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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.
>> Check that backlinks and you'll see how it got there. I have a suspicion that the page used to have relevant content for "jewelry".
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Cache of the page has *NO* one single word for jewelry, so backlinks do count heavily - this is an obvious flaw in G algo, it cannot analyze that the destination page has nothing to do jewelry.
I am starting to come back in the top slots in the SERPs.
What did I do?
I cleaned up my over-optimized pages where there's an alignment between anchor text, file name, and cross links within my site. I cleaned that up and got rid of all the INTERNAL anchor text alignment. I do not believe external links with keyword anchor text is having a negative impact.
So, how do I know it is working?
Of twenty city pages (e.g., Chicago Widgets, Los Angeles Widgets, etc.) , I only made changes to half of them. The pages that came back are all the ones I cleaned up. The others have not.
The first thing I did this morning was to validate and ensure that Google had the most receent cache of my city pages (all pages with or without the recent changes). They are all current so I know my changes had a positive impact. Will the results stay there. Hell-if-I-know...but at this point, I'll take any positive gains I can get.
Okay...so now my city pages are coming back...but my index page still does not show up for my primary two keyword phrases....except for my third phrase which was not heavily optimized.
Me thinks the rules have definately changed at Google. YMMV but backing off on optimization seems to be working for me.
Google has *always* been this way. Do a search on "Googlebombing".
Look at the page name - ring.html
Check that backlinks and you'll see how it got there. I have a suspicion that the page used to have relevant content for "jewelry".
Well Spotted,
This proves that not all filters are being used.
Actual on page content may not have been properly added or filtered, this would answer the question why some of the highly SEO indexed pages are not appearing.
Also I would say that
this update is going to last more then weeks less then months :)
Just to note that one or two of my sites that have been hit by the usual rankings seems to still draw in the same amount of traffic, this is due to internal pages appearing in results that I didn't appear in before.
Still a long way to go yet guys!
Leave your site alone, your can't re-optimize sites based on a half updated search engine :)
One thing I am wondering is if this page *recently* changed? The Google update is based on what it saw 2-3 weeks ago, and SERPs are based on that. If 2 weeks ago that page was about jewelry, then this would explain things more.
Using the Keyword1 Keyword2 -fufufu method allowed me to precisely determine which keywords (actually keyword combos) are being filtered.
Actually, my number one search phrase for my niche is:
keyword1 keyword2 keyword3
if I search for: keyword1 keyword2 keyword3 -fufufu
My index page still does not show up,
BUT, if I search for:
keyword1 keyword2 keyword3 -fufufu -xyzxyz
My index page comes up #2... So it seems to be some sort of DOUBLE keyword filter? You have any input on this?
If I search for just: Keyword1 Keyword2 -fufufu (only using 2 of my keywords in the search and 1 -fufuf, then my index comes up at #2 as well.
Wed, 29 Jan 2003 13:14:58 GMT
Appears not to have been updated for a while but I may be wrong
I have another related site that is an info site and that seems to be pretty stable through this entire thing.
My key client right now is not however and I am not sure I agree with the over-optimized theory. I have keyword at the start of the title in the anchor and body text (11 times) nothing in the H1.
So it seems to be some sort of DOUBLE keyword filter
willardnesss, I can confirm this, good find
I am getting traffic based on words and phrases removed a long time ago?
Freshbot comes around alot, so the cache looks current, however, the serps don't match the cache.
This is exactly what I find for my index page, which vanished a few days back.
Not one, but two of my product specific sites have dropped from front page to no where.
These are not 'optimized' or SEO'ed sites in any way, other than legit product content and links from a few of my other sites....
The funny part is that several sites that now appear on the main page are totally unrelated to the product search terms, unlike my sites, which represent them well.
I can't expect Google to be perfect, but I CAN expect Google to be LOGICAL. I think that is what is bothering most people.
Good Luck
Josh
that keyword1 keyword2 -dfdf -dfdf search is awesome suddenly I get more results and the serps are very clean. I see sites which should rank high, ranking high again. So all we have to do is tell everyone to search for things using the -dfdf -dfdfd.
Can anyone figure out why this is happening?
Very interesting. Here's a rough summary of what you said, I think:
Rule 1: If the user entered more than 4 terms in the search box, then the search is sufficiently narrow, so don't consult the dictionary.
Rule 2: If the user entered 4 terms in the search box, then use only the first three.
I probably don't have it right, but you get the idea. There's an initial if-then parsing of the search term box that determines whether you even do the dictionary lookup. Once you're sent to the dictionary, the -xqwqxw trick works because the dictionary lookups aren't smart enough to deal with the excluded term properly. But if you have enough search terms, you probably aren't even sent to the dictionary to begin with, so you don't need the excluded term to defeat the dictionary.
It's just a guess, and more testing needed. But I think we're getting sufficiently close to figuring out Google, so that Google might soon react by trimming back the dictionary. That would defuse the spectacle and make a lot of webmasters very happy.
Too many webmasters have been 'gaming' Google, getting useless links from completely unrelated sites, along with building GAZILLIONS of useless pages in an effort to improve their rankings.
This new update is Google's way of 'getting even'. They're now listing all those 'useless' pages in the top of the SERPS.
Let's see if a site about 'How to Make Butter' (which now ranks #1 on Google for a search on 'widget'), with 312 links, will really drive business to your 'widget' site.
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Hey, it's the 40th anniversary of the Kennedy Assassination...maybe I've been watching too much of this conspiracy stuff on TV this week....
My observations on my site:
Title and H1
<title>Key1,key2,key3,key4,key5<title>
<h1>Key1,key2,key3,key4,key5</h1>
Key 5 still #1
Key 1-4 no where land
2) The quality of the serps is much better when searching with -fgfg -fgfg
example (niche term):
search "boston real estate agents" 6 out of 10 results have to do with phrase
search "boston real estate agents -dfdf -dfdfd" 10 out of 10 results have to do with phrase
Sorry to include real searches but it is just to illustrate a point. I am not associated with these searches.
3) I noticed pr has little to do with the domination of certain sites. The level of over-optimization plays a big role.
Anyone else making any observations?
Kackle, I noticed that the searches that I'm still on top with do not use "jewelry" as the first of the 2 search words sooooo maybe they are only filtering the first word of the search?
I don't know, frankly. But I can confirm that the single word jewelry is what I'd call "dictionary sensitive" without even knowing who you are.
Do a search for: jewelry -xwqwxwq and then do a search for just jewelry.
You will see that the top site for the first search completely disappears in the top 100 results for the second search. That means "jewelry" is a sensitive word. When you find a keyword that is so obviously sensitive as the word jewelry is, then it's a matter of combining it with other terms, both sensitive and non-sensitive, to figure out how the filtering works.
If I do a search using all 6 keywords that are in the title on my home page, my site comes up number 1. If I do a search using 5 of the 6 keywords in my title my site appears further down the SERPS. It appears the order of the results in my case is highly correlated with the closeness of the match of the search term to the title.
-agreed, now what is the madness behind it? Quickly before the Google programmer closes the window.
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.)
Of course, maybe they're just waiting to see who changes things and then give them the REALLY big penalty;)
Of course, maybe they're just waiting to see who changes things and then give them the REALLY big penalty;)
Also known as the Nov 22 "lone nut" correction. Y'all have cookies disabled while running these tests, I presume. If not, time to delete cookies so that you get a new cookie and a new unique Google ID number.
[edited by: Kackle at 10:55 pm (utc) on Nov. 22, 2003]
Also can anyone confirm that the “penalty” is only applied when the keywords appear in both the title and H tags in the exact order.
No. My site is missing in action for both keyword1 keyword2 AND keyword2 keyword1 (even though this is an unlikely combination that never appears on my pages).
Anyone see any Nov 22 tags yet?
Yep already showing but won't make any difference!
The update will finish in more then weeks but less then months :)
No. My site is missing in action for both keyword1 keyword2 AND keyword2 keyword1 (even though this is an unlikely combination that never appears on my pages).I am seeing this as well.
But is the kw1 kw2 appearing ONLY in the title and H tags? Or are they appearing in the title, H tag and text?
[edited by: BradBristol at 11:09 pm (utc) on Nov. 22, 2003]
Powdork, we have Nov 21 tags, not 22nd yet.
Try again!
www.awebsite.net/ - 21k - 22 Nov 2003 -
Maybe the keyword holiday or accommodation :)
Also known as the Nov 22 "lone nut" correction.Well, I am looking at the serps and I am not there. I look through my logs and they confirm what I suspected. I can stare at them and pretend I am there, but the fact remains I am not. So instead I look at my site. You know what. The things that Google has previously rewarded have led me to turn my site a bit, well, spammy. Nothing major, but it was optomised for a certain phrase. Here's the example I used last night. (even the real words don't apply to my site.)
Old info
Title-Unique Wedding xysde at Wedding xysde.com
The majority of the external inbound anchor text is 'Wedding xysde.com'. After esmerelda (GoogleGuy talked about diversity) I tried to get varied anchor, since my sites went awol at that time too.
Occasionally there is 'Unique Wedding xysde', and then of course there are those that simply add my link of their own volition using the entire title.
My navigation bar linked to the home page with anchor of 'wedding xysde'. Google has about 43 pages indexed.
New Info
Title-Wedding xysde.com
Navigation bar links to home page with anchor 'Home'
[edited by: Powdork at 11:13 pm (utc) on Nov. 22, 2003]
22 tags here. Made a couple small tweaks. Wiggled around on several 2 kw combos, but dont see any rebound on my massacred 2 word combo yet.
Here's the deal: -hstsydy appended to a search shows the allinanchor-based results. (The Google Viewer has been showing allinanchor for many months.)
If you are one of those liking the results when shown with -ystefrtg, then you need to step back and see that your site was built on anchor text. For competitive terms, the -agstsvy results show far far spammier results, with duplicate domains, non content domains, etc. That is because all they are showing is *anchor text*. Anchor text is no measure at all of content quality. It isn't even a measure of content *or* quality. And it is the most easily manipulated of all algorithm elements (except page title).
These update threads are usually quite useful, even if there is always a majority of hysteria amongst a minority of good information, but (and okay, this may be coldblooded) all those "New User" posters should be paying attention to the isolated posts from members here who have more than 500 posts to their credit, instead of latching onto whatever bizarro idea some newbie concocts.
Face it, there is a new algorithm that does not value anchor text as highly as previously. Then, the introduction of the new algorithm introduces a different sort of spam into the results than the spam Google was dealing with previously, and Google has to figure out how to get rid of it after being made aware of it. Then finally, some good sites get mis-ranked in any turbulent change.
[edited by: steveb at 11:16 pm (utc) on Nov. 22, 2003]
2003-11-22 02:03:50 64.68.82.170 GET /index.htm
UTC time... that's where the freshtag that is showing came from... we might have got hit earlier than others so the tag isn't Nov 22.
Added:
To have it make sense.
Powdork, we have Nov 21 tags, not 22nd yet.
Wrt msg #913... this thread moves so fast. You post something and it's buried in under 5 minutes.
[edited by: Stefan at 11:23 pm (utc) on Nov. 22, 2003]
This nonsense about the -dhstahf on searches was blown out of the water by mfishy in message 770.
My site overall has faired fairly well in this update. The only place I've been whiped out completely is on my productname/moneykeyword phrase.
I have a support forum pointing at my index page with a graphic link and a text link. This in essence points 100s of pages at my site with the title from the pages and anchor text from the text links being productname/moneykeyword.
I also use my productname/moneykeyword for recip links.
Is it any cooincidence that my only completely missing keyword combination is productname/moneykeyword?
Unca
But this is clearly *not* the tail end of Florida - it is a new update.
I don't see how these two searches could possibly be returning the same results.
Check your priorities, I mean SERPS, for that one.
Do the same search for: expensive jewelry or discount jewelry. The results closely parallel allinanchor, but are not precisely the same.
"New User" posters should be paying attention to the isolated posts from members here who have more than 500 posts to their credit, instead of latching onto whatever bizarro idea some newbie concocts.
Pure hubris. How about those of us who lost our posting privileges on WebmasterWorld over a year ago for being too critical of Google, and are now using a new name?
Does anyone know how much more traffic I can expect if I move up to #312? ;)
? Why would you even think to compare those two numbers. They have nothing to do with each other.
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"How about those of us who lost our posting privileges on WebmasterWorld over a year ago for being too critical of Google, and are now using a new name?"
LOL. Thanks for driving the stake through your own heart. I guess its not the new results bugging you then huh?
Google worship has been the fashion, until it all goes wrong.
It's an electronic version of the mob really.
allinanchor:keyword1 keyword2 keyword3 are completely different from keyword1 keyword2 keyword3 -yuti -fgrd
- I think many of us are going to be eating Kraft Macaroni and Cheese for X-mas.
