Post Florida Tweaking

Have you changed your home page?

[SlyOldDog]

Anybody deoptimized their home page and seen no impact on ranking since the Florida update?

If you have seen no impact, how many times do the keywords remain in page title, outgoing links and body text from your home page?

[vbjaeger]

the homepage is one of the most important aspects of our site

Maybe this is the problem, perhaps inner pages should take the weight? I'm thinking of much earlier posts on themes.

Our site is actually #1 right now. When I say the homepage is the most important page, I mean is that it has to catch the readers attention. People coming to my site are looking for a product that does a particular business function and my site has to immediately set itself apart from my 100+ competitors. The inner pages definately have more content, but the home page has to get the readers attention and immediately let them know they are in the right place.

[dasboot]

it has to catch the readers attention

Yeah, maybe this is the dichotomy with commerce sites vs theming. A lot of people land on index page - and you have to draw them in.

[a_chameleon]

I ran a search on terms for one of my affiliate sites, and lo and behold a site I built, and abandoned years years ago, w/ a sub-domain URL,("http:mydomain.maindomain.com"), very old-fashioned frame styles and two worthless inbound links from low level search engines is now {unbelievably} at No. 1 for this three-word search term, and is out-ranking much more sophisticated sites with higher PR, and with much higher keyword incidence rates..

This site is so old it was around (well-ranked in MSN's old search engine and also the "old" Inktomi) a couple of years before Google even existed, then it disappeared. It uses a lot of block quotes and <H> attributes in lightly keyword-sprinkled paragraphs at the tops of most "main" framesets in it's pages..

Has Google suddenly changed it's ranking procedure? Wasn't it formerly a bad format (frames) as crawlers found it difficult to parse the page's framesets..? Does this seem more of a fluke, or a new look at how Google asseses a site's relavence to search terms? it moved from 200 or worse to #7, the #5, now to NBo. 1 holding steady for a week now.

Very puzzling and curious..

.

[a_chameleon]

I just checked the same 3-word search term again today... This site is still ranked No. 1, and is out-ranking sites w/ PR values of 5 & 6... While my site's PR renk is nil...

Certainly not a "fluke", but how is this happening..?

[SlyOldDog]

I wouldn't worry about it. You aren't likely to stay there for long.

Google crawled a test page on one of our sites and now it is number 1. It's full of dead links and I am getting phone calls asking why I have a site when I don't provide a service.

I guess they'll fix it pretty soon.

[a_chameleon]

I wouldn't worry about it. You aren't likely to stay there for long.

That's what I thought, 2 weeks ago. This ancient site has been re-crawled, and re-cached twice since then, it's still holding strong! >...?<

.

[a_chameleon]

A slight development.. The site's PR has been upgraded from none to "2". And this is with two worthless inbound links..?

Even stranger, this site is now ranked in other SERP, beating sites w/ three times the PR value... >?<

.

[taxpod]

The easy answer to the riddle is that pages aren't ranked in PR order in the serps. There is some sort of hierarchy in which PR seems to count after a few other key items are tabulated. If you are way ahead on these other variables, you can certainly beat out a much higher PR page. If you are tied with the same page, it will be listed ahead of you. Inbound links certainly do count - you can get nowhere without some - but it isn't a "whose PR is bigger" sort of thing and hasn't been for quite some time now. The trick is finding the other elements which trump PR. That is the game we are playing, at least in my mind.

[DRGather]

Along the same lines, one of my pages just popped up at #8 for a 2 word keyphrase that I wouldn't have expected it to. One thing of note is that the page has 2 snippets of H1 text that are consistent for the keywords and the keywords are also contained in the title (basically it's a 3-peat of the keyphrase, 1 title and 2 H1 instances). Naturally, there's a lot of other content on the page including other H2-3 tags. In fact, there's so much other content that I honestly thought that keyphrase would be diluted to infinity (but didn't care as it's a deep interior page). Apparently I was wrong.

Combine this with the post that started this thread and maybe you're on to something with H tags.... who knows?

While the PR is only one factor, it MUST play into the equation from another angle. 2 inbound links means low link pop and almost non-existent inbound anchor text. So while we all know that a low PR page can outrank a high one, I would NOT have made the same assumptions when taking this forward into link pop and inbound anchor text. Check anywhere on these boards and you'll see the same "anchor text rules all" statements fairly often. Assuming the page in question maintains it's position, maybe we were wrong to think that inbound anchor is the end all. Or... perhaps the conspiracy theorists were right in thinking this was an OOP of some sort. (this last is unlikely due to the "you can't hurt your competitor by linking to them" clause we've all heard about.)

[bekyed]

Google have said this all along that a competitor can do nothing to hurt your page, it is just that with the latest algo there were so many different changes that even die hard webmasters didnt know where to start.
A lot of unoptimised pages are indeed near the top of the serps with little relevance to the search term, this indeed is a strange game google are playing.

Bek.

[a_chameleon]

Assuming the page in question maintains it's position, maybe we were wrong to think that inbound anchor is the end all.

I absoutely agree - if anyone would like to see the page, sticky-mail me and I'll send you the URL itself, the {5} three & four word search terms it's ranking >7 on, etc.

I have to believe the post I quoted from above is, in fact, correct in that anchor text may not be all that important anymore (since Florida..?) - and once you've looked at the 'main' paragpaph's font attributes on the site's pages, they're all bold, no <H> tags and all centered.. So I guess that throws some doubt on to the recent "Is <H> Important" thread.

Regards keyword incidence, I wrote this experimenting with the idea the {then} major search portals may begin filtering their SERP {there was only Yahoo, Inktomi's portals, a primitive MSN and WebCrawler back in '98, if I remember correctly} and gave them a lot more credit for intelligence than they deserved. I opted not to repeat keyword phrases verbatim within the content, thinking that "intelligent" evolving algo's would recognize and reward such.

Excuse the riteration, but the framestyle and G's crawling them seems the true conundrum; aren't frames still a hindrance to Google's crawl? The HTML on this site is primitive and almost amateurish, it was my 2nd or 3rd site. It's framestyle is ancient, and in my mind extremely difficult to crawl, unless Google's following all the links on the page and evaluating each in turn, ignoring the framset tags. Strangely, though, the two peripheral framesets w/ menus and graphics aren't keyword rich, either.. Just the 'main' page in the frame named "main" is keyword rich. Is Google now following framsets where the frame's src. is named "Main", perhaps?

.

[Dugger]

I have seen this elsewhere post Florida - the "maindomain.com" probably has lots of incoming links and the subdomain is receiving benefit from that. I have seen other old sites with low page rank and few incoming links at the top of rankings and that is what is happening in those cases.

Google likes large sites with lots of subdirectories now - Thinks they are "authority" sites - one of my own has greatly benefitted from Florida :)

[a_chameleon]

..I have seen other old sites with low page rank and few incoming links at the top of rankings and that is what is happening in those cases.

Google likes large sites with lots of subdirectories now - ..Thinks they are "authority" sites

Dugger, as in a) Large sites with lots of subdirectories or b) Large sites w/ lots of subdomains..?

And are you noticing sites (just curious, can't be helped) that are using old framesets up at the Top too?

.

[Dugger]

Both - subdomains and subdirectories. As far as can tell Google treats them the same.

As far as old framesets are concerned, I don't think Google looks at page content for keywords ranked with the Florida algorithm. As long as the site is an "authority" site and the keyword is mentioned somewhere - that is good enough for Florida. Florida seems to be all about backlinks and subirectories or subdomains - that is what it takes to be an "authority" and thereby rank well post Florida.

That is why there are so many irrelevent results.

[Jakpot]

Is a new update titled "Ginger" being discussed elsewhere in this forum?

[DRGather]

It's in the members only area. People have tried to get some discussion on it going here, but there's still a lack of evidence that the results are in fact going live, so the interest has been lackluster.

[webdude]

My site has been ranked #1 for the past 1 1/2 year until the Florida update. Now it is ranked #18 and it uses frames. I think a well designed site CAN use frames succesfully as long as you use the noframes tag.

I would also recommend using javascript to force the frames as my top and left frames get crawled and indexed almost daily.

[DRGather]

I've read some other threads around here that indicate that Gbot can indeed index pages using frames. It's still not considered good practice, but that doesn't mean Gbot can't handle them. I *think* I even remember hearing GG say that himself, but I'm not positive.

Personally, I'd prefer to use serverside scripting to generate a standard portion of a page. For instance, with PHP you can use include to add a header, navbar, whatever. Does pretty much the same thing as frames by giving you one place to edit a file, and make changes sitewide. The benefit is that you end up with standalone pages with no frames. Of course I guess the reasons for using frames are many and varied... this solution may only answer one of the potential issues.

[a_chameleon]

I've read some other threads around here that indicate that Gbot can indeed index pages using frames..

I've had two different sites so far, using very old, very basic framesets get ranked in serp's well - and what's curious is Gbot seems to have only followed the frameset titled "main" and it's links.. Ignoring the other two framsets completely. Since it's a sub-domain I don't control the hosting of, I can't confirm this via log files but I'm sure this is what Gbot did.

What's curious is Google has indexed, and cached a page using frames and all (very old frames).

As far as this site being considered any kind of "authority", I'm stumped. The site doesn't meet any of the various criteria suggestions in this thread and many others..
It's hosted ("http:\\mydomain.maindomain.com") in one of the freebie web hosts w/ probably 1,000 sub_domains; none of which have anything to do with -or- compare to this site's product;

It's keyword incidence is also fairly high but the content text's keyword arrangement{s} never mirror the Title's keyphrase verbatim, anywhere on the site which I think may be significant..

..?

[a_chameleon]

If anyone would like to view this old (abandoned 6 years ago, ony tiny copyright upgrade since) 'amateurish' site that has suddenly outranked several thousand comparable sites w/ far better PR, far better keyword incidence etc.,
far better optimization etc., I've changed the homepage in my profile to this URL and my "Interests" to the three-word search term it's been ranked at No. 1 in SERP for over a month now. It also ranks >7 in all variations of the three-word search term.

:-)

[SlyOldDog]

Hi

I think the reason for your dominance is the 400 or so backlinks which are only visible via alltheweb.

That's a lot of backlinks and if the anchor text is good that would be why. Good anchor text can beat good pagerank.

[dirkz]

> I've changed the homepage in my profile to this URL

Can see this. Not enough posts?

[a_chameleon]

I think the reason for your dominance is the 400 or so backlinks which are only visible via alltheweb.

I checked alltheweb,found only 106 inbound links.. Using "link:mydomain.maindomain.com".. Is there a better search to use, to see the 400?

I also think it might be due to the ODP listing the site received a year or so ago..?

[Jazzy]

A_chameleon,
I noticed the same thing with one of the first sites I ever built. Came up #1 out of 2 million. Then I noticed several other forgotten pages on those freehost were suddenly getting better traffic after Florida.
These sites are obviously garbage compared to anything I put together years later. The main difference is I learned how to optomize like most people and show up in the engines better. Now I am penalized for that.
Heck, in my niche one might as well be full blown black hat now. They are doing very well competing with only total irrelavance on one side and ultra accurate ADWORDS to the right. Judging by what I see, I am not that worried, if google does not get better people will gradually leave. For the time being it does hurt, going from one of the most relavant sites for years, well linked by many choice, not so much recip to Totally off the map irrelavant overnight. People can discuss theories all day, but the bottom line to me is ADWORDS is eating it up and that is a fact!

[a_chameleon]

There's a lot of discourse claiming that it's Google's shift towards ADWORDS, generating RMR to show for the projected IPO blast-off coming soon, etc. It makes sense, but from a capitalization approach, not reliable searching.

Personally, I believe Google's trying out some filtering, to keep the e-Monsters from dominating due to massive keyword:content ratios and by sheer PR value from tremendous inbound link counts.

Doesn't seem to be working well, in many categories, as youcan see from various recent post-Florida threads. In my site's category(s), if my "theory" is right, it worked very well.. but my arena involves 3-word search phrases only.

[Bobby]

but the content text's keyword arrangement{s} never mirror the Title's keyphrase verbatim, anywhere on the site which I think may be significant

a_chameleon, I'm looking at 2 previously high ranking sites for 3-word searches that did match the title AND domain name (hyphened 3-word), both of them have now completely disappeared for that 3-word search!

I too am convinced there is a filter at play (the +is +the test still brings them up to their former positions).

[dasboot]

Don't change your homepage. Add 2 - 3 links from it to themed content in a layer below and build a themed site from there.

Solved!

Regarding a filter: of course there is a filter - Google are monstrous, money grabbing b*astards.

(IMHO)

(Whoops - * misplaced)

[Hissingsid]

a_chameleon, I'm looking at 2 previously high ranking sites for 3-word searches that did match the title AND domain name (hyphened 3-word), both of them have now completely disappeared for that 3-word search!

Hi Bobby,

I wonder if it could be one word in the URL natching a word in the anchor text matching a (too dense) word on the page.

I did a search last night on Alltheweb, trying to find links that should show on links:mydomain on Google. Many of the ones that don't show on Google either use [mydomian.co.uk...] or mydomain as the anchor text. Mydomain is our trading identity name.

My domain is like "widgetgood" and the search term that most folks us and which I've been badly hit for is widget financial .

Sorry if this is a theory too far but, one of the things I've reported here over the last few weeks is the relative lack of widget-something-else.com type domains in the top 200 (I have not checked back further).

My site is often listed close to a compatitor "widgetwarn" which has also been dropped. Similarly they often have their brand name (which matches the domain name) used as the anchor text of backlinks.

If others here have noted similar things or can rule this one out because all of their top 10 have matching URL, anchor text and one of the search term words is included in the domain name I would very much like to hear about it.

Meanwhile over the next few days I'm going to ask the site owners to change the text in the anchor to my affected search term and see if that helps.

Best wishes

Sid

[NexDog]

It's hosted ("http:\\mydomain.maindomain.com") in one of the freebie web hosts w/ probably 1,000 sub_domains; none of which have anything to do with -or- compare to this site's product;

Is it possible that the site is inheriting the PR benefit or weight (authoritive) point of the free host's main domain?

As for the whole subdomain thing, I believe it. One of our competitors is a free host and hosts tens of thousands of sites on "subdomain.subdomain.freehost.com". They have come from nowhere (absolutely nowhere 3 months ago) to number one in our main category and I see them high in the serps for many, many hosting related terms and now on page 2 for the pretiguous "web hosting" termthat has to be one of the most competitive terms on the internet.

[antrat]

It looks like most are relying on one page for all their traffic. That has always been a recipe for disaster in my books.

Pretty much any site that has less than 100 pages will suffer greatly from time-to-time.