I manage a site that has not been ranking above 1000 for it's business name plus 2 main keywords since before I redesigned the site last April (it does rank #1 for it's business name without the other two words).
The original site had too similar descriptions and all product descriptions were identical so it may have been under a penalty but this was fixed last April--7 months ago. The owner had AdWords running until July when he stopped it due to a lack of income from the site.
The owner just restarted Adwords again 5 days ago out of desperation due to no relevant Google traffic and the rank for those 4 words started at #329 and is steadily climbing about 6 spots per day.
Also I checked about 10 keyword phrases for products sold on this site that are not contained in the 4 word phrase above) and they have all jumped in rank. I have been keeping almost daily ranking records ever since i started working on this site and practicall all the words I checked DROPPPED in rank after we stopped AdWords and JUMPED in rank after reinstating adwords (some by 650 points). Some of the affected words are now ranking #1 where they should be.
It has been about 7 months since the duplicat content was removed and if it's true that duplicate content issues result in a 6 month penalty, that may be the reason for the rank coming back HOWEVER it is highly suspicious that rank Jumps for a multitude of keywords within 3 days after AdWords is restarted.
I have few sites that are very new and only has few pages, Google sends considerable traffic to that site, I have AdSense on that site.
I am OK with that, I make money :)
It would not be a really fair policy if they really do this but it looks to me that they are doing it.
[edited by: adrianTNT at 11:29 pm (utc) on Nov. 13, 2006]
I always thought Google sends more traffic to sites that show their ads.
They claim this is not the case, and I am sure we will shortly see an appearance by AWA parroting the company line. :)
OK, I guess I believe that... but... perhaps there is something more subtle going on.
Because Google's algorithms are opaque, we have no idea what might influence ranking and position. Perhaps traffic has some bearing. Obviously, Google has limited visibility into traffic. But they do have some ways...
Obviouly, they know when somebody clicks on a SERP link.
They also have their own extensive network, and are rumored to be building an even more extensive network. Their routers advertise their networks to the Internet, though I dunno at this point if they carry third-party traffic. I do note, though, that the route taken from San Diego to Google servers in Japan goes across the Pacific on Google-controlled links. There would seem to be little need to end users in the U.S. to access Google servers in Japan, so why are they advertising this route? I'm guessing that at some point Google will announce that they are offering network transport peering at no cost and with no strings attached. The catch, of course, is that they will snoop on the traffic.
[news.com.com...]
I'm sure that U.S. security interests that they are rumored to be in bed would be more than pleased with this, as long as they share the wealth.
OK, so where is this going? Traffic is traffic. Anything that gives them visibility into traffic should go into the equation, if they are indeed estimating traffic and applying it to position. Adwords clicks are traffic data points, so why not add it in?
If this is what is happening, it may be temporary. If Google intends to at some point switch-on public use of their networks, so that they are now carrying third-party traffic, the traffic information gained from this will probably swamp-out Adwords traffic.
What I am suggesting is that perhaps they are using Adwords clicks as part of an over-all scheme to measure traffic, but perhaps adding Adwords data was premature.
If this is the case, it has probably now resulted in a leak of their future plans.
I'd suggest a more scientific test of the theory. If this is correct, I would expect turning Adwords on and off to have a greater effect for sites that get a high percentage of their traffic from Adwords.
P.S. I'm not in favor of the notion of sending more traffic to sites that have high traffic. Sorta negates the whole point of search, don't you think? Instead of finding what you want, it just finds you what is popular.
But I am guessing this is the direction Google is going in.
I want to see search engines that really let users control the search parameters in ways that we cannot now. As a user, *I* want to control the ranking criteria. Maybe choose from multiple algorithms, developed by Google and/or third parties. Specify that I don't want to see directory sites, price compaison sites, ranking sites, etc. Maybe I want to turn the whole thing on it's head - say, I am looking for emerging trends. "Show me sites about foo that get less than 100 uniques/day, but the same users keep coming back repeatedly."
Ain't gonna get it from Google. But that's another discussion for another forum.
