Forum Moderators: open
In FI, CW and DC, my site is in the index. Most search terms performing the same as usual, EXCEPT the top keywords.
Top keywords are keywords used a lot in anchor text and contained in the title of my page.
The reason I am posting this is not to blame google or what. I need to at least find our the reason why this is happening.
Anyone here having the same experience? Maybe we can discussed here and find out the reason. Maybe there is a new filter working againt us.
I have just one H1 tag per page. The page did not have one originally and so I added one. Good luck with your changes.
Hmmm, I think this is the first time Google take actions againts ZEUS and LinksManager.
Unfortunately that is incorrect. There were incidents months ago where a very large portion of ZEUS directories were hit with PR0. The current advice is to stay away from most automated link exchange programs. If I were Google, I'd PR0 all link directories that had similar structures and were nothing but links. You know, the old link farm concept. Some have taken it to a new level, it worked for a little bit, and now it's a dead strategy.
Not sure I'm ready yet to start going around removing H1 tags... Assuming that there is not excessive use of them on your pages, and I'm sure there's not, this is such a standard HTML convention that it's hard to believe penalties would be assessed for this.
If I have a site named White House, and the Title is "White House" and the H1 text on the index page says "White House" do we really think that the H1 text will get you hammered by G?
I have been a big advocate of trying to understand WHAT Google is testing so we can at least learn something from this nightmare of an update. But until the dust settles and GG and WW say "that's the official update" I'm not ready to start changing everything on my sites just yet.
Just MO anyway.
Man, I'll bet the drug companies have been puzzled at why their aspirin sales are up in the major metro centers lately ;-)
If I have a site named White House, and the Title is "White House" and the H1 text on the index page says "White House" do we really think that the H1 text will get you hammered by G?
the problem would be if your domain wasnt called WHITE HOUSE...or the url didnt have WHITE HOUSE in the title and you then had a bunch of links inbound with the anchor text saying WHITE HOUSE....then google would kick you like a lot of us have been!
My experience so far:
4th on sj,
7th on ex and in,
nowhere on other datacenters.
For allinanchor: search :
2nd on sj,
8th on ex and in,
3rd on all other.
For allintitle:
3rd on sj,
8th on ex and in,
nowhere on all other.
I have only one H1 on my nomepage, have keyword in title, most of my incoming links have something like this: "e keyphrase" as anchor text(but that`s my site`s name), and my url is like wordonewordtwo.com .
the problem would be if your domain wasnt called WHITE HOUSE...or the url didnt have WHITE HOUSE in the title and you then had a bunch of links inbound with the anchor text saying WHITE HOUSE....then google would kick you like a lot of us have been!
Diffrent issue than what I was commenting on, however. My comment was to question changing H1 tags, per AthlonInside's post.
We also have a few sites that seem to have been negatively affected by anchor text. But we don't think it's necessariy related to use of H1. More, it seems to be related to too many so called 'perfect text' links. What's confusing us is that the problem seems to be the external links, which we can't control.
But even that I'm not at all sure of yet, since Google's new stew isn't fully cooked yet, supposedly.
So far, I'm still hoping that this is testing we're watching, and not a major long term influence on the SERP's.
What I do agree with is that Google seems to have gone paranoid in some of the things they are testing to send SEO's running. (And for the record, we're site owners, not SEO'ers...SEO is IMHO an irritating necessity, associated with a world controlled too much by SE's.)
You are part of us now! What you say is exactly what are seeing.
wackmaster,
Actually I also don't think it is the H1 problem. Because my use of H1 tag originally is not for SEO. I want my site name to appear large in every page in my site and so I use H1 is ALL pages in my site with the same site name. I removed it now and replace with font tag instead. Because I have nothing to lose. :)
...
I always believe the reason of this semi-penalty is due to the inbound links. Yes, something to do with google bombing (as pageoneresults says). Search on 'Microsoft' do return microsoft and search on 'best view' do return IE page. There must be some some extra algo to determine if the 'bomb' is legimate. Maybe they check to see if you link to that site which link to you? Because microsoft seldom links to site that links to them. And IE page don't link to a site that says 'best viewed with IE'.
...
But I still hope everything is wrong and google will put us back to the index after the updates complete.
If you lost 80% of your visitors, I think you will be as freaking as us. :)
nobody forced you to read this thread.
I'm interested in the colour of my car, even if it's not yet build :)
I'm certainly not freaking about it (but then I don't make my living through a website) but I do find it fascinating and it's also a real insight to something new to see it in it's pre-built stages.
Very useful info in amongst the utter rubbish!
TJ
If your business plan is set entirely by the whim of Google you need to rethink your business practice. You should switch to Ad Words and Overture when you fall off and then when they come back on get rid of PPC.
Once again submit your problem to Google like GoogleGuy said and they will look at it.
if you would have read the thread, you would have seen that the problem appears on SJ, FI, CW, DC, VA and AB. And, at the moment, I'm seeing one of these data centers on google.com.
Neither my business plan based on Google's results nor did I have a problem (in general) with the results. I just found some strange behaviour, which I want to analyze.
? Linksmanager is one of the current "secrets" to many sites ranking high. Google certainly does not take action against such sites, unless you mean by take action "put in the top ten".
I am 100% convinced that this has nothing to do with heading tags. I'm split between the idea that this is a 'bug' (i.e. it will be fixed by the addition of new data/links) or a penalty (potentially through the use of too many keywords in certain areas or something similar). I have looked into the factors affecting my site and the only real 'facts' I can glean are the following:
My site is unchanged (i.e. ranks well) on sj, but is nowhere in the other data centres.
Inner pages of the site are unaffected.
The homepage is devalued for all searches.
The link count is the same.
The site hasn't been altered for some months - it's not a new site.
I know other people have different circumstances, but the fact that we are all seeing the same result must say something. If things stay as they are this is a blow to me, but I don't rely on Google traffic, so at the worst it is going to involve a few months (and updates) to fix.
But sometimes even if I am willing to pay, adwords and overture (and even looksmart) are not able to drive as much traffic as the google free traffic. And traffic from them are not so targeted as well.
Why in the world are people still freaking out over the dominic thing?
Hey there ogletree, stirring up the bee's nest, eh? ;) That's okay, this recent Dominic update has really got the board on its toes. Many of us are tired of seeing the update threads but we have to look at it from the posters perspective. Most of the people involved with these threads are new to the board. They've not used the site search feature to look for possible duplication of their concerns.
We're all just trying to move things along with a minimal amount of stress. Relying on Google for one's income can be extremely stressful for some, if not all!
P.S. I'm not too sure I like that color. Yes, I know, it's not on the car yet, but, I just am not sure. ;)
I'm not freaking, i'm trying to learn from it...
>>Many of us are tired of seeing the update threads
Me too pageoneresults!
I was hoping this thread would be useful as a place to exchange useful info on a particular problem some of us are seeing on the new data centres. I have thought before every post I made that the likelihood is that it will turn into another frankenstein update thread, but there are some illmuinating posts here.
Roll on the update being on 8/8 data centres so all the threads will be about the 'new index' rather than the 'update', lol :)
Once again submit your problem to Google like GoogleGuy said and they will look at it.
pixel_juice,
What happening to you is exactly what happening to most of us who post here (of course except some who is tired of the update threads).
My site is unchanged (i.e. ranks well) on sj, but is nowhere in the other data centres.
Inner pages of the site are unaffected.
The homepage is devalued for all searches.
The link count is the same.
The site hasn't been altered for some months - it's not a new site.
This is exactly what is happening to me. My home page used to rank #1 for my main search term, and I would say I didn't use any dirty technique to be there (as for H1, I don't even have H1 tags on my home page...). It is kind of a mistery, and I can only think of two old domains that I left redirecting to my home page using a meta-refresh, or about the fact that my main search term does appear on every image alt text of the home page (maybe too much?). Any guess, out there?
I understand that this is a difficult time for you ogletree (i'm not loving it either...) but the relevance of Google serps generally has absolutely nothing to do with whether or not your individual site is included. Please try and see the wider picture. Google's results are used by millions (billions?) of people. This is the important thing - not whether my (or your) hard work to rank well has been wasted.
I am so sure (and I have spent some considerable time researching this) that none of the factors you mention above are causing the 'semi penalty' effect. Something else is happening here. Hey, we're not spammerrs and we're in the same boat so at least that's some reassurance. We'll all go down together :)
This issue being discussed here has to do with Google's effort to move against spammers.
Inbound anchor text (from external sites) has something to do with it, perhaps related to 'perfect text'.
H tags are very unlikely to be an issue, unless they are used excessively...use them for what they are for and there should be no problem (unless Google is ready to take on w3 ;-) )
There is no way of knowing how significant this inbound linking penalty is (IF it even exists) until the update is done, unfortunately.
As painful as it is for those who have seen their sites blown up, there is so much of that issue being reported that it's just very hard to believe it's a permanent condition. And where it is a problem, I expect GG et al would do his damndest to fix any unfair results.
Watch, learn, and be ready to take action based on hypotheses...after the update is complete.
My biggest gripe continues to be that Google should *not* have done this in a way that punishes innocent Webmasters ... regardless of how much or little of their income is tied to 'free search'...that will certainly have some impact on this community longer term.
Now starting to see almost random results coming up for some searches and strange PR values. I think this is down to other data centres finally starting to show up for me on www.
We're getting some PR0s where there shouldn't be and huge amounts of missing backlinks - nothing to do with Google counting them differently, Google just isn't seeing them at the moment. I don't really care too much about this stuff though 'coz I'm convinced it isn't real and it has to sort itself out soon.
Anyway - the thing most to do with this thread....
On the site we have that's fallen from around #10 in the SERPS to around #300, the only change I made was to change the title on the home page from bold text to H1 after reading about Google liking H1 tags on this forum. Nothing else has changed apart from the addition of some backlinks that Google doesn't see. I'm starting to think the H1 might've been a bad idea, but it seems a very strange thing to penalize... Of course it had to happen to the only site we have that does rely fairly heavily on Google for its visitors. Ho hum.
