Forum Moderators: Robert Charlton & goodroi
Could it be caused by the linking methods by a poorly designed scraper site (an accidental hijack) or is it more likely that some kind of filter in the Google algo has filtered the page out?
There's no mystery to the ones going URL only. They lose rankings because Google doesn't know any words on the page. They will regain rank once they get crawled again.
Well, I'm happy to say that in my own case your prediction was right steveb! My local language sitemap is back, it has a new cache from Jan.7 and has regained its usual place in the serps.
I wonder if Google has a system whereby pages that hit some kind of filter and turn url only, will then be subject to a closer look when they are recrawled. In my own case possibly a duplicate content filter, since the page looks very similar to its English counterpart. The only change I made after the page disappeared was that I added some pics that are unique to this page. I don't know, of course, if this was what got the page back or if it would have returned anyway once the spider found it was a legitimate "duplcate".
If you only have one site and a certain small number of pages this can hurt. If you have hundreds of sites with millions of pages it actually doesn't registrar on the radar!
I just accept that it will happen! Looking for a reason for every occurrence is simply not worth the time and effort required.
My advice is to bombard Google with so many pages that the odd penalty, lack of crawling, failure to calculate back links correctly really doesn't matter.
At all times you will have sites and pages that are being mistreated by Google, but, who really cares!
Think volume, value, and quantity......not quality!
In other words exactly the opposite to what Google asks for.
I am sure you are right. Let see... how many different versions I can make of my 50 page site 500? 5000? or do I need 50,000 pages now like the scrapers to play!
I had the same thing, traffic dropped on dec the 15th to 10% of what it was before.. Only reason i could imagine was the change of a server that pointed to me.
But I think you are right, in some situations losing one link might make the difference.
At least it's findable although indirectly. I'm in a different situation than the really big sites where one page doesn't matter. The topic on this page is of major interest to the sort of people who visit my site.
I'm still curious if anyone else has noticed a sandboxing effect on new pages.
Now what I'm wondering is, if in the case of the older page, a single html page could be hijacked.
I have a e-commerce site whose internal pages use to rank well prior to April or May 2005.
Now, only the homepage ranks well. All pages are indexed and have the correct title and a good snippet. They are also indexed under the correct url, meaning they are all under www. They are all unique content, no duplicates and many even have good quality inbound links. We also get mentioned in some various forms b people, nothing great, but a few mentions here and there with a link to a product occasionally.
However the internal pages won't rank, at least not for terms over 100K and in many instance even in the 5K to 100K range. They might show up occasional for terms with 1-2K worth of results. It just doesn't appear to matter what I throw at them. Many people have said that they just need some good inbound links, but even with the good links, they just don't seem to want to rank.
I thought it had to be a duplicate content problem, but even that doesn't pan out. I thought maybe it was a similiarity problem since we use a template, but that doesn't make since because in researching that possibility our pages appear to only be about 55-62% similiar.
I have a competitor whose internal rank very well. I have compared our pages to theirs. Althought we each have unique content, they don't seem to be doing anything that we are not. I researched their backlinks using Yahoo and MSN. Their only links appear to be internal links, so that doesn't make an sense as to why they rank so good and we rank so bad given that we have some quality inbound as well.
It would almost seem as though the Big G has hit us with some kind of dampening effect because after trying to solve this problem for almost 8 months, I can not find a single thing that explains it nor can I found anything odd.
I just made some slight changes in titles on some related pages. They all have the same internal link structure. I'm going to watch to see if the page that has been penalized gets the new title in the serps changed when Google changes the others.
The frustrating thing about this page is that Google shows another page of mine as #3 for the most descriptive 3 word search phrase. The other page does link to the missing page but the title and description that google shows has nothing to do with the missing pages topic.
My internal pages do get spidered and even have a relatively up to date cache in the index. So it's not like google doesn't understand that they exist. They all have PR as well.
I have also noticed the same type of thing about the "not most relevant page" showing up in some searches.
As for new pages that I've added since this started happening. I have not noticed any of those ranking all that well either.
My original page is ranking below a scraper site for an exact phrase from the page. The Scraper site is marked supplimental tho my page is not.
It's just discouraging.
I just looked tho and the page ranks extremely well on Yahoo and Microsoft. They have both updated my titles & cache. I wonder if Google is just holding off until they do all the other redoing of their search that we have heard talk about.
JudgeJeffries:
I've got exactly the same problem. 4 year old site, not been touched in over a year. 75% of the pages went awol end of last year. All pages content rich and not much to chose between them. Some missing, some not.
Looks like alot of people have the same problem you have including myself.
On Matt Cutt's Blog, I recently noticed many people complaining about this problem and using it as the reason why they would recommend that in 2006 Google do something innovative to provide feedback to webmasters so that we will at east know if a penalty is being incurred against our sites.
Personally, I don't think that would help because I think that this is a problem not of our own making and probably one that is not widely aware of at Google. My prediction is tht sometime in 2006, this will become a promient issue anbd only then will Google look into it.
I wish Google would see us discussing this problem and choose to be proactive by quietly ask some of us for our domains so they can investigate the problem before it mushrooms into another large scale issue like the www and non www issue has or the 301/302 redirect issues.
What more can I say, I'm an optimist and I always hope that People and Companies want to know about problems affecting their customers and supporter before they become major issues.
This got me to wondering if all these scraper sites could be distorting Google serps in some way. Even though most have no PR and wouldn't count for much when you have dozens of them linking to a page it could make a difference.
I have looked at the hijack/scaper site angle and for me there is nothing to it. My site is definitely not being hijacked and I can't find any scaper site pages linking to it either. I can't imagine that the scaper links could be a problem because as prevalant as they have been, I can't imagine google would allow that to trigger a penalty. Those scaper links just may not be providing an link related help.
Is anybody else who is having the internal page not ranking probelm finding the same thing as Annej
The home pages of each of the sites are still firing away nicely but pages within the site targeting the more specific terms (which is where the real conversions come from) have all been hit with only the odd page slipping through to actually be found for their search terms in the index.
Why?!,...... I have been puzzling over this for a long time.
1)I have analyzed the pages for duplicate content - at most 55% so I don't think this is the cause
2)Pages went missing in Jagge/Sept22 and before that had been well served by Google
for upto six years.
3)No significant changes to pages made to make me suspect sudden on page factors.
4)All pages were linked to internally, I have added deep links from different sites with PR5/4 etc
this has aparently not helped.
5)One of the sites has been suffering canonicals, but the problem affects other sites which are fine canonically so I don't suspect cannonicals or supplimental index.
6)Penalty seems unlikely, apart from the fact the site is clean, the pages are missing in a seemingly random fashion.
7)I don't see any relief yet in any of the DC's or Big Daddy.
In short, I have no idea why this has affected my three sites in this way.
Penalty? Google problem? I don't know and I don't know which way to go forward with this.
My customers have complained about not being able to find certain products that they used to.
I thought this would work its self out but now seem to be a "cronic" problem that I can see no way forward with.
Any serious suggestions will be duely tested with a report here.
Gratefull for any input by members.
This got me to wondering if all these scraper sites could be distorting Google serps in some way. Even though most have no PR and wouldn't count for much when you have dozens of them linking to a page it could make a difference.
You bet!
Google's algo is in serious troubles due to the massive number of scrappers. What we are seeing nowadays is a major hiccup....the giant is chocking on spam and fast becoming clueless.
My advice, lern to perfect your adwords and overture skills. Build or acquire a good product and dedicate the bulk of your time into perfecting and promoting it via the proper paid channels.
Relaying on free traffic is a very short term solution...search engines are DOOMED to fail and so is your business if you happen to relay too much on free organic traffic.
How long do you think SE’s are to keep with billions of new pages added to the web daily, billions of crappy pages with nothing but scrapped content, nasty 302's, false blogs, dummy articles, randomly cloaked content, and other php wizardy....something has got to give. The amount of processing power needed to weed through the crap is enormous and is growing at a crazy rate, daily. This slows down everything else, crawling, indexing, algo filtering....the lot.
Many many legit sites are disappearing or will disappear as a result. There is nothing you can do about it. Learn to live with it and be prepared. The guys at the plex are trying to keep up with it but i think it got to the point were the left hand is no longer in sync with the right hand...God help us all. :(
When our pages "Went Missing" they showed no "Link:" results.
When they re-appeared the "Link:" results were back as well.
It seems that if Googles indexing problems cause a loss of Links using "Link:" then SERPs positions are lost too.
It's all quite discouraging. We feel better when we can see something is broken so we can figure out how to fix it. In this case the missing pages seem to be random. I'm sure they aren't but the cause is a mystery.
We may just have to wait it out while Google does whatever they are doing with Big Daddy and all. I was hoping Jagger would sort things out but no luck there.
