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Our Index page was ranked in the top 2-3 for almost all of our keywords. It is no where to be found now. We still have a "G" pr of 5, all of our sub pages are all still ranked highly for their specific keywords, top 3.
We do link exchanges with websites that are relevent to our topics.
We are a print publishing company and have high quality content on our website.
We receive 5,000-10,000 page views per day, still!
I checked Yahoo and found the same, I was expecting as much since they pull from Google.
This is interesting though, we have moved up to the #2 position when you click on "directory" after you do a Yahoo web search for our most important keyword. Previously we were a few pages back.
I am trying to convice myself this is a temporary thing.
Any help is greatly appreciated
[edited by: yvt360 at 5:00 pm (utc) on Nov. 17, 2003]
Before you were saying don't panic, the update would take 3 - 4 days to settle down (From Saturday, that's Tuesday or Wednesday)
Are you now saying the update is complete? That's these results are close to the final results and we should send in comments? Or should we still not panic and wait for it to settle down?
[edited by: LogicMan at 4:59 pm (utc) on Nov. 17, 2003]
Nice to see you around and about. I have a quick question if I may for you. We have a large multilingual site and all of the pages that were indexed this weekend are showing in SERPs nice and healthy like. The rest of the site which does not have a cached date from this weekend are appearing nowhere in the SERPs could you advise?
{may the google gods shine on us}
J
Backlinks have not changed, and due to the arractic changes of this update I strongly believe their is more to come!
Mine have changed, actually - down by two - but I'm only looking once per 24 hours now - it's amazing how much other work you can get done when you're not worrying about something that you can't change :-)
As to why they've changed, or whether it's a blip - well, I'll go do a before and after in 2 days' time...
Two more days chilling out to do yet...
DerekH
The white hat black hat thing seems a bit off the mark. We were "white hats" for soooo long and in the end when we saw Google was going to do nothing about it we gave in as we saw our rankings slowly slipping away.
So we cross-linked a little (just from home pages and 4 or 5 links per site - nothing really OTT) and we put links pages on our sites. I knew that eventually Google would find a way to deal with it, but I expected them just to eliminate the effect of those "artificial boosts". Instead it's glaringly clear that some of our site have attracted an outright penalty.
My point is that the people who work hardest on SEO are also the people who most want that top spot. They are therefore likely to be the most relevant site. To punish them for that may be morally satisfying for those at the Google mothership.
However, in my industry it makes no sense since everyone who is anyone does SEO. A few sites got past the filters, but others didn't, and a lot of good sites got buried and got replaced by weblog sites which talk about "a mate of mine who sells" keyword keyword.
I am a good Adwords and premium customer, and use SERPS as a natural second channel to find customers. I am dismayed at the way Google did this. A little telegraphing was necessary to avoid unnecessary carnage.
During Dom/Esm there were obviously several issues which were later addressed - some which maybe were not initally regarded as being problems.
With regards to Florida, you have stated that there is another couple of days to go before we see the final update.
Questions:
1. Can we expect to see minor changes from now until the end of Florida, or are the filters etc yet to be applied going to have big impacts?
2. Do you or anyone else at Google feel there are issues with the quality of the florida SERPS?
I am not trying to use this as a private forum to ask you questions, I think most who have contributed to this thread up to now would be keen to have a quick progress update from your point of view so we can gauge our expections!
We've got multiple sub domains on our site as an aid for the customer (ie keyword.oursite.com), but there is no duplicate content. We did this as we believed the customer would find it easier to come back to the site, and with no duplicate content shouldn't be hit for spamming. Now it seems that most of these pages have been completely removed from the SERPs. Is it just a wait and see, or is anyone using sub domains going to be thrown out.
My point is that the people who work hardest on SEO are also the people who most want that top spot. They are therefore likely to be the most relevant site.
Sorry to say SOD but that is rubbish. Most SEO is done for very small sites that only deserve top spots for their own niche but want to have the single multi million click keywords. And most site owners don't do their own SEO but buy it from an SEO company.
My subdomain which is doing better then any of my sites.
This subdomain has 2 links and 2000 pages indexed.
2 other sites that have about 300 pages and 30 links, with full domain no spam very clean pages have gone.
I have started to laugh at this then worry.
Its so funny seeing them change like this.
It sounded like you or google didn't know if their was anything left to include, like asking someone where did we put that last 6 million web pages again.
I hope its more then just a little, many of us white hats
are scratching our heads wondering why your liked us for the last couple of years and today you hate us.
Cheers GoogleGuy just for keeping in touch makes a difference :)
I doubt it as there are some legit sites using subdomains such as about.com - although i've currently got good on target pages appearing below about.com subdomains ranging from asthma and allergies to veterinary medicine and yoga - so I wish they would ;)
Apart from this I cannot see any major changes to the serps at all for myself. On the major terms its the same as 2 weeks ago. I also have some recip links so it isn't currently hitting me.
I got hit bad by the dom update in the summer mainly due to Amazon, dealtime results etc, but can't say I notice any changes this time round.
That's our case. We would not know what to do with those million hit keywords if we got them. We sell a proprietory product for each region and only want to rank well for that.
[edited by: SlyOldDog at 5:28 pm (utc) on Nov. 17, 2003]
Thank you for spending your time here trying to help us out. :) I have read some of your posts in the past on backlinks and anchor text and we all know this has been (among other things) a huge ingredient in the mix in the overall ranking picture. However, it appears such is not the case right now. Can we expect overall backlinks/anchor text to be added in the next couple of days...b/c it seems it's either not being given weight right now or the CURRENT backlink/anchor text data has not yet been thrown into the mix. Your comments..or hints...anything? ;) Thanks again.
Will there be any return of index pages with this minor filter to be added? or is that all she wrote till next month.
thanks,
[edited by: union_jack at 5:33 pm (utc) on Nov. 17, 2003]
I'll try to be more specific, lasko. ;) I know that there is at least one minor update to some data. I don't know if it will go out tomorrow though. Fair? :)
sounds fair to me...i can hear a big yippee from several webmsters too!
I have had a few sites drop totally out of the index. Most of these sites are keyword-keyword-keyword .com with anchor text links to them as "keyword keyword". The pages themselves have quite a lot of keywords on them including keywords in directory names. Other sites that have less keywords do not seem to be as heavily effected. Has anyone else noticed this? Are the sites that have drop just a bit over optimised? Any thoughts?
John
SOD and dazzlindonna: no offence intended and sorry if you lost rankings. I was only commenting on the sentence I quoted.
I come across *a lot* of webmasters/webdesigners and either they don't have a clue, they think they have a clue and mess up with the type of things we discarded years ago or they work for the big companies that should be on top but have their site made inaccessable for spiders. That was the background of my remark. Could be different in other countries though.
All: Our site (index page) in pain right now, like so many others, dropped from mid page one to mid page four. We had been on page one for some time. You've heard it before, but like others, practice conserviative SEO, and all subpages doing fine, maybe even better than before. But our index page, despite what many in here say, is unquestionably our bread and butter for the site.
We have internal backlink text repeating the site name, which is also our lead keyphrase, but I am assuming that G either gives little or no credit for those links, as it should be. I am also assuming no penalty for those links, as they are the site name (safe assumption?).
The only thing I'm aware of that we did of significance was to add about 15 very relevant backlinks from other sites in closely related areas to our own. Puzzled how that could drop us four pages in the SERP's. We stay *way* away from bad neighborhoods, or at least we think we do.
Hmmmm, maybe there is one explanation. I hate to be so blatant about it, but I do see that a large number of affiliate sites were blown up, and the site I refer to makes more from affiliate $ than it does from advertising, though it makes a bit from advertising too. Is it possible that Google has simply come to hate affiliates? One might say 'no,' since affilate subpages are in tact, but a more subtle way to wipe out affiliates would be to cripple their homepages. And Lord knows, many affiliates are spammy.
We have five other sites that have few or no affiliate links and they are all doing fine, but they also make far less $$. If G is fed up with affiliates, I would have hoped it could have distinguished between the decent players with useful sites, and the ones who repeat keywords in URL's and every inch of every page (those guys make me crazy too!).
BTW, yes we use Adwords, etc. etc. -about $20K so far this year - but as CPC prices have continued to escalate, so-called 'free' traffic has gone from being a nice extra, to essential for survival...at least in the category we're in. No one's worry but my own...let me see, where did I put that resume...
The biggest shopping day of the year is less then 2 weeks away, then theres the month after that, and the 2 weeks of clearance after that.
Adwords relate to selling items, not information on how to build your very own Free Widget.
So how convienient to have another Dominic (florida(Disaster)) right before the biggest Adwords fest of the year? Sure noone has any common sense at google?
Would 1-2 weeks give most internet stores enough time to consider using adwords? Would after 1-2 weeks of sales down 75-95% make you use adwords?
Someone is smart.
We are all being messed with in the worst way
And here we are again reading GG post, they are riddles, why cant he just speak plain english?
[edited by: deanril at 5:57 pm (utc) on Nov. 17, 2003]
I'll wait. I'm a patient guy (maybe too nervous but patient).
On the searches I'm looking at they seem to be improving as the cache date seems to be more current. Nov 16 cache date pages seem okay and are starting to bump out no cache date sites.
Last April/May, my biggest page (business wise) disappeared after being top 3 and then reappeared as top 2 after several days. That page has a pre-update cache date, so since Google considered it quality before the update (I don't do any 'funny' business that should get me penalized) I'm expecting it to pop back once it is cached. If it gets cached and still isn't rated I'll send off an email.
Most SEO is done for very small sites......
Very, very silly thing to state....unless of course you have backup statistics to prove your statement?
That statement is 100% false.
waiting till the update is complete before showing results to the public.
Amen DazzlinDonna. And Amen means "So Be It". I would bet big money that this is the last time we see this happen! This, I believe, is the one more update that GoogleGuy talked about at Esmeralda. We were waiting for this and expecting it. And thankfully it sounds like its only going to take 3-5 days from start to finish this time.
Does Google know what they are doing, you bet. They are going to be presenting the best results they have ever had. We will be praising Google for killing the spammers just before Christmas. Spammers will be forced to buy Adwords in 1-2 weeks for the biggest shopping day of the year - and hopefully the rest of us, will outbid them :-)
[edited by: HayMeadows at 6:14 pm (utc) on Nov. 17, 2003]
As far as Google presentinbg the best search results, they promissed that after dominic? Were they the best? No, you have to remember google is company, a company must make money, you or I are not their friends, we make them -money.
[edited by: deanril at 6:16 pm (utc) on Nov. 17, 2003]
Except one big issue - No traffic = Less cashflow.
If more people have to use Adwords then it will cost more to be seen as more people are using it its a no win situation.
[edited by: sd2001 at 6:19 pm (utc) on Nov. 17, 2003]
Except one big issue - No traffic = Less cashflow.
If more people have to use Adwords then it will cost more to be seen as more people are using it its a no win situation.
I lost you here? More adwords is bad for Google? So more money in your pocket is bad for you, but for me thats a good thing!
I am really confused as I read over google guidelines again and saw no mention of linking to a certain text was wrong.
I made sure my sight did not have anything the guidelines said not to have.
On my front page I have as a example : [Welcome to blah blah .. we have informative [blue widget articles]
[blue widgets] being hyperlinked to the actual page.
Also is it wrong to name the page /blue-widget.html?
If so what would you name it?
I thought revlancy was a good thing?
I did this on my site because I read everyday on this forum and other informative websites about ways the spiders are working and whats recommended.
Ive been looking at my site for 2 days now trying to figure out what is wrong. It didnt vanish all together - Matter a fact its doing better then before but my theres 2 areas it was #1 and number 4 that were most important and they are gone now. I am really really confused as how can I be penalized for 2 keywords and not for 30 others?
I am stuck as if I redo or change things it might upset what I have. Its really difficult as there are no answers any where to this kind of a problem. I think if someone that has been in this biz for years had the knowledge and could have a website that kept up to date on google and actually show a correct struture of a website for us new guys it would be a high traffic site.
Thanks,
Dan
I see it this way.
November 14th google has 300million adwords customers bringing in 200 million dollars dailly.
Novemeber 25th Google has 600 million Adwords customers bringing in 500 million dollars dailly.
This is bad for google? In what way?
How did it jump to 500 million yet the cutomers only doubled? Because of the bidding..........
Webmasters and IT Geeks! We found Google and promoted it to the regular folk. Only through word of mouth did Google become known. Yes, they are a great search engine, but
they wouldn't have come this far with out the Geeks!
Well guess what? Google will succeed only if they are fair to webmasters/seo professionals, which I believe they have been so far.
If they do unethical things, We Geeks will be the first to
inform the General public about it.
If they upset enough webmasters, then we will all find another search engine to praise and promote just like we did for Google. It might even be Yahoo again :)
With Great Power comes Great Responsibility!
CS
Why would the number of adwords increase?
Those who went down will use adwords, those who went up wont use adwords.
I think this topic is a little far fetched seen as the update hasn't finished (I hope)
:)
Welcome to Webmaster World!
I don't think you should do any major changes to your site until this update settles down.
Patience is virtue. I have faith that those of us that have done the right thing will be placed back to where we should be.
[edited by: synergy at 6:35 pm (utc) on Nov. 17, 2003]
Parts of the changes may have something to do with spam, but only in part, and they are not terrifically effective. I am sure that the biggest change is to do with links and multiple/generic links in particular. We've all noticed a massive absence of index (home) pages in the serps, but some domain URLs have gone too, and the occassional index page is listed. So what is it about index pages? They are linked to from almiost everywhere in most sites - and they are very often linked to using the filename instead of the domain URL. Also, they are usually linked to using identical link text. I feel that those two things have been taken into account in this update.
Google bases its relevancy on votes for pages by pages (links and link text), but they had no desire for generic links and certain multiple links to come into the reckoning. For instance, links in sig lines in forums are not genuine votes, and are not desirable for Google's relevancy scheme. Generic links to home pages are not genuine votes either, etc. etc.
I feel sure that the main changes in this update are an attempt at dealing with those generic and indentical links. That's my current theory :)
[edited by: PhilC at 6:37 pm (utc) on Nov. 17, 2003]
Was this stated by Google or anyone from Google? What makes anyone think this?
[edited by: optimist at 6:34 pm (utc) on Nov. 17, 2003]
How many businesses will go out of business? And do you really think google cares? Common, welcome to the world of big business!
Also is it wrong to name the page /blue-widget.html?
If so what would you name it?
I thought revlancy was a good thing?
Of course there is nothing wrong with that!
Most web sites are built that way. Most also have links from the text in their copy to the correct pages.
When I start reading that this is wrong or that is wrong I ask myself "what is reasonable?"
It would be totally unreasonable to penalize millions of websites for doing this as it is a natural process. Most people creating websites are not reading WW and have no idea that this is even considered wrong by a few posters here.
I, for one, just don't believe it and would caution anyone that making changes at this moment if you know you are "white hat" would not be the smartest move. There are too many much more serious examples of 'black hatting" going on to worry too much about this issue.
you said, "Generic links to home pages are not genuine votes either". i don't understand what you mean. why would a link to my home page not be a genuine link?
---
optimist,
googleguy has said they have NOT punished domains with hyphens in them in this update.
[edited by: dazzlindonna at 6:38 pm (utc) on Nov. 17, 2003]
What I have not seen discussed is the relationship between the fact that the Directory was recently updated. I am seeing some data suggesting that placement in the directory has effected the swings. Anyone else seeing this?
WBF
Keywords in domain names I believe will not get a penalization as this is not really logical at all, however keywords in the url like
/keyword-keyword/more-keywordstuffing/yet-another-keyword
would be a very black hat tatic.
pure keyword-keyword.com wont.
What I have not seen discussed is the relationship between the fact that the Directory was recently updated. I am seeing some data suggesting that placement in the directory has effected the swings. Anyone else seeing this?
I've tried bringing this topic up several times in this thread and it was by-passed.
My recent addition to the DMOZ directory has been added to the G directory in some datacenters. Weired thing is.. the directory is showing a PR7 next to my listing when my site actually has a PR6, more recently a PR5.
[edited by: synergy at 6:44 pm (utc) on Nov. 17, 2003]
Generic internal links to home pages are not votes in the same way - they are just a way of getting to the front of the site again. So I'm suggesting the Google doesn't want to count such generic links as proper votes, and that they have tried to deal with it in this update. But it's just my theory. It would account for the disappearance of so many index (home) pages and a few domain URLs too. And it may also account for what people are reporting regarding link text.
Google is still not able to catch hold of most popular- visible- known spam techniques till now....how it is suuposed to put an end to upcoming spam?
Guys!
I see a big debate over "Google should switch to evaluate the site most on content then anything else".
By no means do I think these results are spam free. Heck no, I was talking about the results we will see in 24-48 hours - I'm very optimistic we will see the best results we have ever seen from any search engine.
I'm signing off the Update thread, until we can have the serious algo thread :-)
Dan
What I have not seen discussed is the relationship between the fact that the Directory was recently updated. I am seeing some data suggesting that placement in the directory has effected the swings. Anyone else seeing this?
I don't see any relationship. I have a domain which moved up in the directory; however, the same site has vanished from the SERPs for the main keywords.
We only ever use HOME for linking but we went from #1 to who know where!
My gut feeling still tells me to use home, but now I will start looking at other factors too.
If you where being banned for using keywords in links relating to your site just to take them back to your home page then all those sites that target the keyword 'Home' would be also be dropped.
I am marketing property and homes :) so what should i write to take my users back to the index page?
punishing sites that are linking to the home page with keywords seems to be a bit harsh.
[edited by: jddux at 7:08 pm (utc) on Nov. 17, 2003]
And I don't think it's anything to do with 'punishing'. I think it's to do with discounting certain links so that they are nowhere near as effective as they were.
[edited by: PhilC at 7:09 pm (utc) on Nov. 17, 2003]
From what I've seen and read any kind of update or movement in the directory and the sites go AWOL.
Exactly what I am wondering. Where are you getting this information? Could this be the remaining data GG implies is to be added to the mix?
WBF
All I want for Christmas is my Google placement back
I noticed last week results that were very different on -fi. They were using this dcenter for about 2 days and then when this update took, they didnt use those serps.
Can anyone confirm or deny the -fi results and if they might use those in the next 1-2 days when it settles?
Before the update, if you searched on "keyword1 keyword2 keyword3" my site would come up #1. It SHOULD come up #1, no other result is even close in relevance.
Right now it isn't coming up at all. Instead, the Yahoo category that links to my site is listed #1. The link to my site is the only place on that yahoo page that "keyword1 keyword2 keyword3" appears.
I guarantee you all that when this update is done, my site will be #1 for "keyword1 keyword2 keyword3", Google will be #1 for "search engine", and all white-hatters and gray-hatters will be content again.
Just takes a little patience. This is history repeating itself. Including the hand-wringing and sky-is-falling.
Not so. I know one site that has been running a reciprocal link campaign for the last 6 months. They have tens of thousands of sites linking to their index page. Florida has been good to them, they have a higher ranking now.
If you ranked for a 2-word keyword, try searching it as "keyword-keyword" rather than "keyword keyword".
Results look much like they did before the update....
