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Last month Google reported my backlinks as over 8000. I believe the exact number was 8301. Now after the last update a few days ago, my backlinks has dramatically been reduced to about 1000. There is no way I lost 7000 links in one update cycle. As a matter of fact, I actually obtained some very good links over the last month. I doubt that sites linking to me can hurt me, but something certainly happened this update…
My site is still ranking well for most of the search terms I usually do well on. However, my site used to appear top 10 for 100's of other keywords relating to specific models of widgets. After the last update, my site can not be found anywhere in the top 100 pages for a specific widget model. Sites w/ much lower PR are actually doing a lot better than my site.
I have not made any dramatic changes to my site or layout. I did add some iframes to increase functionality to my site. Also, I do have an affiliate links box on the footer of every page (like many sites). Could the iframes or off-topic affiliate links be hurting my SERP so dramatically after the last update?
My page rank has stayed the same (PR 7), but I now do terrible for many of the keywords that I used to do well on over the last few months. I certainly am not doing anything spammy, or illegal in Google's eyes. I am very confused, and would welcome some ideas.
Did I manage to trigger some sort of penalty or Google filter? Can sites linking to me hurt me in any way? I checked all the sites I link to, and most have a Toolbar PR of 3 or above. So, I am not linking to any penalized sites or bad neighborhoods. Frankly, I have not done much to my site in terms of SEO in the last few months, as I was doing pretty well. Now I am in oblivion, and I am at a loss... How did my site go from doing well w/ Google to doing very poorly when I changed nothing on my site?
Could someone have written a negative email to Google to affect my SERP? One of my competitors? How can I find out if this is the case?
Also, when searching for a specific widget in the past my site would come up as "domain.com/page.html", but now the only listings I see are "subdomain.another-domain.com/page.html". My actual domain name is not found in most of the listings for obscure terms I used to do well for (specific widget names). Rather, I see a link to a subdomain for my hosting company that links back to my site.
To wrap it up, I am not sure what to do from here. I mean If I was penalized, wouldn’t my PR have dropped?
Also, why is my site ranking so poorly for a lot of keywords I used to do really well for? I still do rank good for some 2-3 KW phrases that I have done well with in the past. It’s strange that I do very well on some phrases, but non-existent for some of the very specific KW phrases I used to do well on; there are literally 1000’s of these.
What happened during the last update that affected my site so dramatically, and where do I go from here? Anyone, please help; I am at a loss…
[edited by: Marcia at 6:37 am (utc) on Mar. 22, 2004]
Yahoo! and Google are not that different right now
Correct. Along with MSN, they are all equally poor. In fact, I don't know of one single SE that I particularly like. A big part of this is because of webmasters on the one side, (in some cases), trying to game the serps, and SE's on the other side trying to prevent being gamed. It has all resulted in a complete mess.
I am hopeful that eventually some brilliant programmer/librarian/philosopher/fair-minded person will figure things out and make the Internet more useable. Until then, I figure everyone should just keep building sites that are genuinely good, (or at least the best you can do), with sensible linking, and forget about SE's, (as much as possible ;)
Step 2:After that get few sites which has a link of your(above PR3), which are not listed under Google backlink.
Step 3: Then analyse those pages,splly the cache page.
we may get another clue to solve this mystery.
Aji
The number of new members participating in this also seems to be much higher than normal suggesting that many more people outside are suffering the same fate. Would it not be wise for a moderator to step in to redirect and correlate these threads? This would give us a better picture of the extent of the problem.
Perhaps GoogleGuy could comment?
Can the moderator help establish a single thread, with all the symptomatic issues involved, such that Google and their PhD programmers *MAY* listen to someone or something - other than the tiny little voices in their head, which keep telling them it is time to kill.
Again .....
In the meantime results suffer and so do a lot of honest, hard working web developers.
I hope they don't spend too much time going down this road before they realize the end users experience isn't as good as it was...
-s-
For almost every search I do Google has been right on target with very little spam. It looks as if they have got it right this time in my opinion.
I think the majority of Webmasters are pleased with the results they are just less vocal about it.
Who cares how many back links show up or what somebody’s PR is. What matters is where you fall in the SERPs. If your not on top, then you need to figure out what the ones who are have done to get there.
For every site that falls, one moves up. I think were seeing a lot of affiliates sites that have no real value other than being one of 100 other sites promoting the exact same product drop. Yes there is the occasional good affiliate site that actually has valuable information and stuff that people can use but those are few and far between.
It's the nature of the beast and will always be.
Of course you could always go and pay per page and even have the honor of paying for each click with Yahoo.
GoogleGuy you keep doing whatever is your doing there at the Plex because in my book, you guys finally got it right.
Aji
If google will not list the market leader in the result pages or delist the sites like this definite people will go to the others engines. And google will lost the position they have got in last couple of years.
Thanks
Exp...
