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Maybe you have something. So having keyword1 keyword2 in that order on your page several times is not good for that exact same search - is that what you are saying? What you need is this keyword2 is a byproduct of keyword1 (made by Peter Smith Inc) but keyword2 is manufactured by Joe Blow Inc.?
I think these www.keyword.ext domain sites escape the ne for keyword searches from what I have seen. There is only one question for me. Is the problem with sites a penalty or a data / PR and keyword relevance calculation catch up issue?
If you have a company/site name which is a non competitive keyword then you have no problem, even if a filter is tripped.
This filter IMHO is only triggered by a series of obvious seo tactics.
Can you say what those tactics are? As I have tried to determine if it could be this based on several search term returns, and am still not convinced.
Submit www.google.com to 3000 guest books in 1 day and use the title / name "Google". Then, see what happens when you search for "Google" on google.com in 2 days ;-)
The name of the site/company includes the name of the country the company and I am in. It is a very important keyword in serp terms. Though, in the domain name it is unimportantwordkeyword.com.
On some datacenters, depending on whenever I check, and I think depending on whether index page has a fresh tag, the index page is being buried on the main two word phrases that include the name of the country/nationality.
Without the fresh tag it ranks on first page for most of these phrases. Site is almost a year old and heavily seo'd but all on topic.
I understand that this happening to some other people and trying not to let it drive me up the wall.
HAHA ;) ...I imagine Google has conveniently excluded itself from penalties.
This filter IMHO is only triggered by a series of obvious seo tactics.
If you mean "against the rules" tactics, then there is no way that can be possible. Too many sites are being affected that do NOT employ such tactics, including my own. If this is what is happening, then Google is having serious difficulties distinguishing between the two.
If you mean normal and approved SEO tactics, then Google needs to come forth and tell us the new rules, rather than punish webmasters for doing what they learned here [webmasterworld.com] and other well respected resources.
GrinninGordon...
Is the problem with sites a penalty or a data / PR and keyword relevance calculation catch up issue?
I would like to agree with the latter. I am hoping that this is the case, as I haven't done anything to deserve a "penalty", and I'm sure some others haven't as well.
Napoleon, you have some experience with this, don't you?
But of course, if it is true that it's just a glitch and not an algo change, we'd just be wasting our time......
My conclusion is that there is a problem with Google and you are wasting your time tring to analyse it. Its not operating to the published specification - there is no point trying to understand why there are some 'anomolies' in some of your searches.
Try a search for 'free keyword' where keyword is anything that you think may be a 'popular' search term....
Now. Look closely at the serps. Look closely at the cache. How many are just plain badly spammy? Most of them. Spam still rules where it pays - even blatant machine generated stuff - javascript redirections - and even hidden text/ hidden links. On less competitive search phrases - you aren't seeing how bad it really is. Go and have a look.
Google isn't operating to the published specification - its broken - and I think its a waste of time to try to analyse it.
Just hope they sort it out soon.
Let me explain. 2 months ago, at the start of Dominic, one of my top ranking commercial websites (no spam, optimized in a search engine friendly manner, with mixed anchor text) disappeared completely. Poof. Gone.
I haven't seen it again in the top serps for 2 months. It didn't go in and out like some sites, it was gone and I never saw it again until 5 minutes ago.
For the first time in 2 months, it has showed up at:
www-ab, www-in, and www-fi and www3.
This is a big deal because unlike some of my other sites, it never went "in and out" of the top serps. It left and never came back until tonight.
I hope, I just pray, this is the start of their calculating ALL of the algo factors.
This site was optimized for 2 sets of keywords (Affordable Widgets + Widget Discount Center) and the h1 was taken out and replaced with a logo. I also moved the site over to a static IP and rebuilt the website.
I am also seeing other websites that once ranked high then disappeared. They have come back as well.
Yes. Basically that's what I have been trying to do here (not in public anymore though because I felt frowned upon by some mods).
I basically sacrificed my sites, plus a couple people have handed to me in sheer desparation, to experiment with (as posted in another thread I could no longer sit and wait and assume that everything would be OK).
Essentially I have made different changes to each site affected. This includes anchor text where I could get at it or influence it.
It's now sit back and wait time - there's not really much else I can do except wait and see what happens. And hope.
The fluctuation is of course the problem. If this was a straight filter or rule it would reflect across all centers and certainly would be consistant at each individual center. It isn't.
This therefore suggests that: it isn't a filter; or it is a filter that Fresh ignores (or vice versa); or it is a filter that someone can't keep their hands off.
I have my views on this, but really, for certainty, we will have to see what happens in the coming days. Or of course GoogleGuy could comment (ok ok... I'm only saying!).
I put a panel on a thousand of my pages with links to my 'most popular pages' - mainly to see if I could influence the SERPS though the number of internal anchor text links. These pages have dropped considerably (e.g. 160 places) in searches for the anchor text - but still remain no 1 for the full phrase they are targetted for.
I am still of the opinion that since they have not done a complete deep crawl, they are working with incomplete results, some dating back to February, and piling freshie results on top of that. When this update finishes we will see if there are any penalties to be applied.
The fluctuation is of course the problem. If this was a straight filter or rule it would reflect across all centers and certainly would be consistant at each individual center. It isn't.
There is another explanation for the fluctuations. Google have different versions of the same page chached (As far as I know, before the freshdeepbot area, one was the cache from freshbot and one from deepbot). Therefore, if one if these versions if causing a problem and the other doesn't, this could lead to some strange behaviour. If this would be true, it could explain some 'in and out'. Also, if this would be true, it would indicate that these problems are caused by on-page factors (due to the changes between the different versions).
Can someone confirm or exclude this? (e.g. if someone observe large fluctuations, but haven't changed that page for months.)
This filter IMHO is only triggered by a series of obvious seo tactics.
excessive anchor text filter
It's my own belief/observation that it's possible to over-optimize and look unnatural to Google. Some of my client's competitors try so hard, with the most obvious "optimizations"- the only apt comparison I can make is that these sites look like they have Fake Boobs.
There's nothing natural going on. At a certain point the optimization stops being about "clarification" of the message, and it becomes something not natural, perhaps something that Google isn't looking for.
Like, yeah there around 100 Google algo factors, but did you ever stop to think that Google has studied sites that hit too many of the factors and realized there's a threshold at which no natural site would score on the 100 factors, a threshold at which only an unnatural site would score?
With that said, I know of one competitor who has the hallways and doorways and dozens of anchor keyword optimized text links at the bottom of every page (doesn't look like inbound anchors are optimized, though), and it's consistently in the number one spot for certain keywords- whereas my client's natural looking site occupies around 5 positions in the top ten. It's like Google preferred the natural and gave the site extra positions, but only gave one position to the Silicone Site, and less coverage overall with a broader set of keywords.
Just my 2 pennies.
martinibuster...I would have to wait until we see the rest of the backlinks get brought in to make a judgement on the anchor text...some sites are still missing hundreds of links from good authority sites (again this problem started back in the bad deepcrawl) so its kind of hard to tell the effect of the anchor text yet. Im making an assumption here that backlinks that have similar anchor text links are not being penalized since this would affect too many of the portals etc.
The main problem is knowing which algo is effecting whom. Sites drop for many reasons, a clean site dropping does not mean this algo is not possible, it merely means there is some other reason for that particular case.
Normal and approved SEO tactics as outlined by google are fine, but unnatural bending of those rules is not. You can use a hammer to put in a nail, or use it to break into a house.... same perfectly legal tool, but you get in trouble with the police algo for one of them :)
Martinbuster clarified my thinking perfectly. If you over do the seo and manipulate your text accordingly..... beware!
but did you ever stop to think that Google has studied sites that hit too many of the factors and realized
That should read, "...that Google has studied probably studied sites..."
Thanks,
Catnip
I could not agree more.
For every "natural" unSEO'd site that has moved up in the SERPS, there is a blatent spam site that has also moved up as well as traditionally well SEO'd site that has also moved up. Then there is the ridicolus. I have held the #1 position for a particular phrase for over a year. I am still first page, but I'm beibg beaten by the Navigation frame of a framed site. It has no text, no alt, even the links are images and javascript. Google is committed to returning the most revelent serps they possibly can. There is no reason a well established site should be #1 one day, #435 the next day, #23 the following day etc. There does seem to be a fairly clear pattern of issues that newer sites are having. Other than that pattern, trying draw conclusions on the serps in general is an act of futility. For the time being, Google is broke. I'm not touching my site until the data centers remain calm for at least a couple of weeks and some patterns start to emerge.
