Forum Moderators: open
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.
The records are still in the database, because you can still find your site at its pre-florida position if you use the following techniques:1: keyword1 keyword2 -fufuf -fufuf
I've checked this with multiple sites, and this has been tru with all of them....(let me know if this is not the case).
Not the case! Back to the drawing board.
2 word city real estate -ggg -dddd -fffff -iiii -sssss
Make sure ot put multiple -fufu -ytyty the search!
Let me know what happens now.
[edited by: willardnesss at 8:21 am (utc) on Nov. 23, 2003]
keyword1 keyword2 keyword3 -argf -argf will show pre-Florida until the programmer fixes the bug.
<EDIT>What willardnesss said</EDIT>
The site which has been at #1 for five years shows up #4 and the #2 site for the past four years shows up as #5. A major spam site shows up #1 and two of my sites are #2 and #3.
kw1 kw2 shows the old #1 site at #1, old #2 site at #2 spam site at #3 and my sites at #4 and #5.
Pre Florida my sites were #8 and #9 and the spam site was at #18. #1 and #2 were at #1 and #2, just like they have been for five and four years.
But I just checked pure search and 7 out of 10 of last month's Google results are there for my kws... and Im #1 for the 2 main ones. So while G may have knocked me silly for:
A. Over optimization of H1, title, etc
B. Specific anchor text
C. Actually having words that describe my site on my site
D. all of the above
E. Who the heck knows
...INK decided to put up decent results that closely mirror Google's serps of two weeks ago.
IMO, outguessing Google is pointless. Even if you do "figure it out", dont make any changes because G isnt going to let this stand. They will get this fixed since there is no way to defend these serps when compared against AV and INK.
2) Strange thing happens when you type keyword phrase and -dfdfd -dddddd (I noticed the two minus thingy's have to be different). Suddenly more results appear than the natural search results. This would imply that there is some filter being added to the serps. Possibly based on a dictory look up or possibly based on over optimized sites.
3) The break down:
sample search:
normal search: 1,620,000 results
allinarchor: 2000 results
quotes around phrase (exact search): 32,300 results
phrase -fgfgfgf: 1,650,000 results
phrase -fgfgfgf -fgqqqqq: 1,650,000 results
(all results show fresh tags)
The best qulaity results were shown with the double minus. Even the exact phrase shows signs of filtering.
Actually it is plainly right. One bit of evidence is that people have been saying over and over again that they see themselves where they were before the update. If you'd actually look you could see that the anchor text results now very closely correspond, and this is true for all types of searches where anchor text was the key factor before, and it has nothing to do with some imaginary dictionary. A simple command shows a search phrase (at least now) under the previous algorithm.
They changed the alogorithm. Like with anything where there is a major change, some things did not go smoothly.
Instead of myths that can be disproved in ten seconds, people would do well to examine the algorithm: the increase in words on the page factors, diminishment of anchor text, increase in generic authority, etc.
==
"allinanchor always produces fewer results and results which use the phrase in the anchor text only."
I give up. If you honestly didn't know how anchor text was effecting the previous serps, then there is no way for you to discuss any of this.
With regards to the title relevancy tests I ran then, I have since tried the same tests with a couple of other SEs, to see how Google compared. Here are the results -
Search 1 (8 million in Google, Top-10 results)
values = all keywords in title, exact phrase in title
(larger # is better)
AllTheWeb: 10, 7
old algo (-): 9, 8
AltaVista: 8, 8
New Google: 6, 0
values = only 1 keyword in title, no keyword in title
(smaller # is better)
AllTheWeb: 0, 0
old algo (-): 0, 1
AltaVista: 1, 1
New Google: 2, 2
Search 2 (4 million in Google, Top-10 results)
values = all keywords in title, exact phrase in title
(larger # is better)
old algo (-): 9, 8
AllTheWeb: 9, 4
New Google: 7, 5
AltaVista: 6, 3
values = only 1 keyword in title, no keyword in title
(smaller # is better)
old algo (-): 1, 0
AllTheWeb: 1, 0
New Google: 3, 0
AltaVista: 4, 0
Note that in Test 1, the New Google consistently got the worst scores of the 4 engines, and in Test 2, it in was second to last place.
BTW, on the other SEs I tried, ALL of the Top-10 listings for the search "jewely", were - guess what - related to jewelry!
(I noticed the two minus thingy's have to be different).
We have a winner! Back to good results 1-10. So this means that all 10 from pre-florida pi$$ed off the Google gods?
They changed the alogorithm. Like with anything where there is a major change, some things did not go smoothly.Instead of myths that can be disproved in ten seconds, people would do well to examine the algorithm: the increase in words on the page factors, diminishment of anchor text, increase in generic authority, etc.
steveb, I believe this is the answer.
quoting myself >The only exceptions in one search Im seeing are two sites that had huge backlinks relative to the niche, but little onpage optimization. They appear to actually be there because of the user-centric on page content.
Without and we're down on page 3! We got replaced by a book review on a cooking web site, that just happened to include the keywords sprinkled somewhere in the text, for a search that has nothing to do with either books or cooking.
But it's definately a money search, with lots of AdWords on the results page. Funny, all of them are dead-on for the money topic I searched on (unlike the "new, improved" Google listings!)
Isn't progress wonderful?
I think you're wrong. I don't believe on page factors are producing a benefit. In fact I'm seeing the opposite. Sites was with excellent page text ranking extremely poorly. In fact for many searches allinanchor and natural top ranked serps are the same if not very similar.
If anything anchor text has become more important. However, I believe in a third case where sites are being dropped for over-optimization. I seems Google is testing a filter which has gone too far. Possibly they will reconsider its use.
Pre-Florida, my site was listed well in both normal and allinanchor: for key1 key2 key3. The thing was, the only anchor text where I had those keywords were internal backlinks to my home page.
Post Florida, my site along with dozens of others killed for that phrase. As predicted doing the search with -dfdf -dfdfd brings back all those sites.
Now, if I use the phrase key1 key2-plural key3 I'm back! I don't use the plural of key2 in my internal anchor - but make no mistake I use as richly onpage as its singular. Google didn't like so much anchor text using it.
To summarize:
key1 key2 key3 (nowhere)
key1 key2 key3 -dfdf -dfdfd (top 5)
allinanchor: key1 key2 key3 (nowhere)
allinanchor: key1 key2 key3 -dfdf -dfdfd (top 5)
Notice that the filter also kicks in on allinanchor!
key1 key2-plural key3 (top 5)
allinanchor key1 key2-plural key3 (nowhere - to be expected)
And, for those still skeptical about the filter and the -dfdf thing, try a search on, lets say "Roman History" with and without the -dfdf -dfdfd - in both cases the results are a near exact match - as would be expected. Now pick lots of different commercial type searches and you will see a marked difference - lots of sites excluded without the -dfdf as the phrase should make a filter kick in. Clearly, a bug is stopping the fliter kicking in when you type in exclusion phrases.
