Forum Moderators: Robert Charlton & goodroi
Something is up. We monitor google.de very closely and the SERP's have remained very static for a couple of weeks now. No jumping around of sites as we have seen over the past months with the exception of a few sites that should not be ranked as highly as they are. Last time I saw this there was a big shake up. Lets hope for the best results ; )
[edited by: tedster at 5:39 am (utc) on May 1, 2009]
I posted an explanation of what's going on with my sites, yesterday, you can find a page or two back. Anyway, what about sites that didn't get a -50 but moved let's say from #2 to #12, #6 to #25, and showing interior content pages outranking my homepage more? This doesn't fit the -50 but it's happened to a couple of my sites starting May 11th. ....I am still seeing a lot of fluctuation. I would like to hear your thoughts, let me know if you need more details. Thanks!
[edited by: Robert_Charlton at 1:57 am (utc) on May 21, 2009]
[edit reason] removed specifics [/edit]
Makes sense. Let's see how it all goes.
interior content pages outranking my homepage
At least a few sites are reporting this pattern too right now - apparently a separate issue from the p4-6 penalty.
I like this theory but it doesn't make sense that the -50 is a 'safeguard'. If legitimate businesses were affected, and losing big money, these sites would likely start damage control and cleaning up their link profiles. This would, according to your theory, signal Google that these were 'spammy' sites and the vicious circle continues.
If Google expected collateral damage and conceded this when the penalties began, it's their responsibility and should compensate the legitimate sites that were penalized, like that would ever happen :)
But the reality is this is costing e-commerce sites big bucks and the 'silence' concerning this penalty is very disturbing. As Tedster said, the SERP's look like relatively low churn so this could be an experiment and possibly a way to publicly call attention to unnatural link building.
Sites can and do comeback, Google is very lenient, unlike Y!. I had one site come back now after 2 years by doing nothing.
Yahoo is the worst, I have my most whitewhat site banned for something I did before 2000 and no amount of emails help!
interior content pages outranking my homepage
Classical sign of a penalty. Once upon a time we thought it was a google bug over site.com?links but it's by design, they remove all the "juice" from your index page
But the reality is this is costing e-commerce sites big bucks and the 'silence' concerning this penalty is very disturbing.
For every site that is hurting, there is one celebrating.
Have you considered the possibility that it's a "read these similar articles" type of automatic internal linking that may be causing some of the fluctuation? It's possible that as you write more articles the links on each page keep changing.
May be it is sign for Google Updates / penalty..
The sites that were providing mediocre content are still on page 5.
I think that Google was cleaning out spam sites and there was some short-lived collateral damage. I'd expect any other authority sites to return soon.
just that your posts in the Monthly thread are mostly confined to the major events
Indeed. ;)
Nice observation, but I'm still not sure yet.
What do you think Shaddows?
Is this major or not?
If you say "not", then i can go enjoy the extended weekend. :)
The current moment is seeing a select slice of penalties - some were handed out to big budget sites, definitely, but it's not a major flood by any means. Overall, the SERPs are still remarkable free of churn.
Tedster
- Are these Big budget sites selling or buying?
- What else do they have in common?
- Would they fall under my "ghost dataset"
(trademark still pending =p) definition in terms of authority and/or seeding relevance?
Did I mention there's a US holiday coming up? (hint, hint)
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Just for the record, for those who want to speculate with more data.
My competitor that's currently experiencing "anomalies" is
- big budget link buyer
- beyond historically authoritative (ie household brand)
- gets preferential "hand-picked" treatment for hypercompetitive keywords.
- Are these Big budget sites selling or buying?
- What else do they have in common?
- Would they fall under my "ghost dataset"
1. Buying, and definitely not selling, dofollow links -- or in some cases, they are only "apparently" buying.
2. No easy answers on other common factors, they are all very different markets. Some are services, others are hardgoods. Some are B2B and others B2C. Some are big Adwords clients (as high as 8 figures annually) but not others. Some use Adsense, not others. Some are online sales, others are lead generation. Some spend millions in offline marketing, too. However, all are in online markets where link buying at some level has seemed to be a survival need.
3. The domains have historically seemed to be whitelisted for trust. Most were a long time at #1 for many generic query terms, even single words. Right now, for the search [example.com] they are still showing at number one, but down to page 4-6 for the [example] search without the TLD. The domain names also show as a navigational link in Google Suggest.
In most cases these businesses are one of, if not THE top brand in their market. You can be sure these ranking demotions are costing them a lot of money.
However, all are in online markets where link buying at some level has seemed to be a survival need.
This is what leads to me to believe this is a bug/test/fluke (lol hopefully we avoid the usual semantics argument when I use words like these)
Since our data seems to line up, let's look at some obvious corporate "no-no's" that would imply intentionality.
1. Trusted name-brands
Google likes when their customers can find those trusted names at the top of the SERPs
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2. In markets that are already known for link-buying as survival-based actions.
Again, G knows these markets very well and it also knows it could put the first 15-20 results into "penalty-land" as they all buy links to some degree.
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3. Major adwords buyers.
As you mentioned, spending 10s of millions of $$$ a year supporting G's only profit-making venture usually gets G to look the other way, or at least, reconsider their latest engineer's "test algo".
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4. Traditional SERP #1's or at least top 5.
Similar to above points. Why intentionally pick on these sites? Especially where in the past, G went out of their way to promote said sites.
Seems odd, doesn't it?
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5. Addedum to 3. It may take a minute, but as these companies contact their personal Adwords "account managers", the word will spread UP to "central command" and then back DOWN to the "other half" of G that doesn't give "preferential treatment"... also known as the Algo team.
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IF this continues past 7 days, then I can tell you exactly what's happening and why it STILL is not a reason to panic. (for most people, that is)
Although i can assure you that all the "gurus" will have blogged about why you "should panic" by then...(or, sigh, moved those threads to their "hot topics" discussions)
Google shows different results for my keyword in the Internet Explorer and Firefox!
For example, on google.de on the Internet Explorer I'm on first page rank five but on Firefox my page shows up on sixth page rank five. Crazy
The rank also often changes between the first and second search.
I have some of my site product sub-pages that were #1 completely disappear from the SERPS. I can find them by doing a search for page URL, but can't find them using the keyphrase - not in the top 600 anyway. Also, doing a search for a portion of a unique text fromt he page returns nothing.
And other similar pages from the same website are doing just fine, like they used to.
Also, doing a search for the keywphrases in google.de still shows these page right where they belong.
So don't panic, i think some major index shuffle is going on.
but searching for a unique portion of text from it returns nothing.
and the ranks are still about the same in google.de
also, people on other SE forums report the same thing - sites/pages started disappearing about a week ago and they are slowly getting back in now.
i think it's just some kind of algorithm screw up
[edited by: Jessica at 4:44 pm (utc) on May 23, 2009]
If this goes on, do you think a reconsideration request would only make things worse or not?
Damn it really hurts when big G isn't sending visitors to your site...
My conclusion either glitch or penalty, though I do not see what could have I done to earn penalty
[edited by: SEOPTI at 1:25 am (utc) on May 24, 2009]
I mean it would be impossible for all of these people (on this board who reported problems) to make same mistakes with their websites (in different niches) and get this penalty .... all at the same time. It has to be something else.
What is happening this month also happened in the month of May last year.
Unfortunately the -50 is not a glitch, I was hit last year by this nonsense and it was real for sure. Not a single -50 domain returned back.
[edited by: Whitey at 12:22 am (utc) on May 25, 2009]
i think waiting is not a solution to stop downstream trend for rankings.
Now Google.com rankings also changing to my website.
