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Does that make sense?
And in my case, it won't really change my behavior because my sites are going to be the size that they need to be from a user perspective. Yes, I need search engines to bring in those users but if breaking the content up into different sites doesn't make sense for the user, then it's a pointless exercise to try to please the search engines.
I have 5 sites that could all really be on one but seperately they perform very much better.
Regards
Rod
Did I miss something? I see nothing out of the ordinary in the areas I watch!
In reading posts over the last year or so, I got the impression that theme sites were out… but I kept mine around because they seem to be working for us. We are thriving on G right now.
I do think the SE are aware that all the domains are micro domains of our primary domain. When I do a search on Alex for any of the micro domains – The results show data for my primary domain.
No "shake up" for the SERPS I watch either...
What's your take: percentage-wise it seems as if smaller, more static, more focused sites might be the name of the game right now. Much more than large, primarily dynamically, automaticaly controled sites with less of a human element.
Could you do a better job of defining your statement? You have jsmmed all sorts of things together that are not necessarily related.
What about large, dynamically-served static human generated content that is well focused?
Size has nothing to do with how the content is served, how it is generated, or how focused it is.
What do you consider large or small?
How do you determine the "human element"?
etc.?
I've noticed there has been very little, if any, movement in serps for SE's that use G's results since last Saturday. Normally I see daily movement which makes me think google might be putting a hold on things as they work things out.
Others have stated gbot stopped spidering for days (sites which normally are crawled daily) then coming back stronger than ever, PR going to zero then coming back, etc. - all of which makes me think this might not be a shake-up at all (except it has shaken up a lot of folks around here).
I have to think that things haven't settled yet.
It seems to me that the sites that have been hit by this update are large, previously stable sites that have been around for a number of years. From a spam / quality perspective, I can't imagine that Google would want to drive these types of sites out of the index.
When you're seeing a scale of 70-80% of a certain type of site's Google traffic disappearing, it just feels like the small site / big site pendulum may have swung a little too far, and G may still be working out the kinks.
Now the knob looks like it was turned way the other way. Deep pages on authoritative sites seem to be doing less well, while very weak (but non-spammy) domain main pages seem to be doing much better. I'm seeing the most authoritative sites having their dozens of #4 or #6 rankings for a term now being #12 or #15, while the sites that have moved above them are not spammy, they are simply weak.... meaning a page with excellent quality resources on Paris has dropped below a page that basically says "I went to Paris and it was cool." Nothing wrong with the latter, just not worthy of a high ranking.
This may be just an example of why on page content should never be considered very important in ranking a page. I could write a paragraph on the theory of relativity, with all the right keywords, and then another site could have Einstein write a paragraph on relativity. A bot would never be able to tell the difference in quality, but off page factors would normally clearly reveal that the Einstein page is the one to rank higher.
The authority knob seems to have been turned down, especially authority you grant yourself -- meaning even if other quality authoritative domains lavish authoritative linking on a domain's main page, that main page is not able to transfer as much of an authoritative vote to its own internal, more topically focused pages.
Personally I suspect this knob turn will be undone like a similar one early in the year. The low quality domains are much better than the pure piffle of last year, but still, if you want authoritative domains, you have to respect internal linking and the transfer of authority within a domains own pages.
I ran a search on the most competitive phrase in my area and checked all 10 results on the page.
EVERY single result was relevant and truth be told any one of them was worthy of #1.
All of them were from 10 different companies and all were normal run of the mill sites. No BS seo stuff.
This is a phrase that commands over 7.00 per click.
So, if there was a big "shake-up" as has been said, then it was only in very specific areas.
To come to the conclusion that the end of large sites is on the horizon when many sectors where untouched, is just conjecture. If they turned a knob, it would apply across the board and not be industry specific.
If indeed some industries are seeing huge changes, then I would bet it is more than a knob turn.
That's what makes this update so weird. The SERPS that have been shaken up are the NON competitive ones. The sites that are taking hits are typically those with a high home page PR, thousands of relatively unoptimized pages with keywords not interesting or monetizable for most SEOs.
That's why this one is so baffling. It's a clean up (?) of SERPS that weren't dirty to begin with. As SteveB says, Google has decided to replace the internal pages of big sites, with primary pages of hobby sites.
Maybe 500-1000 big sites got dinged by 70-80% (pure speculation), and the gains were spread out across millions of hobby sites, whose webmasters are most likely not on WW anyway.
i hope i don't sound bitter
That isn't the issue here.
"If they turned a knob, it would apply across the board and not be industry specific."
LOL, it would? Your statement is totally wrong. They sometimes even turn knobs that effect one single site. If you don't understand that some industries can be heavily effected by a change that doesn't concern most other industries I don't know what there can be said. Every industry doesn't have the same group of influences in play.
LOL, are you suggesting that Google would place a good deal of effort figuring out what dial to turn just to affect a single site?
Honestly, if Google is focused on tweaks at that level, they are missing the target. With the results they are returning for searches, I would think they are turning much larger knobs - on a much broader scale.
Who said anything about a good deal of effort? They aren't loading coal here.
Apparently it isn't, but it should be obvious to everyone that Google can significantly effect the rankings in an entire niche by doing something as simple as PR0ing one domain. That should be a very clear basic of basics.
However, while that is obvious, more interesting is how some knob turns will strongly effect some sectors while leaving others completely undisturbed. For example, a lot of the travel industry types have complained about how Google basically altered how it handled "location widget" searches. A geolocation tweak could drastically effect the travel niche while being completely unimportant to adult or php or entertainment or many other niches.
If an entire niche can be affected by PROing one domain, then it was a disaster waiting to happen anyway. If all those sites in the niche were basing their ranking on one domain, then the spoils go to those in that niche that did it right to start with and were not affected by the one site. All the sites that got wacked got wacked for a reason.
Never the less, it is also apparent that Google is trying to clean up the rampant affiliate sites that are popping up. I say Good riddance!
I don't see a problem with Google doing this.
That may be why many have said they have Google traffic down to Yahoo levels, and that isn't good for Google. I think Yahoo results are about two years or more behind but catching up fast after this debacle.
the primary objetive was to push down spammy pages, and I am seeing less spammy pages in first pages
I am seeing the spammest spam i have ever seen getting to no 1.
I mean pages with 50 hidden links, redirects. spammy noframes tags. Dynamic content generation. The Works.
If google doesn't turn it back then more and more of us will start using these spam methods (myself included) and their results will get worse and worse.
The same happened to geniune content sites, but As I theorized in the other thread, most genuine sites are one-topic or multi-topic but with strong inbound links (specially the biggest, I mean, thounsads inbound links) so those got a special status and remained without the "lowering filter".
It seems tht big loosers are multi-thematic sites without huge link popularity. If you had good section about X , but your site homepage has nothing to do with X, then you are "lowered"...
I think you are right on the money there as I already supported your view in the other thread, this covers my observations 100%.
Our site is rising again, so I think they may be turning the knob back round a click or two...
