Instant Success!

and ugly downfall

[deimosaffair]

Hello,

i'd appreciate if some of the veterans here could give me a clue as to what happended with my case. I'm taking it easy as it was my first experience on SERPS, so...

It all happened on a beautifull morning (or so it seemed at the time ;)

1) I get a small web up, for a local business on a place called spotland . Few dozen pages, some (incipient) SEO for the keywords i want to target. I'm competing against all the "tourism" and "hotel" directories and affs with pages about spotland. Tough neighbours....

2) i create some blogs and posts for google to byte, about 5 diferent webs. All on different free servers, some written slapstick content, no content cloning.
3) I wait for the GoogleBot. The GoogleBot comes. And wow, i'm suddenly number one! Yeah! this SEO is easy stuff!
4) My SERP hangs there for 3-4 days and then i drop off to page 7 never to recover again. Ah well... end of the fairy tale....

I noticed the 'bot passes once about every week or so. I have one PR 5 and a couple of PR 4 pointing to me.
I didn't use any spamdexing, the link farms have one or two links to my web each, mixed with other ones, and i tried to keep my nose clean. So, anybody has an idea about this rocket rising and hard fall?

Cheers

[martinibuster]

>>>So, anybody has an idea about this rocket rising and hard fall?

New stuff used to get a freshness boost that'd last a week or ten days then disappear. Now you have to wait until your website and it's backlinks are folded into the general index, after which you will be graded the same as anybody else. Simple.

[jk3210]

Google gives a rankings boost to new pages for a short period of time (--probably to allow the page to get some exposure to the public).

After the honeymoon period is over, the page assumes its rightful place in the serps based on Google's algo.

That's when the hard work begins :)

<edit>I must learn to type faster.../>

[SlowMove]

That's why I always freshen my pages up. G sees that things have changed a little and whoosh, back up it goes for a little while.

[deimosaffair]

I dunno know.... being a new web, naturally i'm updating all sorts of stuff, so the bot should give that "newness" boost everytime it passes. But what i saw is that the web kept falling and falling.
I tried to google "site: myweb.com" and i foound about half the pages indexed, so google at least acknowledges it's existence.
I suspect that for some reason the web got banned. Is there any way to verify this?

[Stefan]

What Martinibuster said.

<edit>

[d_stew]

>>>What Martinibuster said

...is that <G> USED to get a freshness boost, but the rest of you were talking present tense. Which is it? Personally, I haven't seen the "freshness boost" for some time. Is anyone else still seeing it?

[martinibuster]

>>>Personally, I haven't seen the "freshness boost" for some time.

Yup, there've been discussions about a "new site sandbox" where a new site is temporarily sidelined. I'm not saying it's true or not- lots of anecdotal evidence though.

For established sites, you'll still see freshening.

[RussellC]

I am not seeing a new site temporary boost. I started a new site March 1st and it has already gotten PR, it's been fully indexed, I have a DMOZ link and probably about 20 other incoming links, plus googlebot comes by everyday. Everything is how it should be compared to my success in the past. BUT....

It does not even rank #1 for the name of the company or the words that I am using for anchor text on my inbound links. Very odd. I am in a VERY competitive area where PPC costs are usually $7-$15/click and Google returns 7 million results.

I guess we will just have to play the waiting game.

[deimosaffair]

just out of curiosity, do you even see your web in the serps?

Because with me is almost the same, PR 3 on the entry page, a few good backlinks, and i just disapeared after the honeymoon period.

well, i stopped checking after the web slumped beyond the 7th serp. I've a weak heart.... 8)

[edited by: deimosaffair at 9:03 pm (utc) on April 19, 2004]

[BeeDeeDubbleU]

<Google gives a rankings boost to new pages for a short period of time (--probably to allow the page to get some exposure to the public).>

Do you know this for a fact?

I have a site that is about one month old. It appeared at or near the top of the listings for several key phrases last Friday for a few hours. It then disappeared and it is nowhere to be seen since.

Can I expect this to return?

[RussellC]

I do see myself in very limited SERP's like if i search for the company name, but I never had a honeymoon period. Never ranked well so far. Still waiting.

[MHes]

Honeymoon period is no longer there in my experience. I reckon 2-3 months before a site starts to rank well. I suspect Google waits for all its filters to be applied before taking a site seriously, it stops all the one minute wonders spamming for a few days, then getting caught.... after they have made a killing.

[lunarboy1]

I've had the same problem. I had an old site (2.5 years), and I killed in rankings, number 1s for lots, and even for obscure searches. Not that competitive, but still beating out BIG sites.

By big sites i mean ones who have lots of info on many many widgets. My site specialized in info about a specific widget, but very very very in depth.

So I transfer domains, 301 header and all, but google loves my old site about a week after the transfer, then the new domain takes the old one's place for a week, then kerplunk, out of anything and everything.

I'm slowly assimilating back into results 3 months later. I have a PR5, but it doesn't seem to be helping. The sites ahead of me have lower PRs and are very googlebot friendly(in a bad way) in my opinion, plus I have gobs of better content then them.

My site isn't w3c certified, I'm working on redoing lots of stuff. (i was young and it didn't matter as long as it looked good at the time with ugly tables. Innocence for Users at its best :). )

However, I do have backlinks which google hasn't found yet. Every page is in the database and google crawls around twice a week.

Kinda similar, I give it some more months and hopefully resume my nice cozy position :).

[deimosaffair]

that rings a bell in me little <strike>bean</strike> brain...

html validation in your opinion matters:
1) BIG time
2) helps some...
3) waste of time
4) never used.never hurt me.

I made a couple os webs with the wc3 validation, but didn't see any results. then again, i guess i don't have the level to see them coming even they strike me in the head.... ;)

[lunarboy1]

i think it matters "big time" (which is why I'm working on that now) because not only does it help users by having the page usually look the same for everyone, but I believe googlebot can worry more about content and not trying to find where it is in a complex table within table within table heirarchy.

Know what i mean?