Forum Moderators: Robert Charlton & goodroi
I've wondered too as to why some search terms are affected more than others and some result pages are changing around while other barely move.
Has anyone seen any relationship between how popular a search the term is and how much movement is going on?
As to when it will end I don't think we can predict as nothing quite like this has gone on before.
[edited by: tedster at 2:48 am (utc) on June 1, 2008]
I’m seeing some dramatic across the board cuts for returned results for many keywords in my areas. Many keywords that once returned 850-950 results are now showing only 600-725 returned results. First page though is showing about the same amount of returned results as before which is somewhat deceptive. I had a feeling this was right around the corner. They’re applying more and more of the quality control features of Adwords to the natural results.
Has anybody seen where cache dates may be 1-3 months old but the page showing in the cache is current? This is taking into account that the new cache date could show up shortly but doesn't.
[webmasterworld.com...]
and here :
Of much greater concern are results for "City-name" Traffic on global search on regional TLD's , probably effected by the users IP as discussed over here :[webmasterworld.com...]
It's another one of those regional issues that is disruptive - so I'd take all the regional issues and put them into one pot of disruption for webmasters.
but now I'm seeing some real tough algorithimic and selective human editorial adjustments.
I suspect this is no glitch - it's a forerunner to a big attack on quality control. The rollercoaster part may just be the experiment required before a major rollout on US [ .com ] geo related sites [ my hunch ].
We have just seen one of our UK sites disappear competely in the last few days. This is a stable site of some 5 years old. But our friends in other positions have remained in the same position . So why us ?
We are concerned that stronger SEO practices used in the last few weeks, could have caused sites to be flagged for selective human review or an algo driven "trigger " . So they may have reached a tipping point. This concern is that with the use of geo filtering , "flagging" and human editorial intervention the ability for Google to QA sites has now been made more easy for G.
So things that may have been recently done, may also have pushed the boundaries of G's tolerance at a crtitical time of this new GEO related adjustment.
The BIG thing I do want to emphasise ..... and I haven't seen anyone react to it, and there should be a BIG reaction is, with GEO filtering Webmasters are not going to be easily able to see what a user is seeing in a different IP / locations so easily, making it harder to manage SEO.
I'll try to make it clearer. How do you know what result a user in New York is seeing versus a user in Stockholm on the different regions global result filter - you don't !
so how are you going to manage you regional global results deployment SEO ?
With Google's new GEO filtering tools for webmasters ?
You can't.
Google says it is introducing new tools for webmasters to help you manage it.
Where in the World is your site ? [googlewebmastercentral.blogspot.com]
But G's recently introduced GEO filtering management tools at Webmaster Tools are really too inadequate and premature to release ; they are too limiting to the regions you can deploy and manage in and therefore show signs of being severely disruptive to what is required to effectively manage GEO targetted results, by limiting the regions a site can be deployed in. I think this is a big G mistake.
My overall sense is that it will be some time before G gets GEO filtering right, and in the meantime there are going to be many disrupted webmasters and site owners.
My personal view is that G is about to severely mis handle the GEO location rollout adjustments i suspected that it would, and the the UK is just the experiment.
Hold onto your hats [ black and white ] everyone. This wind may run cold.
[edited by: Whitey at 2:50 am (utc) on June 1, 2008]
So the Webmaster tools advice of:
How can I improve my site's ranking?
In general, webmasters can improve the rank of their sites by increasing the number of high-quality sites that link to their pages.
Since it is generally agreed that being linked to (except in certain extreme situations) cannot harm your site should we all be paying someone $200 to get 400 links from dodgy directories?
Cheers
Sid
Having spent a few hundred dollars on the so called quality directories and been lucky enough to persuade a few on topic sites to link to me from their home page coupled with a few tweaks to my main site and I've gone from shuffling in the #11 to #7 area to #1 on half the DCs and #2 on the rest for our most competitive target term.
So even in the new algo doing more whitehat stuff can get you above sites that have grubby caps. Not exactly black, some would say not even grey just grubby. I'm even spotting companies and organisation that have excellent and very ethical off-line reputations using very dodgy online tactics. What is the World coming to?
Cheers
Sid
Google is too open for garbage sites with BH tactics and too rude with quality content that makes rthe Internet interesting. Simply wish, that there would be quality related directories for all important keywords ruling the market.
Anybody else seeing this in there area.
Looks just the same as yesterday here.
Cheers
Sid
I’m seeing some dramatic across the board cuts for returned results for many keywords in my areas. Many keywords that once returned 850-950 results are now showing only 600-725 returned results. First page though is showing about the same amount of returned results as before which is somewhat deceptive. I had a feeling this was right around the corner. They’re applying more and more of the quality control features of Adwords to the natural results.
This is the second time in as many days I've seen mention of applying ... the quality control features of Adwords to the natural results. I did a search here and didn't find anything, can someone please elaborate on this...
What you are describing happened to me during the Florida faff. I had no outlinks only backlinks. So I guess Google saw my site as a destination at the edge of the Universe.
I'm not saying this is your problem but thought I'd mention it in case it triggers you to look at your site from this point of view.
Cheers
Sid
quality control features of Adwords
Google's phrasing is "Quality Score" - often called "QS". Use either in a site search and you'll get lots of results.
I use Google webmaster tools and everything seems fine in there, no problems whatsoever. I also use Google analytics which is how I noticed my traffic going to zero, it's like it fell off a cliff when viewing the chart.
It sucks so bad to lose that traffic because it had such a high conversion rate... Why Google... why!
[edited by: SEOPTI at 8:33 pm (utc) on June 4, 2008]
I've now seen two occurrences where one website has taken the #1 and #2 SERPS with the EXACT same website. #2 was the same website as #1 but with a non-existent query at the end of the URL. The caches were taken at different times in the day so there is a tiny difference in that.
[edited by: tedster at 10:43 pm (utc) on June 4, 2008]
I've also seen some examples of that this week - as if the duplicate filter has gone missing. Maybe lots of people are trying to knock out the competition with spurious query string urls and Google's been flooded. In one case, the query string version wasn't even clustered - it appeared at #3 and the regular url was at #1
[edited by: tedster at 4:45 am (utc) on June 5, 2008]
Sites which have never been hit before have been moved at the end of results. I don't talk about URLs, but complete sites. This is really really strange ...
[edited by: SEOPTI at 1:44 am (utc) on June 5, 2008]
Maybe lots of people are trying to knock out the competition with spurious query string urls and Google's been flooded.
Yeah I'm definitely seeing these in my logs (just lately) and they're lengthy. Again I don't know quite what they're trying to accomplish unless its exactly what you mention.
[edited by: Pico_Train at 6:12 am (utc) on June 5, 2008]
Surely it would be better to just ignore anything bad and only weight sites on good factors.
Cheers
Sid
Two examples currently in the UK are the top-2 results for searchs of 'andy murray' and 'rafael nadal'. Both #1 and #2 go to the exact same page and it's been like that for a few days now which is frankly shocking.
The forum doesn't allow specific searches but I was lucky enough to see yours before it got snipped. The reason you are seeing the same at #1 and #2 is because they gave Andy site links.
The Spanish tennis player search you suggested does not have #1 and #2 the same, at #2 is a Wiki page for Mr Nadal.
There is IMO something definitely wrong with the way that sitelinks are generated by the UK geo filter. I have a site at #1 for the generic (in our niche) 2 word term which has sitelinks. It is definitely not the authority site for the term, it is more like an arbitrage site.
I wish Google would make some efforts to sort out some of their UK geo filter bugs.
Cheers
Sid
[edited by: tedster at 1:52 am (utc) on Aug. 7, 2008]
