Low PR sites seem to be hurt worse or is that just my limited data? I had heard that they drop to the index of the .com and check PR to make sure it is a "real" site. Sites with zero PR seem to have just been blasted for me.
The bot cannot identify a misspelling. The cost on "wigdet" versus "widget" is out of line. Thinking of adding these to the page... not sure how to do that and not make people think I am a moron.
Then just pretend none of the "bitching and moaning" threads existed and find some useful information on gaming the system :)
I actually have some new data from our campaigns, and a few really surprising things that are fairly conclusive about what is and is not in the algo (it's still speculation of course, but it's getting pretty easy to have confidence.)
I was thinking of posting some of that, and some stuff on how these algos work, but after reading the posts, tone and BS, I think I'll just let the google gamers game things on their own. I think the folks that really are more interested in cussing out google can certainly fend for themselves.
I'm wondering in google folks pop in here, read the posts from the last few days and go "Wow. Why would we want to do businesss with these...brats. Guess we made the right decision losing these guys" (Not that I think that, of course).
And I'll be laughing at the irony when some of those google attackers and BS artists have their min. bids altered again, and re-ad on google so fast, their hypocrital behinds will be in Ohio while their heads remain in Burbank.
But I swear I am not.
I have just checked and all of my ads are inactive apart from maybe 10 keywords (with lowish volume - 50 clicks per day or so).
I tried to work out why, and I can see that the page I am sending traffic from these keywords to is a little test I threw up on the side with (I am not joking):
- adsense links on it
- affiliate links on it
- nothing else
I will say that again:
google has basically banned a site with no adsense/affiliate links and is allowing one of my sites with affiliate links/adsense/nothing else to flourish.
Utterly incredible.
Please note: on second glance it *does* seem it is domain specific, as the affiliate site is a separate domain, and it hasnt been hit even though it is within one of my campaigns that has been hit... same campaign, 2 domains running it, and my keywords are running fine for one of them, not the other...
P.S. I set the second site up on sat, maybe they havent got round to looking at it which would give credence to the manually update theory (surely a bot would have checked it within 48 hours)
... [edit] and it gets weirder... one of my keywords has been inactive for almost a week now, but its still running i n the sponsored searches.. its a low volume keyterm but I am sure I have had a few clicks off it in a week... there appears to be no method to this madness
The only commonality I see is that it has hit a lot of big spenders... and there arent too many small players complaining... but other than that I just dont see a link
I think the first big way to game the system is already out there. Just lots of us can not throw away our url's and just get a new one.
The ultimate irony.
MFA sites, other type of arbitrage sites, etc. - e.g. those already gaming the system - are able to get around the new algo by going to new domains.
Legitimate businesses can't.
You owe it to Google to do the exact same :)
My regular customers can still find me at either the old location, or by typing in the same search term they usually do at Google. I shouldn't imagine any of them will notice any difference.
[edited by: Alex_Miles at 10:15 pm (utc) on July 18, 2006]
Had a Googler look at a landing page today. He said maybe not enough content.
Unfortunately he did not have a clue about the content on the page - two screens full of a specific programming example.
And, as for navigation.... There is a big difference in the hand holding you need to do for a visitor that is looking for cake recipes or new shovels compared to a programming or engineering site visitor.
Who the heck is evaluating these pages? My grandmother?
Most of the Googlers don't know what the words mean in the links on my pages. If they did they'd be making twice as much money in the back room programming.
any comments on this?
Now I'm adding content.. as my psychology professor said 'sailor, you have to expand your reports. The content is good but you need more of it. Repeat it at the top and then repeat it again at the bottom'
What a bunch of s..t
We've invested thousands of hours fine-tuning our pages over the past two years to maximize sales, an investment that thankfully paid off -- until this disaster. Google is asking us to redo landing pages that work (and, by the way, do have original content and do provide a valuable "user experience.")
We find it an unacceptable business risk to invest any more time into second-guessing what the Google gods want from us with no guarantee they will be pleased with our next sacrifice. This has become a risk management excercise and in hindsight we were too heavily invested in Google AdWords. The only reasonable business decision is to mitigate risk through diversification. Hence, we're leaving our decimated AdWords campaigns as is while we increase our spend on other PPC services. Any time we invest in modifying our landing pages will be based on the judgment of our visitors (i.e., sales) and ourselves, not an ivory tower "Quality Score Specialist" who thinks s/he knows our business better than we do.
