Forum Moderators: Robert Charlton & goodroi
Once again this was a site previously proxy hijacked months ago and quite heavily copied.
I've counted at least 7 major pages that are totally our of the index.
Even sil.y directory listings or forum posts would rank above the site itself for a search like domain name + widget. And that's only on Google.com
I looked into it even more and found out that the same was happening to a couple of competitors. Even worst as 1 of them have their homepage that is not cached.
It's like Google that keep on hitting and hitting again websites that were already victims of scrappers and hijackers. Just like if it was not sufficient to have our copies infringed and Google not being able to recognize the real author.
Really disconcerting. and only on Google.com.
I start wondering if I should ask for re-inclusion. That would totally su.k as I will have to admit we did something wrong and that's not the truth.
I have the feeling that some people have found ways to manipulate Google weaknesses somehow.
---
[edited by: tedster at 5:13 pm (utc) on Oct. 17, 2007]
I still see several sites doing very well with Stat counter link spam
I also wonder how difficult it is to filter website with backlinks on homepage footers. As I see it, those too are doing perfectly well on google.com and do better for a few weeks again.
Again, how difficult is it to filter based on obvious offtheme incoming and outgoing links?
For example, how can 10 links from pharmacy sites help ranking a software site? How can this software site be taken seriously be providing a link from its homepage to a pet store?
If this is just a storm then it's pretty bad and runs for over a month now. It seems to be exclusive to Google.com though I can't be sure.
On some other TLD's I've seen serious spammers coming back from where they used to have been penalized and totally rank like if they were the wikipedia!
Apparently there are also more complaints about pages that just disapear from Google without obvious reasons (including some of ours).
Dropping pages on sites that try to do a good job, and ranking scrappers, .cn and almost empty pages makes no sense to me.
for the past few weeks, I spend more time checking if our servers have been hacked, and find nothing - unique formerly valued pages just disapeared! , than managing our affiliates or pay per clik.
I spoke with a couple of competitors that also totally lost some pages, we all receive traffic from coutries where we usually don't sell. We have a general feeling that somebody is playing a bad joke with all these non-sense blogs and super-minor local players whose sites are now ranked for the first time in history.
Sites that rank now for the main industry we are involved in are always blogs, flat paraphrases of major industry news, or foreign or local players that sometimes don't even sell in the US at all.
When I spoke with these other guys the only conclusion I had was based on comon factors...we all had our sites displayed on many scrapers, we all had to deal with more or less serious hijacking situations. It simply doesn't seem like the problem is on end. End consumers will pay the price at the end of the day.
---
I am seeing the same thing this October that I saw last October: The algo for supplemental is turned way up, hence legitimate sites are taking a big traffic hit.
If I remember correctly, all the traffic came back on or about October 20th and it did so in full force.
That is the way it played out for me.
Any of you remember this from last year?
One of my associates made the mistake of submitting his site to a few FFAs and a few foreign link directories.. it has sunk to incredibly low rankings, pretty quickly since all this began.
The competition could do exactly the same, couldn't they?
I honestly don't think that being submitted or listed in a directory is going to get you removed
I'm guessing it's centered around the ratio of "qiuality" links, to obvious junk links...?
.
The competition could do exactly the same, couldn't they?that is indeed one of the huge issues I think. And despites whatever people may think, it is used widely in some industries, at least in ours.
Supplementals may be a problem I agree, there are really many pages gone missing or that aren't cached anymore. For some I understand for other it makes no sense at all, 50/50.
I repeat myself but except if you consider supplementals as some type of filter --- the rest of Google filters look totally missing so is the totally WRONG geo location.
Our most cherished :P website doing great in countries where we "don't sell/have never promoted/have no personel/have probably no links", while sites from those countries do great with their "casino site homepage" backlinks in the US is totally baffling to me. what's the point really?
when querrying datacenters I see almost "normal" results, not great, but looks more like real companies, not fake overseas seo stuff.
So Google does it on purpose for a reason, just that given the results I harly find what the reason could be except forcing on pay per click. After all, it's business. It's just overall disapointing that Google would eventually do that I think.
Market authorities excepted, It looks like a-n-y-t-h-i-n-g can rank for anything whatever the total lack of quality in their content, incoming and outgoing links. and more surprising is how easy they get ranked and stick there with such poor, so poor quality.
I am very surprised that Google hasn't communicated, nor exported their pagerank. Sounds like if they would then they would raise a webmaster revolution that would shake down they stock quotes. My $.2.
Overall though I don’t think Google gives a hoot. As long as they keep the first fifty results within reason they’re going to squeeze every dime they can out of people. They’re money making programs are way to big now to not be influencing the end results.
Market authorities excepted, It looks like a-n-y-t-h-i-n-g can rank for anything whatever the total lack of quality in their content, incoming and outgoing links. and more surprising is how easy they get ranked and stick there with such poor, so poor quality.
I would disagree, and because you see this in your sector does not mean that *many* other sectors show the same results.
In 5 of the 6 sectors I watch, highly linked to websites are winning. I have not gone through to analyze the links they have. And sure there is also the usual crap site or two listed.
In 5 of the 6 sectors I watch, highly linked to websites are winning.
Ditto for me, and I have probably 18, 19
that I watch daily. Highly linked-to sites
have climbed up several slots.
.
Ditto for me, and I have probably 18, 19
that I watch daily. Highly linked-to sites
have climbed up several slots.
Just curious. Are we talking domains selling things or Adsense sites here?
10-15 minutes ago (6:05 PM Friday 19th) my site came back to where it used to be but since it always goes up and down I don't know how long it'll last.
We had 2 1/2 months of this from January to March, in April then Stats collapsed and haven't returned back since then on one server after we had 2 1/2 months record traffic, collapse up down. This when I discovered a spam network was linking to us and a poem site. We also gathered many organic IBLs. In fact we have now as many as never before.
It was like we were at the border of something. The site is 10 years old and linked from Unis, governmental institutions, some german ministries for research and environment, schools. Weird.
I remember at the time someone else was posting they had the same, rollercoaster of wild traffic behaviour. A similar server, same programs, equivalent content, same hardware and software setup, same age but PR -1 and less links and link spam had no rollercoaster. At the time they send us 3/4 of craigslists users .. on something that has ALOT more graphics and videos.
The only positive thing I learned then was to handle massive users on a shoestring budget.
"What Google giveth, Google taketh away"
If you want go down the bible line: :)
Peaceful meadows will be turned into a wasteland by the LORD's fierce anger. He has left his den like a lion seeking its prey, and their land will be made desolate by the sword of the enemy and the LORD's fierce anger. (Jeremiah 25:34-38 NLT)
What I see basically is that quantity of links, related or unrelated, along with a handful of related and some high pagerank links is very effective in the sectors that I watch, regardless of whether it is for products, services or Hadsense :P
[edited by: tedster at 11:45 pm (utc) on Oct. 20, 2007]
have climbed up several slots.
Are we talking domains selling things or Adsense sites here?We're talking eCommerce, service providers, Info. sites & blogs
And the pulse site is showing very heavy movement today, the heaviest in over a month.
Also, after several weeks of deep robot traffic, G-bot has stopped.
I think something is brewing.
Can anyone confirm the same?
Good luck everyone
If you notice that your post has gone missing without notice, that will be the reason. Many of those posts habe now been moved to a thread dedicated to the Adwords/organic SERPs discussion [webmasterworld.com].
[edited by: tedster at 1:12 am (utc) on Oct. 21, 2007]
I've been a member for some years now, and this forum has always been good at spotting Dances.. I'm real convinced this is, as mentioned earlier, "the storm before the calm". I've seen Gbot get very busy for a few days, several of my sites actually increased their rank, then suddenly; no crawls 'tall.
BTW, Tedster, thanks... I was wondering when you'd nip the off-topic banter . :)
I probably have reinstated what I mentioned much earlier in this very long thread: I am not checking on very heavily searched keywords.
I am checking on medium volume queries. This is where, in any industry I perform my test searches, I find that any site can rank for anything whatever its popularity comes from - 10 backlinks from pharmacy homepage sites can rank a marketing site for example.
Since last month all "authority" sites have benefit from additional trust from Google, same as a couple of years ago.
So if you check on high volume type of keywords, I have no doubt that you will find ONLY heavily linked websites.
As long as their backlinks are consistent (which in my opinion should trigger some filter) it doesn't matter anything else, tiny little sites gets above some of the usual market leaders.
Also sites that used to be penalized or filtered for the past two years are back on top, better than ever, whether they stopped what penalized them on not. I see that on most Google TLD's since we have offices in 7 countries.
On google.com specifically I find that a few websites have seen their value go down and are replaced by much less popular sites, often originating from very local/tiny businesses, lots of blogs, blogs that crosslink with 1 of the other sites already ranked (a blog from a corporate site installed on another domain for example) or businesses overseas.
Devalued sites are still doing well on some other Google tld's although they don't sell in countries other than the US and there is no indication in their backlinks that they would do so. This also happens the other way around with for example totally wacked out site "values" between .com/.co.uk/.co.in and other TLD's that all have the english language in common.
In fact, for some sites now doing well on Google.com, according to "inanchor", they would be more relevant to other countries than the US which is really weird.
All websites that went down have done well in the past 2 years or so and have been scrapped a lot. But his may not be related, just a fact.
The inanchor query still shows approx. logical results so it all has to do with some additional tweak based on...something!:)that Google did back a few weeks ago.
Note that I test only 50 keywords, but that's what I find consistently on medium volume searches and I am not even talking about the blog thing and companies that have multiple sites + subdomains that take up to 20% of the top 20 at times.
I certainly wasn't talking about the quality of content.
What I was mentioning was that in the sectors I watch, links are winning the game. And you are spot on, it currently doesn't seem to matter where the link comes from, as long as it has the right link anchor text. Let's hope this is something Google can deal with because of course it opens up a whole lot of issues and allows spam to enter the results.
GEEEESSSSSHHHHhhhh.....
[edited by: engine at 5:33 pm (utc) on Oct. 23, 2007]
[edit reason] specifics [/edit]
Let's keep discussion of PR in its own thread:
[webmasterworld.com...]
and let this thread focus on the SERPs, thanks.
Did this actually affect search results for anyone, or is it just a toolbar thing?
I'm seeing PR go down on 2 of my sites, with absolutely no change in SERP ranking...
FWIW
.
