Forum Moderators: Robert Charlton & goodroi
However, we have one site that is still #1 for the two main keywords.
I have looked at various theories, to no avail so far.
Here's another ---
Do any of you have badly affected sites in which the home page has AdSense with pictures right above the AdSense banner?
I have four pix semi-aligned above the three- or four-text AdSense listings.
Google actually wrote me an email a while back saying this was okay as long as the pictures were not intended to mislead visitors, just to "draw the eye" to the AdSense area.
BUT, the site I have that's not affected by the 27 June screwup does NOT have these pix above the AdSense area.
Yes, another screwy theory --- anyone else think this might be a problem?
First, of those who have lost say 75% of traffic, does the remaining 25% from google come from good positions and competative keywords? Or are they for more obscure keyword combinations? And of those remaining pages that are getting traffic to you, how are their positions in the serps?
Second question is along the lines of what soapystar said. Do you tinker with your site often after changes in your serps positioning?
I offer no theories or conclusions to the 27th, I am just curious as one site of mine is like a rollercoaster in google, up and down BUT a certain amount of pages consistantly do well, and always have.
I don't tinker with the site only adding more content, well I was till it dropped right now I'm working on another site and hoping like most in 2 weeks we see the traffic return LOL! OK I know we can dream
could these data refreshes actually be updating this part of the algo....hitting keywords only when google decides you fall below its threshold for that term?..could exaplin search by search drops rather than site wide drops..i know for some they have been hit site wide..but id like to know how many terms they come up for..the broader the terms you show for the more it will appear as a page by page drop rather than site wide..
some of the terms although they rank #1 dont bring big traffic. one eg is celeb name 1 - 10 of about 15,800,000. it has been for 18 months though little traffic.
plus for this particular site i talk of it has 1300 pages and they are seo'd in groups, eg 100 one way, 150 another etc as i tried various combinations of different things. some pages simply work while others dont even when seo'd the same way. believe it or not some with no IBL's rank well while others that have don't.
Too much brain power needed too work it out.......for me anyway :-)
[edited by: djmick200 at 1:28 pm (utc) on July 10, 2006]
Soapystar - The only problem with some of the theories that they are targetting certain pages etc perhaps using click counting is that a lot of the effected sites have a common theme that the homepage is not top on a site:domain.com search.
Whatever the downranking/refresh that occured on June 27th it seems to be heavily linked to how the homepage performs in a site:domain.com search
Now this bug on the homepage not being first on a site:domain.com check is not new and was first noticable in November time (before that all site:domain.com checks appeared to be random) when sites with Canonical url problems never seemed to have the site:domain.com check in the top position.
MC stated after Big Daddy roll out that G would be doing work on Canonicalization (sp?) - is the June 27th update the first side effect of twisting and turning knobs.
Also around the 27th there was a PR export which was quickly rolled back - however what I did not notice until afterwards is that there was a change in PR calculation as far as Canonilization rules are concerned (Possibly on the 27th?)
Eg. I can see a site that has PR6 on domain.com on some DCs but PR0 on others while PR6 accross the board on www.domain.com - unfortunately I dont know which way this is going eg - if things are moving to PR6 on the non-www to match the www or moving towards the PR0 (IE if Google is starting to Canonicalize correctly for the site or if the site is just getting split)
Now anyone with any knowledge can tell that G are still not correctly Canonicalizing on a consistent basis - so perhaps MC comments of another data refresh refer to more work on this coming soon?
[edited by: Dayo_UK at 1:29 pm (utc) on July 10, 2006]
right...we're doing a lot of cross-talking (note the play on words :))
different issues have the same symptoms making it all the more confusing..and hey..that may actually be a designed element!
And no it's not a new problem - our site had this until the 27th, and now it is clear again. My interest is that it stays that way.
But the problem is affecting more people than before. Note the size of this thread.
And whilst it could be a bug, it might not go away.
All the personal sites that I looked at were personal sites that made money, so they are business sites really.
I have seen some sites go the other way - eg site:domain.com shows homepage top and rankings are a bit better (although not had an updated crawl/index to really judge) - and even more sites are position correctly for a site:domain.com search on the 72.14.207.* DCs.
However, obv G have a problem that a fix for some sites seems to result in a bug for others.
really don't think anyone can answer that
Well GG or MC or even Adam probably could - but they wont.
[edited by: Dayo_UK at 2:17 pm (utc) on July 10, 2006]
what exactly does this guy do again?
>>> It's like the sandbox in reverse! I thought Google respected old sites to some extent ...
One of my theories is that pre June 27, google has been giving weight to sites that were older and had climed through the ranks through popularity. On the 27th they removed this favoritism to see if the sites could climb back through the ranks by popular favor as if new. However, this doesn't explain the site:www.mysite.com issue.
>>> The index not appearing first in the site:www.mysite.com is a sign of a penalty ...
Perhaps under normal circumstances, but it appears in this "refresh" that so many good, clean, white hat sites were affected that it tends to make me think that's not the case.
I did notice something very interesting in my site:www.mysite.com listings, right after the 27th they were showing an unbelievable number of pages, which could only have occurred if they had included deleted, orphan file and noindex pages in their listings. Now, almost two weeks later they are showing a much reduced number which is representative of what their count should be.
>>> A combination theory?
Maybe they thought it was time to scrutinize older sites, as to wether or not they needed to be cleaned up or if their old files are inflating the google storage space, and/or if they can still pass the mustard when put to the test with visitors.
by that i mean the sandbox is an observed affect that doesnt actually exsist as a coded target...
so google will say there is no sandbox..whilst agreement is that it exists in reality because of its predictable effect...
LP :(
If this was the case my site would have zoomed in rankings because in the last 6 months there has been an abundance of powerful Wiki, .org, .edu sites, Opensource, Linux and many others linking (over 60) to inner pages including sites in several other countries but it tanked for a lot of words for the first time in almost 8 years.
My feeling/theory is that this huge spam network simultaneously entered the SERPS on June 27 and had a large effect. Obviously this network has very deep pockets and resources to implement such an attack and is a danger to all of us. The site has been removed. Google has delivered in the past and they will again the historical and deserved rankings for sites. We should all just be patient and I am confident that things will return to normal soon.
Thank you very much!
I hope you are getting a lot of money, otherwise this will have only proven that Google should never talk to the public.
[mattcutts.com...]
