Forum Moderators: Robert Charlton & goodroi
I have seen some changes, none of my pages were listed in Supplemental index, however, those pages do not rank even when I type the exact title with quote.
Time here is 11.30 - 1 Aug 2007
[edited by: tedster at 5:08 am (utc) on Aug. 1, 2007]
I've tried to stop worrying about the results so much, but reading theses posts have got me nervous again!
Tedster, after many hours of looking into it, I agree about this being due to 1) linking issues and possibly 2) over optimization. A high percentage of our incoming links are coming from pages that are very similar to each other. They're relevant content to our site...but they're all very similar content and may not look "natural" to a SE spider. Also, we've always paid attention to having a lot of content on the site. It's unique and is valuable to our visitors....but I've always been a bit concerned with stuffing too many keywords into text or anchor links.
The last few months we've continually tried to gain new quality links, and dropped a couple of the others that may appear to be "unnatural". That's our #1 plan for combating this issue.
Not much new info there....more just agreeing with other statements that have been brought up. Hopefully the posts keep comin and we can continue to nail this thing down!
The pages that are yo-yoing seem to be ranking again although a little lower than before, but this time there’s a caching issue,search for the search term I’m not seeing a cache link, but if I use info: or inurl: the cache link appears and works. Most of the dates I’m seeing are around the change of the supplemental tag removal and real time cache change over the 31st / 1st of Aug.
Could be that they will regain there full cache and SERP’s once updated.
Vimes
When searching for "green widgets" a search term that we have been trusted and ranking on for years we get the normal serps im used to. 5 minutes later the same search "green widgets" shows an something completely different. With our site on the 2nd page.
Now your going to say its just my site but its my competitors also who are affected.
what ever happened to serp consistancy and trusted rank? this is been going on for 2 days now and its driving me bonkers.
[edited by: tedster at 5:04 pm (utc) on Aug. 14, 2007]
[edit reason] moved from another location [/edit]
I noticed that our website shows no cache when accessing it with the "www". But when accessing it without the "www" the sites cache shows up and it was last created on August 9th. (note: it has a PR of 1 without the www and 3 with the www.)
I also notice the only search results shown from our site are our home page and they are using the domain without the "www" and are on around the 2nd to 3rd page of results. Any incoming links we have from other websites and even our internal links use the "www". I assume this is part of the reason our rank has fallen.
Does anyone else notice this issue or have any ideas/suggestions about what to do?
There's a lot of information for your situation (often called a canonical problem) in this thread:
Why Does Google Treat "www" & "no-www" As Different? [webmasterworld.com]
That thread is part of the Hot Topics area [webmasterworld.com], which is always pinned to the top of this forum's index page.
Thanks for your response. I read that thread and have a question maybe you can answer.
As I mentioned my website with the "www" has always been ranking well in Google and it just the other day fell off to be replaced with the non www home page. I already had Google's webmaster tools set a long time ago telling it to use the "www" version but ever since the latest Google update its using the non www and not even indexing my home page with the "www" at all the last week or so. Anything I I can do to fix this or should i just wait it out?
RewriteCond %{HTTP_HOST} ^domain\.com
RewriteRule ^(.*)$ http://www.domain.com/$1 [R=permanent,L]
Of course replace domain and the .com with whatever domain and tld you are using.....
This will force Google to bite on the redirect even though Yahoo for some reason cannot still for the life of it figure out a 301 redirect permanent.
HTH
domain.com/category/product/343.html
will become
www.domain.com/category/product/343.html
I tried using it and itlooks like it does not carry
the whole url it just forwards to www.domain.com/343.html.
Do you know how to make it carry the full url?
RewriteEngine on
RewriteCond %{HTTP_HOST} .
RewriteCond %{HTTP_HOST}!^www\.example\.com [NC]
RewriteRule (.*) http://www.example.com/$1 [R=301,L]
I think this is a better solution for redirecting from non-www to www:
RewriteCond %{HTTP_HOST} !^(www\.example\.com)?$
RewriteRule (.*) http://www.example.com/$1 [R=301,L]
A negative match will redirect *any* request for *anything* not www to www, rather than only checking for the non-www version as the previous example showed.
Also the start (^) and end ($) anchors are basically extra on the rule, while the condition is anchored to provide an exact match. The question mark on the condition makes www.example.com optional for HTTP 1.0 compliant browsers.
For more information, please see the Apache Forum [webmasterworld.com].
Justin
<added>
I was posting at the same time as Marcia, so my 'better solution' statement will apply to the first example. (Marcia's is essentially the same, except it uses an extra line of code.) Make sure if you use Marcia's you put a space between the %{HTTP_HOST} and the !. The forum software removes the space.
</added>
I've also heard recently of shifts in localization: .com sites that had a high percentge of backlinks from one ccTLD have dropped on google.com after years of success, and are now only doing well on the country-specific SERPs. Many have doubted that backlinks would play into localization efforts, but there are some reports coming in that this factor is in play.
Which still leaves the extreme yo-yo rankings unaccounted for, at least in detail. Clearly these sites are close to some threshold, but which one? Is it the backlink profile?
We've been picking up signals that Google may not just be ignoring certain kinds of backlinks -- especially those that may be controlled by the domain itself, though appearing elsewhere. Google may now be experimenting with actively penalizing domains with a high level of self-controlled backlinks, at least if they are too much of a site's total profile.
[edited by: tedster at 3:35 am (utc) on Aug. 15, 2007]
Interesting, thanks for sharing that. I've wondered if (suspected) that's why some sites have gone PR0.
Can you clarify this more?
Are you meaning links within the site itself? or sites within the same ip range?
---
clarityproductions,
I feel your pain. ours is somewhat the same although we have a broad range of products, but it's definatly a niche
[edited by: Bewenched at 6:01 am (utc) on Aug. 15, 2007]
- It's difficult to get links if you cannot be found in SERPs.
- It's difficult to be found in SERPs if you don't have links.
MySpace.com - www.myspace.com/whatevername
now shows
MySpace.com - My Name 41 Male www.myspace.com/whatevername
Not seen this before, not sure whether it's Google or MySpace with a new idea that's not yet propogated throughtout all the DCs
I don't see it on some other DCs I looked at though
Has any one else drop out of G again today.
I have been in and out like a YO_YO since July 26th.
Any idea on whats going on.
25/7/2007 results re-appeared at prominent positions
8/8/2007 results returned to levels prior to 25th
12/8/2007 results back up again
13/8/2007 results down
14/8/2007 (around 1pm) results up
17/8/2007 down again
Is this due to localization efforts from google as we are a UK Company with a UK server/IP we have a .com domain?
This just seems wrong though as our product is internationally sold and would not benefit the customers in the US or the world for that matter, so I find this abit strange google would do this.
We also have product pages on a US server under a US domain name which points back to our product pages in the UK could this be the cause for these recent drops?
as Tedtser mentioned "Google may now be experimenting with actively penalizing domains with a high level of self-controlled backlinks,"
Anyone know more about these possiblities?
Is this due to localization efforts from google as we are a UK Company with a UK server/IP we have a .com domain?
I would say that's more than likely the reason.
Your username made me laugh by the way. :-)
June 29 - All keyword traffic dropped 70%
July 12 - All keywords back to normal
July 14 - All keyword traffic dropped 70% again
So far I have not recovered since July 14th but i'm still hopeful. Last year almost the same thing happen to my Google traffic and it all came back 9/30/06.
G.com results (using a US proxy) are as "regionalised" as those on G.co.uk, you'll need some serious link juice to beat the "local" guys though upping your % of "local" links might help....
