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The new alorithm is penalizing your site on a search term if it's too SEOed for that search term. It's a mystery how Google accomplishes this part, but that's the secret behind the new algorithm.
If other people create natural unsolicited links to your site on widgets, like <a href="www.domain.com">Bob's page of widgets</a>, then Google knows your page is about widgets.
BUT, if you try to SEO the site by following all the advice here, then Google senses that it's SEOed and penalizes it.
Let's not get overly paranoid about what type of link is good and what is not. Sure, stay away from link farms, but web sites have links coming in from all angles for all sorts of reasons. The benefit you might get from the link certainly outweights and "link spam" penalty Google might dream up.
A while back Pizza Hut gave out free pizzas to people placing a link on their site to pizza hut, they are number 1 in the SERPs. I can't believe that everybody's site is about pizza!
The new alorithm is penalizing your site on a search term if it's too SEOed for that search term
Small Website Guy, you've echoed my feelings here too. Could you expand on what leads you to this conclusion? I have plenty of "search phrases" that seem to have been "overly-optimized" in Google's eyes and now are banned from SERPs, yet the site is quite relevant.
Either Google believes that the site down at number 1000 is truly more relevant for my niche because they happen to have a word appear somewhere on a page once with no relationship to the other 3 words in the phrase or there really is a "filter" in place.
No question in my mind.
The next phase is page theme (I beleive we are seeing this now) - a bike page on a computer shop site linking to a bike shop has suitable thematic elements to help. The computer and bike have a common theme - a shop so a bike page is relevant on the computer shop.
The final step will be site theme although Google were quoted as preferring a large site with multiple areas (themed areas) over a series of smaller singular themed sites.
Looking at link patterns helps Goo Gal decide which keywords form a theme - look at related suggestions of sites to analyse the patterns.
Bobby writes: Small Website Guy, you've echoed my feelings here too. Could you expand on what leads you to this conclusion? I have plenty of "search phrases" that seem to have been "overly-optimized" in Google's eyes and now are banned from SERPs, yet the site is quite relevant.
I have a blog. The blog has a name. It's called "The Word1 Word2". Before Austin, if you typed "word1 word2" into Google, my blog home page was the number one result. This is easy for those familiar with SEO to understand. It had a PR of 5, and many of the inbound links had "The Word1 Word2" in the anchor text. It had "The Word1 Word2" in the title and the <h1> tags.
I have to confess that my site has nothing to do with word1 word2, it's just a catchy name I gave it, and there's a graphic logo that matches the name. I thought it was cool that every day I'd get a hundred visitors looking for word1 word2 but finding my blog instead.
But, suddenly, on Austin day, I noticed a big drop in my visitors. At first I thought maybe the hosting company was having problems and the site was down. But no, I noticed that the Google traffic was missing, and I Googled word1 word2 and discovered that instead of being the #1 slot, I had fallen back to page FIVE. What had happened! I visited this forum, and sure enough I discovered that it was a new Google update.
My blog still shows up in the #1 slot when someone types in my name, "John Doe". The number 2 slot is the page of another "John Doe" and his page by all logic should actually be the #1 slot for "John Doe", because not only does his page also have PR of 5, he has John Doe in the title and John Doe splattered all over his page and he even has inbound anchor text that has "John Doe" in it. On the other hand, my page has my name mentioned only once, in regular text. It's not in the least bit a page about "John Doe".
There is also a "John Doe" who is a semi-famous political figure and his page appears also on page one of the results, but although he's famous and I'm not, Google think's I'm more deserving of the top spot.
So the mystery here is why am I number one for John Doe, but not number one for word1 word2? The answer is that I went out of the way to optimize my site for word1 word2 because I thought that it was cool to get the extra traffic. Other websites I have control over haave links to my blog with "word1 word2" in the anchor text.
My explanation is that Google is smart enough to figure out that I've create artificial links with "word1 word2" anchor text and has penalized it. On the other hand, the "John Doe" inbound links are natural unsolicited links. I had no desire to be the number one page for my name. In fact, I kind of wish that I wasn't. But people chose to link to me using my name. Just as "miserable failure" brings up a site about George W Bush, "John Doe" brings up my blog which is not in the least bit about John Doe.
I really ought to have the #1 spot for word1 word2 as well. I have even more inbound anchor text for "word1 word2" from many other blogs, and "word1 word2" is not a heavily sought after commercial term. Right now there is only a single adword that comes up when you do a Google search for "word1 word2", and it's some link to eBay (I guess eBay sells everything under the sun). But instead I'm on page five.
Clearly Google's new algo has figured out that I'm trying to tell Google "hey, this is a page about word1 word2" and Google has chosen to PUNISH me by demoting my page down to page five. I think that without any SEO at all, my page would show up as #1 due to the page rank and the many inbound links with "word1 word2" anchor text.
Does any one know if rock climbers use computers?
Many people tried to analysed the florida after effect and had come up with many theories, which cannt be proved.
Does the filter of florida is empowered by the austin update? Are ppl getting penalties for OO?
What is the latest buzz in SEO world? I was out for a holiday and was unaware of this new update.
Let me know in short, if possible.
Thanks
Aji
... because there is so much conjecture based on so little if any fact
BRAVO!
Does any one know if rock climbers use computers?
well, they're quite handy for calculating terminal
velocity during free fall.
but bootup time can be deadly :)
Well, since your site has nothing to do with Word1 Word2, it appears that Google got it right somehow.
Neither is my site about John Doe, yet I come up #1.
Interestingly enough, I typed my name into All The Web, and my blog was NOT on the first page of the SERPs. But what I DID find was a page that WAS about me that was on another website. I was totally surprised.
I have a computer site right now, but I also have a new biking site. Would I be penalized if I linked to the bike site from all of my pages on my computer site?
You could make a page (or more) about bike computers and link that to/from the bike site ... i'd say if you carefully research the thing, you likely will find some crossings between the two topics.
In any case, if the site is not to big, you could put something like:
"Please visit my other website about bikes" in your computers site, and not to worry. Even if somebody reports you as a farm, if you have this in your menu, I think G will baypass it: keeping two personal sites and exchanging links among them is more a tradition than a SEO technique!
I'm speaking 'bout personal sites. As more commercial and less personal they are, the linking is more SEO and less tradition. Once more, I can not sa you: Do it! or Don't do it! You must evaluate your site and decide wich option will be most worth.
Hoping this is useful,
Herenvardö
Incidentally, I keep seeing people on this forum saying that "Google does this", "what Google does is", "Google does this first then this ..."
How come you guys who make these statements are so sure of yourselves? If you are so sure why don't you write a user manual? You could become very rich.
So the mystery here is why am I number one for John Doe, but not number one for word1 word2? The answer is that I went out of the way to optimize my site for word1 word2 because I thought that it was cool to get the extra traffic. Other websites I have control over haave links to my blog with "word1 word2" in the anchor text.
John and Doe are both in the dictionary. Okay. I know that's not (probably) your real name. If you Google for John Doe you'll see that Google underlines the search terms and links to the dictionary. It might well do that for your real name.
Word1 and Word2 are not in the dictionary.
That's one reason why Google could treat the search differently.
The "blog noise" problem is well known. I think it would be fairly easy for Google to spot names (again via a dictionary or even just examining author, copyright, etc meta tags).
I'd believe that blog results are given a different score if the searcher is looking for a name or not.
Okay. I'm trading speculation for speculation here. I'm just not quite swayed by the over-SEO'd argument yet.
Incidentally, I keep seeing people on this forum saying that "Google does this", "what Google does is", "Google does this first then this ..."How come you guys who make these statements are so sure of yourselves?
I normally use the forms "I think", "I believe", "probably" when I post something without being completely sure. But sometimes, I can give answers much more fiables. As I have some experience in programming, I can easily deduce what G can do automatically, what is possible to do automatically and what must sure be done manually.
Thanks for your post, I'll try to give argumentations when I post, but some people could consider them too basic.
If you are so sure why don't you write a user manual? You could become very rich.
Would there not be a problem if both the bike site and the computer site are on the same server/using the same host, etc?
Greetings,
Herenvardö
there can be a robot that detects "suspicious" sites
Hi Herenvardo,
I'd like to take advantage of the fact you are a programmer and get a general idea of what Google can and can't do easily in their quest to "stick it to the spammers", I hope you don't mind.
I dropped from number 2 for my main keyphrase to just past Pluto on the outer edge of the galaxy and still haven't got a clue as to why.
My first question is this:
In reference to Google having a robot which checks "suspicious sites", what type of system would they need to label a site "suspicious" and consequently subject it to further scrutiny? More precisely, what elements of a site would be easy to spot as possible spam? Exact matches between title tag and H1? Repetitive use of search phrase (with some threshold point triggering the robot)?
Could, and would Google implement this throughout the whole database or only to certain highly competitive commercial sectors like travel (mine) or real estate?
For what reason would a search for "custom designed blue widgets" not appear in the top 1000 SERPs yet the exact same search with +a (custom designed blue widgets +a) comes to the top?
Lastly, would you subscribe to the point of view that Google has a dictionary of terms (possibly taken from top 10,000 searches or other "most common" monthly searches) to which it applies another algorithm?
Sorry for all the questions but I think we will all benefit from sharing knowledge and working out exactly what Google can and cannot do.
So try to relate your content to keyword 1 and keyword 2 when you target these keywords. It's a secure long term benefit.
A friend has a site which is on a completely different topic than my 10 or so sites. But my sites rank pretty well and I figured I'd at least put him on the map with some links. After Florida it seemed as if the anchor text in my links to him was the key. And it was but with Austin his site disappeared. Today it is back. But it doesn't show up for any relevant searches. If you search his domain name, you get the typical page but when you click on "similar to" you get almost no hits on his subject. Instead get almost exclusively pages on my subject. So you really have to be searching for "juggling with brass tacks" in order to find his site.
The theme of this message is that Google seems to indeed be theming. And since little weight seems to be given to the words in the anchor text, I guess that game is about over. Now it seems to be the text on the pages linking to the object page. Or perhaps the links into the linking page? In any event there seems to be theming going on. Others have said this is occurring but now I've seen it for myself.
Whether relvency of the site matters or the relvency of the page. I have seen this that a guy running a car site got his page to #1 for computers.
car.com/computer.html is #1, if my site is also a computer site , will car.com/computer.html be relevent.
In Short is it site relevency or page relevency the issue
Thanks Aji
This will check the relvency of the page where the link. For everything
Title
URL
Content
Links e.tc. there will some points for each attributes.
if(relevency(key phrase)> some value)
{
relevent link;
}
else
{
non relevent;
}
there can be a robot that detects "suspicious" sites
If I was Google, it would be perfectly clear for me that not the H1, ALT or HREF's little content will be the automatic proof for the site's overall theme. The content will.
In reference to Google having a robot which checks "suspicious sites", what type of system would they need to label a site "suspicious" and consequently subject it to further scrutiny? More precisely, what elements of a site would be easy to spot as possible spam? Exact matches between title tag and H1? Repetitive use of search phrase (with some threshold point triggering the robot)?
Could, and would Google implement this throughout the whole database or only to certain highly competitive commercial sectors like travel (mine) or real estate?Could? of course. G even could use a different implementation for each sector, depending on the spam techninques most used in each sector. Would? this is not a question for a programmer. The only one in WW who can answer that is GG.
For what reason would a search for "custom designed blue widgets" not appear in the top 1000 SERPs yet the exact same search with +a (custom designed blue widgets +a) comes to the top?
Lastly, would you subscribe to the point of view that Google has a dictionary of terms (possibly taken from top 10,000 searches or other "most common" monthly searches) to which it applies another algorithm?
Surely it is easy for Google to determine the theme of a site. It would check to see which category the site is in in the directory (Google or DMOZ). If your site links back to the same root category as that of the sites you are linking to then they have the same theme?
What I think is there might be some function(very complex) say relevency(key phrase)
if G is trying to block spamers, why doest it counts the self-links (from a page to itself) as a backward link?The hardest question! I'm unable to answer and feel that GG too! Maybe you have detected a bug ;)
Hoping to be useful,
Herenvardö
PS: Many things said in this post are based on suppositions. There where the verb can is used, I mean that it's technically possible.
A site on knitting may also be relevant to someone searching for pensioner holidays. A site on Manga may well be a good place for a link to rock music.
This social relevance is something that will be very difficult to code, and I cannot believe google would ever penalize for it.
This happens in advertising all the time- how many people watch an commercial about home loans during a TV show about Cops?
This social relevance is something that will be very difficult to code
Greetings,
Herenvardö
THANKS,
Herenvardö
Like all forums - so how is google can place a site like that in a box - and while currently its obvious that is a forum to google, normally it is not, just waiting for vB 3 Gold and then I redo all my urls in such a way that they are normal looking and unless google really is a god its not gonna get that its a forum from my html (mainly because its all over the place)
I actually, now that I 301ed my extra 400 domains pointing at my box, am doing good on a variety of search terms, all that are related, and like always, doing really good on search terms that I make me double take - then I see what thread they go to and laugh cause for those few pages it is complete relevant.
