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Update Austin - January 24, 2004

on DC: 216.239.37.99

         

paulk

5:22 am on Jan 24, 2004 (gmt 0)

10+ Year Member



DC: [216.239.37.99...] Major Shuffle, looking worse then ever, results look very bad, anyone seeing this?

Belmont

10:31 pm on Jan 27, 2004 (gmt 0)



You would think that a Web site that is simply about a company and its products would still remain in the index for its exact name and location - but alas - this is not happening for some of my sites.

My large content rich sites are still indexed properly for names, keywords and phrases, but smaller company sites (20 pages with products and services), intended to be indexed only by company name and location - are gone.

I don't use any spamming techniques, so if Google can't even index a company by its name - I can't buy the stock. Which leads us back to the impending YAHOO (We buy everything that will make us money off listings) stock explosion?

Just wait until Gates jumps in and buys the winner(s).

maybej

10:35 pm on Jan 27, 2004 (gmt 0)



My company runs legitimate directories and lost a lot of rankings after Florida and now even more after Austin. After Florida we noticed google was penalizing certain cities with keywords but not others, and now to us the difference with the Austin update is that google is penalizing for a lot more cities and local searches. Can anyone confirm?
P.S. As a related note, Google is beta testing a "search by location" service on labs.google.com...It doesn't work very well and doesn't seem to correlate with the Florida/Austin penalties, but shows that they're thinking about it at least...

makemetop

10:38 pm on Jan 27, 2004 (gmt 0)



>Make your main site look like an important authority site.

Exactly! SEOs and SEMs should be able to do that with ease! Although I would change the statement to "Make some main sites look like important authority sites." Even if you create them from scratch!

West of Willamette

10:52 pm on Jan 27, 2004 (gmt 0)

10+ Year Member



For sites in the ODP/Google Directory, when they now appear in the SERPS, a snippet of the ODP description is now appearing in the SERPS in addition to the normal text snippet. Is this new or am I having problem keeping all these changes straight?

digitsix

10:53 pm on Jan 27, 2004 (gmt 0)

10+ Year Member



Could someone please define Authority site? I mean what, do i put "Your <keyword> Athority" in a set of h1's at the top of my page?

I mean seriously, I dont see how a bot would know if your site looked like the "Athority" of any topic regardless of how indepth the algo is.... but yeah, someone please explain that to me ;)

jojojo

10:53 pm on Jan 27, 2004 (gmt 0)

10+ Year Member



great now the awesome stuff I saw on google.es is not back to the www crap :(((

The only foreign one I still like is google.fr which is nice to some sites but hates others...

how long before this settles you guys think?

Robert123

10:59 pm on Jan 27, 2004 (gmt 0)

10+ Year Member



i have not seen any switches today on google.fr/it, or es

no offense..but i am glad i do as part of a service to the compay that i own--and that i only have to worry about one site.

I cant imagine what it is like for you guys managaing hundreds of sites

idoc

11:02 pm on Jan 27, 2004 (gmt 0)

10+ Year Member



digitsix,

Once again the www is the antithesis of the rest of the world.

Usually in business to do well you would first provide a quality product or service... or in our case web content...then you will naturally build the business... increasing page depth, site size and internal and external links as you go.

Here you need to go in reverse to make it work it now seems.

[edited by: idoc at 11:55 pm (utc) on Jan. 27, 2004]

digitsix

11:02 pm on Jan 27, 2004 (gmt 0)

10+ Year Member



I agree, its days like today that I glad I never opened my own SEO firm and stick to optimizing the sites that I own or directly work for. =)

digitsix

11:04 pm on Jan 27, 2004 (gmt 0)

10+ Year Member



well, the site in question for me is a database drivin store with over 5000 pages and im not sure how many exactly, google has about 3700 of them indexed. Also, I use mod_rewrite to make the pages apear as HTML which helped a lot when I was orginally trying to get indexed.........

pleeker

11:05 pm on Jan 27, 2004 (gmt 0)

WebmasterWorld Senior Member 10+ Year Member



Exactly! SEOs and SEMs should be able to do that with ease! Although I would change the statement to "Make some main sites look like important authority sites." Even if you create them from scratch!

I would tend to agree with you if the evidence I see supported it. The one client who is nowhere to be found in these new, work-in-progress SERPs is the client who has created THE authority site for their market. They have more information about the industry, the products, latest news, help documents, etc., than any of their main competitors. They sell no products through the site, but they do display what's available. The site has not been over-optimized. (It's barely been optimized at all by my current standards.) :)

And they're MIA. Previously had lots of Top 5s and Top 10s.

I'll wait to make any judgments until this settles down. The one thing I do see appearing higher is ODP and Yahoo directory category pages.....

customdy

11:11 pm on Jan 27, 2004 (gmt 0)

10+ Year Member



Just check google.it
Results look pre-florida or better....

Yahoo is definately NOT using Google results for the last 24 hours, I have check atleast 20 times in the last 24 hours and NO Google results here.

digitsix

11:19 pm on Jan 27, 2004 (gmt 0)

10+ Year Member



wow you are right, yahoo isnt using google results..... I also cross checked them with inktomi and they are not using Inktomi results either, however the #1 spot is the same on both inkotmi and yahoo....

futureX

11:19 pm on Jan 27, 2004 (gmt 0)

10+ Year Member



I dont want to moan about the update, but I just cannot figure the results... Maybe I should read the hundreds of replies here, but for all intents and purposes it seems like google is getting its ranks a bit random.

The question is, what is google applying importance to?

For my main keyword combo I was first, and am now 96 (wether this is temp or permenant we do not know yet) but why?

Look at the stats:
My PR > 95 sites above me
My keyword density > 95 sites above me
allinanchor:keyword combo shows me as #1
all links that point to me are related

What am I being ranked on?

trillianjedi

11:23 pm on Jan 27, 2004 (gmt 0)

WebmasterWorld Senior Member 10+ Year Member



Pleeker - you should read the very first and very last sentences of your post, and ignore the part in the middle......

TJ

futureX

11:24 pm on Jan 27, 2004 (gmt 0)

10+ Year Member



can i phone a friend...

Googleguy...

customdy

11:25 pm on Jan 27, 2004 (gmt 0)

10+ Year Member



No, but you can buy an adword

pleeker

11:31 pm on Jan 27, 2004 (gmt 0)

WebmasterWorld Senior Member 10+ Year Member



Pleeker - you should read the very first and very last sentences of your post, and ignore the part in the middle......

But that would imply that a list of links is more authoritative than actual content. And I don't believe that to be the case. It better not be. :)

steveb

11:38 pm on Jan 27, 2004 (gmt 0)

WebmasterWorld Senior Member 10+ Year Member



Here's the deal... Google is serving up several different sets of results.

What you see on .it or Yahoo or .de or .com is not what everybody else sees.

Moderators should just snip the whole last fifteen pages.

digitsix

11:42 pm on Jan 27, 2004 (gmt 0)

10+ Year Member



Well, i havent seen any google-like results on yahoo... infact it looks like yahoo isnt even using google righ tnow... maybe they had enough?

Robert123

11:44 pm on Jan 27, 2004 (gmt 0)

10+ Year Member



I think we have established that google is serving differnt results. That was established on like page 2 of this forum--and a forum is for particapation.

I doubt snipping the last 15 pages would be of value--maybe the excess of "my site this, and waaa, my site that"-

MHes

11:46 pm on Jan 27, 2004 (gmt 0)

WebmasterWorld Senior Member 10+ Year Member



I am at a loss but this is what I guess is happening so far:

1) The defences against google bombing via anchor text has been dealt with, and in so doing many of the old seo tricks no longer work. One factor seems to be that if there is too high a percentage of keyword rich anchor text pointing to a page, they are ignored as unnatural. A more natural link on a site is to put the domain name or 'click here' kind of link, often within a sentance. If you have a keyword domain, you've got problems. If you have a company name that is not a competitive phrase/word, you will still be ok. If your company is called Cheap Widgets, you've got a problem.

2) Stemming is an issue, but word theme matching doesn't seem to be, its all too complicated. Pre identifyed words or phrases seem to trigger a more aggressive look at your page. These phrases have probably been sourced from adwords data.

3) A pr6+ is more robust to recent algo changes. They will move about, but rarely drop out completely, PR5 or less seem to be far more prone to "all or nothing", being more dependant on 'on page factors'. Get yourself up to pr6 with honest links in and you can sleep easier.

4) Two weeks ago high density of keywords on a page seemed to be a problem, now we have sites untouched since Florida coming back into top 20 positions (pre Florida top 10) with high density. The theory that site structure is more of an issue, with a theme being reinforced from the top down is interesting but unproven. It assumes that the algo looks at a site as a whole as well as each page, this is a huge leap and I guess too much computing power to process. I still believe a page is looked at in isolation, with the quality of links to that page being the only external factor.

5) Non recipricol links or recipricol links makes no difference. It is the type of link that counts and the type of page it comes from. If the page is called 'links' I suspect it will not carry much weight. Likewise, if the page has no real theme, or masses of other links, it will have little benefit to you. If the link is structured like a directory page of links, it may also carry less weight. The links that have value are logically within a paragraph and on theme.

6) Content King? Authority site? Nope. Minimal rubbish can get to the top. Take any competitive search and it is rare for good content sites to dominate the top 10. The words are there for seo reasons, not for helping the surfer. How many times have you read that such and such place 'has good shopping facilities and a nice cathedral blah blah'. Its all rubbish content for the spiders, you don't go into a shop to hire a car and discuss at length the local attractions. If 'authority' = good spammy rubbish then yes, you need to be an authority.

7) Focused themed sites? Nope, multi theme sites do well and a deep low pr page can get top rankings if it rings the right bells.

8) Community of links? This could be an issue. It seems to take google a while to spot it, but if a site bursts onto the scene with multiple links from a few ip's it will fade away in competitive searches without new links kicking in.

9) Duplicate content. Seems to be more of an issue. Duplication is everywhere, especially with affiliate content. If you are taking content from elsewhere, you need high pr to survive, nothing else will save you.

10) Over doing a keyword phrase, without high pr seems to spell disaster. Often the low pr pages that do well do not have repetitious keyword phrases, but a nice mix supported by some quality anchor text in.

Thats whats going through my head at the moment, and I'm still confused.

digitsix

11:51 pm on Jan 27, 2004 (gmt 0)

10+ Year Member



Wow MHes, that post made the most sense of all 600 some odd posts in this thread... thanks!

dazzlindonna

11:52 pm on Jan 27, 2004 (gmt 0)

WebmasterWorld Senior Member 10+ Year Member



AOL now has a new home page - and it does NOT have a search box on it! No more google searches for them? Are they as leary of the new G as well?

digitsix

11:56 pm on Jan 27, 2004 (gmt 0)

10+ Year Member



Actually, aol still has [search.aol.com...] and im sure if you use them for an ISP you will still search via that portal, however, I did notice the results are the same as yahoo's results which, again, do not look like any google results I have seen as of yet.

digitsix

12:01 am on Jan 28, 2004 (gmt 0)

10+ Year Member



I would like to add to my previous post, i just noticed on AOL's search that it does in fact say enhanced by google, and they are in fact the same results I am getting from Yahoo, so I guess yahoo is still using google, however I am now confused as to where they are getting these SERPS and I am starting to beleive that these are going to be the NEW, finalized, stable SERPS from google... Just a hunch, but I have a feeling that its going to be true... If it is true, for me anyway, the results arent Too bad... not as good as pre-florida for me but Much better than the current www-google-com serps...

drewls

12:06 am on Jan 28, 2004 (gmt 0)

10+ Year Member



wanna see those same SERPS on google? Use the IP in the first post of this thread and refresh until you see them.

customdy

12:17 am on Jan 28, 2004 (gmt 0)

10+ Year Member



must of refreshed 100 times but not once did they come up, alternating between two sets of SERPS, both which are bad.

drewls

12:18 am on Jan 28, 2004 (gmt 0)

10+ Year Member



This is what's confusing the hell out of me...I haven't seen anything change EXCEPT 2 new sets of data on that same datacenter and the different data in the non-EN Googles.

digitsix

12:23 am on Jan 28, 2004 (gmt 0)

10+ Year Member



im 99% sure that the non-english DCs (es,it,fr) are the pre-florida results.

As far as i can tell, i did get the yahoo/aol serps when i refreshed that DC on post#1

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