Now floating to the top - .org sites are 14 out of top 20!

For Crying Out Loud Google! Get a Grip!

[internetheaven]

This is just getting ridiculous now. Google are grasping at straws in trying to simplfy their filters. Over the past few weeks as things have shifted the pattern that is emerging, in my more major industry anyway, is that .org and .org.uk sites are floating to the top despite inbounds and age. Out of the top 20 results for the top keyphrase 14 are .org or .org.uk ... I'm now down to position 16 from 7 one month ago.

- 100 PHDs and that's the best filter they could come up with "oooh! everyone who buys a .org domain must be far more relevant and trustworthy, let's make them rank better!"

OR

- 100 shareholders got together and realised that people with .org domains tend not to purchase Adwords so if they rank at the top then everyone else has to buy Adwords.

[pontifex]

something is going on... internetheaven is just (like myself) another victim of very strange algo changes.

also, some respected members have pointed out, that the algo is clearer than ever... not for me, though :-(. I am earning more money than in the beginning of the year, but with stuff that I considered SECONDARY, or less rank-worthy. The stuff I have put remarkable amounts of work and brain into are dropping to below #20 ... hello? what kind of motivation should that give me, if my mirrors, spams and scrapers are earning top dollars and my heart work, my primary targeted, clean super site is dropping? If that continues for another 4 weeks, I am back in the black hat corner again and I guess a few dozens are already!

Unique content and user experience counts? Well, at least not for AdSense dollars :-(

Don't get me wrong, I am not complaining because Google does not rank me, where I want to be, it is just that I rank damn good with stuff, that is low quality... earning much more and harder than the site I would consider top notch super duper unique high quality content. That really makes no sense and I totally sympathize with internetheaven: something is corrupting the algo big time. OR: something is making good spam rank high again!

Just my 2 rant pennies,
P!

[edited by: tedster at 11:34 pm (utc) on May 22, 2006]
[edit reason] member request [/edit]

[JeffOstroff]

We do a lot of online fraud investigations and I've been successful at shutting down over 600 fraudulent escrow web sites targeting victims of ebay, Yahoo, Autotrader, etc. with fake listings.

Many of the scammers sites we have worked against were named with .ORG for some stupid reason, probably to trick victims into thinking they are non profit organizations.

SO if Google is using the .ORG filter to boost a site's relevancy, they need to gather their PHDs and their Matt Cutts dudes into a remove and retool their algorithm.

[internetheaven]

Okay, this is just getting ridiculous. It seems to be rolling out more and more .org.uk and .org sites into the top listings in more industries I work in. The legal one seemed to be hit first.

A large portion of these late-comers are all MFA's with recently bought (1-2 months) orgs. I guess the spammers are ahead of me again in guessing Google's next move!

[dcheney]

I've got a largish .org site - can't say that I've seen any difference (beyond normal variations) in the traffic numbers in the last month or more.

[internetheaven]

I've got a largish .org site

Is it in a competitive market? I'm talking about people who are registering things like baddebtcreditcard.org.uk and putting up an espotting credit card search results page.

[reseller]

internetheaven

Whats your sector is related to?

Thanks.

[JudgeJeffries]

Excellent...I've got a ton of .orgs 'cause that's all that was left when I arrived late to the party. Respect Google...Respect. Please - keep quiet about this. Dont want Mr. Cutts changing the rules.

[Haecceity]

I'm in a nonprofit sector and the top two sites in my field are dot coms, so I don't see any evidence where I'm looking that supports your argument and in fact the evidence here seems to point the other way.

Even searching for the keywords in your baddebtcreditcard.org example I don't see a single dot org site. Can you give us a hint what field you're referring to?

[dcheney]

Is it in a competitive market?

hehe, my sites, in general, are not at all competitive. They are essentially hobby sites with Adsense.

[internetheaven]

Even searching for the keywords in your baddebtcreditcard.org example I don't see a single dot org site. Can you give us a hint what field you're referring to?

Wow! It's just occured to me that this could be industry specific. I'm in the legal industry which is highly commercial, NOT informational, (I'm sure it should be the other way round but hey ...) - it doesn't seem that strange a leap for Google to have moved "legal" queries into the "informational" list of queries rather than commercial for which it prefers .orgs

Of course, all the .orgs are commercial in my industry so all it is doing is giving them preferencial treatment.

[arran]

Sounds like a coincidence.

Why would google give extra weight to a TLD which is unregulated?

arran.

[JeffOstroff]

I'm going to rename my web site like this:

MySite.Gov.Edu.Org

That should move me up to the top!

[SniperRyan]

I hadn't noticed it until now, thinking it was just some bad algorithm tweaks, but this is absolutely the case for one of the verticals in which my SEO takes place.

SERPs for this particular search:
#1 .org site, subpage, TBPR 6, 22 Google backlinks, 1 keyword in title, 2nd keyword in URL, information on site indicates that this is no longer relevant information as of Sept, 2003
#2 .org site, subpage, TBPR 5, 7 Google backlinks, both keywords in URL, info on site is current.
#3 .org site, subpage, TBPR 7, 7 G BLs, both keywords in URL, irrelevant since Nov, 2003

The other 7 contain 1 .com (the major software/OS developer's website), and one .edu, all the rest being pages on .org domains.

My site, which used to rank 1+2 for this term, is now on the 2nd page. Homepage & targeted subpage, TBPR 7 & 6 respectively, G BLs 250 + 36, search term in the title, and search term in title, URL, and copy on 2ndary page.

I will be happy to PM anyone this search string if you would like to see the example.

[BigDave]

A large portion of these late-comers are all MFA's with recently bought (1-2 months) orgs. I guess the spammers are ahead of me again in guessing Google's next move!

I think this might be the real case, and it has nothing to do with the TLD.

If it was simply a case of .orgs taking over, it would most likely be the established .orgs, not the MFAs. It sounds to me like it is MFAs that know what they are doing, that just happened to buy .orgs because they were available.

[seo_joe]

what's wrong with just posting the search string for us all to look at?

[internetheaven]

it would most likely be the established .orgs, not the MFAs

I guess I wasn't clear then. Yes, there are espotting/overture affiliate search results pages now ranking above me.

[Enkephalin420]

I am in a commercial sector and I don't see any .orgs on the first 2 pages across 33 data centers. I've checked other categories and all .org sites I see are ones that look like they are legitimate organizations.

[mimo]

In the travel sector I see in the first 5 position .org

[europeforvisitors]

In the travel sector I see in the first 5 position .org

I don't.

Results obviously vary by keyword or keyphrase.

[mimo]

For some keywords i see same url ex:
1) domain.com
2) domain.com/doma.htm
8) domain.org

Why This?

[internetheaven]

For some keywords i see same url ex:
1) domain.com
2) domain.com/doma.htm
8) domain.org
Why This?

Are they all for the same company? Is the domain name one of the search terms?

Generally, most site's get linked to by their domain name so if the keywords is there then inbounds could be the simple answer ...

[mimo]

I type "Hotels cityname" and in first page I see
1)domain.com
2)domain.com/cityname.htm

Yes the results are for the same company.
I'd like find 10 different company in the firsts
pages of google. I hate the monopoly.
This is caused by "Big Daddy"? Or from many inbounds links

[RichTC]

Since bigdady Google has produced a right pile of junk imo.

1. Trying to be ahead of its time regarding word association and providing utter garbage results. Ie Accountancy = Accounting, Legal = Law, etc, etc, etc. I can see hundreds of examples where they are doing this and the results are less relevent now to the search since it would display a site page about one thing that may have a few keywords on it rather than a more relevent page that is specific.

2. This change to its links and PR structure means that an old one page site can rank at the top of google for its keyword due to it having old keyword links to its page. The fact that the page is garbage and has no relevent content on it or behind it is now irrelevent.

3. This stupid change since Big Daddy where you can have an internal page say "pink Widgets" with links to it saying "pink widgets" yet google decides to display in the serps a "blue widget" page that is not as relevent for the "Pink Widget" keyword search. Madness

All in all, Google may think its technology is the bees knees but frankly they have lost almost all relevency now

[John Carpenter]

I'm really trying but I see nothing but yet another witch hunt.

[internetheaven]

3. This stupid change since Big Daddy where you can have an internal page say "pink Widgets" with links to it saying "pink widgets" yet google decides to display in the serps a "blue widget" page that is not as relevent for the "Pink Widget" keyword search. Madness

Not really madness:

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