Forum Moderators: Robert Charlton & goodroi
Now we have the new BigDaddy infrastructure rolled-out, its about time to make some assessments (could be damage assessments for some publishers).
Though Google data centers are in everflux (or possible update of some kind), signs of improvement or deterioration should be becoming to some extent clear.
To judge whether the new infrastructure is a success or a failure, we might use the following items as a check-list and see whether they are met yet or expected to be be met very soon:
- improve search quality (otherwise why should it be there at all)
- reduce spam to large extent
- fix the canonical issue
- possibly deal with supplemental issue
- more correct indexing of sites (again.. otherwise why should the new infrastructure be there at all)
Thanks for feedback.
Exactly my thoughts: Google is in some way broken but they blame the webmasters.
First they cried for sitemaps which haven't helped in any way improving the situation, and now Mr. Cutts comes along with some hand-picked examples with 'junk'-links (sorry: he also mentions one domain where he is 'going to assume this domain is doing fine now' - wow!).
Aren't there any sites where they said: 'Sorry, don't know what's wrong with this...'?
Google, take care that you don't end up with an empty index as there are not too many websites that don't in some way violate your well-praised 'webmaster-guidelines'.
Sorry for this quite offending post, but I can't stand their arrogance and ignorance any longer - it's also us that make their living...
The mechanics haven't really changed for as long as I can remember. Yes, the general public SE preferences change, but you should base what you do on how that impacts you. I, personally, find MSN results amusing. Maybe they are the next greatest "thing". If so, I imagine I'll take them a litle more seriously. Until that time comes to pass, I'll deal with the Google ups and downs. When it gets really, really bad, yeah, I suppose I might buy some ad space.
Just like bricks and mortar. :)
linking to that content is the most important factor for:- crawling and indexing of your content
- ranking of your content
Crawling and Indexing - Yes Links are now an overriding factor - you don't get in at all without the right links
Ranking - Links are one of many factors - quite probably the most important, but that PR10 site for Red Widgets still doesn't rank highly for Green Widgets, so I guess content must have something to do with it!
Quality, not quantity now counts.
"Quality, not quantity now counts."
Agreed. Welcome to buy/sell "Quality" links ;-)
Why should a 'quality' site give a 'quality' link, especially if your site is relatively new, and it could hurt their rankings could your site doesn't have enough 'trust'. Don't bother getting reciprocals or buying your way through the door because you'll be penalised either way...
So instead of a wealth of information that ranks on it's own merit we are finding the same websites in many niches which can be completely outdated or don't have what youre looking for. Newer websites are out of the index and can't be found.
Google is making the internet a better place by making it more like corporate America.
Well there's an awful lot of AS publishers here...
"Newer websites are out of the index and can't be found."
Thats exactly the main problem. I expect boost of buy/sell text link because of what you have mentioned. And I wonder whether Google would be able to control that.
Before, it was mostly high PR sites the text links marketplace focus on. In future sites of PR5 and PR6 would be also profitable to buy/sell text links. Can you imagine Google controling thousands and thousands of such sites.
Don't get me wrong. I'm not endorsing buy/sell text links. But it could be a necessity for new sites to be index.
I understand what you are saying, I agree.
So our only way of seeing what a quality site is, is by seeing what ranks highly then. I expect those sites to milk it for all it's worth.
I doubt there's any point in hoping any website launched since 2005 will have any sort of success.
"So our only way of seeing what a quality site is, is by seeing what ranks highly then. I expect those sites to milk it for all it's worth."
Exactly!
Results 1 - 5 of about 24 linking to ****
Results 21 - 23 of about 34 for "www.*****"
site:domain.com/ (trailing / on query)
and
site:some-domain.com (hyphenated domain)
See: [sitemaps.blogspot.com ] for more information.
Supplemental Pages
Supplemental pages have been drastically reduced. In fact, there is only one page on one site still showing as supplemental and it is a page which was deleted quite some time ago. However, I have to admit that it was a dubious page to begin with and could easily be considered a doorway of sorts. Though at the time I built the page, that was not my intent. I was going to start a new section for my site and that was to be the lead in page of the section. I later abandoned that idea and deleted the page.
Search Quality
To some extent, search quality has improved in my opinion ... but still has a long way to go in very competitive keyword searches. I think the trust rank filters may be set too high which allows for too many of the major and long standing sites to dominate and overshadow smaller/newer "good quality" sites in the serps. I hope (with time), this will be realized and worked on.
Spam
In my opinion and in the sectors I keep an eye on, spam has been reduced drastically. The search results are far better than they were even 10 months ago when I was often fed crappy blogs or "fake" directory results containing pages and pages of links with no content.
Canonical Issues
Never had any problems with canonicalization ... so nothing to report.
Indexing of Sites
Perhaps I am just lucky or perhaps I actually know what I am doing ... but none of my sites have suffered terribly from any of the problems many have reported with Big Daddy.
I did experience a few weeks of negligable traffic during the roll out, but all is back to normal now and my sites have all been completely re-indexed since April 1st. Ranking has also returned to pre-rollout positions across the board for the most part. A few ups and downs ... but no substantial changes to report.
The rollout
From a webmaster's point of view, the rollout of the new Big Daddy infrastructure was a mess which lasted far too long. But as with anything as huge as this ... it was not surprising to me.
Google is constructed in such a way that everything they do is "live" and can be viewed by the webmaster public. I think this creates an environment which begs the hostility seen in this and many other threads. In my opinion, it would be better to do everything offline and just throw a switch once they are ready to implement changes. From a marketing point of view, public access to gradual changes on various DC's is a public relations nightmare and as a one time PR person, I certainly wouldn't want to have to deal with it!
Random Comments
When I do a product search now instead of getting small affiliates I see all the large ones like eopinions, nextag, buy, pricegrabber, etc. Those sites have less content than the small affiliates for the most part, and aren't quality sites.
I agree to a certain extend and it is frustrating to have Wikipedia or Epinions or Tripadvisor pop up as the number one result with a single page of vague and often inaccurate information ... but these sites are all "trusted" by Google for now and we all have to live with it. On the other hand, many (perhaps too many) of the small affiliate sites are far from trusted or trustworthy.
All I can say is that it is possible to outrank these sites eventually, but you really have to work hard at it!
In my opinion, "traditional" affiliate sites are a dead donkey. Get out now or start building quality content if you want your site/business to survive. What makes anyone think the world need thousands of affiliate sites selling the exact same things? Unless you provide even better content than the manufacturer or recognized distributors, you are no longer in the game.
For all intents and purposes, I am an affiliate, but because I have good quality content, my site does well.
Perhaps I am just lucky or perhaps I actually know what I am doing ... but none of my sites have suffered terribly from any of the problems many have reported with Big Daddy. I did experience a few weeks of negligable traffic during the roll out, but all is back to normal now and my sites have all been completely re-indexed. Ranking has also returned to pre-rollout positions across the board for the most part. A few ups and downs ... but no substantial changes to report.
IMO, the tragedy of our beloved Google is; its dieing and nobody at Googleplex care
I disagree. Google is not dying ... or sick ... or broken. There is a new infrastructure in place and all webmasters need to learn what works in Google and what doesn't. Apparently, you have at least one fine example of what doesn't work ...
Pick a topic, any topic and try writing a simple little, content based site consisting of about 10 pages. Forget everything you think you know about Google and the internet, launch it, submit it to the appropriate DMOZ category and a few other sites to see if you can get a few reasonable quality IBL's. DON'T link to it from your other site(s) which are experiencing problems with Google ... then leave it alone and see what happens.
You'd be surprised how successful a site can become by writing naturally, forgetting about link building strategies and other webmasterly tricks. You need only spend a few days on this experiment. Try it and see! I did and I learned a lot. It took exactly 3 weeks for the site to be indexed and ranked (well) on Google and that was during the so called "sandbox" era. I am just about to launch another 10 pager ... just to see how it does with the new Big Daddy infrastructure. I'll let you know.
The truth is Google has created a monster under the name BigDaddy. First that ugly monster will destroy thousands of health webmasters sites. Then the same monster will for sure destroy Google.
Again, I disagree. Only those webmasters with an axe to grind make such statements. You simply refuse to accept the fact that there is any possibility that perhaps YOU have created the problems you are experiencing. I did the same thing after the Florida update ... then I wrung out my crying towel, mopped up the mess, cleaned up my site and got on with the business of doing business.
That said, the no recip links, not enough links is sure going to hit little webmasters hard. How do they GET links if no one can find their site to then recommend it.
Its the chicken and egg issue really. A good solid business plan is always a brilliant way to start any business. That includes marketing strategies of course.
No business is easy to get off the ground but if doing business on the web, you must get at least a few good quality IBL's. There is no substitute for doing your ground work. Webmasters can't rely on people finding you, you must go out and sell! Get those links. Its the hardest part of doing business on the web. It is not the job of search engines to find you ... you have to lead them to your door!
"Can we please have a link to our site but I cannot return one, or pay for one, really do anything else for you in return but my site is really awesome and you should link to it."REPLY: "No you may not have a link. Although your site is awesome it is not in the index and has no PR so it may come back and hurt my rankings in the process."
And therein lies the rub! Its time webmasters stopped thinking like that! In the quote below, Matt has clearly stated the way of the future if we want to be successful in Google.
The sites that fit “no pages in Bigdaddy” criteria were sites where our algorithms had very low trust in the inlinks or the outlinks of that site. Examples that might cause that include excessive reciprocal links, linking to spammy neighborhoods on the web, or link buying/selling. ... Matt Cutts
We as webmasters can choose to stick to our old ways ... or we can finally come to the realization that that kind of marketing strategy no longer works. Its up to us individually to change our ways. There are plenty of webmasters who readily give free links to sites deserving of a link without any reciprocation or payment. I am one of them.
The whole Google philosophy of ranking sites based on votes from other sites is down the toilet. End game.
I disagree. Its the end of the game when Google says its the end of the game or until some other search engine manages to deliver more traffic than Google does! Until then, whatever Google chooses to use to define their search quality is the whole game.
Just my opinion folks ... but go ahead and take your best shot. I only ask that you keep name calling and sarcasm out of your replies.
For both of them Google had sites which no longer existed on page 1.
That's pretty broke to me!
Looks like they are keeping old results to compare with new results for some reason and getting muddled about which are old and which are new.
Yahoo did better, but had a totally worthless site at the #1 spot for one thing. MSN did best. I found out the details I wanted to find out there.
I decided that lots of surfers would feel the way I did and decide that the day of Google was over - time to find a replacement. Use another search engine first, and if one doesn't find what one wants there then see if Google could help.
For my own sites, I put my adwords bids all down to 10c. If Google starts delivering the sort of results I want in my own private searches again, then I'll put the Adwords bids up high again. But for now I think they are yesterday's game.
I still like Google but I don't like the results as much as a few years ago. If Google kicks out all the small affiliate dependant sites that do have real backlinks from respected sites like libraries, EDU, Yahoo and others then nothing will ever satisfy them.
Now they don't even want related sites to exchange links, that makes no sense either. I thought that was the backbone of how Google could tell which sites were related before, now that they don't want that done then it will result in worse SERPs.
I know some will say "it takes money to make money, so you have to spend" but that has nothing to do with SERPs. SERPs were suppose to be neutral, offering the best page that related to the search terms regardless of how large the market cap was of the site was that offered the result, within reason.
It would almost be interesting to see Google have more than one search algorithm available, then those that hate small sites could get the current results, those that want all the sites could get that, and so on. But I have to say right now it looks like a broken search with a lot of unrelated results being given out, and only the larger sites being dolled out the traffic.
I'm out of practice with writing well thought out concise posts. I think you did a very good job of outlining probable current requirements and where the focus should lie in site design/marketing.
Thank you.
"reseller requested reports of improvement in the Google index. So here's my report in regards to the sites I manage and areas I keep an eye on."
Thanks for detailed feedback. Much appreciated.
First off. My main site has been doing well pre-BigDaddy, during-BigDaddy and post-BigDaddy. However, I have several sites which I use for testing. You name it and I test it ;-)
"IMO, the tragedy of our beloved Google is; its dieing and nobody at Googleplex care
I disagree. Google is not dying ... or sick ... or broken. There is a new infrastructure in place and all webmasters need to learn what works in Google and what doesn't. Apparently, you have at least one fine example of what doesn't work ...
The several threads on forum 30, and hundreds of fellow members feedback illustrate without any reasonable doubt that Google has several major problems. I prefer not to go in details here, but leave it up to you to read our affected kind fellow members feedback. If those problems continue to exist in future, I really doubt that Google will survive as a major search engine. Maybe it will continue to exist, but not at its current position in search market.
And there is one important issue to keep in mind, IMO. Google continuous denial of the existance of major problems with BigDaddy and Google employee posting of generic collective posts of no value on Google's blog, doesn't mean at all that those major problems don't exist.
Once again. Thanks for a generous feedback.
[edited by: reseller at 11:01 am (utc) on May 21, 2006]
Try it and see! I did and I learned a lot.
you must be lucky to be in a sector where the dmoz editor is actually unbiased as to whose sites they list unlike my own niche.
You'd be surprised how successful a site can become by writing naturally, forgetting about link building strategies and other webmasterly tricks. You need only spend a few days on this experiment. Try it and see! I did and I learned a lot. It took exactly 3 weeks for the site to be indexed and ranked (well) on Google and that was during the so called "sandbox" era...
As nice as this sounds, this is demonstrably untrue. Try making it work on anything even vaguely resembling a commercial site.
The fact is quality means little, at least in human terms. You can have the best content, the best design, the best website. But in many commercial areas I have worked in the guy at the top is the one with the 35,000 crap backlinks from casinos and viagra selling tat. Not the one with the beautiful prose and lovely pictures.
I have often clung to the belief that well written web prose, combined with elegant design, will help a site. Mainly by attracting natural backlinks. It just doesn't happen.
A good example of this is that in many semi-niche markets people like Next Tag are commanding good positions, despite the fact they use boiler plate text, and are about as far removed from the personal 'quality' approach outlined above.
In the current environment much of what we are dealing with is determined by algorithms. We may read a lot about advanced text filters, semantic filters and other fantastic-sounding bits of programming, but the evidence is there to contradict these claims. I've seen too many badly knocked together sites succeed to have any faith in the idea that 'if it's good they will come'. They often don't. Especially since people are switched on to the idea of backlinks as a form of currency.
Don't get me wrong, I always take a quality approach myself. But in my experience it's ruthlessness that gets you on, not quality.
But I have seen a "problem" I can't explain.
I'm living in Scandinavia, and from end April I seen a drop of 40% in visits from my own country. Visits from my neighbours in Scandinavia it's even worse. But other international customers are at the same level as earlier. The serp for my country seems to be approx the same at local DC.
At the same time there was a drop in the local Google trafic I gave seen a nice growth in Yahoo visits (which was very low at earlier stage).
Could there be any filters for my local DC (but not .com) that I have tripped after Big Daddy?
The problem is Google is turning into what AltaVista was before Google, a search engine that only returned the sites with all the money to spend, yes they still have some smaller sites but not many, not nearly like it was three or four years ago.
Well, I've never paid Google a dime and I do just fine.
Now they don't even want related sites to exchange links, that makes no sense either.
That is NOT what Matt said ... nor did I!
He said:
Examples that might cause that include excessive reciprocal links, linking to spammy neighborhoods on the web, or link buying/selling.
I would place the emphasis here on the word "excessive" reciprocal links. Read his comment again.
It is very plain to me that Google's intent is not to cut sites off from exchanging links. However, it kind of raises eyebrows if ALL your outgoing links or at least the majority of your links are reciprocal ... don'tcha think? That would be a sure fire sign to me that you only link for PR purposes.
The several threads on forum 30, and hundreds of fellow members feedback illustrate without any reasonable doubt that Google has several major problems.
The number of webmasters reporting problems with their own sites does not indicate that Google has major problems. It indicates that those experiencing problems with Google have major problems with the new infrastructure and should be working on rewriting those sites if they ever want them to enjoy the success they once had.
I suggest webmasters who are confused or who are suffering from a major drop in Google traffic go back to November 2003 and the "disastrous" Florida update. In fact, do a search for the Florida update on Google and see what you get.
Many of us (including myself) said at the time that Google had gone crazy, Google was broken, Google was doomed, blah, blah, blah. In the end, we all had to come to terms with the new algorithm and "fix" our sites or let them die on the vine.
Nearly 50 percent of all Americans did not vote for George Bush. While their numbers are impressive, and many continue to complain ... where has it got them? As the Borg said, "Resistance is futile". ;)
It is you, not Google who has to change! Accept that as fact, (if you wish to rank in Google) ... get to work on your site(s) and get on with your business. Complaining is futile and a waste of time and effort. Put your efforts into fixing your site(s).
I cannot see anything wrong with my site. Why should I want to risk loosing my no.1 positions on the other main search engines by trying to fix illusionary problems? For now I'll just sit back and see what happens next.
I hear you on that and I too was very reticent to "fix" anything on my site after the Florida update. But the truth of the matter is that Google has the capacity to deliver waaaaay more traffic than the other two combined.
The choice is yours of course, but I found that after I fixed my site, rankings on MSN went way up. Yahoo remained about the same but my ranking went down a little in some areas. The net result was an incredible boost in traffic from just about everywhere and my site has been the one to beat in my niche for quite some time.
