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Paul
I think everyone on WebmasterWorld has seen that by now. There's nothing there but speculation... like on here.
The problem is that some lesser experienced folk are being sent down the wrong ally... working their butts off removing H1 tags/etc in panic mode. That's ridiculous, as Heini points out over there, and unfair.
I think if you actually polled the 'old guard', who have been around the houses a few times, you would find that most agree with me: Let it ride for a while - the middle of a state of flux is NOT the time to draw firm conclusions and start redesigning or making major changes to your sites. This was also GoogleGuy's message at the outset by the way.
I offered several alternatives theories earlier, all of which are just as possible as the 'semi-penalty' theory.
I'd just suggest to those who are understandably worried to try to sit tight for a while. I know... it isn't easy... you want to be doing something to recover... but you could end up doing entirely the wrong thing.
This can't be emphasized strongly enough. The foundation of the results we are seeing is based on the Internet as it stood around February 15th. Newer sites will be in a state of ongoing Everflux ( [webmasterworld.com...] ) until the update that Google Guy has said will take place a month from now (give or take two weeks). Your pages will likely disappear and reappear multiple times during that time.
The static sites tend to be those that have been around for 12 months plus, and I guess even for those there will be the odd example of flux.
So again, it is worth re-emphasizing, don't beat yourself up at the present time and don't engage in recovery tasks which may ultimately prove to be a waste of time and potentially counterproductive.
Sometimes it's harder to sit on your hands and do nothing - but sometimes it's the right thing to do.
I have the same problem, however, my index page is still in Google´s index - it just completely dissapeared from the search results for my main keywords.
And while checking the index page, I discovered something very odd - there are currently TWO VERSIONS of my index page indexed! I changed the page title a little some weeks ago. Now, when I search for "Keyword1 Keyword2" my index page is listed with the old titel, when I search for "Keyword1 Keyword3" the new titel is there!
So, maybe Napoleon´s advice is the best made in the last couple of weeks - just sit and wait.
What annoys me is that with a position of great power comes great responsibility, and what they do at Googleplex affects quite literally millions of peoples lives, either because thousands rely on accurate fair searches for income, or just because they know that Google returns (should that be used to?!) the most relevant results.
I have a whole load of keyword phrases that recently began returning a bunch of interlinked domains - we are talking dozens and dozens of domains which fill up Googles returns and are totally unrelated to the search except for the first (which is crapsville anyway and only gets there due to the current 'problems' and spammy interlinking of domains.
In terms of speculation here that writing links with keyword focus can get you penalised - well I'll tell yeah - these results I have reported to Google fly in the face of that - dozens of sites using the keyword phrase on many many links on many many pages has Google so impressed it fills the first ten pages of its results up with it!
I'm just hoping that Google sorts itself out very quickly, yesterday would be good, last week better! I'm plain sick of this little 'experiment'.
The problem is that some lesser experienced folk are being sent down the wrong ally... working their butts off removing H1 tags/etc in panic mode. That's ridiculous, as Heini points out over there, and unfair.
Same with "penalty" for links pages named links.html and some are changing them to resources.html. And one day, remor will spread that that name is bad too and finally we shall resort to naming files randomly like cFgdtPnes.html with anchor text vhwosyfjridslv since those couldn't be caught by Google. Users won't have a clue but who cares. ;)
1. register black widgets the 5th, red widgets the 5th, green widgets the 5th etc (perhaps the 10th - there's a lot already registered and I heare they're running out of numbers) - dont skimp on this, do like a hundred or so at least.
2. put them on seperate IPs and interlink them all with keyword heavy links (as makes sense).
3. don't bother with inbound or outbound links, you have enough of your own now, linking with other sites just wastes time.
Expect all of your sites to appear one after the other for the three and four word phrase searches you target at the expense of sites with relevant content.
On these sites create an Amazon affiliate link to your new book 'How To Spam Google Successfully with no hiddens, redirects or third party links'.
You'll make a mint from your sites and your book sales too.
Or perhaps wait until Dominic is history, and spend your time on some content while Google get's itself back on it's feet after the current disaster is over.
MapoleanThe problem is that some lesser experienced folk are being sent down the wrong ally... working their butts off removing H1 tags/etc in panic mode. That's ridiculous, as Heini points out over there, and unfair.
If and when Google fix their glitch, I might add one (1) H1 tag again. On the other hand I have done well so far without the H1 tag.
Anon27:
Do you have a carbon copy for this also?allintitle: keywords (index page not there)
allinurl:sitename.com (index page not there)
allinanchor:keywords (index there and ranking high)btw, I am now seeing me return for some keywords in all datacenters except -fi, -va, -cw
unless the other datacenters are pointing to some weird place where I was showing before. But still in those datacenters, index page MIA for allintitle, and allinurl
allintitle: keywords = mysite.com at #18 when www.mysite.com was #2, but now is not found.
allinurl:sitename.com = index is there
allinanchor:keywords = index there and ranking very high
The pages I'm seeing ranking highest are those with less focus on particular keywords, those with no keyword H1's, those with keywords spread more evenly through the page content.
Basically pages which have more than one topic, or keyword focus are placing higher than those pages which I previously had optimised for particular keywords.
This would make sense, kind of, apart from many high ranking sites are still doing well with over-optimised pages. I can only hope that google with filter these out, but I won't' hold my breath...spam is like cockroaches. There's always more of them, and they breed...
I know this to be true because someone stole my site: Content, graphics, metas..., everything. They threw in a few commas..., to make it different. The stolen site was picked up in the April crawl, with only one or two minor back links. (So even though my new content did not get picked up in the last update, stolen content did!) The stolen index page is in the top ten, while mine is lost... (was #2)
FYI, the stole site is now and has been for sometime a 404 page, due to my threats of legal action, but it does still appear in the top ten, along with all sub-pages.
So if this had anything to do with keywords in titles, H1, density..., the stolen site would not be there...
Good news is I'm slowly but surely coming back for Keyword Phrases, one at a time. Anyone else coming back? Have faith you will if I did because I went dead for every keyword for my index page.
There's no point worrying about things over which you have no control.
Clearly Google is in a mess right now. It will be fixed when it's fixed and not a moment sooner. When it's all settled down, if necessary start worrying about how to claw your way back up to the #1 slot.
Personally, I wonder whether GoogleGuy should go into politics. He's forever promising jam tomorrow and a lot of people seem to believe him. Me - I'm a cynic and believe only what I see and here for myself, and I certainly take all things said by vested interests with a large pinch of salt, including GoogleGuy. I would not be surprised if things don't fully settle down for several months (and at current levels of panic that could account for several heart-attacks).
The one thing that is certain is Google is too powerful - it seems to account for around 75% of my traffic and I suspect that is the case for many other people. So what are we going to do about it?
We are off/on on one of our kw combos, and have been all week.
Check the "dance" link- and use the "recheck " feature for your kws....you'll see different results 4 out of 10 times on some phrases.
Personally, I wonder whether GoogleGuy should go into politics. He's forever promising jam tomorrow and a lot of people seem to believe him. Me - I'm a cynic and believe only what I see and here for myself, and I certainly take all things said by vested interests with a large pinch of salt, including GoogleGuy.
GG heard my cries about 6 weeks ago about some spam practices. He took immediate notice and action. For that, he is a little bite more than jam on my plate. GoogleGuy is more like caviar.
Google is a mess right now, and GG puts out what he can. I suggest you learn to listen closely to what he has to say. I have. I do not always like what he has to say, but in time, it becomes fact.
BTW, Thanks GG.
[edited by: Anon27 at 2:48 am (utc) on May 27, 2003]
I was seeing the off on every other starting earlier today, and now on strong. But for days, I saw no off/on activity at all, I was just vanished. So, I do think the conclusion is that something is happening today, and it may be something positive for other lost sites to hold on to. If I'm coming back, so could others. OR maybe it's just activity between old and new SERPs on diff datacenter, but I've been keeping good track of what's happening on all data centers, and I think this is new. Will have to wait and see.
I do not see any changes. Are your keywords unique?
GoogleGuy:
I just sent a a spam report with this in the subject:
"For: GoogleGuy on webmasterworld From: Anon27"
Thanks,
A27
I began to believe that the lost of homepage is not an accident this time nor G technical problem. It seems to be a going-on, new algo of Google which is able to downgrade a certain page of their relevancy for your targeted keywords. In short, it is not necessary to be your homepage but your internal pages as well - once those pages fall in the same criteria. What we are seeing now is only one of the chapters of Google filter mechanism.
What i did: Nothing!
GG heard my cries about 6 weeks ago about some spam practices. He took immediate notice and action. For that, he is a little bite more than jam on my plate. GoogleGuy is more like caviar.
If you watch a man dancing in the desert long enough, eventually you will see it rain.
Maybe GG fixed a problem and may it was going to be fixed anyway. 6 week sounds mighty quick to me for any sort of policy change at Google.
Re: the playing with H1 tags. They are no longer there again, and yet, I didn't come back. I really think that semi-penalty theory is not the cause of our index pages missing. SOme of us made a change and saw a difference, but a lot of people also saw a difference and didn't do a thing.
Good luck to all.
I despair.
I am beginning to wonder about the adwords sales boost conspiracy theory...whether it was deliberate or not, google must be raking it in this month!
To me there seems to be a new index since not only is my index file missing but the sites that come up for my main keyword are all different than usual too.
