Google Is Working on an Algo Fix - to help wrongly demoted sites

[tedster]

Here's official news that many sites have been waiting to hear. Google fellow Amit Singal is quoted in Wired:

"We deeply care about the people who are generating high-quality content sites, which are the key to a healthy web ecosystem," Singhal said.

"Therefore any time a good site gets a lower ranking or falsely gets caught by our algorithm - and that does happen once in a while even though all of our testing shows this change was very accurate - we make a note of it and go back the next day to work harder to bring it closer to 100 percent."

"That's exactly what we are going to do, and our engineers are working as we speak building a new layer on top of this algorithm to make it even more accurate than it is," Singhal said.

[wired.com...]

[JohnRoy]

manipulate search results for certain people they like which is unfair

It would be unfair (and stupid) if they don't change this 'accurate' algo.

one site has already seen its rankings return - after losing 96% of all traffic last week.

- Google becoming the largest 'human' directory?

[wyweb]

@Freedom

Knowing my luck, the algo tweek will make things even worse for me.

LOL... and that's probably what I'll see too. I'm not getting a lot of breaks these days.

[kd454]

"Knowing my luck, the algo tweek will make things even worse for me."

Yep I can see this coming.

The buddy system seems to trump all from what I am seeing. And everything they tell us seems to all have shades of grey.

[vandread]

I think they should have a place where people can post their sites to that they can be checked and reinstated, something like Webmaster Tools but less complicated and time consuming for the users.

[wyweb]

Google becoming the largest 'human' directory?

They're becoming the biggest player period. And they've become bullies.

after the Texas Attorney General approached the company following complaints over search rankings.

Texas likes to make noise. I lived in the state for 25 years and watched it happen over and over again.

They don't have the guns, the ammunition, the manpower, the knowledge or even the awareness to take on google.

Google's legal staff is first rate. And they're internet versed. Most of Texas can't even tell you how to turn a computer on, much less reference any accurate legal standing. And that attorney generals office is no different.

They're after a big target. That's all. Google will throw paper at them for years though. Any possible solution or compensation these interests think they're going to receive aren't going to hit the bank for a long time, if they do at all.

[kd454]

@tedster

"For me, it's also a signal to understand as much as I can about the present moment before that "second layer" gets applied."

They are saying the algo was already "accurate" so how will improving it help the people that were hit hard? If they make it more accurate seems this could even make things worse for the hit sites?

I am trying to learn all I can :)

[Panthro]

To everyone asking for a legal solution to Google's power, please consider that by using Google you are creating the problem. The only way GOOG can have less influence is for you, and everyone else, to NOT use it.

[TheMadScientist]

They are saying the algo was already "accurate" so how will improving it help the people that were hit hard?

Uh, maybe by putting them back in the results?

And, it is accurate ... They're working with something like a TRILLION pages. That's 1,000,000,000,000 Pages. Even just the index is huge. Do a search for your favorite key phrase and check how many results there are. That's how many pages they have to sort through for only that query to determine results for. The top 10 of a 1,000,000 page results set requires an incredible degree of accuracy to get a single 'correct' result for, let alone 7, 8, or 10.

[falsepositive]

With Cult Of Mac back, I suppose they'll dial up the authority score a bit more perhaps? It's a site wide issue if they reinstated them, just like that.

[walkman]

Dear Google,
how can I get my site back too, like CultOfmac did, or is this a 'embarrass us and we may reinstate you'?

Thank you.

[browsee]

Dear Google,
Why are you experimenting on our Websites? Like CultOfMac we also became a civilian casualty in the war against content farms.

It is also wrong to reinstate some sites because they made a big deal. If you want to make a change, you need to include all the websites.

[supercyberbob]

Soo to summarize, Google messed up.

Carpet bombing = bad.

Makes me worried about the "fix" they have in store for us.

[TheMadScientist]

<sarcasm>
Yeah, they'll never fix this mess...
They totally blew it!

Just like all the other times they totally destroyed their search results. The major decline of their relevance and results started with Florida I think ... Check it out: [webmasterworld.com...]
</sarcasm>

[Reno]

Given that I criticize Google a lot, I will commend them for publicly acknowledging that they missed the mark, and publicly saying they are attempting to do something about it. But also, this incident puts in perspective (yet again) how much of the previous announcements are spin, when they talk about how pleased they are with the accuracy of their internal testing, etc etc.

The fact is, for the rest of the time that Google is in it's premier position there is going to be constant collateral damage as they make changes to an increasingly complex algorithm. This time I got hit as did many others, while some folks here dodged this particular bullet. Perhaps when they do this fix, I'll come back, but you know what? This up & down & up & down is exhausting, so I can't get depressed by the fall, nor can I rejoice at the redemption. I simply look at it as the reality of life as long as I must live with Bipolar Google.

.......................

[edited by: Reno at 6:23 pm (utc) on Mar 2, 2011]

[chrisv1963]

It is also wrong to reinstate some sites because they made a big deal. If you want to make a change, you need to include all the websites.

I think the press would love this story. If you have friends at the Googleplex you can get your website reinstated. Wrong signal Google, very wrong signal ... How can we ever again trust the rest of the serps?

[Bewenched]

So if we were wrongly affected should we put in a site reconsideration request or is that going to be falling on deaf ears?

FYI, complete white hat, been around since 1997, ecommerce, great ratings.

We've lost about 40% of our traffic.

[edited by: Bewenched at 6:52 pm (utc) on Mar 2, 2011]

[peego]

Gosh... hope their new "fix" don't make things even worse...

[browsee]

Yes, press would love this story, any one knows press? Because, this is the wrong business practice.

[Perfection]

I haven't been reading most of these threads (seems like there's a million of them everywhere), so I apologize if I'm repeating stuff people have already said.

I have a site that I started in early 2001. It's just me writing articles about a subject I have an interest in and knowledge about. Simple as that.

People seemed to like my content a lot, and I ended up getting some good links and traffic. At some point over the last decade, I ended up averaging around 20k unique visitors per day (most of which came from Google), and it has held amazingly consistent for the last 5 years at least.

Until of course the other day... when traffic instantly dropped by 50% (along with revenue, which comes via Adsense, affiliate products, and my own ebook).

I don't have any user generated content, no scraped content (although people have been scraping the crap out of my site for years), no typical low quality MFA nonsense, and no links to anything remotely "funny."

It's literally just me writing articles about a subject I like for exactly 10 years straight.

Why Google would intentionally create an update that would hurt a high quality site like mine, I have no f'ing clue.

If that's really what they set out to do, I sure as hell would love to know the reasoning.

Unless of course I'm just one of the people who ended up getting screwed by mistake?

If that's the case, I would obviously love it if they make some kind of effort to fix it.

Do I actually deserve to get either of these things? As much as I really love to think I do, I guess I really don't.

Which sucks... a lot.

Especially after 10 straight years of it not sucking.

[jersey_guy]

Did anyone else notice that the embedded article links on all google knols went from DoFollow to NoFollow right around the algo update?

wrong...I do not see rel="nofollow" on the embedded article links on the knols I've published/created.

[apauto]

I submitted a reinclusion request yesterday asking for a manual review after my site was hit.

Interesting to see this is being fixed.

For those of you who had your sites hit, please update this thread if and when you notice any SERP or traffic changes back to your site.

*Crosses fingers*

[apauto]

Given that I criticize Google a lot, I will commend them for publicly acknowledging that they missed the mark, and publicly saying they are attempting to do something about it. But also, this incident puts in perspective (yet again) how much of the previous announcements are spin, when they talk about how pleased they are with the accuracy of their internal testing, etc etc.

I don't doubt they were happy with their internal testing. Afterall, what testing was it? Just checking to see if a few scraper sites changed rankings? Sure. However, how can they possibly test all of the quality sites that were affected? They don't know until they release the update and then sit back and watch the fireworks.

Please Google, don't do me wrong! This thread gives me hope.

In fact, I'm going to go take a nice long shower right now, and dream of what it was like this time last week when I had a bunch of happy visitors on my site. Maybe when I'm done, and come back here and hit F5, I'll notice a change :)

[universetoday]

So I should publicly complain?

[zerillos]

@apauto
did the reconsideration request work in your case? i'm not sure i got it right

i saw a very slight increase in comparison to the drop on friday, but not sufficient enough to convince me things are back. it could have other reasons...

[TheMadScientist]

I don't doubt they were happy with their internal testing. Afterall, what testing was it? Just checking to see if a few scraper sites changed rankings?

Hmmm... I don't think that was it, because maybe some of the checking and verification they did was in the linked resource?

“If you do over a large range of queries, you get a very good picture of whether the new results are better than the old,” Singhal said.

But after this change, the company asked additional questions about top sites to judge their quality, including “Would you feel comfortable giving this site your credit card number?” and “Would you feel comfortable taking medical advice for your child from this site?,” according to Singh.

“The outcome was widely positive,” Singhal said. (To be clear, these surveys are used to measure changes, not to create them.)

Generally (those who comment without bothering to read the information we have access to, which is more than one person) I think will get a way better idea of things if they actually read the resources linked in the threads, and if the 'comment without researching' theme is indicative of the level of time and effort put into the sites not ranking any longer, then I think I might understand why so many people are complaining.

[edited by: TheMadScientist at 7:13 pm (utc) on Mar 2, 2011]

[browsee]

So I should publicly complain?

It worked for the WebSite mentioned in the Wired article.

[JohnRoy]

They are saying the algo was already "accurate" so how will improving it help the people that were hit hard?
If they make it more accurate seems this could even make things worse for the hit sites?

They will change the algo; that's what they say. Might become better - might become worse.

"Although we rely on robots and computers and software and algorithms and layers and hardware and plex's and stock boosters and spam buster techniques, and they work perfectly fine -
mistakes however might still happen along the way (but didn't occur here - since this update is accurate);
we'll therefore look into it to fix the mistake, um, sorry, get the accurate results more accurate"...

[Content_ed]

Apparently Singhal meant the bit about working to get sites back only in the general sense, improving the algo, not white listing.

The Cult of Mac site in the Wired article is probably seeing traffic return from the iPad2 release.

[apauto]

did the reconsideration request work in your case? i'm not sure i got it right

Not sure yet, still waiting.

So I should publicly complain?

I can't publicly complain... I have an ecommerce business and my competition would gobble it up. Not all of them were affected.

Plus, what worked for CultOfMac won't work for everyone... they have connections.... specifically to wired.

[wyweb]

@Reno

Given that I criticize Google a lot, I will commend them for publicly acknowledging that they missed the mark

And I criticize them a lot to. Lately more than ever.

I commend them also.

I'd like to see more than that. Saying "we'll try to fix it" is a good start though.

I doubt it will be enough to restore my faith in them but indeed, it's a good way to start.