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]
Update to my last three posts:
3390858, 3396117 and 3397366
In summary, I had a site ranked high for a very long time. I had not made any changes. Recently, I dropped out of sight, then back up and now, back down! The entire site is quality content written by myself and links are all natural, so I had no clue as to why it has dropped so low.
I know you can't stay in the top forever, but it hurts when you fall!
[edited by: tedster at 7:58 pm (utc) on Aug. 20, 2007]
This has been happening to us, exactly up, down, up, down, up, down.
I am just ignoring it and carrying on working on the site (what else can you do)
We have virtually no recipricol links (makybe three from 3 4 years back). I had a genuine link request from this very good site with a PR 6+ for a link in a relevant content page but I'm just too scared to do it.
I know when we are up as google accounts for 70-80% of traffic (which increases traffic around 40%)
Google is now giving us 30-40 % and traffic is down 40% ish
When you say link request from a good site, is that for a one way to them (paid) or a recip?
When you say link request from a good site, is that for a one way to them (paid) or a recip?
Thanks Marcia, no the link request was for a recipricol link from a PR 6+ site which was related to our content. They just wanted a link at an appropriate place and they would link back to us. It would be an 'honest' link exchange ie our and their 'readers' would benefit. I find it easier to adopt a no recip link policy though. We just link out when its appropritate and never seek links back..
Sorry the relevance of all this is that our site can not be penalised (if that is what has happened by all this yo yo traffic we are seeing )for recipricol links as we have only three dating back 3-4 yrs.
I am trying to read it as if our site is on the edge of being 'pushed up' by google but its so marginal we are beaming in and out!
your flucuations are exactly the same as mine.
Its totally all or nothing we are ether page in or nowhere page 5,6,7.
The Google Directory has today been updated for the first time in nearly 18 months. This may have an effect on which directory categories show in Google search results, and their positions.
It may also have a negative effect on sites that were in the old version of the Google directory but are no longer listed, and a positive impact on sites that are newly listed in the Google Directory... or will it?
Google Directory Discussion: [webmasterworld.com...]
There may be a time lag for the changes to ripple through. Will it be hours, or days, or weeks?
Has anyone Yo-Yo'd back up after dropping off on friday.
We are still waiting, fingers cossed if it follows the same pattern as the last couple of weeks we should recover on Tuesday.
Another, similar search term I have a good position in (4/60 Million) has remained unchanged.
Most of my other search terms remain stable.
I have had no changes to my:
- DMOZ index entries (still all there)
- Yahoo index entries ( still there)
- Backward links (nothing changed
Needless to say, my revenue stream has markedly changed (lol)
FYI: crusty old site; online more than 8 years; highly relevant, highly trusted site; totally legit site - no black hat anything (cloaking, Link Farms, dup content, etc)
It's like this - I look at it like I had a winning football team. It wont be #1 forever - but when it's up there it's very gratifying.
I am sure this is a yo-yo phenomenon; this happens from time to time. I am confident this issue will resolve
FYI: crusty old site; online more than 8 years; highly relevant, highly trusted site; totally legit site - no black hat anything (cloaking, Link Farms, dup content, etc)
Sounds like you are talking about our site!
We have been totally redesigning and updating ours (with some web 2.0 stuff too and new pages) though and it gets refreshed every year.
Google seems to be 50% of our traffic (after falling from 80% to 30%) and going upwards so maybe a short spell at the bottom this time?
Fri and Sat traffic went down by 30% or so. It appears to be back. Also I noticed that I was losing pages those 2-3 days but now I have them all indexed. The pages though were only about 10% less. The pages index issues must have been a mistake since Google does get about 500 pages a day and I have only about 1000 pages.
I am thrilled since that 30% apparently made at least a 50% in earnings. I guess Google was messing around with some settings, but I do remember that years ago on the 23rd till the 25th I'd get less visitors even if my site was still ranked high-- Google used to update during that time of the month. All speculation of course.
This morning our positions have risen back up again but not quite to the same levels as before the previous drop.
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
NEW 21/8/2007 results up again but at less prominent positions than 14/8/2007
The PageRank is still shown but when you search for the cache version Google says it doesn't know the page.
Has anybody experienced the similar issues? Does anybody have a clue what the newest Google algo change might be about?
[edited by: tedster at 8:13 pm (utc) on Aug. 21, 2007]
[edit reason] moved from another location [/edit]
I'm not doing anything different in between these episodes. We literally go from page 1 to nowhere in sight. These searches aren't broad...I'm choosing keywords for the specific city they're in. So, my search phrase might be < keyword city state > which will yield positions 1 to 3 consistently.
That's what I was getting 1.5 weeks ago. So I try the search today, the same keyword search plus a combination of other ones specific to "City" and this time we're inexplicably absent. I can understand maybe a drop of a few positions...or heck even a page or two (which drop I would still have to question)...but c'mon.
We have a robots file and sitemap file and all check out fine. As I said, this has happened before and after a while (maybe 4-6 weeks) we jump back in standings. We have a low PageRank being that our site is about 1.5 years old but that's a moot point because we consistently rank at the top any other time and it's not like I'm trying to do a keyword search that's competing with every BBQer in the northern hemisphere! My search is very targeted. We're not banned because our pages our in Google's index as were our pages the last time this happened. It's like we don't exist but then we come back.
Our site was just crawled on Aug 17, 2007...successfully mind you. But how could this be the reason. Or the reason for the wide disparity.
Does anyone know what's up? I don't experience this in MSN and Yahoo.
[edited by: tedster at 4:36 am (utc) on Aug. 22, 2007]
[edit reason] remove specifics [/edit]
I've given up after page 40
First, try going to the very last page of results. Some people who experience this Google yo-yo find their url has indeed vanished, but others find it shifting from the very first page to the very last page. We've been calling it the -950 or EOR (End Of Results) penalty. There's ashort summary, with links, in this thread:
Google -30 & 950 Penalty Summary [webmasterworld.com]
Wouldn't we just love to know what song is playing.
Anyone else seeing this today? (or the opposite :( )
So what about this yo-yo syndrome that's been cropping up? Has anyone stopped it in its tracks? Or even slowed it down? If so, in what area did changes seem to make a difference?
Tedster, I've made carefully considered changes, seen lost sheep pages bounce back to top 10 placement, yelled HURRAY, only to watch them go south in the next week.
The yo-yo seems to be always one step beyond...
I see sites on which I would not throw $1 to buy anything ranking high on very competitive terms, especially in industries where optimizing is a fairly common practice. The scary part is that it looks like they stabilize.
I won't complain too much because ever since Google changed "something" related to Google bombing some of the sites we would never have thought would generate any money eventually were successful and require almost no maintenance. I can be happy I guess although ethicaly and for the sake of doing thing right I can't be fully satisfied.
However to Google I'd ask this:
1. how complicated is it to filter sites that have let's say over 50% of valuable backlinks from homepages?
2. why pages with ultra high keyword density but little occurences rank well? (this meaning almost no content but at 1 or 2 occurence for the search terms) I just don't think that those are valuable pages whatsoever.
3. why would 3-4 links to totally unrelated sites on a homepage does not trigger an alarm?
I think that Google spent so much time trying to figure out how to penalize link exchanges that they end up ranking sites that simply know how to hire a 3-way bulk link exchange service or spend $500 in non sense directories (IMO) such as yahoo.
From my prospective you submit to Yahoo either because you have no experience or for SEO purpose only, no traffic coming from there and acceptance levels are pretty low, in fact all you need is 1 site and $300 - I hardly see how this constitutes any type of solid information.
I dont know for you guys but I've never spent so much time searching on page 2 or 3 than this year, especially in the past couple of months.
It may work for Google one way or another, at a large scale...maybe.
But for solid businesses that are neither authorities nor, by definition, low-class/new-comer/cheap-seo-strategists it's not so good. By the way...aren't those also that spend the most in paid ads? ohhhh that's not so nice isn't it.
I have to admit that it's a little upsetting to see a general blog, digg post, youtube college prank video, an indian (for the example, link building is cheap there...and it obviously works well) SEO'ed website or expired craigslist add competing were your site is obviously related to a search query and where you spent so much time writing and perfecting again and again each page thinking that Google will, one day, recognize your relevance and leading eadge expertise.
Well we should all learn how to be efficient with pay per click anyway so that's the lesson we can learn I guess...
I still like Google, but I am not ready to swallow any pitch of innocence anymore. A bit of competition would probably help Google going back to their basics and finally throw at us what we all expect from them. Competition is good for the mind...
Google DIRECTORY Updated: 2007-08-18
Updated on 2007-08-18 including edits through 2007-08-07
[webmasterworld.com...]
Check your Directory listing(s). Have they changed from the previous versions?
The top handful of rankings might shuffle a bit from day to day for a few keyphrases, but in most cases I'm not even seeing that. It's just business as usual--not just for my pages, but for all of the players who rank in the top spots for those keyphrases.
(Disclaimer: As always, your mileage or km/l may vary; if you've noticed a major upturn or downturn for rankings, you're obviously going to have a different perception of whether "August 2007 Google SERP changes" have been significant.)
