Forum Moderators: Robert Charlton & goodroi
Hi all,
We have discussed this many times on other threads, but this effect in various forms is still ongoing and I believe we are seeing far more of it than we used to – the yo yo effect, i.e in and out of a prime search keyword terms for a site that’s on topic 100% relevant.
My Overview
I’m of the conclusion that with so many filters at G now in play, either a good site gets caught up in a filter because it’s suspected of being over optimized? Or it has too many anchor backlinks on target or some other reason and gets knocked back when all of the filters have finished kicking in.
The recent algo changes also make the situation worse because G tinker with yet more filters and they now struggle to identify what’s quality from spam. Some of the new filters could now be working against quality as are they could be weakening previous filters/adjustments that were more effective at defining quality from junk.
The net result of this is that it’s probably good for adwords and helps force good websites into buying more traffic from them because the site has no stability what so ever for its primary keywords.
However the down side is that they G lose relevancy as a result. Why use Google at all if the serps are only good for adwords clicks? Meanwhile bing and yahoo don’t have these issues, so the user gets what they expect elsewhere but not from G, and G only maintain market share out of old customer habit - new users coming in, could switch to bing for example because its becoming more relevant than G?
Let’s take a real life example
Bluewidgetstoday.co.uk is a site about Blue Widgets and is a few years old, over the time it’s attracted a good helping of links some authority, some junk that it can’t avoid and it’s without doubt packed full of information on blue widgets. It’s a great site and of significant benefit to users.
The site sits in both Bing and Yahoo for the term “Blue Widgets” – it’s two in Bing and three in yahoo.
On Google it either doesn’t rank anywhere for the term “Blue widgets” or it yoyos in and out. Yesterday it was 6 for the term, today its 191 for the term. Next week it could 60, 30, 18, back to 6 or 7. Other related terms are not an issue. Its name itself “blue widgets toady” ranks, it ranks for loads of other terms just not its key primary two word search term“
Now as I see it’s the sites either relevant to that term or it isn’t.
The site clearly should be listed, heck it should be 1 or 2, it certainly should rank above junk that is listed in G’s top 10 that G thinks is quality- This is where both bing and yahoo prove they have more relevance.
Reasons for this Yo-Yo effect
The site has a number of links from review directory sites like Yahoo, joeant etc so that in my mind used to be an indication sign to Google that a site was less likely to be spam?. Let’s say this was perhaps a signal that was used in the algo?. Let’s call this old Filter (A)
If in this example G say, put in a new filter to lower values of links from directory sites, perhaps gave more value to on topic sites, more than likely (in other words weakened off topic links) another filter, let’s call this filter (B) - the ramifications of this could be to reduce the power of filter (A).
What I’m saying is in laymen’s terms, that by constantly adding more filters to tweak results, G has the reverse effect on their serps of making them less relevant. Hence why webmasters think the serps are now less relevant than they were previously – that’s because currently they are!
The original filter (A) which helped improve quality is now weakened to such an extent that the junk slips in whilst the quality get filtered out.
Obviously G has a lot more filters of various types running but it’s this kind of problem that I believe G now face and the recent algo twist has I believe made their serps worse.
It’s a bit like making the perfect curry, you add a few great tasting ingredients, you perfect it some more, add some more spice, salt, pepper etc. Eventually you get the best curry possible. Then someone new wants to try and improve it further but cant, they add yet more ingredients, more spices and as they continue to do so the worse it tastes Eventually they end up with one great mess that no one wants to eat.
I think G has moved from displaying quality results, to displaying OK results, to now being right on the edge between OK and in some cases unusable serps?
The yo-yo effect is either the result of a combination of filters new and old shifting a sites position that are not working together well, some kind of traffic steaming issue to push more sites into adwords thats gone wrong, or some other reason.
Im on the side of two many filters introduced i think - i feel they are constantly adjusting something that doesnt need to be messed with as much as they do and these are the side effects of what they are doing.
Rich
[edited by: Robert_Charlton at 7:29 am (utc) on July 8, 2009]
For our site we yo-yo between the 2nd and 6th page for just one key phrase, the main one for the site. However, our long tail phrases, which account for 95% of our traffic, and conversions, are very solid and better than ever. We have experienced this effect without making any content changes to the home page.
Perhaps its a semantic tipping point with the algo; is this site about “widgets”, or “widget reviews”, the difference as far as Google is concerned may be increasingly significant, and difficult to set algorithmically thus the drastic movement of placement in the results. (its a thought)
Maybe your site is about widgets, but there are other sites that focus more of their content on just widgets, where yours is more diverse. That’s where the confusion may come in; content rich quality sites (in many ways superior to what’s above them) may get more traffic from the sum of diverse phrases searched, as opposed to that one main term.
The “yo-yo’ing” for us is frustrating but ranking high for that one trophy keyword is more pride, and a selling point than anything else. It accounts for less than 1% of total daily visitors. We have not experienced any “traffic throttling”, nor do we feel we have undergone any “link devaluation”; we simply jump back and forth for that one main key word.
Are users begging for predictable, stable results? Is stability for stability's sake better than constantly striving (successfully or not) for improvement?
The amount of Google searches Joe surfer does just to get to sites he knows quite well, or to tell a friend how to get to a site, ("just Google such and such, it's right there") is huge. Return visitations to sites by conducting a Google search stems from lots of factors like forgetfulness, failure to book mark or just plain laziness. Its easier to type in a company name in the Google search box than properly entering a domain.
Quality results are completely subjective and even more so when it comes to the opinions of folks who hang around here; we all have such an innate investment in where our sites rank that our opinions are too suspect. But, this jumping around IMHO is a serious problem for Google; its going to prove frustrating for the average user at some point in time.
But, this jumping around IMHO is a serious problem for Google; its going to prove frustrating for the average user at some point in time.
Most webmasters I speak with have not noticed anything about yo-yo rankings - and not even many who promote their SEO services know what we're discussing here. I certainly have not heard any observations from a non-webmaster regular user.
If it's "going to cause problems" it certainly isn't near theat point presently.
..The site sits in both Bing and Yahoo for the term “Blue Widgets” – it’s two in Bing and three in yahoo.On Google it either doesn’t rank anywhere for the term “Blue widgets” or it yoyos in and out. Yesterday it was 6 for the term, today its 191 for the term. Next week it could 60, 30, 18, back to 6 or 7....
That is almost exactly what is happening on a couple of our sites. The worst part is, many - or even most - of the sites that come up ahead of us on the "down yo-yo" days are almost pure spam/adfarm sites. Yet we have other sites or pages that have been in the same spot for literally years.
Overall in the past few months Google search results have gotten much worse for relevance for quite a few of the less popular, or niche terms. For what I would call 2nd tier and below searches, I have seen as many as 7 adfarm sites on the first page.
Whether due to filtering or aliens, it is definately happening at times. Could it be due to Google giving new pages too much of a boost?
[edited by: Wlauzon at 6:12 pm (utc) on July 8, 2009]
It's probably the most talked about discussion and it's been going on for over a year.
[webmasterworld.com...]
[webmasterworld.com...]
Funny thing is that we are the same group of people who are noticing this once again.
I'm trying Bing out and although the top few pages of Google results seem to be fresher (and Google has better advanced search options), the top few pages of Bing results are more stable and include more established sites.
It has nothing to do with Adwords...
The reasons it happens are various and somewhat ever-changing.
Again, they DO NOT MATTER
(if you actually want to test and watch SERPS 24 hours a day for a few months to understand the basic "whys", then go for it.
It was easier to do when I was doing it, than nowadays, as much more has been added into the algo everflux)
The SOLUTIONS are much easier.
Change your link profile (in Goog's eyes).
It's frustrating that people are still struggling with this, when the solution was given a year ago.
It may involve "thinking outside the box" on what I mean by:
"Get better links"
"Change your link profile."
But that IS the answer
Again, knowing exactly WHY the yo-yo happens doesn't really help or hinder one's escape from it.
It's frustrating that people are still struggling with this, when the solution was given a year ago.
It's heartening to see you feeling for these folks , but I think that they may be stuggling with a myriad of scenarios which are not clear cut for them.
I mean , do you alter the link profile and dive deeper from this , do you send a reinclusion request and get dinged for something else you didn't know about. There are just so many questions about this that i think are not giving conclusive answers , although to some particular persons with conclusive experinces they may have something positive. But i haven't seen a lot of folks making this claim.
For my reading of the situation i would describe it as a penalty , albeit there are some semantics around the term which differ for some. Call it a filter , a semi penalty , whatever ....
Google is good at throwing up a wall of mystery , and plays the game well. My take is that we need more data points and we can only hope , some clarification from Google.
Still, I really can't understand from a human logic point of view why results would be programmed to fluctuate at these different levels. It's like half hanging someone you're trying to teach a good lesson to. [ forgive the macabre pun .... no offence meant ].
It's not "intentional" from Goog's standpoint to have sites yo-yo-ing, but it is a natural side effect. (which can seem intentional)
It's basic physics.
Any two objects (or MORE) in motion will naturally form a cyclical pattern/oscillate (the YO-YO).
reinclusion request
My personal belief is that one should never send a reinclusion request.
(Again, my PERSONAL belief)
but then again, I have Google clowns looking over our websites every other week or so anyways for my most competitive industries.
IF i THOUGHT it was a "penalty" (which it isn't)
and
i KNEW what i did wrong and fixed it, then i would file a RR.
BUT....
It's not a penalty
and
you haven't done anything "wrong" per se.
...except not getting yourself out of the 2 (or more) filters that are causing your site to OSCILLATE (yo-yo) between them.
---------------------
In all honesty and seriousness, I would suggest doing whatever "meditating" or "dream work or "right brain" activity that's going to give your subconscious mind a chance to have the "Eureka!" moment to find the answer.
It's right there in front of everyone (and strongly hinted at in most of my posts over the past year)
It's right there in the update AS WE SPEAK.
It was in the last big update, that I detailed WAY MORE THAN I SHOULD HAVE.
It's in the original yo-yo thread.
Up and down on the first page is different than on-and-off the first page. "Used to be first page" but now yo-yoing between deeper pages? That's different from a deep yo-yo that never ranked well. And a predictable, very short period yo-yo is not the same as a random period yo-yo that extends over days or weeks.
I agree that the backlink profile is critical almost all of the time. But what, exactly, you do about that profile may vary in each case. The key is in knowing your site and your backlinks very well - it takes solid analysis and clear thinking. In some cases, just one or two backlinks from a strong authority website can make all the difference. In other cases, I've seen such new backlinks actually throw the url into a yo-yo, often because the conscious manipulation was too obvious and heavy-handed. A light touch can go a long way,
One suggestion for the short period yo-yo: watch to see which data centers are involved in the live results. Use the Firefox add-on called "ShowIP".
-----
For those who haven't had recent experience with it, the current name is a "reconsideration request". It has not been called a "reinclusion request" for quite a while. This semantic difference reflects something important - your site can be presently included in the index and still have its ranking reconsidered.
If the rankings for your website are "accidentally" affected by some shift in Google's algo, then a reconsideration request can result in a fix after you send a detailed report of the symptoms. I've seen it happen.
