Forum Moderators: Robert Charlton & goodroi
As our intrepid heros left Oct. and entered Nov. they had just weathered a seige of Chinese domains into the rankings, Google's PageRank Massacre and the first signs of the annual Pre-holiday Sales Algorithm Change (a festive Google tradition)...
Chapter 11 - Holiday Hell or Heaven Sent?
Hee hee. Obviously I am having some fun starting the November thread. But seriously, this SEO is seeing some long-ranking web pages erode in the rankings. They're acting like icebergs. After a long time in good positions they have broken off of the glacier and are slowly drifting south. These are not stagnant websites sitting on their laurels either. The big concern is that doing the 'correct' relevant things do not seem to help.
Many of the replacements are soaking in a bath of external paid link-equity. One website I am watching appeared on the first page for a major two-word phrase and rose to #2 last month. The website has a reciprical footer link with a directory that has site-wide footer links to the ranking website using only the two-word keyword as anchor text. The directory has site-wide footers with 3 other directories. All three directories have site-wide footers to the ranking website. Oh, and the cream of the crop...one well known directory has a hidden link to this website. The link is in the markup with no anchor text. Other websites seem to enjoy link equity from lots of TV and radio websites (I wonder why? ;) ). For all of Google's bluster, Mountain View continues to have only sporadic combat success.
Boring business websites, the ones that have a hard time crafting compelling creative linkbait, seem to be the vulnerable to ranking shifts. I still see many verticles where reciprocal links still seem to be the deciding factor for which pages rank where.
Size does matter. The slow encroachment of big box retailers and Amazonian wannabees (you know who you are) continues to creep into the SERPs. Many domains that have spent the last year or two in the 20-40 positions have cracked the first page and are quietly moving up. These sites have lots of original content. Perhaps Brett needs to update the 26 steps to say, "Add 100 pages a day."
Does camouflage work? This makes no sense at all, but I have noticed in some keyword markets that domain names that contain popular domain names as a part of them are ranking. For example the popular well-known domain might be called THISDOMAIN.COM. The lookalike domain name might be THISDOMAINPRODUCTCATEGORY.COM.
Those are my observations. What are you seeing?
[edited by: tedster at 5:14 pm (utc) on Nov. 1, 2007]
I'm still seeing sites that get almost all their links thru counter link spam on top as well and ranking better than ever.
I don't have a clue what google did here. It seems to have no rhyme or reason at all. I'm just hoping its fixed before the holiday shopping season or its gonna suck for me :/
I'm confessing to a little sour grapes cuz I got crushed a few weeks ago (I'm getting like 15-20% of my normal google traffic) and I don't really have a clue why. Some of my content was scraped from me (about 200 pages - since replaced). Some sites that linked to me, I can tell, got devalued. One of my sites got hit, the other stayed the same (or improved).
I'm seeing a huge change in the amount of results returned on these DC's for all of the search terms i follow.
64.233.171.99
64.233.171.104
64.233.171.107
64.233.171.147
72.14.203.107
72.14.253.107
72.14.255.107
209.85.139.107
For some search terms of 4 million results on these Dc's they are showing 400,000.
I'm also seeing a fraction of my true page totals on these Dc's approximately only 10% of my site is indexed :S
Vimes.
Vimes.
Some of my content was scraped from me (about 200 pages - since replaced).
So what - they stole your content, Google punished *you* and now you're rewriting it? I am not sure I understand how it works.
The thing is, I am having a similar problem with scraped content (which was stolen by spamers dozens times over) - suddenly, a few months ago Google just devalued me completely (I don't even rank well for my own content!) and I can't figure out what to do. Is rewriting everything the most sensible alternative? Do you think that'll restore the original positioning in Google - at least to some extent?
Ripped you have a more difficult problem when our content was stolen unfortunately the quickest solution for us to get back in G’s good books was re-writing.
I do believe that Google will eventually sort out the issue programmatically but that could be a long time coming.
Vimes.
The newer content is turning out much better anyways - since we have practice now! - so in the end, it's probably a good thing.
I had to do it in 2005 when stuff was stolen from me too; should've learned my lesson there. Unfortunately, that was a 3 month penalty for me. I hope this one doesn't last that long :/
Ripped or proxy hi-jacked if they are hi-jacked you might be able to defend against them, read this thread:
[webmasterworld.com...]
From my research, it looks like people just manually copied pasted my content. Some of them used spiders, I can tell that because when my writer(s) give me articles, they are done in MS Word which makes unusual characters for ' , and " when converted to a text file - so the spider stops when it hits one of those. Not sure why. But those, I can tell are robotically done.
Others, the text that was taken was in disparate places on the page, so a human almost had to accomplish it.
I can't figure out what to do. Is rewriting everything the most sensible alternative? Do you think that'll restore the original positioning in Google - at least to some extent?
I think just removing the copied stuff is the way to go. Sometimes, if you write it the second time, it comes out a lot better anyways, so I think it'll help out in the long run.
From my research, it looks like people just manually copied pasted my content.
Most people would use spiders I would think. When you post articles make sure you link intuitively to other pages of your website that make sense for the visitor.
I have found that this helps Google to 'understand' that it is likely that the content is yours, although this does not work in all cases.
Most people would use spiders I would think. When you post articles make sure you link intuitively to other pages of your website that make sense for the visitor.
Why would you rewrite your content? If it is yours, file a DMCA notice with Google and the hosting companies hosting the sites which have stolen your content.
yep in a perfect world this works, unfortunately when the server is in a country that 'maybe' isn't as strict with its copy right laws, that just doesn't cut the mustard....
if these guys were in the states thats exactly what i would have done.
Vimes.
I have a fairly new website (about a year old) in a very competitive area with millions of search results. The site has only about 100 pages. PR2. Hardly any backlinks. No link campaigns. No optimization. But it's a single-word dn in .net, e.g., widgets.net. (I bought it in the aftermarket hoping search engines would dig it.)
It's now top 5 in SERPs for a clean search of widgets! (Out of nowhere.)
I can't think of much that would get it that high other than the dn. Having said that it's not entirely unreasonable for Google to estimate some inherent authority in domains which are one word.
(I don't know that the dial has been turned for other domains which have more than one keyword, although I have some early indication it has.)
Anyway, now that I have this free gift from Google, I better go and do something with it. Time to build!
p/g
[66.102.9.104...]
while the new backlink numbers could be seen on most the DCs, including for example:
[72.14.207.104...]
I see pages I haven't got any hits on for about 3 weeks getting hits again.....
Wish they could make up thier mind. Was it just a test for 3-4 weeks?
What boggles me -still- is that I keep getting chinese adsense ads all over my site. Adsense is written in chinese. The ads are in chinese and I'm not sure why.
For the adsense in Chinese, check your character encoding. It should be US-ASCII - and use a lynx browser to check how google sees your website. There is a firefox extension for viewing sites in Lynx - called yellowpipe lynx viewer tool.
Hope this helps,
Tad
My bets were on this past weekend, but nothing happened.
Twoo weeks ago, one of my page ranked in the TOP 5 in Google.
The keyword was "dark blue widget 4". My page contained the latest and most relevant information about the topic. I get lots of traffic, because other competitor sites (in the first 3 places) gave information about only "dark blue widget 3".
I get at least 30-40 links from blogs, other sites etc. also.
One week later my page vanished from SERP. The page is in the Google
index, but do not rank in first 1000.
BUT, some of the blogs who linked to my page are in the TOP 10!
Other sites, who copied my content (or rewrited) also in good position.
And this not for the first time ...
GIANT, multinational sites in this sector always get a good position
on any keyword in a week.
How can I get back my position? Any ideas?
Where is the big November "Holiday" update that we see every year?
Last Thursday of the month if its gunna happen.
Vimes.
