Forum Moderators: Robert Charlton & goodroi
In the industry I'm in, this site is aimed at the highest niche - i.e. the most popular part of that industry with the most searched keyphrases. For the top five keyphrases I rank between 1-4 on both Yahoo and MSN. On Google I don't rank anywhere on the first 10 pages for any of them, I went right the way through for one of the phrases and found my listing at No.943
I've been an avid disputer of the Sandbox theory ever since people started looking for it as an excuse as to why their customer's sites weren't ranking! But now, with this site where:
- the site is 100% unique (i.e. handwritten and designed from scratch)
- with natural linking (we ARE an authority in the industry)
- natural SEO (e.g. nothing stuffed, no doorways, no cross-linking etc.)
- it has it's own unique IP address
there is only one thing that stands out: The site was registered in Sept 2005. We've never been "dropped" on Google, the site just never ranked in the first place.
internetheaven, Did you change anything "on page" shortly after launch and after Google indexed the site?
What's "shortly"? Site started off at 8 pages, they all got ranked at PR2. In January we added 20 pages and then in February we added 30 pages. At next update they were all PR4. In April I updated the content on the main page.
Surely Google wouldn't penalise for freshened content, what could be the possible aim?
Web CEO will let you search 1000 results from google
My browser also lets me do that! There are plenty of free tools but none that work perfectly. Remember, each Google datacenter gives different results and reacts differently to IPs based on geo-location (so I've heard ...) One free tool I used said I ranked at number 673, but when I checked google.co.uk it was far, far lower.
JeffOstroff - the sandbox. Yes, I'm with the others, the "sandbox" feature was given it's name generally because the sandbox is where you send all the new little children to go and play together till they grow up. It is an age thing only - am I right?
* Visit the page you are checking.
* In Google preferences set the number of results to display 100 and save this.
* Enter the KW(s) into the G search panel.
* Scroll through the results and if your page is listed it will be highlighted because you have visited it.
What's "shortly"? Site started off at 8 pages, they all got ranked at PR2. In January we added 20 pages and then in February we added 30 pages. At next update they were all PR4. In April I updated the content on the main page.
I didn't ask if you added new pages. I asked if you changed anything on the pages ... meaning the pages you already had up shortly after launching them? Shortly meaning "soon after" or within weeks/a couple of months.
I didn't ask if you added new pages. I asked if you changed anything on the pages ...
I know, and I answered that when I said that I changed the content on the main page recently. I gave extra information aswell -> I'd added pages over time.
Shortly meaning "soon after" or within weeks/a couple of months
Okay. Then the answer is no, that site remained the same for some time after being launched. I would again ask the questions though, what possible reason could ANY search engine have for penalising fresh content?
my site has a decent page ranking on the home page and all internal links, it was coming up in google and all the rest when searching for different keywords and then all of a sudden a couple of weeks ago all my pages except for my home page were put into this supplemental results crap area, now when searching none of my pages come up except for my homepage in google but in all other search engines it still comes up. (i am just taking a complete sentence from any page and plugging it in to see if it comes up in a search)
the only change i made a few weeks ago was that within our website we had a home navigation link and logo home link, that would link back to our
homepage with the following <a href="/">home</a> (relative path), we changed all those links to <a href= [www...] .ourdomainname. com>home</a> (absolute path), which changed over a couple hundred pages or so
this for is the only reason i could think of that might have put us into the supplemental area, but i can not figure out why, ive read articles that state that absolute paths are better then relative paths and this is why we made this change
now i have changed everything back to the way it was to see if that was the difference and we are still in this supplemental results area
could this have caused our site to move into
supplemental results and how do we get ourselves out of this supplemental results area without having to wait until forever
asia_expat and mypattaya, where are your sites hosted?
We have had sites hosted within SEA for years and just can't get anywhere, although they do well on Y and M, but a couple we put on US hosting a year ago doing way better on G than those hosted local, but of course way behind sites that have anything from 80,000 to 200,000 links.
I have 2 servers, one in Germany and the other in Hong Kong.
My german server is my live server and currently my Hong Kong server is the one I'm using for development. I'm considering migrating completely to my Hong Kong host as the customer service has been excellent.
Send me a private message if you like and we'll have a chat sometime.
I've read articles that state that absolute paths are better then relative paths and this is why we made this change
I have done this to multiples of sites I manage this last year as it is recommended by Matt Cutt's (Google rep) and others, and have had no negative effect. I also have had no hijackings to those sites and this is supposed to prevent this, so I really doubt this is your problem unless you made a typo on all the links.
Do you have too many reciprocated links or descriptions and titles the same? This can also cause a problem.
Thanks so much, Nichebot was EXACTLY what I was looking for! I am deeply sandboxed!
Hey, Clean, what about this for a thought on what could have caused your pages to go Supplemental:
I know Google has been punishing people for ROS (Run OF Site) links.
With ROS links, you buy links through a link broker who places them on say 20 pages of one web site, so you have the exact same link pointing to your site from 20 pages of a web site.
Google views this as a spam link, and an obvious paid link, and punishes you accordingly.
I am thinking that maybe hmmmm.... just maybe....could Google have tricked itself into thinking you were doing ROS linking, not noticing/ignoring that the links all came from your own site and not from a paid link farm?
Google has done stranger errors before, and certainly a lot of them the past month.
