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...]

[conroy]

I had a site come back right at the start of March 1. It took a 75% loss in google traffic since Jan 10. It's about 400 page site, all static html. I did a reinclusion but I'm not sure if that did anything or I just came back from these tweaks. The site hasn't been changed on page barely at all for years.

[apauto]

@conroy - when did you do the reinclusion?

[wyweb]

@Bewenched

FYI, Texas Gal here

And I love you girls. You're on the ball. You're also some of the prettiest and smartest in the world. Bar none. What I like mainly about Texas women is that they don't back down. They'll get right up in your face and tell you what's on their mind. Some guys find that intimidating. I like it though.

This thing has gotten a little twisted. I've reviewed my earlier post and I'll stand by it. The Texas Attorney Generals office, in and of themselves, do not have the ability to take Google on. Not if it's a fair fight anyway. If that's their actual intent, to haul Google into court, they need to start scrambling right now and getting some really good advice from some IT people. Or some IT attorneys.

Google will walk through the front door of the courtroom with 4 or 5 top notch attorneys, a paralegal and boxes of documentation. When you've got a cash cow on your hands like they do, you can afford to do that.

I'm in the same boat. I've lost some money too, okay? And I continue to lose money. That's why I'm jumping ship. I'm not filing suit though. I'm not real clear on whether I had any legal right to be on their website to begin with. They certainly have no legal right to be on mine, not unless I allow them.

The rules are becoming more defined. It's good to see to.

I wasn't dissing Texas though. Not her people anyway.

[dickbaker]

I agree with what The Mad Scientist is pointing out, and I'm certain that my site is an example of one of the sites that has good quality pages mixed in with bad.

I've noticed something of a pattern to the amount of ranking drop, and I think it could have something to do with variations in page quality as some percentage of the overall site. In looking at pages that were on page one for certain phrases, some pages were dropped to #12 or so, some to #24 or thereabouts, some to #45 or so, and some to #70 or even worse.

The pages that went to #12 or so are pages that brought in a lot of traffic, amounts of traffic that were proportionately higher than other pages. The #12 rank almost seems like a "the page is good, but we had to hit it because of other pages on your site" demotion.

The pages that dropped much further have what could be problems, even though they were page one last week Wednesday. The ones that really dropped need a lot of examination.

The question now is whether to wait to see if Google does some re-ranking before making adjustments to the worst pages. I'm tempted to make changes to pages that never ranked too well just to see what would happen, with or without a re-ranking.

[aakk9999]

The site with 1000 pages got a boost.

Would that site perhaps be more narrowly focused on the subject (or a bit wider subject) of the search query? It is difficult to imagine you could have 18,000 pages being written on the same subject area without many of them being thin.

Perhaps for the bigger site the IA and site structure plays even bigger role in order for Google to determine site "sub-areas" and decide that the whole "sub-area" is dedicated to a wider subject of the query? Interlinking between less-related parts of the website may also play in this case.

[BillyS]

I call BS on that one. A few hours after Matt Cutts noticed and promised action, he magically came back up. Google got embarrassed so they are trying to spin it

So what do you think Matt did? Did he run to the plex and slap down the big red Rank Higher button? How hard did he hit the button? I hope not too hard or the site would be #1 for "Apple." Oh wait, he had someone tweak thousands of keyphrases...

Personally, I think this is non-sense. I saw that button pushed with Live based on a report I made on this forum and action by the MS rep. About a week later, the spammy site popped right back to the top.

If it were that simple, I'd be working at Google...

[browsee]

Proper programming logic. You just need to write one line code to exclude this website.

[TheMadScientist]

Proper programming logic. You just need to write one line code to exclude this website.

? They spent a year working on and writing the code for this and they can just eliminate a site from being evaluated by it but still be inserted into the remixed version of the index with a single line of code?

I think that's a bit simplistic to believe they could actually do, personally.

[BillyS]

Proper programming logic. You just need to write one line code to exclude this website.

I hate to even think about the unintended consequences of this particular suggestion with a ranking system that is both iterative and in a constant state of flux.

Personally, I think my Rank Higher button is more realistic...

Maybe I should work at Google.

[walkman]

So what do you think Matt did? Did he run to the plex and slap down the big red Rank Higher button? How hard did he hit the button? I hope not too hard or the site would be #1 for "Apple." Oh wait, he had someone tweak thousands of keyphrases...

How many times have we heard of re-inclusion requests, or asking 'GoogleGuy' to check something and Bam!, it's up again. I think that this latest one is either another layer or each site might have 1-100 rating. It's possible that they gave him manually the pre-farmer rating or removed that layer that penalized the site. To suggest that Google can't do that is kinda dumb. No way Google trusts their algo 100% and leaves no entry for human action.

Google got embarrassed as many are complaining but one high profile site gets its ratings back up after being written up. Doesn't look good for Google, as other hit sites are laying off employees, does it? What's Google going to say, yes we gave him his previous rankings, but screw you?

[browsee]

I think that's a bit simplistic to believe they could actually do, personally.

But, they did. Did n't you read the update? [cultofmac.com...]

[edited by: browsee at 12:43 am (utc) on Mar 3, 2011]

[conroy]

@apauto - I did reinclusion Jan 10, the day it happened. In the past I have seen reinclusion happen way faster than this so I suspect it is not from the reinclusion, but I could be wrong.

[TheMadScientist]

But, they did according to Wired.

Do you have a reference?

I had the other article ... Do you have a reference for Wired, because Google is saying they didn't do anything, so if they said something different somewhere else that would be interesting, but I highly doubt they did ... I think it's something different that helped.

[TheMadScientist]

But the changes were already in place early this morning, which makes me think Google is slowly tweaking its algorithm to get better results.

The article is a bit 'sensational', and the above is from it...

They aren't saying Google pushed a magic button, they're saying they think Google is slowly tweaking the algo, which makes sense and is inline with what Cutts said in the SearchEngineLand article about the 'normal tweeks' taking place which could have helped.

The Headline and the Lead In on the CultOfMac site make it sound like a 'magic button press' but the text doesn't say that.

[edited by: TheMadScientist at 12:53 am (utc) on Mar 3, 2011]

[apauto]

@apauto - I did reinclusion Jan 10, the day it happened. In the past I have seen reinclusion happen way faster than this so I suspect it is not from the reinclusion, but I could be wrong.

@conroy - But this update happened 2/23.

[BillyS]

But, they did. Did n't you read the update?

Do you have a reference?

Yeah, I just wasted my time reading it again.

On my last IT project we had a big red Easy button. Maybe that's what Matt used.

[zerillos]

Have you noticed that in the last day or so, there's no discussion around, regarding the algo update, that doesn't mention Cultofmac. I bet most of their returned traffic comes from here. Google probably didn't do much for them. I'm wondering if this returned traffic will start to get thiner in a few days...

[aristotle]

zerillos is right. Cultofmac has gotten a lot of publicity today, and this could have caused their traffic to increase. Also, someone mentioned that the iPad 2 announcement could have boosted their traffic.

[TheMadScientist]

Google can't make manual changes to the update -it's official- but you can report issue directly to them: Farmer Update - Report Good Sites Negatively Affected to Google [webmasterworld.com]

[walkman]

Google can't make manual changes to the update -it's official- but you can report issue directly to them: Farmer Update - Report Good Sites Negatively Affected to Google [webmasterworld.com]

It's official? Nope, they said they can't which is a lie and everyone knows it. But they have to say to cover their @sses, if it's automatic they get more protection, less 'please fix mine too' and less bad press.

CultofMac was fixed yesterday, long before it became major news. And they became famous in these circles because they came back. They are not suffering for links, do a [google.com...] to see for yourself.

[frontpage]

Google can't make manual changes to the update

Sure they can. It has been already publicly revealed that Google can and does manually alter search results.

Why we've been upgraded, I have no idea. Google's head of spam, Matt Cutts, tweeted me yesterday, saying Google had likely seen my post and would get it resolved. And Wired.com published a story about us today after speaking to a Google Fellow Amit Singhal. But the changes were already in place early this morning, which makes me think Google is slowly tweaking its algorithm to get better results. I've asked Cutts for an explanation, and will post up if/when I get a reply.

Here is evidence of Google Matt Cutts reaching out to CultofMac that they would take care of their search results problem. The rest of the world can pound sand I guess.

[twitter.com...]

[TheMadScientist]

...which makes me think Google is slowly tweaking its algorithm to get better results...

Apparently the people actually involved have a different take than you...

[BillyS]

TheMadScientist - Thanks for the link...

I looked at four of the sites that complained they were a victim of this change. All I can say is Wow! Looks to me like Google did a pretty good job in the four cases I examined. It was hard to find any information among all those ads. Clearly the sites were not made for visitors, rather to only make a dime.

[TheMadScientist]

Np BillyS glad I ran across it ... I haven't looked at those, but years ago here I offered to help one of the 'I'm going out of business, my site's great I should be number one' posters and I got pretty skeptical about complaints when I saw a 2px keyword stuffed black on black h2 linked in the footer of the pages and links to p*rn and casino sites all over the links page ... It was soooo obvious it wasn't even funny, and what's more amazing is in the time they spent complaining they could have easily fixed the issue, but they didn't. Go figure...

[TheMadScientist]

Alright I went and looked and read/skimmed some of the posts, and I understand people generally put time and effort into their site(s) and I really believe they probably try to do the best they can, but what's represented there on that list is not what I would call the 'quality' sites of the Internet and building websites isn't for everyone, even if they try hard or do their best, just like anything else.

After looking, I wonder if it's tough to quantify 'quality results', because it's one of those things you know when you see, but is difficult to verbalize.

I don't see the 'quality' of those sites making them a better find for searchers than probably 1,000 other choices, because I don't see anything that sets them apart from the crowd either in content or presentation.

Can I tell you exactly what I mean by not seeing the 'quality', no, but I can tell you from a visitor perspective, the 'personal' sites are probably not the sites I want to find and the 'sales' sites are a-dime-a-dozen, so as a searcher it doesn't really matter to me which one they pick, and I think they could (probably?) do better there too.

Sorry if you're someone with a site like the ones listed on the Google complaints page, but the Internet is a big place and there are probably a ton of pages like yours and sites similar to yours and this is a really tough game we play that's only going to get tougher.

If there's nothing to set your site apart from the crowd and you're still ranked, enjoy the ride while you're there ... If you're not ranked well any more, then my opinion is you should go back to the drawing board and find a way to 'stand out' from the crowd of sites you're competing against, because imo that's what it's going to take to rank moving forward...

[mrguy]

Had Google not been a public company and this wasn't fed to the mainstream media, Google would not be taking a second look at hit sites.

The only difference between this update and past updates like Florida that reaked desctruction in it's path is this time main stream media outlets were fed the information.

So now, you can drop links in forums and get sites banned like happened here another thread or have a contact in some media outlet feed them info to stir things up even though the writers for most of those media outlets have no clue what it's all about.

Things have really changed.

[TheMadScientist]

mrguy, if you're referring to the Overstock thread / penalty in the last part of your post, there's been some clarification over the penalization by Google posted by tedster in the following thread: [webmasterworld.com...]

It had nothing to do with the thread here.

[walkman]

Actually some of the sites like danniweb, or the construction site in the Google thread are very good, although too many ads may make them seem spammy.

[mrguy]

It had nothing to do with the thread here.

Right, and Santa Claus left me a Ferrai for Christmas.....

[TheMadScientist]

... although too many ads may make them seem spammy.

Yep ... I agree they're both well made, but personally, if I'm looking for construction information it's not the site I'd sit and read, because it feels spammy, and all I saw on the second page was ads. I could have missed the text, but if I did, that doesn't say 'quality find' to me and if I didn't then all that's there is ads, which doesn't say quality either.

Too much monetization relative to information, imo...

As far as DaniWeb goes, it's really well made, but what content besides the 5 lead-ins to the forum and forum info on the home page is unique? I see news repeats, digg, facebook, and a tag cloud ... I'm not going to go any farther with an analysis, because I don't think we're supposed to do site analysis outside of the review forum, but I will say I can understand how it was hit, even though it looks great.