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The panic is settling down, the whine of worry is receding to a steady hum in the back of my head, and several recovery plans are forming...
I lost my index page entirely, due to lazy keyword stuffing. My fault! Unfortunately, mine is a very small business: no listing = no food (let alone xmas).
I was planning on overhauling the website anyway, and I've given myself until 1/1/04 before I accept an opening with another business and abandon my own. The question now is: overhaul the index page and resubmit to Google immediately, overhaul the entire website and resubmit the whole thing in a few weeks, overhaul the website (starting with the index page of course) and wait for Googlebot. Time is most definitely a factor.
...are any of these plans likely to restore my index page to the directory before I have to throw in the towel in January?
There are also longer range options of starting over with a new website and closing the old.
Mahalo Nui Loa! (Thank you very much!)
Going grey very fast, and lost our best client because of it!
All changed again we went from #1 to #820, then the last 2 days #1 + #2 now can't find under main KW again.
well, if nothing else i'd say we have evidence that it is not over yet.
dazzlindonna, it's far, far from over yet.
[edited by: James_Dale at 7:21 pm (utc) on Nov. 20, 2003]
Activities under the Anti-Trust law govern monopoly, pricing limitations, predatory practices, merger control, ADVERTISING, etc. The change in their current algorithm has led to undo hardship on small business advertising on the Internet. If one company can shift advertising dollars and affect pricing within the entire Internet it has stepped DEEP into Anti-Trust violation waters. Google, like Microsoft, looks like it is going to learn the hard way that “with great power comes great responsibility.” But Google could end up going BUST in a class-action lawsuit that could consist of most every small business in the Internet.
Google’s subjectively controls the algorithmic value of back links pointing to a business’ web site. A recent change in their algorithm HAS CHANGED the way the advertising dollars flow to a business on the Internet. The use of this unfair advantage in this manner has bought Google into direct violation of U.S. Anti-Trust Law. And because they have used this advantage during the holiday seasons they have injured millions of Internet business’ that rely on advertising dollars. This poor timing will probably fuel the class-action lawsuit that is sure to come against them.
Even though Google may not have been trying to monopolize advertising and pricing in the Internet it has given the appearance of an attempted monopoly. And in law “appearance” can be just as damaging. I suspect that if Google is as smart as they are perceived their legal department will advised them to immediately shift course and return their search engine results back to its previous position
One is back on -gv, sort of. It's optimized for two 4-word phrases with regard to anchor text. It's back where it should be for a 3-word phrase that's part of one of the 4-word phrases. Still MIA on the 4-word phrases. Something's shaking it seems.
Nicely made points, but it is all wishful thinking!
Search for widgets shows a placeholder page at #3 or #4 across most DC's, Amazon.com at 9 and 10 on 4 DC's, Yahooligans at #17 on 4 DC's, Google Directory smattered around here and there (with the snippet being the description of my site, which is nowhere in the SERPs), CNN and other news stories...
And now the FAQ from an alt.newsgroup is showing up!
WBF
I am bnow seeing other sites that have vanished appearing under the guise of the Google Directory - Google Directory->Business->Sector->... but with the snippet being the Directory description of the individual site. I have never seen this before this update.
There are wierd relationships between the directory and the SERPs this time around, but I have yet to make sense of them...
Massive changes from about 4 hours ago...
The site i mentioned in a previous post that went from the land of the dead back to number one is now gone again.
Interesting note:
One large SEO company I'm aware of seems to be keeping the same ranking for it's own site through all of this. However, his clients have mostly gotten trashed so far.
Makes no sense, since they all employ the same 'tactics'.
Could this update have anything to do with
The pages accessibility to the disabled?
PopUps on index page?
All site pages in root not directory structured?
Aliens? :-)
This new update has been hard on my site.
1. Edit to Dmoz listing.
2. Google Drops my sites description /category from SERPS, but am updated in the directory.
3. I seem only to rank when i have fresh dates. ie i'm number one for many things, the fresh date vanishes and i get pushed out of the top 1000.
4. Thousands of my pages are falling out of the index every day now, when using the site command.
Going take tomorrow off and relax.
The relevancy of google results have dropped off HUGE. I'm not talking about my SEO efforts.
I run hundreds of searches each day on google for work related lookups. It just doesn't seem to provide good results anymore. I have been noticing this over the past month or so, but it really dropped off after this last update.
I think they have focused so much on curtailing corporate efforts for high ranking, that they screwed up and can't provide decent listings anymore.
Did SEO drive google to having poor listings? Is it possible?
Just my input....
Hopeful that the msnbot will give us something to look forward to.
Still seeing my site's page on purple widgets listed on a search for red widgets with the page on red widgets no where to be found.
I have about 30 SEO clients in separate industries and they have all been affected one way or another… some for good, but mostly for bad. The only clients that have faired well during this update are the ones with large networks of Travel sites, Gambling sites, Drug Sites. All my other clients with only one site and basic link exchange programs have fallen dramatically.
I don’t quite understand why large networks of sites have done so well since they have link exchange programs as well, but they all interlink with each other without crosslinking. As anyone else noticed that networks of related sites have done well?
Any other patterns?
It is not over, and the results are getting more bizarre.
Ouch! Within the last hour my index page vanished from the SERPs. So far the update had moved it up to #2 across all the data centers. Life looked good. This thread was only interesting reading....
A link from my signature(url)on a forum posting shows up on page one of the latest SERPs for my index page keywords.
That's a bizzare result.
My index page title is 5 (different) keywords. Most inbound links use my page title as anchor. It is a human readable/sensible phrase.
Alltheweb isn't having a problem with index pages, tell folks to go there.
#7 to nowhere. Back to #28 4 hours ago. Now gone again. A site that took the #1 spot for my keywords on Saturday has now completly disappeared as of half hour ago.
Funny - although I have not been that badly effected I spent the entire day concentrating on Inktomi and Teoma. I have not done this for months - it was also not a conscious decision and only realised it now.
You know Wisenut is looking good - I think there is a possibilty that this update maybe may not only be expensive for SEM's but also for G.
Ok- I've been reading through this thread for almost a week now. Some of you are acting as if Google owes you something! They don't!
If your rankings have slipped, you can always use their Adwords. I know, I know, you shouldn't have to pay for advertising.
Instead of b*tching and moaning on this thread, maybe you should spend some time reading other WW threads. There's a wealth of information here. You'll learn something new everyday!
Good luck to you all!
My homepage went from PR5 to PR6 on www-va with this update (and it's still at PR6 there). All the other data centers still show PR5. Clicking refresh several times shows several PR5's, then a PR6.
Surely it won't stay this way? Will the www-va PR revert to PR5 or will the other data centers "catch-up" (or neither)?
Very much so, our business is quite over the 2 week xmas anyway so this is the time to built up a backup of cash.
It's not over yet.
I've seen the #1 ranking for one keyphrase flip-flop between another site's page and my own several times over the past few days. It just flip-flopped again, erring on the side of favoring PageRank and/or crosslinked subdomains. But on the whole, changes for the keywords and keyphrases that I track have been minor (at least in the top 5 or 10 spots).
