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My logs now contain a disproportionate number of referrals from continental Europe, and my actual sales outside the UK, for what was previously a high ranking UK site - but sadly no longer - have gone up 50 fold since the Florida update.
The initial hypothesis is that although commercial results are less relevant, they are now being dished up in their charming and random way, all over the place!
Now all I've got to do is sneak a few references about farmyard animals onto my widget site to ensure a broad match! :)
Let's have a go:
'Here are our latest company premises, located deep in the countryside, surrounded by farms. Meat our new secretary, Helen Goat, and our new finance director, Alan Cow.'
'<a href= Alan Cow's profile </a>' (note use of plural)
Alan Cow joined widget and co from his previous job as a farmer with James Rooster (Pigs division) and co'
etc. etc.
Big smile!
Meat our new secretary
Where did you get her from, the butchers shop :)
Karl :)
Are the links pointing to your site talking about sheep?
That's an interesting one, but if I have control of the links, I could insert the word sheep I suppose.
'Also see our latest range of widgets by Sheep & Co'
Then,
'Dear Customer,
We are afraid we are currently out of stock of Sheep and co. products'
All hypothetical of course!
Or how about:
'This company gives 2% of its profits to the welfare of farmyard animals'
<edit>I'd just better point out that I am not this unethical, I'm merely pointing out that there are pitfalls to all algo changes!</edit>
BTW, I'm not being deliberately obtuse, just trying to investigate how the mechanics of broad matching and categorising concepts might pan out.
Conclusion 1: Google is losing some honest visitors
Conclusion 1: Since mostly people find crap on initial SERPs, they are showing interest in CPC ads. with a hope to get atleast a related informtion though 100% commercial.
Anybody else noticing this stastical change?
how important a sheep farming site would it be, compared to the other sheep farming sites!
Yes, it's all hypothetical - as you say, I might accidentally get myself classed as a site about sheep, and get millions of hits from people trying to buy mutton on my widget site!
What is amazing here in the UK, is that on my previous main keywords, my competitors and myself have all virtually disappeared. But none of us are appearing in Adwords either. In my case this is because I refuse to waste money on it - but where are all my previous high ranking competitors - why aren't they appearing in Adwords?
It looks like they've all been booted off by huge companies, several of which are in the USA - and it doesn't make any sense for a UK customer to buy from the States. The postage cost, long delivery time and import taxes mean that we in the UK go elsewhere when we see dollar prices on a shop page.
Crazy!
<edit: We have no problem with USA sites - your prices are generally cheaper than ours. But import taxes and crossing the pond make it nonsensical to have US shops showing up in UK adwords - unless it is something really specialist we can't obtain here. (I've bought some optical equipment from the USA in the past, and the odd sheep!) </end edit>
[edited by: superscript at 2:30 pm (utc) on Nov. 28, 2003]
Do you get found for more specific or secondary phrases?
Remember that this algo change is new so users looking for commercial sites on Google might suddenly be taken aback by the broader range of topics now presented on their familiar "best/cheapest/latest widget" search terms. Over time, and perhaps this is what Google is caluculating, users will be more specific about what they are looking for. In which case, for those sites which can be found on more specific terms, traffic would start to return.
Google may be training users to search more accurately!
It is the removal of this possibility to gradually refine a search that will damage Google.
Google may be training users to search more accurately!
One of the features that Google built it's early reputation on was the "I'm feeling lucky" button... the whole point was you didn't have to enter a hyper-qualified search query... Google would 'magically' return something pretty close to what you needed even if you only typed in two words and hit the right-hand button.
Something AV couldn't come close to...
Is this the end of the Lucky Era?
they want to get more money, looks like webmasters can use adwords to get nice amount of traffic.
and im not a lucky one, google dont accept my credit cards :(
Google would 'magically' return something pretty close to what you needed even if you only typed in two words and hit the right-hand button.
If you click the "I'm feeling lucky" button on our two main 2 word phrases you get a site that for 6 months has an index page that states:
Mozilla Firebird (my browser of choice) uses 'I'm feeling lucky' searches by default for queries typed into the address bar.
I've found the results to be on the whole amazingly good, and to also return relevant sites that I would normally have glossed over in the results. This is both pre *and* post-Florida, and I do a lot of searching!
i hate google!
I am sure you don't really mean that. How quickly people forget the hand that fed them.
>> Now all I've got to do is sneak a few references about farmyard animals onto my widget site to ensure a broad match! :)
Let's have a go:
'Here are our latest company premises, located deep in the countryside, surrounded by farms. Meat our new secretary, Helen Goat, and our new finance director, Alan Cow.'
'<a href= Alan Cow's profile </a>' (note use of plural)
======================
While I like your imaginative approach and example on how to attain a broad match term, I doubt it will work on deceiving G unless there is a real substance on your website.
If your business is serious about "sheep", the story of farms, meat, goat and cow might not help you much about your widgets on sheep. Unless farms, meat, goat and cow is concerned about your business, it is a waste of time to hit around the bush. You can attain the same goal with the same resources by making G feel that your site is an authority one about the "sheep".
Hmm...how to make your site a "sheep" authority...
If one is so serious about widgets on sheep, there are several approach to make your site an authority one...for example, your intention is to sell the products on sheep wool and mutton, you definitely would have sections selling your products.
In order to make your site an authority, you may also want to put up other sections that serve as a free knowledge base on different types wool and mutton.
For ex. -
What are the different types of wool and mutoon? How to differentiate and measure the quality of wool and mutton. What are the past statistics on wool and mutton consumption in the world or in your local country. Some basic facts on wool and mutton. How each parts of sheep can be utilized in different industry. How to re-engineer the unused part of sheep in different industry. You may also want to go into an extreme side of giving scientific knowlege about the sheep such as anatomy of sheep. How to rear the sheep in one climatic region, different sheep species...and so on down to another hundreds list.
Then invite other sites to link to yours, but don't be so covetous to bloat all the incoming links to your index page, but spread them to different hubs of your "so-called" authority site as well. In this way, I strongly believe you will always have constant potential buyers to your site. Whether you can sell or not, it is your story.
Lastly, you may also want to describe how the sheep stands on its three legs while p1ssing...ah..ah...just kidding!
Commercial filters are in place which are examining and blocking over SEO'ed sites.
I wouldn't agree to that... I manage a site that has fallen out of the SERPs for our main keywords. We don't have any duplication of content, hidden/cloacked text, etc.
We simply have a homepage that links to all our secondary files, giving a detailed list of our services in one of them, the prices info in another one, etc. We have also two forms, for contracting the services and for getting more information... we do not use any kind of spam. We simply had some good and very related links that maintained our PR at 5 (competence in our sector never has passed from PR6).
I don't know why we have been pushed off. We were nice guys :(:'(
Even the competence sites that are above us are much more over SEOed than us, and some of them are spamming. ¿Why are us below sites that put a lot of keywords in color #EEEEEE over #FFFFFF (white) background?
I don't know what's doing G nor why it's doing it, but I'm almost sure they are not doing it well.
Greetings,
Herenvardö
