Google to Target Overly SEOd Sites

[graeme_p]

Matt Cutts says:

What about the people optimizing really hard and doing a lot of SEO. We don't normally pre-announce changes but there is something we are working in the last few months and hope to release it in the next months or few weeks. We are trying to level the playing field a bit. All those people doing, for lack of a better word, over optimization or overly SEO - versus those making great content and great site. We are trying to make GoogleBot smarter, make our relevance better, and we are also looking for those who abuse it, like too many keywords on a page, or exchange way too many links or go well beyond what you normally expect. We have several engineers on my team working on this right now.

Article here:

[seroundtable.com ]

Any guesses on what it likely to change?

[tedster]

I thought that was one of the best blog posts ever put out - extremely informative.

My take on it - these are roughly the criteria that were given to human users. Those humans then established the training sets that were then used to develop Panda, via machine-learning algorithms.

Or is it that Amit Singhal has such a complex set of algorithmn arrays that not even he is able to give specifics anymore?

That's the way it is when a year's worth of intensive machine-learning and self-adjusting algorithms come into the picture. Google engineers have been talking about the eigenvalues of infinite Hermitian matrices and the like for many years.

I'm sure Amit "could" get a good bit more specific if pressed, but it wouldn't be wise to show that many cards. And when it comes down to the real nitty gritty, he'd have to research the current code-base that's in use to answer anything in fine detail.

All this is why I said in another thread that "checklist" or "punch list" SEO is no longer an effective mental model for the Google black box. If you try to understand SERP fluctuations that way, you'll be lost in mystery and probably become very angry after a while.

[netmeg]

My take on it is if you're spending more time and money on tactics than on making (and keeping) your users happy, sharing your site and coming back, you may run into some problems.

[scooterdude]

I listened to the whole 45 minutes of the interview and actually, it was an awesome performance from the Compere

My take regarding G:

1, SEO is only acceptable to the extent that it helps Google index and classify a webpage or site

2, All SEO beyond that falls in the manipulating rankings bracket,

3, It is their stated intent to reduce the effectiveness of rank related SEO to zero

4, PANDA mark 2, mark 3, etc cal it what you like will ensure that sites belonging to SEOs enjoy no more traffic than their non SEO'd neighbours, probably less traffic where the balance of effort has been into SEO

5, Bearing in mind that maybe 3% of webmasters used to get 50% of the traffic, there by creating a class of webmaster who could thrive solely on free web traffic, perhaps Googles intent is to shift that income to website content providers it has determined supply trusted content, but to all of them all at once

3% wm getting 50% of the traffic

becomes

50% wm geting 50% of the traffic

just a guess

[JustKidding]

Is this update already rolled out? I saw a collateral loss of 20-25% from last 24 hrs on a high traffic site and about 10-20% rise on smaller sites. I want to make sure with rest of the world because if it is an algo update then nothing that i can do immedietly to bring my traffic back. Do you see any changes in traffic in last 24 hrs?

[bobsc]

Google has a hole in their algorithm.
For the past 6 months or so - I'm being outranked by a page that's nothing but a frame redirect.

[scottsonline]

What we are all seeing rise in the SERPS in all niches are the sites people developed years ago targeting other keyword methods for their products. These sites were all demoted years ago and fell off the grid. Now they are outranking the parent sites at times but google also left the parent sites in the SERPS. The result is instances where the umbrella sites make up 50% of a page. It's crazy.

So they target overly seo'd sites by promoting those they penalized years ago for the most blatant cheating. Good plan.

[tedster]

For the past 6 months or so - I'm being outranked by a page that's nothing but a frame redirect.

Hmmmm... Last year Google's Matt Cutts hinted that Google was looking at new ways to index framesets and framed content. Maybe this is happening?

[bobsc]

Google's cache is the page it's redirected to NOT the page itself.
Aren't frame redirects against the quality guidelines?

[tedster]

In what way is this a "redirect"? Do you mean a 100% frame that holds a different URL as the framed page, or something else that uses an actual redirect of some kind (301, 302, javascript etc)?

[bobsc]

A 100% frame that holds a different URL.
Is cloaking OK now OR what?

[tedster]

Cloaking means serving googlebot something different than what you serve other visitors. That's not OK by Google's guidelines - but what you've described is not the same as that.

[bobsc]

You mean wikipedia is wrong?
[en.wikipedia.org...]

Click - 2.5 Frame redirects

That's not against the guidelines?

The page is deceptive PLUS has 0 content(unless you call 1 link "content").

[tedster]

100% frames used to be called "poor man's cloaking" but that is not exactly how Google defines cloaking. Frames certainly CAN be used fraudulently, the way server hacks often create parasite content (iframe insertions).

I just checked one current Google description of "cloaking" and I suppose it could be considered to refer to 100% frames, since they change the apparent URL. However there are certainly many examples of frame usage around the web that are not being considered cloaking.

Cloaking refers to the practice of presenting different content or URLs to users and search engines.

[support.google.com...]

It's not a black and white thing, and Google knows that automatically penalizing frames would deprive their users of what might be useful content

[bobsc]

Well, help me understand.
How can a page with nothing but a frame redirect rank well for any query? Don't you need some "content"?

Why does Google cache the target page instead of the page itself?

Something is wrong here - I'm being outranked by Black Haters.

[rlange]

bobsc wrote:
Why does Google cache the target page instead of the page itself?

Because the frame targets are the page. I remember when Google search results would[1] take you to the frame target instead of the "actual" page. No site header, no navigation sidebar. It was kind of annoying and people complained about it.

Still, cross-domain frame targets really shouldn't count. I can't believe that Google would overlook something like that, but it might be a side effect of the changes that allowed them to begin indexing things like Facebook comments inserted into a page using an iframe. I don't really know...

--
Ryan

1. Heck, they still might. Not running into this problem might be more the result of fewer websites using framesets than in years past.

[londrum]

loads of pages rank without much content on. if the URL has got a decent amount of backlinks and people find the page useful, and stay on it for a while, (and there's no reason why they wouldn't -- because the content is all there in front of them), then it sort-of makes sense why google would rank it.

obviously they shouldnt. but you can see why they do.

... but if they are counting this framed page as content for this other site, i wonder if that means they count the (internal) links as backlinks? if you've got absolute links on there, then google might see them as pointing back to your own site. that really would be messed up!

[bobsc]

What I'm seeing is nothing but a black hat technique. It's so obvious(to me anyway).

The offender should 301 the domain(page) instead - because they own it.

Maybe I should do the same thing - buy a 100 domains and put a frame redirect on them to my main site! It sure works.

I was hoping Google wanted to get rid of this crap.

[netmeg]

Because it works once, and works at this moment doesn't mean it'll work for anyone, or that it will continue to work tomorrow. You might not want to focus that closely on this one result. Therein lies madness.

[bobsc]

I wish it was only 1 result.

Big Brand sites get a lift in the SERPs too.

Google is putting legit small businesses out of business.

[reseller]

@bobsc

What I'm seeing is nothing but a black hat technique. It's so obvious(to me anyway).

I suggest you file a spam report to Google via Webmaster tools. That would be Help-Selfhelp :-)

[tedster]

What I'm seeing is nothing but a black hat technique. It's so obvious(to me anyway). The offender should 301 the domain(page) instead - because they own it.

That may be in the particular case you see, but there are still many web hosts and registrars who offer ONLY this stupid kind of "domain forwarding". The topic still comes up here every couple of months.

[bobsc]

The offender has several domains with frame redirects - soon they'll take up half of page 1.
Plus, the same offender AND others have domains that are doorways(without redirection) which seem to lift the ranking of the main site.

Like I said - Google has a hole in their algorithm. Hopefully, they'll plug it.

[fathom]

No - that's not what I'm complaining about, I live in the real world and the business I run has been difficult from the day I started it.

What I am complaining about is the rubbish results being served atm and the fact that you have to have very deep pockets (like as deep as a massive multi-national's) before you even think about advertising certain products above the fold.

Also, google dishes up SEO advice and then says, oh if you do a bit too much you'll be struck down. What's a bit too much SEO? Very subjective indeed.

Multi-nationals didn't start as multi-nationals... they all started where all businesses start.

SEO is a advertising channel. You can start it on the cheap and generate a certain level of success... but you can't take this all the way up the growth curve to multi-national status.

I find that "most companies" (not all but most) never change the game plan... if they start with poor or underhanded practices (which do work) they rarely stop these practices and up the anti because "they do work".

Even multi-nationals do these things and take the risk and due to their natural link profile can get away with it for much longer as the shady practices as incognito but the risk is the same... and the fall from grace is unbelievable huge.

[Sgt_Kickaxe]

This isn't rocket science. Google is sizing up the heard and picking the leaders, build a better site than your competitors (read:better content) and you'll be just fine.

[Whitey]

Has this been rolled out yet?

[irishsolar]

BTW, I recently starting using Bing much more often. They do have better results than Google now.

ponyboy96

I concur

If I was being really cynical, I'd say that Panda was a complete clusterfsck and they are trying to recover from the mess it made.

jmccormac

I have noticed a LOT of sites with adsense above the fold are ranking very well now. There could be something to all this.

[backdraft7]

It looks like keyword loading the title tag is still working, so much for targeting over SEO's sites.