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Kackle - can you explain the "dictionary" for me? And how I might benefit from it - Im reading your posts hard but dont see where youre coming from.
Sure. But you have to act quickly. Google will fix this one just like they fixed the hyphen.
1. Google is depreciating pages/sites that are over-optimized for certain keywords or keyword combinations. It does this by looking up search terms in a dictionary of target keywords or keyword pairs that it has compiled. This dictionary is Top Secret, because if you knew what was in the dictionary, you could avoid these words in your optimization efforts.
2. If the search term or terms hit on a dictionary entry, the search results for that user's search are flagged. This means that before the results are delivered, the order of the links, or even the inclusion of links, are adjusted so as to penalize pages that have overoptimizated for those terms. Most likely the title, headlines, links and anchor text are examined. It's possible that external anchor text pointing to that page has also been pre-collected and is available for scanning, but this is much less likely. (Besides, external links are not something within your immediate control, so don't worry about it right now.)
3. You want to find out which keywords that are relevant to your site are in Google's dictionary. Compile as many relevant keywords you can think of that searchers might use to find your site. Now take these words singly and in pairs, according to how users might search. Run two searches for each combination and compare the results.
4. If the results are strikingly different for the pre-filter and the post-filter search on a particular term or combination of terms, it means that some variation of those terms has been flagged because something was found in Google's dictionary.
5. Do lots of searches and you can come up with a list of "sensitive" words that you'll want to avoid when you re-optimize your pages.
It's a nice weekend project.
Without going into my site history and confusing description of "keyword1 keyword2" type combination results, I'd like to add a couple comments on what I'm seeing.
Do NOT intentionally "optimize" or target two word "money" phrases. Build content rich sites with natural links that aid the user in navigation and let them rise to the top on their own merit.
The only place I've suffered the consequences in this update is on the two word "money" keywords that I've "optimized" and concentrated most on rising to the top of the SERPs.
I can't complain at all about the types of searches I'm seeing in my logs right now. They are a bit more generalized, but seem very relevant.
(In my little niche anyway)
Once the dust settles from this update, I'll get back to work deconstructing all the "tricks" I've used to rise to the top on my main keywords again.
By tricks I don't mean spamming or stuffing in any way.
Unca
I did the search and sure enough there it was.
At first, I agreed with you that this has no reason to rank under 'jewelry' because I looked and could not find jewelry anywhere in the site (visible or hidden) BUT then the obvious hit me. Look at the URL ...../ring.html, who else but a jewelry site would use 'ring' in their URL.
Makes perfect sense to me and obviously Google.
Now if only we could teach our customers to put -dfdf or
any other garbage after there search term.
So any idea what is causing this, and whether google will
fix the problem.
1) More results then without (implies that some sites have been filtered out)
example
search "jewelry mall" 2,330,000
search "jewelry mall -dfdf -dfdfd" 2,420,000 results
so 90,000 pages missing
(this works for any phrase search term)
yep, and if word1 word2 -gfgf brings 1.250.000 results, then word1 word -hghghgh brings 1.240.000 results and word1 word2 -hghghghghghg brings 1.210.000 results, of course if you search for gfgf or hghghgh or hghghghghghg you get the same - no matches found :)
is there anything behind that? not really sure :)
and actually for all my search terms normal search always returnes more results than this keyword1 keyword2 -heregoessomecrap thing
Crazy!
Who is going to tell googleguy to incorporate -dfdf in
all searches automatically. This should be an easy patch
for them to implement. A lot easier than rolling all the
data centers back.
Just saw the "most searched for single term" on the internet - a little three letter word go from 280,000,000 pages in the results to 3 mill - not a lot of movement inthe top 20 SERPs - a little shuffling - but I doubt seriously if that word is going to be left with that few of results - it has run at the over 200 mill serps for the last few years although recently (the last 3 months) its only had 35 mill - and the results I saw match -va reults to a tee
But are people saving both sets of serps (for keyword1 keyword2 and keyword1 keyword2 -wqwqzw, etc) to their desktop for later analysis... the window might only be open for a while :)
Pre-florida: 10 of top 10 have exact keyword1 keyword2 keyword3 in title
Post-florida: 1 of top 10 has exact keyword1 keyword2 keyword3 within long title; all the rest only have one or two of the keywords in title
FWIW, half of top 10 sites for this search are now barely relevant.
Post-florida search with keyword1 keyword2 keyword3 -dfdf -dfdfd delivers strong title tag results.
Anyone else feel this hypothesized filter is killing sites with optimized title tags (for competitive keyword phrases)? For example, my three sites with exact "keyword1 keyword2 keyword3" titles (previously in top 5) have completely disappeared.
It doesn't seem to make a lot of sense to do this intentionally; my (overly optimistic) hope is that it's a (soon-to-be-fixed) glitch in the new algo. Or perhaps Google is trying to extract more descriptive, less keyword heavy titles from us?
The way I figure it, im in the top 7 for my keywords on
all other non-google fed search results.
The fact that im buried in the google index, after 5 years
of top 5 performance in google, means that google is wrong
not me.
I expect I will wake up one morning, and find my keywords
back in the top of the search for Google.
Until them, I will make sure I am stock up on antidepresants :)
I would really like to hear more theories about the double minus issue.
If it seems like it's not obviously a money word, then consider whether the two-word combination that seems to be sensitive is something that generates Adwords.
Two examples of keyword pairs that don't seem overly competitive, but which are "dictionary sensitive," in that they have resulted in top sites losing a significant amount of ranking:
wheelchair ramps
law essays
Both of these generate Adwords that appear to be keyed on the word pair. One of the sites that lost ranking is a *.co.uk top level domain instead of the usual .com domain.
Is there a handicapped lawyer out there who'd be interested in a pro bono class action suit? (Sorry, sick humor.)
