attack on shady adsense sites that offer no real use to the end user or adsense sites that spam or try to manipulate rankings.
They started this thing in the low season, traffic wise. Can we expect the effect to be expressed in the 2006 4th quarter financial results?
As for the ranking issues, we're not referring to shady sites, but to quality sites that have ranked well for years (and are still passing TrustRank as if ranking well).
As for the ranking issues, we're not referring to shady sites, but to quality sites that have ranked well for years (and are still passing TrustRank as if ranking well).
Quality sites of what kind? Directories? E-commerce sites? Reference sites? Forums? "Evergreen" information sites? News sites? Affiliate sites? Without more details (such as URLs in Webmaster World user profiles), it's hard to make educated judgments.
Still one should keep in mind that Google has more profit if they can direct traffic away from our content to its own content (if they have it), as it wouldn't have to give away a share. so in certain markets, if they indeed open a travel site, the claim they might fiddle with these results might not be totally outrageous.
They probably wouldn't need to fiddle with the results, because Google.com pages would be likely to rank high in any case. And I don't think they're fiddling with the results right now, because if they were, there wouldn't be much point in allowing Yahoo.com pages to rank in the top 10 on many Google SERPs.
Nevertheless for many keywords the amount of real quality and relevant websites is sometimes not even more than 10 to 20 with also very few newcomers.
Give it 20 kw managers who look at the most popular searches. Each one could check at least 30 search terms a day.
That will cover most words human beings know.
Easy to check 10.000 terms each month.
