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You haven't shown any evidence to contradict what I wrote. Have all these sites hit #1 in the SERPs on -va now that these new backlinks are showing?
Remember back in the day when AltaVista was the top search engine and they changed their index...and then Google became the top search engine because of all the problems with AltaVista search results....I wonder if this is the changing of the guard for a new search engine....the results on Google right now are ridiculous.
I think we hear this argument every time there's an update. Some people say that everyone's fleeing to AllTheWeb, while others speculate that Teoma will become the new Google. A few even claim that Inktomi gives better search results than Google.
All I know is that when I search on (team mascot) football, I get the University of (state) football team. When I search on (major city) tourist information, the #1 result is for the leading tourism site of that major city. When I search on (brand name) cameras, the top result is for that camera company's site. When I type in a certain type of roof shingles, the top result is an article on that type of roof shingles. For that matter, when I search on the name of an impotence drug that's probably generated more e-mail spam and SEO efforts than any other drug on the market, I get the drug company's Web site for that pill.
Obviously, some terms are going to give lower-quality search results just because they're so general. But even a single-keyword search on a certain money-related "f" word yields better results than one might expect, with listings that range from Yahoo! Finance to a Ministry of Finance to The Motley Fool. One might expect such a term to yield nothing but heavily optimized affiliate and e-commerce spam, but it doesn't. Of course, to the marketers who wish they scored in the top 10 for that keyword, those largely informational search results may be unwelcome, but that doesn't make them bad.
Mind you, Google isn't perfect; searches on certain destination-related travel keyphrases tend to yield a disproportionately high number of "SEO-intensive" boilerplate affiliate and booking sites. But on the whole, I don't see how anybody who's reasonably objective can say that Google's current results are "ridiculous"--at least, not with a straight face. :-)
Dave
You haven't shown any evidence to contradict what I wrote. Have all these sites hit #1 in the SERPs on -va now that these new backlinks are showing?
Now c'mon like you have proof for what you wrote? Is the sky really blue? What came first the chic...
Pure conjecture.... sorry, I don't normally post to these threads and will not participate in pure speculation on something that will not change the outcome...
europeforvisitors is one I can agree with :)
Edited
The four truths:
1.Google is updating
2.Outcome is pure speculation until everything is factored in.
3. when it's done - it's done
4. some will laugh and some will cry
[edited by: The_Contractor at 3:20 am (utc) on Nov. 19, 2003]
Yeah. All the -va SERPs at this moment I check are the same moldy, old ones.
Home page has no penalties, but it is no where to be seen. Same for other competitors.
At this point, the dance will end soon. Will my home page get left standing?
jd
There is still hope. However, as time goes on odds get slimmer.
I think.
Then we'll get a semi-cycle restart.....
Remember back in the day when AltaVista was the top search engine and they changed their index
When Alta Vista was the top SE there was a dance every day. On-page factors were most important then. Tweak a page, submit - number 3. Tweak again, submit, number 94. Repeat, now you're at 18. Everybody was tweaking and submitting and the SERPs changed on a daily basis.
When Google came along with PR and its once every so often update it spoiled a lot of folks. On-page factors weren't as important and tended to be ignored. Back links and anchor text are king and queen. If you got to number 9 on the SERPS the easiest way to get to number 3 was get more backlinks and anchor text.
So if -- repeat if -- Google has done some tweaking of the algo to make on-page factors more important (or just in some way decreased the weight of PR and anchor text) it's time to, as Brett says in his Successful site in 12 months... [webmasterworld.com], do some "simple old fashioned seo from the ground up."
As soon as the dance ends get the tools out. Start with pages a number of positions above yours in the SERPs and find out why they're there and not you. Pull the pages apart, run them through a keyword density tool, check the backlinks (not just G, use ATW also) and anchor text, use sim spider or a text browser to see where the keyword phrases are falling on the page, etc., etc.
<aside>Is there such a thing as 'over optimization?' Sure, it's called not falling within the accepted (or expected) ranges of the SEs algorithm. Pages with too few keyphrase repititions or too many keyphrase repititions, whether in individual components (title, head, body) or the page as a whole are not ranked as well as those that meet the SEs expectations. Reliance on PR and anchor text has tended to obscure this.</aside>
Sorry I went on so long and started to sound a bit pedantic, but it's back to the basics, folks. This is where we find out if we actually know anything at all about SEO.
Jim
Edited
The four truths:
1.Google is updating
2.Outcome is pure speculation until everything is factored in.
3. when it's done - it's done
4. some will laugh and some will cry
I think I am in the crying category..almost literally. I have just discovered two more keyphrases that I have completely disappeared on. I wish I knew what I have done wrong.
Umm...so... your saying that we should optimize our pages to realize an advantage in the serps right? Yeah....
It's good advice I guess... I mean if you don't optimize you won't reach the top.... but.... if you do optimize you may get filtered.... but if you don't you won't make money.... but if you do, the money you start making may go away.... but....
Hey! I got it... let's buy boat loads of Adwords! Then we can gautantee a spot on the page and all we have to do is out bid each other!
woo hoo....
I think I am in the crying category..almost literally. I have just discovered two more keyphrases that I have completely disappeared on. I wish I knew what I have done wrong.
Impossible - #1 is still in progress....
No more posts for me in this thread.... ;)
This is the time to be making observations, not drawing conclusions.
Correct. I've seen major changes happen just before the dance ends. It may look much different then than now.
if you do optimize you may get filtered
No, that's why I through that aside in, there's seems to be a heck of a lot of confusion as to what 'optimize' means.
Just in terms of keyphrase repitition: Too few repitions and the page is not optimized; similarly, too many reps and the page is not optimized. When you hit it just right, what the SE expects to see -- it's optimized!
And yeah, if a page isn't optimized its going to get 'filtered' in a way -- but it is not an actual filter and it is not a penalty. It's simply how the page scores according to Google's algorithm. If a page hits the algorithm dead on it's ranked high, if not, it's ranked low and you find it on page 250. (And then of course, there's where and how Google throws in other factors such as PR into its overall algorithm, but let's keep this simple with basic on-page stuff for now.)
As I said, wait for the dance to end and then get the optimization toolbox out -- before another dance partner has a chance to stomp on your toes.
I remember that.
I was in first place for a very important phrase for three years.
When Altavista dropped my site to page 4 or 5, everyone stopped using it and moved to that brand new place called google so they could find me again.
;-)
my thoughts exactly. well said!
When Altavista dropped my site to page 4 or 5, everyone stopped using it and moved to that brand new place called google so they could find me again.
I used to think Infoseek was the best search engine, if only because I ranked near the top of its SERPs for so many topics. Of course, there was a lot less competition in those days than there is now. :-)
woo hoo.... "
Maybe, just maybe, it's time to kick google back where it hurts so they will stop with this BS. SEO's have no respect from google because we are not the ones bringing in the money, advertisers are. But.. what if we get rid of their advertisers? Imagine a google result page with no adwords!
Possible? you bet.. and easy too. I've been thinking about it for a while. Simple script that installs on the browser and gets rid of google adwords for the user. Better life for the user without advertising and better life for all of us here.
How to make it popular? a webmasters coalition effort for profitability - distribution is the key.
So.. hopefully someone will start this soon and if not, I just might do it myself.
All the other DCs have problems like this: the search is for "Red widgets" and the pages for "purple widgets" and "blue widgets" are shown first, the page for "red widgets" is no where to be found. Throughout the site there are many examples like this.
Yeah, those Adwords are just SO damn annoying everyone will download this. Get a clue.
Optimize means to change and test until an efficiency or balance is achieved....
Pretty straight forward.... and yet not...
A week ago keyphrase repitition was all the rage... really just subtle "optimization"
I'm not talking about weighed and measured and found lacking.. that will happen...
The algorithm is there for a reason... to score and rank pages. It is also changed every now and then to defeat exactly what you are advocating....
Yes... look at what people are doing and how they managed to stay in the serps... but be aware that what you do today may end up dumping into the bowels of the serps... no problem, start over again.
My advice.... build a good site. Target the audience you want to frequent your site. That's right... target the audience and not the serps position you want to get...
Targeting serps leads directly to the bottom of the stack... not right away... but as your pockets get lined you will be willing to "optimize" more and more...
It's a very, very, very fine line....
Maybe, just maybe, it's time to kick google back where it hurts so they will stop with this BS. SEO's have no respect from google because we are not the ones bringing in the money, advertisers are. But.. what if we get rid of their advertisers? Imagine a google result page with no adwords!
Possible? you bet.. and easy too. I've been thinking about it for a while. Simple script that installs on the browser and gets rid of google adwords for the user. Better life for the user without advertising and better life for all of us here.
How to make it popular? a webmasters coalition effort for profitability - distribution is the key.
So.. hopefully someone will start this soon and if not, I just might do it myself.
Maybe, just maybe, it's time to kick my parents back where it hurts so they stop this B.S. I get no respect from my parents because I'm not the one bringing in money, they are. I'm freeloading. But...what if I get rid of my parents? Imagine my parent's house with no people!
Possible? You bet.
Yes, now they just need to be factored in.
I know we haven't finished, and everyone's got their opinion, but we are close enough to finished that I'm weighing in with my two bobs worth.
My two sites that have tanked, vs my 23 others that have either improved or stayed the same, have
(1) Far less text on the home page.
(2) Much higher keyword density for keywords they have tanked on. Partly because of less text on page, so easier to accidentally go high density
The two sites that have tanked, have ONLY tanked on keywords I have got high kw density for on home page. They remain well ranked where anchor text is DIFFERNT to the same as keywords I have optimised(over) for.
I am sure this is the problem. I purposedly set my incoming links with a few poplular keywords that I did not then "optimise" for. I am fine on these keywords
I can see nothing to tie in inbound/outbound links/anchor text as any problems as not showing on my sites.
ALL the site that are now ranking high that I have tested have lots of home page text/low KWD or both usually.
My answer
Add more text to your home page.
Reduce keyword density.
Good post steveb.
Google listed backlinks range from a low of 4 to a high of a little less than 100.
PR's range from 4 to 5.
Text to HTML ranges 27% to 50%
Titles have 1-3 occurences of the keyword
One is a placeholder page for a sold out business (no longer n operation)
One has a hyphen in the URL keyword-keyword
The SERPS are not even close to allinanchor, allinurl, allintitle or allintext.
In short, I am unable to determine a pattern now.
On this term I went from a staedy #8 or 9 (since dom/esm) to who knows where. There are numerous sites in the top 50 results whose only relevance is the link to my site.
The Google Directory Cat comes up #46, and the snippet is about my site, but when I click the link it takes me to the Cat from before when my site was included!
All is conjecture at this point. I would be interested in hearing conjecture backed up by data, or in just hearing interesting data, but I do not believe that anyone here has the answer at this point.
The results I see look vaguely familiar to results that came up a long time ago. In other words, these are mostly "mature" sites, and they are ranked similar to results I might have seen a year or more ago. But as soon as I say that, here comes a CNN Story dated 3/12/03 in the top 20.
Go figure...
WBF
1. Links manager, link spamming
2. Tons of text in div's and set to invisible.
3. lots and lots of resized H1 tags via a stylesheet.
Funny thing is, these sites aren't all that bad, they should naturally rank high without these spam techniques. Whats interesting is affiliate sites employing these tatics got smoked. There seems to be a filter of some sort that says if you have more then x number of backlinks you won't suffer as much of a penalty.
Only two things could be happening.
1. Google is broken.
2. Google dropped all those index pages and is showing a lot of very questionable results on purpose.
Take your pick...
In short, I am unable to determine a pattern now.
Exactly. For every example of whats being observed and why its happening, there is another example that contradicts.
And then i thought, hey, why didnt google use www2 and www3 for staging this massive update so we wouldnt have to bite our nails until it was done....nah, they hate us :)
Naw, they are doing you a favor by allowing you to watch.
For now follow the advice of GG and take a walk around the lake or do like steveb and europe, observe, take notes and watch how this thing (like it or not) is being constructed.
I think it could all be quite simple.
It may be that the google toolbar gives all our SEO secrets and info to google, who then uses them to tweak their algo, filters, and specific penalties. - Maybe even on an individual level.
ianama
Naw, they are doing you a favor by allowing you to watch.
No comment from the Google propaganda Guy in the last 12 pages of this thread...
I've been checking in and reading, BradBristol. Some of the conspiracy theories/imminent downfall of Google stuff drives me away a little.
And how would Google know if the toolbar user was a SEO, or some teenage bozo?
I am pretty much seeing what you described. Some of the results do resemble results from a few months ago. And I can see no emerging pattern. All the datacenters are still returning some peculiar results.
Teenage Bozo or SEO, I think (via the toolbar) google would have, and has the capacity to figure out which sites are really related to one another, and then to take appropriate steps as necesary to counter any tricky stuff as between those related sites.
Just out of curiosity, are there any other victims of the dominic/esmerelda disappearing index page who are perfectly alright this time round (and have bothered to read this thread all the way to here)?
>>Some of the conspiracy theories/imminent downfall of Google stuff drives me away a little.
GG - In Australia we call it the tall poppy syndrome ;)
Way to go Google ...
Some sites are affected profoundly, some a little, some not at all. I believe links are being factored in but not their full pagerank value. So if there is a site with high quality links, that quality isn't being fully factored in yet.
Good luck.
This is exactly my point. I bet these pages have
(1) At least medium PR as a result of medium/high pr home page.
(2) Are not over optimised for that keyword, as they are not trying to optmise for it at all.
(3) Theya re rnaking to a medium/high ranking site with relevant anchortext, and regardless your site is now tanking on those keywords, does not mean google penalises them for linking to you, they may be in fact somehow rewarding them.
Its an overoptimisation filter. I am 100% sure.
One of my sites that went UP has NO KEYWORDS or TEXT and one link only(flash splash page) on the home page. It relies on rank from <title> words and incoming link text. This site's inner pages are now kicking arse too, for all sorts or weird key words that are contained only in OUTGOING text links.
Google may be targeting kewword density, or not. It may just be targeting overuse by SEO uses of keywords in <title> <H1> anchortext, pagename etc regardless of density.
Either way, reduce usage and decrease density.. do both I say and it will help.
Can you shed a bit of light on this situation to ease our misery :) Is there still more data to be added or this pretty much it?
When my wife cooks a cake I often dip my finger in the bowl and tell here it's not as good as her last one. She then tells me she has not finished yet. I must be *really silly* as the same thing happens each time she cooks :o)
Oh BTW, I have heard that if you submit to Google on a full moon you will get my higher in the SERPs. Some other tips are:
1) Use Arial Font only.
2) Never use a Background image or picture.
3) Always use black font on a white background.
4) Never let you keyword density exceed 12.9658%
5) Never us Frontpage or similar.
6) Google only count links in that are blue.
7) Your true PR is always half of what you see on the Google Toolbar.
Dave
[edited by: Dave_Hawley at 6:30 am (utc) on Nov. 19, 2003]
As far as the downfall of google, well, our site is taking a serious plop, but somehow, I think google will survive.
But whatever the case is, would you kindly give some useful info, whether it be reassuring or unsettling?
Way back on the 15th of this month in the first part of this update thread you said,
I think this update should happen over a slightly shorter timeframe, so most data should be incorporated within 3-4 days I would guess.
So I guess we can assume that this update is about over?
"Only two things could be happening.
"1. Google is broken.
"2. Google dropped all those index pages and is showing a lot of very questionable results on purpose.
"Take your pick..."
None of the above. Please read the facts:
October 22, 2002 - Google sued over site ranking http://news.com.com/2100-1023-962913.html
November 13, 2002 - SearchKing Google Rank Restored http://thewhir.com/marketwatch/sea111302.cfm
January 10, 2003 - Google counters search-fix lawsuit http://news.com.com/2100-1023-980215.html
May 27, 2003 - Judge dismisses suit against Google http://news.com.com/2100-1032-1011740.html
June 2003 - Google starts a long process to eliminate "blackhat sites."
July through October 2003 - "Blackhat site" operators receive the benevolent opportunity to fix their tactics.
November 2003 - Google deploys its own "Iron Hammer" operation.
Be :)
November 2003 - Google deploys its own "Iron Hammer" operation.
Would this "Iron Hammer" operation be the nazi or american one?.
[edited by: keyword1dashkeyword2 at 8:36 am (utc) on Nov. 19, 2003]
I only pointed out what seemed obvious to me.
Google is broken or they are serving up the current results on purpose. How could it be any other way?
[edited by: BradBristol at 6:53 am (utc) on Nov. 19, 2003]
All with NOARCHIVE (not cached by Google). And, this one spammer gets the top 10 results for thousands of search phrases. He/She/They use 5 domains and get two listings on each domain! They are making Google look like a laughingstock!
Why can't Google detect this redirect garbage that is dominating the SERPS?
Google is broken or they are serving up the current results on purpose. How could it be any other way?
Your sites? :)
A bunch of webmasters that I've polled on here seem to indicate traffic gains. None of them have posted on this thread.
You are on the mark. It may apply to crosslinking of different sites. But in my case it is going on from linking within the site. WE have no crosslinking from outside sites, or in fact hardly any external links at all.
Your sites? :)
[edited by: keyword1dashkeyword2 at 8:37 am (utc) on Nov. 19, 2003]
I think that is exactly what is going on. So, the most highly optimized keywords are getting hit. My secondary keywords are still doing OK, as you suggest.
What remedy do you suggest?
I will dispute. No cross-linking. The vast majority of my links are inbound only. No links pages. Every one of my outbound links is there for the benefit of my visitors.
Hyphenated URL was purchased about 1999, far before the thought of using such for spam was in anyone's mind.
If one is selling only one product and its variants, the domain name is appropriate to that product, then where is the spam?
Its a somewhat sticky site, so return visitors are keeping it going for now. Also, I have no reason to believe that the site is not rock solid, so I will expect it to return to its former rankings at some point. Also, good rankings in Ink are a benefit, since I am seeing more MSN traffic now.
On the other hand, many of the top sites in my niche are heavily crosslinked. Several of those have come from nowhere to take over top spots.
Again, no pattern is emerging for me. Would certainly like one so that I could get back to work. In my niche the SERPS are not all that bad (except I am not in them:)), but they are certainly missing the authority sites that one would expect from a good set of SERPS, and there are some real ringers in there.
As someone else asked previously, why do I need Google to give me a link to the Yahoo or DMOZ directories? Or, why do I need links to books for sale by Amazon. Or why do I need to read a news story over 6 months old when I could search Google News?
WBF
My site is like yours, I think. But I link internally using keywords - with the same keyword for the
keyword/keyword-keyword.html
keyword-keyword h1 tag
and keyword-keyword title
In a big site that can be done hundreds of times on hundreds of pages. Is that what you are doing?
