Forum Moderators: Robert Charlton & goodroi
So with all of this discussion about what's happening, has anyone heard anything about what G is "trying to accomplish"?
I had heard that they were headed for "all inclusive" search where they wanted to bring images, videos, books and "normal sites" into a single listing. Not to say that I think that's a good thing but is this the beginning of that? Yahoo and MSN surely aren't trying this.
I've never ( 5 years experience ) seen anything like what is showing up. Craigs list entries, books.google.com entries, entries that I can't even see a KW. My site has been Page 1 for 4 years of over 5 million pages and still is on Yahoo #7 with 7 million and MSN #2 with whatever. I can't see that there is a solution for this right now and have decided to ride out the storm ( which I believe started in Feb and got worse in May and just got worse now ) AND this is ONLY happening for single KW, my phrases have not been touched. Even the guy with www.KW.com which used to rank really high ( not a great website but he ranked high ) has joined the rest of us bobbing on the high seas.
There are about 20 really good companies in my industry and about 6 have really good websites. These guys have been my website competition for the past 5 years ( our company is 30 years old ). I know their sites inside and out and not many of them make changes that often and have not made any that I have picked up. I made changes thru the summer trying to combat what I preceived as a simple algo change and managed to stay on page 1 as I watched some of my competition drop to page 2. Now we are ALL bobbing up and down with no reason. Yesterday, I was in 12 different positions ranging from 2 to 46.
Google - I'm getting seasick. Please let this end.
[edited by: tedster at 11:18 pm (utc) on Sep. 16, 2007]
Google doesn't seem to worried about it, which is strange to me.
If people start getting infected by viruses and sites want to install spyware scanners om their cmputers, then Google will be see upon as NOT SAFE anymore, and what are they going to do then?
If they loose their good-will with ordinary people, then it'sgoing downhill fast..... It will take alooooong time before people trust them again!
Obscure enough to not be competitive, but the point is made.
Hope this is politically correct.
If it's not, sorry, please remove the post.
These results show up of course for many kinds of searches.
( Note that they didn't invade the top in the sectors *I* monitor. )
Also, while browsing the SERPs don't click the results!
[buy sell review blue widgets red widgets purple widgets new york london paris tokyo beijing where ever whatever]
Looking at them is safe... *cough* navigate the SERPs but keep your distance.
If you click, they redirect and might try to install malware on your PC.
You don't want to spend the rest of the day cleaning cr@p / reinstall your OS, do you?
[edited by: tedster at 4:27 pm (utc) on Sep. 19, 2007]
[edit reason] switch link to a query [/edit]
Re: decius and hissing sid post.
Is anyone noticing how google is only selecting unique titles to give a broad match for single keywords.
ie kw widgets in the top 100
Google seems to be fetching its best and unique match for
black widgets
stylish widgets
rubber widgets
widget directory
table widgets
sexy widgets
mens widgets etc etc etc
And theres very little duplication in the page titles, if there is duplcation the page appears to be offering somethingelse that is unique to the query and result set.
ie quality wigets inc specialist in black widgets.
Be interested if anyone else is seeing this
ps the last time i say you post hissing sid was florida ;)
... naw.
How about "How do we fix what our summer interns messed up? HEEEEEEEELP!" :)
Damn students! Told'em not to sneak in the main index. Play only with the Directory they said...interns don't listen :)
Name I thought of for this "thing" going on:
1. Alzheimer: for all these pages not indexed, counted, cached and entire good sites mistaken for a super low quality entirely SEO'ed conterpart from overseas.
2. Beijin / Tokyo: now that almost any pages from these CN/JP sites with english terms rank on top a lightspeed.
3. badware: no exaplanation needed...just for all these sites that are potential risks for your computer that pop up there.
They may have lost some databases, the whole histor of some sites. But I would bet that they are in an infrastructure trouble.
Infrastruture trouble:
a. need to keep the business going on
Google solution: keep authorities, keep homepages and pages that a reafreashed regularly which includes any blog site.
Screw the rest and reintegrate it later(hopefully).
This could also explain the pest of bad sites currently infesting SERP's since they update frequently and have almost no content on their pages except 2/3 keyword that are enough for GG to find them relevant.
b. Some regular business drop because some of their pages are mia and some of their backlinks not caculated or counted as missing.
c. Taking advantage of this: diggs, forums, blogs and quickly setup site with a few cheap backlinks from directory homepages get their internal pageranks...since there is no more tough competiton because of b. then they rank incredibly well.
Since these cheap sites above also never got scapped then their profile is clean even though cheap....Google ranks them right below authorities.
Authorities are given a considerable ammount of credibility at the same time, far too much, too many url's or associated blogs or sites that belong to the same person/business/network - including Google itself.
This does not explain the singular/plural issue noticed that I used to consider as one of the Google strenghts over Y and MNS.
Almost looks like their algo rollback to the pre-florida update just that now the internet nowadays and it is quite different guys!
Infrastruture trouble:
a. need to keep the business going on
Google solution: keep authorities, keep homepages and pages that a reafreashed regularly which includes any blog site.
Screw the rest and reintegrate it later(hopefully).
This is exactly my assessment.
Most of Goog's algo "enhancements" follow this pattern.
Change - realize changes let in alot of nonsense they hadn't anticipated - tweak - more or different issues - tweak some more - etc
All the while throwing massive weight to authorities to keep searchers happy enough so they don't go running to the NYSE to complain. ;)
I am thinking about setting up a poll on my sites, asking people what they think about Google and then publish it somwhere where it is VISIBLE to Google... but then again, why would they care when they are showing sites that might infect your computer?
If it is the so called "Universal Search" that created all this, then they should scrap it ASAP. Universal... hmmmm.....
Some quotes I found:
"For example, Mayer said that the first result in Google might get clicked on more than a third of the time out of all the clicks on that page. In fact, Google's search quality team makes it a goal to try and make that first result as relevant as possible. In contrast, the OneBox insertions get clicked on less despite getting prime placement on the page, since they aren't as relevant.
Universal Search aims to fix this through blending. With Universal Search, Google will hit a range of its vertical search engines, then decide if the relevancy of a result from book search is higher than a match from web page search."
This is REALLY interesting!
"As a search engine marketer, the implementation of invisible tabs means that traffic from organic web page listings will diminish over time. The more specialty databases are implemented, the less traffic will fall to web search results.
That needn't be a problem. The skilled search engine marketer's most important asset is understanding how search engines get various types of listings, then helping their clients enter the appropriate databases. Think beyond web page databases, and you'll be prepared for the future."
Since China doesn't like the influence of Google and has had its problems with them regarding the self-censorship issue, don't you think this could be a Chinese attack on Google? I mean a Chinese government attack?
check:
[technewsworld.com...]
Or perhaps google is just giving people a lesson in what the internet would be like, if it really was a totally free market without any uhrm, government control or reputation scales, or systems controlling anything.
Oh, if you could just restrict your search to only com, org and net domains.. and only specific filetypes and put some more restrictions and options into it just to give you that feeling of.. wait, no, okay, forget about that, google wouldn't want to give you any options on what to see, and what not to see. that would be unfair competition, and evil, really.
Now, follow googles advice and make sites for users, not search engines, since they'll probably be dead soon anyways.
1-3 Three Google adwords at the top (sometimes 2)The standard
4 Google Base / Google Books(now showing on a volume of related searches)
5 - First Organic Result
6 & 7 - same site indented
8 - Google News
9 - 14 Organic results
So as i see it looks like google are testing the effectiveness of increasing exposure to own products whilst at the same time offering less organic result options on the home page which may or may not be increasing adwords clicks (only google knows).
By restricting the results to UK the first two organic both have indented listings plus the google base options.
If you think about it logically if they reduce 10 organic results to 9 they have reduced exposure to non income generating results by 10% chuck in a couple of indented listings and they have improved it further. Two sites with indented listings + Base/Books + News means that only 7 websites get a look in on the first page with a free organic listing - every other click on the page is to either an own product facility or google adwords.
I dont think this is anything to do with search quality its testing methods of driving up revenues higher but they need to balance this against effectiveness - if they turn this up to high, search users will lose confidence in their search facility but then again, wheres the alternative?
However, the sector I watch closely is getting better every day.
I see less obvious spam and new ontopic sites moving there way to the top.
A few months ago, hidden text was still an issue. Recently, I've noticed Google getting better on catching hidden text Web pages.
Cheers!
Malware in serps is a big problem so it's sad to see G guys checking my hand written article for an affiliate program (gets 2 hits per day) and trying to find a aff link there somewhere instead of targeting the real culprits (malware and viruses and NOT affiliates!)
The funny part is that these pages are translated via some automated tool, so some words don't get translated.....pages rank on these specific words (or combinaison) which is kinda ridiculous..hey but it works!
I've noticed that almost all 'cheap' sites that appeared since last week follow this pattern: cheap promotion on free directories, very low number of backlinks compared to other players.
Me talking to Google would say: haha well if you are a tiny little player in your field of course you are not scrapped or attacked ever...nobody knows you.Your slate is clean even if your backlink profile is full of s...t.
If Google would really recognize the real value of backlinks intead of chasing seo ghosts they may find a solution someday, not now obviously.
I am really irritated with all the blogs and blogs+sites from the same companies controlling SERP's with multiple url's, plus all these junk sites/blogs sometimes abandonned for more than a year, never promoted that actually is given credibility now - again not counting You tube videos or site advertising Specifically for local search (ie. city in page title) and rank internationally so they're useless - it's all irrelevant to me.
It's almost like we are back with an algorithm from 3 years ago where anybody can create a flash in the pan with little money.
Now all the black hats that see what some of us have noticed are going to jump on the opportunity I am sure. If it continues like that it will be simpler more cost effective to use what I am seeing that to create a doorway page :)
It's been 1 week that things have gotten worst and nobody at google seems to care. My guess is that the pay per click money must flow.
Another problem is that you can't even file a spam report on what's going on, it is not even spam...it's just low end or scrapping or irrelevant.
Google mostly doesn't act on real manipulations so sending them feedbacks about what they did here is not going to work for sure. Depressing.
Something really KILLS me and I need to say it: some sites I thought were filtered because I filed spam reports (they were spamming, manipulating badly...really!) are now back doing better than ever! How come? Their techniques haven't changed! SO Now they are relevant?
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The email told us that the reason for not using Google anymore was the "degradation of the search results", videos were not allowed because of bandwidth, and most blogs are blocked anyway, too much time spent on research.
This is an important change in their policy and it tells me that there is a widespread "annoyance" with how Google works right now and I am thinking that Google might be digging their own grave by their so called Universal search. They are slowly killing their golden egg. People won't go to Goole and search anymore because of all the garbage and when people don't use Google, they won't get any money from their ads. No money from ads, advertisers go to MSN or Yahoo and spend their advertising money instead. This will lead to a downward spiral and when it's started, it will spiral down fast!
Too bad Google doesn't see this but I guess they are too narcissistic to realize what they are doing now.
As far as SEO I'm thinking the SEO business is dead from now on. Google just killed it
Another idea: It seems to me that "quality" or "thematic links" are not needed anymore, just bash as much links as you can get - thats how some of my competitors are beating me at the moment. Even "nofollow"-links seems to count.
This old site are getting more traffic now after all the Google changes and I can't really figure out what is going on. I can understand that they show the page if there was a link somewhere on any page right now to that page, but I have searched the whole site and can't find any link to that page and I KNOW that nobody else is linking to the page since it was a page in a frameset. Just weird!
Another thing I have noticed, is that when you use Google UK then you have related searches at the bottom of the page, and if I am not wrong, the same links used to be on Google.com, right? I don't see them anymore at Google.com? How long have they been gone or is that some setting I have, not to show the related searches?
BTW, I wish there was something you could add to the google query that would remove all books and videos and other stuff I don't want in my search.
ps the last time i say you post hissing sid was florida ;)
I've been around but have not had much to say.
The current round of changes are much more subtle (for me) but still damaging and this time I don't think that Google have heard they have a problem. With Florida they picked up that things were going badly wrong pretty quickly and had a real desire to make it right, this time they don't seem to see it as a problem at all.
One worrying feature of these changes is the lack of a consensus here on what is causing the problem. I keep dropping a line about allinanchor but no one else is picking this up so I wonder if it is just a coincidence.
For me it is just one two word term that is affected, I'm still #1 for all of the other 2 word terms and the 3 and 4 word terms I target, and for those I'm still #1 for allinanchor as well as well as being in the top 3 on Google directory for those terms, in fact #1 for most. In my niche no one has a decent PR, the terms used are largely UK specific and quite specialised.
I'm therefore able to narrow my focus to a single two word term and can narrow it even further because one of those words is used in all of the other terms that I'm still top for. This is the same word that caused the problem for me with the Florida fiasco.
Here's my short list of what may be causing the problem in no particular order.
1. Allinanchor turned up in algo.
2. New disambiguation element of semantic indexing.
3. Keyword prominence element of algo more important.
4. A mixture of the above.
1. and 3. I can deal with, 2. is much more problematic.
Cheers
Sid
PS I guess it could also possibly have something to do with changes in their spam filtering algos which is causing collateral damage in the war against spam. Its friendly fire guys.
I'm not quite sure what you mean with 2.
According to Matt Cutts, "By March 29th [2006], Bigdaddy was fully deployed and the old system was turned off. Bigdaddy has been powered our crawling ever since."
Since March 29 2006, changes in Google's SERPs have been quite subtle. Even when Bigdaddy was fully deployed, hidden text was still an issue.
Today, new ontopic Web sites are moving there way to the top. These new Web sites should replace some questionable sites still showing in the top 10 - top 20.
