Forum Moderators: open
I read one post that suggested more specific searches would results in better serps, but 'homes for sale in mycity' and 'mycity homes for sale' still served up a mixed bag. My site comes up 1st page , but so does the same post florida directories and a Linux users group. Can't reconcile any of this.
Suggestion would be that whatever this phenomenon is, it isn't universal, and therefore not algorithmic - ie it has been "manually" applied, or at the very least "manually" restricted to the US.
True - it is not universal, only on select phrases. That however does not mean it's not algorithmic. I think I understand your point however: whatever has happened to those phrases, it does not apply outside of those phrases at all, plus it was applied as a filter, meaning serps got calculated as before, and in a final step filtered.
Second it has not at all been restricted to the US, I can testify to the fact that generic german phrases were among those that lost 90 of 100 top results.
You are correct. I have a French site and term immobilier French for real estate has been affected as well.
Kirby,
I was hoping for a different answer from yo. I was hoping you would know for sure what is going on and then you could enlighten me because I'm really lost. :(
I did notice that one of my sites returned to the serps after adding outbound links, but still it didn't achieve top 10, now it is #39.
[edited by: allanp73 at 7:19 pm (utc) on Dec. 15, 2003]
Take a look at naples fl, myrtle beach, san diego and san clemente. A few sites have come back, including some template sites.
I fear you are right. Time to build that directory site I have had on the back burner for two years. Didnt want to invest the time or money thinking google was done with these directories, but obviously not. At least this way I'll have both flanks covered. Froogle will probably be the frontal assault.
Not a bad idea at all.
I would expect to see a "froogle like" tab for real estate in the near future
Good point john316, Google needs to survive and we all know what that mean$.
Kirby I think you've got the right idea, fire up the directories and lay low till Google's Salem update.
>>expect to see a "froogle like" tab for real estate in the near future.
Not a bad idea at all.
With the everflux associated with an individual listing's price, status, and the fact that each product is unique and 'sold out' after 1 transaction, I don't see how they can legally make this work. How would they handle broker reciprocity feeds/pages? I would think they would have to be tied into the MLS DB in order to have credible, real-time price and status data. Then what does it look like--realtor.com, MSN Home & House, or Yahoo Real Estate? No thanks.
Time to study up on Froogle, but it seems they would start selling cars (usually not a one of a kind, one-time offered product) before they would start dealing with real estate.
B.I.N.G.O.
I only ask because some of my competitors that survived throughout florida use the same 3 keywords as the title of the page and throughout the content of each page. Would that make you seem to be more of an authority if your entire site seemed dedicated to those keywords?
Would the number of times your keywords appear throughout the entire site make a difference?
vbjaeger, I don't think it makes a difference really, it seems like things are determined on a page by page basis.
Although, once excluded for a particular kw combination the exclusion is site-wide.
I have a travel related site (and we've been hit hard just like you guys) where I absolutely MUST use my 3 KW phrase to describe my service, and it is now excluded for exactly that search.
The kw phrase appears in over 50 of the 80 title tags on the site and in content on nearly every page.
Perhaps I have triggered a filter here by over-using the phrase as it appears in title, description, alt, h1 and body tags all over the site. I wish I knew, but nothing makes sense as other sites appear which have little or nothing to do with the business.
The one thing I do NOT have on the site which may suggest "authority" to google is many outbound links to other similar sites. I have 1 outbound link to a client who provides the same type of service in another country, but his site has the same IP as mine. Maybe that gets ignored by Google.
For the particular penalty across the board for major cities/towns we see no difference whether a site was optimized or not in any way, shape or fashon. We have a client that has been in #1 spot for 4 years now. Only lists keywords 3 times on the home page and title included. We also have some clients that were in the top 10 for the same CITY/STATE REAL ESTATE searches but require more optimial use of keywords - all mixtures have disappeared.
I agree with what you see on your side, but in our areas of South Florida this isnt the case.. It just a global block of Real Estate agent websites for real estate searches - end of story..
However, rfgdxm1, I would say that the majority are lame, but many old-timers with good_clean_informative_honest_traditional sites (one designer is a DMOZ editor) are gone for 'mytown real estate'.
Still, two words that GoogleGuy mentioned in a sentence in a post early-on post-Florida that I thought went unnoticed:
quality controls
Good question. Do an allinanchor check. This runs pretty consistent with pre-florida results. This way you will be comparing Google apples with google apples.
Look forward to your analysis.
In our home state, the area we live in has three main cities, so you can guess what most of us call this area.
If I do a search for AREA REAL ESTATE I get lots of directory sites, and next to zero real estate agencies. But ... if I do a search using one of the actual city names, CITY REAL ESTATE, I get what appears to be the old, untouched SERPs from before Florida.
So if the phrase "real estate" has been targeted, why would it only impact the AREA search and not the CITY search? Has anyone else seen anything like this?
You hit on one of the inconsistencies that is driving me nuts.
I can do a search for 'mycity real estate', 'real estate mycity', mycity homes' and 'homes mycity' and get mostly directories, etc. I can do the same for another city or town and half of those queries will be directories and half will be pre-florida results.
This is one reason it feels like a filter for a specific target list. The issue for me is that I can't find the common link to adwords or # of searches or anything else that a filter like this is tied to that would be consistent. While it probably isn't, it still seems like a half-baked man-made hit list.
they have gone too far here, okay so some sites have been penalised, but the rankings i monitor i am seeing stupid serps such as web design, directory listings etc where no real estate sites are showing when there are plenty.
people optimise for real esatate in my city because thats exactly what they offer, when we list 5 properties per page with brief detail, how can we not use the word villa or apartment plus the city name not very often?
its not sour grapes because my competitors out ranked me before, no i havent had the patience to go crawling through the trash to see where the other decent pages are and by the looks of it neither are my customers (i am actually the third decent site for what i want in my opinion now) but seeing nothing to what i had before
its not as if they were appearing for unrelated obscure search terms, just what people would search for when they wanted to find real esatate in their city.... i honestly cant see a punishable problem here
but i have noticed my adwords click % falling, when in fact it should be rising due to the poor results... maybe its because i havent raised my cpc.....
...ah now i understand!
Only 1 local real estate firm comes up halfway well doing this, and it is at #11. I just did this search on Alltheweb, and 5 of the 10 are local firms. (And, 1 of the 10 is a FSBO site catering specifically to my area.) However, Google on the standard search does pull up both the Yahoo and ODP cat in the top 10, and ATW doesn't. Google is better if someone wants directories.
Google is better if someone wants directories
That's what I'm seeing for some of our real-estate searches too. :-/
A search engine for directories... put those sites and extra click away, that's user oriented, uh-huh
One whole mouse click? That truly would be an outrageous burden on the searcher. ;) Google has long had directory categories show up in normal searches. Most often below a listing of a specific page to the category it is in. Google sees its directory as adding value to regular searches.
rofl..
I do agree - with the changing trends of technology people DONT want to click twice. It should be a one shot deal.
Funny - for all of the real estate searches I watch, Alta Vista looks just like Google did pre-florida. Maybe A/V is taking notes... :)
In my area, using the criteria you prefer, post-Florida Google is actually better than Altavista. Unless you think wunderground.com is a good result for "real estate mycity mystate". ;)
Well that's funny, I get wunderground #1 for RE stuff all over the place on Google now.
This is too crazy not to be work-in-progress.
