Forum Moderators: Robert Charlton & goodroi
"I think some of us are seeing a different variation. I know my site and at least someone else on this thread ranks # 1 if you type in their domain name. Or domain.com. Back actual pages by title, those that used to be in the top 10 SERPS are now about 10 pages back, in the 100+ range. "
This is exactly what I'm seeing. I'm holding many keywords fine but all my big keywords are gone most of the time.
Our site is swinging up and down all day long. Sometimes I search for red widget and we are not on page 1 but we are in the top 4 pages then a search an hour later and we are blasted back to the bottom of the results.
Other keywords seem stuck at the bottom.
As a result our Google traffic is down more than 80%.
We have lost many keywords that we have held #1 on for years. How can we go from #1 to the bottom or not even showing over night?
I have done nothing to deserve this and cant seem to figure out why this happened.
[edited by: tedster at 7:17 pm (utc) on Mar. 2, 2007]
its always been assumed that updates were to purge the serps of these type of sites, so why aren't any of them posting about being purged?
What could they possibly say? "We know our site is complete webspam, but we used to rank anyway."
its always been assumed that updates were to purge the serps of these type of sites, so why aren't any of them posting about being purged?What could they possibly say? "We know our site is complete webspam, but we used to rank anyway."
They do not talk about site content, but they complain anyway. It is hard to know here what users sites are like, because of the forums rules and because so few user profiles have home page links. It is fairly evident on some other forums (Digital Point for example).
[edited by: tedster at 9:22 am (utc) on Mar. 9, 2007]
[edit reason] fix formatting [/edit]
1. Have been on-line for several years or longer, well established sites.
2. Ranked high for many site-related keywords and now their pages cannot be found or they rank in the hundreds of pages.
3. Haven't made any recent, major changes to their sites
4. Mom and pop type, a few blogs.
5. Most were either selling a product or a service, a few had adsense but usually as a supplement to their products or service.
heheh, this is the situation of my website, yesterday I had a record low in term of traffic, I had top results for a bunch of keywords, now, what I see in place is a social network reputed for using cloud tags being on top for all my key terms, the irony is that their pages have little or no information on the key terms.
I checked various data centers and it looks like its everywhere.
1. Have been on-line for several years or longer, well established sites.
2. Ranked high for many site-related keywords and now their pages cannot be found or they rank in the hundreds of pages.
3. Haven't made any recent, major changes to their sites
4. Mom and pop type, a few blogs.
5. Most were either selling a product or a service, a few had adsense but usually as a supplement to their products or service
we have the same problem in europe with german, austrian and swiss websites. nobody knows why. the crashing startet on 07.03.2007. the crashed wesites, that i monitore use no black hat seo. i absolutly donīt know, what is the reason for the crash.
cu
Unfortunately I'm not making any money out of this. It's a purely noncommercial hobby. Maybe it will make an extra $30/month in adsense revenue. Big deal.
I'm pretty sure that my boost in Google traffic is a clue to what kind of sites Google is favoring with the new update. I sure wish my money-making site doubled in traffic.
I wonder if they try to recup losses due to the miserable Dollar course?
Surely for a billion dollar company the losses must be immense.
Some DC's with rolledback serps and pagerank
Some DC's with the buried listings for keywords many are suffering from.
A shiny hope set of DC's showing new cached pages and updated results for some sites with rankings there.
Not sure which way this will go...
I wonder if they try to recup losses due to the miserable Dollar course?
What losses? And what evidence to you have to support the notion that currency-exchange rates affect SERPs?
What losses? And what evidence to you have to support the notion that currency-exchange rates affect SERPs?
Like you, I make guesses .. ;)
When I see more spam pages on .com then on non .com this is a possible scenario. Possible as opposed to 100% true. Since Google gives nearly no information, all comments about it are speculation, hence also yours.
Is google bad no, is it good no, hence we poke around in the big grey area and try to make sense of it.
I don't think it's that unreasonable to recup losses, Google would be silly not to react to the devaluation of the Dollar.
Since Google operates in Dollars all income from non US Dollar streams must decrease.
Maybe I am wrong, it's a _guess_ ..
I'm pretty sure that my boost in Google traffic is a clue to what kind of sites Google is favoring with the new update.
What kind is that?
The changes I'm seeing are tragic. On an art related keyword (that I'm not in) two of America's most prominent museums have lost ranking, in favor of Wiki, Ebay and a site that isn't about art.
Let's say the keyword is "abc" and the site that made it to #4 of this high volume keyword is called: "Armenian Banana Company" (there is no such company).
So the site is about bananas and written in Armenian language but ranks
#4 on the HIGHLY competitive "abc" keyword ("abc" is a widget here).
What losses? And what evidence to you have to support the notion that currency-exchange rates affect SERPs?
Actually the dollar is the Internet's time bomb. If Bush fails to nail Iran (I'm not saying he should succeed), then that might put the dollar over the edge, because Iran will then continue to sell it's oil for Euros, pulling the rug from under the dollar.
If Bush does invade Iran, then at some time the Asian central banks will have to reduce their dollar reserves anyway, so in either case us Adsense publishers are screwed. I'm contemplating a different income scheme.
Has anyone else seen this or have thoughts on the 'local' keyword impact of this latest shakeup?
A site that's devoted to Arkansas widget stores comes up #1 on some datacenters when searching for "California widget stores."
Another site that has listings for widget stores all over the US has its Indiana widget store page show up in searches for a number of different states' widget stores.
I thought the datacenters were beginning to stablilize, but I'm seeing even weirder results.
See what I mean.
I don't see this happening with Google's competitors and would imagine that many advertisers will be eager to move to a more stable and consist platform, albeit a rapidly changing marketplace.
Advertisers will go where their potential customers are.
Regarding my site, it is new (launched Feb 1st) on new domain which as far as I know never existed before.
So I cannot compare my rankings with the past.
Saying, that I am sure it is a temporary thing. Probably the effect of the new peronalization feature.
All we ask is for a level field.
[edited by: Strider at 5:16 pm (utc) on Mar. 10, 2007]
We're still suppressed somehow on most pages - maybe 1/3 of our highest traffic, 1/3 revenue.
It seems each day, a handful of pages are being "tested". In yesterdays stats, our # 1 page was something I forgot we added, 3 years back, that must have been rotated at or near the # 1 spot. It was about a specific tourist destination, kind of a one-off for us, and I'll bet for a short time we must have ranked right up on the first page for it. When I search for that page and others that were high yesterday, there's no sign of them.
Could it be Google is sorting through these results as such? How could they be accomplishing this? And what it means in the end in terms of what we should do for future pages... I'm at a loss.
Is anyone else seeing anything like this? Rotating older pages into high positions for a short time?
Is it good that < other data centers > still have it in there? I just don't understand.
Any thoughts?
Michael
[edited by: tedster at 9:57 pm (utc) on Mar. 10, 2007]
It seems each day, a handful of pages are being "tested".
I very much doubt that....the craziness/inconsistency/randomization of the SERPs has been going on since a little after the launch of the Adwords program.
Forget trying to rationally explain the massive weekly shifts...it is very much intentional and designed to ensure that NO site enjoys (FREE) top ranking for too long...
And they call this crap 'The best search engine on earth'...go figure.
[edited by: Web_speed at 11:32 pm (utc) on Mar. 10, 2007]
Around that time is when MC publicly boasted about how Google could now determine which links were natural and which links were bought links. Two months later we hear that Google can now "fixed" the Google bombing issue, apparently by determining again which links were naturally occurring and which links were placed there for the purpose of manipulating the SERP's.
After witnessing these occurrences, I'd like to suggest what I believe is causing the topsy-turvy search results on Google. I believe it is simply these new algorithms which are proported to be able to determine naturally occurring links from unnaturally occurring links, and penalize pages and sites which exceed some threshold.
We all know that backlinks are the backbone of Google's ranking system, and not all links are equal. When Google calculates PageRank, introducing these new algo's into the mix makes changes that effect the entire Internet as Page A links to Page B, which links to Page C, and eventually links back to Page A. Eventually, every page on the Internet is linked to every other page. Add to this that too much of a particular type of link will backfire and cause a penalty for that page or that entire domain, and again it effects every site on the entire Internet. Calculating the PageRank for every page on the Internet has to at some point become circular, and the final outcome will actually depend on where you start the calculation.
I believe this could explain the huge shifts that many of us webmasters experience with each new update. When you start calculating from one place on the Internet, certain sites benefit, and certain sites pass the threshold and get penalized, and both effect the sites which they link to. Start at a different place, and the same sites might not reach the threshold, and that in turn helps the sites which they link to, but those sites might then be pushed over the threshold.
I think that duplicate content is only an issue when it dilutes PageRank, but it is not the main issue here. Getting rid of duplicate URL's with the same content will help in keeping the PageRank from dilution, but it is not what is causing the day to day roller coaster ride. I believe that this coincides with what the Googlers have been saying.
Anyway.. this is just my view on it, I thought I'd like to submit it to the group to hear what others think of this theory. If I, with my limited understanding, can come up with such a theory, I would think the PhD's could come up with a solution. I still can't imagine the SERP's are in this condition on purpose.
I had 12 hours of good traffic in February, and about 80 hours of good traffic so far in March. When traffic is "on" we require several employees to help manage it. When it is "off" we can't afford employees. Hopefully we'll have a few more "on" days before the end of March.
I believe it is simply these new algorithms which are proported to be able to determine naturally occurring links from unnaturally occurring links
I've been thinking along these lines to, at least for some of the present gyrations -- and it may be a lot more than trying to detect paid links. When Googlers start talking publicly about a topic, that often indicates at least one of the of the present areas of focus in Mountain View.
So it caught my attention over the past few weeks when several Googlers started talking about major changes in the way backlinks are weighted and how a domain's link profile gets scored. It does seem to me that domains with the most diverse link profiles seem to enjoy the more stable rankings right now. But domains with predominantly one or two types of backlinks, no matter how big the total number of links, are often wobbling.
So the question is how do I get out of this black hole...
Dan
We've never done a linking campaign, so very few of our links in are "the same" at all. Maybe 20 or less to the front page.
