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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!)
Olee!
SEOMariachi
GoogleGuy, if you need any help recounting those hanging chads, just ask? I can be found in the ATW forum.
Or the fact that since July google has been acting rather strange.
What about the Google directory switching back and forth between old data and current data?
Down data centers...
And some folks just dismiss this as a "normal" update...
Thanks ;)
Fred
Still, it can be scary. Kind of like hitching a lift with a drunk driver.
In my opinion, if none of us change anything and leave it three months, we'll be back in our former positions. The same applies to the current top listed results.
James_Dale, I think you may be right on this one.
I reckon one another possibility is that in a couple of days we'll all be singing Google's praises. No?
Wow, that would be a real treat after this tsunami is over.
Yeah, -zu is offline.
[edited by: g1smd at 10:42 pm (utc) on Nov. 19, 2003]
Google is going after all the unatural link/anchortext boosters. It wants HONEST votes for link pop. No more I vote for you, you vote for me, *wink* *wink* votes.
I remeber a thread about a month back, where people were noticing links from links.html or obvious links pages were no longer being weighted as they once were.
What good is a link if is listed in a big long list with 100 other links all with their ideal anchor text? This is obviously an attempt to manipulate rankings.
Now imagine your competitor links to you in their body text, and just with "brand name" with surrounding text with your keywords. Which do you think is a better vote?
I'm going to be optimizing my sites to be 100% natural with generous outbound links. And with link exchanges I'll request them to be in paragraph form, no obvious anchor text stuffing and be selective on what pages they appear on.
I think that is what Google is trying to reward. I don't see irrelvant/bad-vote links being a penalty on us, they are just being discarded entirely and Google is being very selective about what it considers to be a vote now.
Things look perfectly OK with the Google SERPs to me. And, I haven't heard that the public has switched to msn.com. As for GG, I suspect he knows things are just fine at Google, and that it is the the fact those decimated in the SERPs are the ones that most post in these threads makes it unappealing to come here much at the moment.
I reckon one another possibility is that in a couple of days we'll all be singing Google's praises. No?
Could be...
According to what GoogleGuy said in the first part of the this thread waaay back on the 15th this "update" should have been over yesterday.
He also stated yesterday (in part 2 of this thread) that the data was all folded in or someing to that effect. That led me to believe this "update" was over...
<added>
Things look perfectly OK with the Google SERPs to me.You must not be looking very close or you have your eyes shut.</added>
Try a bunch of random searches on non-commercial topics that pop into your mind. Assassinations of US Presidents, favorite music artists, etc. Do these SERPs really look THAT bad?
This thread has become virtually impossible to read because of the sheer volume of posts but also because of the following:
1) Some members that post the same thing over and over again. We got it the first time thanks. No reason to crank out a dozen posts that say basically the same thing.
2) Pleas to googleguy. c'mon, it's not becoming of any of you.
3) Whining. Hey, I hear you, I fall into the camp that think the new results are a step back as far as quality is concerned, no reason to go on and on about it. It's noise.
Alot of thoughtful analysis has been posted over the last couple of days, it would be nice if we didn't have to wade through 800 posts of noise to find it.
Thanks for thinking before posting. :)
[edited by: pmac at 10:56 pm (utc) on Nov. 19, 2003]
--> lighten up Francis.
<added>
Things look perfectly OK with the Google SERPs to me.
You must not be looking very close or you have your eyes shut.</added>
Hang on - there's 3 billion pages in Google.
I'm not seeing 3 billion different people complaining....
Or even 3 million...
Just a few.
In fact, I think my eyes are wide, wide open, actually...
From my perspective, all my sites have moved only a few per cent in this last update - about the amount I'd expect.
Mischievously, but based on fact not opinion...
DerekH
Things look perfectly OK with the Google SERPs to me.
I have to agree. If I hadn't been a member of WW, I would have never known that anything was going on, (I mostly do information searches though, not commercial). I sure wouldn't have found out by seeing changes in our own kw rankings... nothing changed.
ADDED: I hear you, pmac... I shouldn't have even posted this, it just added to the dross. My apologies.
[edited by: Stefan at 10:58 pm (utc) on Nov. 19, 2003]
Do these SERPs really look THAT bad?
Try a bunch of random searches on non-commercial topics that pop into your mind. Assassinations of US Presidents, favorite music artists, etc. Do these SERPs really look THAT bad? - rfgdxm1
Oh yeah? try "Tourist attractions New York" (without quotes) - is there a New York in Romania?
Update GoogleGuy?
Secondly, no of course customers will not leave Google it is still delivering great results, just different ones right now.
The question really is why have so many good sites just vanished. It can be understandable to drop a page or two or three but to have gone completely! If Google thought these sites good enough to hold good positions over the last how ever many months why the sudden change.
Oh yeah? try "Tourist attractions New York" (without quotes) - is there a New York in Romania?
No, but there's one in the cache of the page google returns. Clear as day.
And that's what google is returning you...
You ask it for a page with those four words on?
You got it.
DerekH
unfortunately I'm none the wiser about tourist attractions in NY!
I think that is what Google is trying to reward. I don't see irrelevant/bad-vote links being a penalty on us, they are just being discarded entirely and Google is being very selective about what it considers to be a vote now.In my view, it is definitely a penalty. The site has been forced out of the results for certain keyphrases. If the reciprocal links are removed I still have more inbounds than my competitors total inbounds. From quality, on topic sites. There are hundreds and hundreds of pages in front of me with no external backlinks at all. That means zero impartial votes. There are hundreds of pages in front of me that have NO CONTENT RELATED TO THE SEARCH. There are dozens of pages in front of me whose only relevance to the search arises as a result of a link to my site. If I have wedding directory in Purple River, and a national dj directory links to my dj page, is their page with my listing more relevant than my homepage when people search for purple river weddings. Google says yes. ALL the other search engines know better. It is absolutely a penalty.
With the results as they are, and the competition looming on the horizon, and the fact that someone talks about Googling someone on the telly every night, an IPO must be imminent. The word of the new algo will get to the press. Yahoo! will be formidable, as will M$. And Google won't be cute and cuddly for very long. Their value can really only go down from here.
unless it goes up;)
We may just not have the whole picture.
[edited by: Powdork at 11:11 pm (utc) on Nov. 19, 2003]
likewise if you search heathrow airport parking why is there a site specific to Bristol Airport
For the same reason!
You are NOT asking google about Heathrow Airport, you are asking google to return a page with heathrow, airport and parking on it.
Can't you see the difference?
Google isn't an encyclopedia, it's an index...
DerekH
