Lets talk in depth about the google "filter=0"

[baron13]

If I add "&filter=0" to my google query I see different serps. In my oppinion the reults are the old/better ones.

If I enter the query "blue widgets" in google.com:
I get less results when I turn the filter "OFF" (add "&filter=0")
And I get more results when I turn the filter "ON" (leave the query as it is or add "&filter=1")

I think this is a little bit strange because a filter is filtering things out and does not display more results!?

Will google use this filter or will they turn it off soon or will they refine it?

In my oppinion I think the current results are really bad and I hope they will solve this soon.

[mykel79]

For a few days I got results that made sense - more results when the filter was turned off. My site appeared then also.
Now my site doesn't appear with the filter turned off either, and I get less results like you. I'm lost!

[kendos]

Just have a look on what G says about filter from Google Web APIs Reference :

The <filter> parameter causes Google to filter out some of the results for a given search. This is done to enhance the user experience on Google.com, but for your application, you may prefer to turn filtering off in order to get the full set of search results.

When enabled, filtering takes the following actions:

Near-Duplicate Content Filter = If multiple search results contain identical titles and snippets, then only one of the documents is returned.
Host Crowding = If multiple results come from the same Web host, then only the first two are returned.

[dazzlindonna]

Near-Duplicate Content Filter = If multiple search results contain identical titles and snippets, then only one of the documents is returned.

that nearly explains my losses. a competitor duplicated my meta description (which was showing up as the snippet for both of us). he did not duplicate the title however, but it was similar. so...i changed my meta description a bit. back in the results this morning, although it might have come back regardless.

[baron13]

Hmmm...in my business if I turn the filter on (enable) I see lots of irrelevant and spamy sites (with blogs and guestbook links). If I turn the filter off, I get better results.

Does this filter filter out dupe content but than display irrelevant sites instead?

[sunzon]

With filter, position #11 (without indents #7).
without filter, position #71.
Interestingly, the first 6 are the same websites in both cases (with filter, one site gets 4 indents, without filter that same site gets only 1 indent)
All those 60 sites ahead of mine (and after the first 6) are different sites, barely an indent in sight, and all levels of PR in any order.
Without filter, the SERP says "results 1-10 of about 41,200".
With filter, the SERP says "results 1-10 of about 41,200".
So filter=0 or not, the number of results is the same.
It seems weird that the algo would put those 60 "similar title and content" (as G defines the filter usage) websites ahead of mine unless asked to filter them "out"(?)
I can't make sense of it all.

[Metaphorically]

If I have "&filter=0" then my business name shows up when I search for it (that is with no quotes, as just the four words) as the second match. The first match is clearly less relevant. The results are the same as I saw a few weeks back. I did clean up some of my pages a while ago to make the footer text more consistent (it contains my business name and contact info). Now I wonder if google sees all my pages as junk? It's not that just supposed duplicates are removed without "&filter=0" - all my pages are gone (I've shown up at least on the first page for this search for several months now). I'd like it if my existing clients could search for my business by name and find it, any ideas?

[jkfjkf]

My Home Page: #1 with filter=0, #25 under new SERPs
Sub pages: #1-15 with filter=0, 50-200 now.

This occured about 5-6 days ago.

Here's what I'm doing. I'll keep you informed of the outcome.

1) I'm sending cease and desist orders to those webmasters whom I have determined have been scraping content from my site. I am also emailing those who have been doing 302/303 redirects to my site.

2) I've just tweaked my title and meta description. So we'll see what happens!

[sunzon]

JkfJkf:

Are you sure others are scraping content from your website and doing 302/303 redirects?

Sounds like everyone in webmasterworld forum is hammmered with hijacking (except me as far as I can determine) although I suffered a major rank drop recently too and am trying to understand it and why the filter on/off makes such a difference.

Are you inferring that because of the filter on/off difference it must be malicious sites pushing you down?

[baron13]

Anybody else seeing irrelevant and crapy sites in the new serps (without "filter=0")?
I can see sites with blog and guestbook links and japanese sites in google.com.......very strange.

[nutsandbolts]

Pretty much the same for me too DazzlinDonna. I've e-mailed the person asking them to remove the link to my listing (with my exact title as their link page) as it's caused my site to disappear. I hope they will.

This really is a stupid fault on Google's part.

[bak70]

I have this problem with 3 of my sites when using the allinanchor search

any ideas why this is hapening

all 3 sites were page one for the regular search bfore the update
now they are deep in the index.

[larryhatch]

I'm having trouble testing &filter=0.

Lets say my keyword is KWD. A search for just KWD returns 8 million listings.

If I enter KWD&filter=0 nothing comes up at all.
If I enter KWD &filter=0 (i.e. add a space) I only see 4 rather goofy results.
If I use quotes as in KWD "&filter=0" I get few but different results.

WHAT is the exact syntax that I should use in the Google search term box?

- Larry

[dazzlindonna]

larryhatch, after you search for KWD, put your cursor at the end of the URL that now appears in the address bar. Type &filter=0 at that point, and press enter.

[steveb]

[google.com...]

[google.com...]

[larryhatch]

AHA! Thanks guys. I figured it was simple. - Larry

[rich42]

I didn't see anyone else point this out so I'll mention it:

&filter=0 is what gets appended to your query if you click the link after viewing all the (presumably filtered) serps:

In order to show you the most relevant results, we have omitted some entries very similar to the 133 already displayed.
If you like, you can repeat the search with the omitted results included.

exactly what gets filtered seems to depend on the query being done - not just a matter of certain pages getting consistently tossed out of the serps.

[proboscis]

Hello,

My site has about 600 pages and has lost about 45% of traffic from google, not all pages have lost rank. And of course when I add &filter=0 my pages return to their previous rank.

The thing is I haven't been able to find much dupe content for the pages that have lost, maybe one site here that has copied 29 words, and another here that I have copied their title and some text from their site in order to make a link to them. I guess that is enough to trigger the filter.

Oh, and how can you tell if someone is doing a 301 or 302 redirect to your site?

Hope everyones rank comes back soon!

[DerekH]

Talk in depth, as thread title says?

OK - if I search for a colleague firstname secondname I get 1 - 3 of about 7.

If I elect to "repeat the search with the omitted results included"

I get &filter=0 added
And then...
.
.
.
.
Ta da....

1 out of 1

How does that work, exactly?
DerekH

[walkman]

with filter=0 you remove any dupe penalty you may have.

[andystowell]

Very interesting topic I too am suffering from this.

What I have noticed is that if I choose a unique phrase from my homepage and search for it within quotes it doesn't appear. The results consist fully of sites which have my unique phrase as part of a snippet describing my site and in some cases with a heading linking to my site. Essentially a site displaying search results for a given keyword which includes my site as one of the results.

If I add &filter=0 then my site appears top.

Anyone else seeing this happen? Any idea what could be causing this? It looks as if I am being penalised for duplicate content due to these other sites displaying snippets from my site. I don't think my site is being hijacked as described in another recent thread.

Thanks

Andy

[baron13]

Another strange thing is: why drop the most of my sites 3-5 ranks when this is the dupe filter? If my site has dupe content it must be filtered out completely.......or am I wrong with this?

[proboscis]

My whole site has not been affected, only certain pages, some have droppped back a several pages and I have only found one page so far that has disappeaered completely-- unless I search for the exact title or add filter=0.

When I seach for that page's title I get my site plus 27 other sites that have linked to me using my exact title and meta tag description.

If I search for "mydomain, kwd" I get several results plus one result that looks EXACTLY like my page but the url is example.com.php?site=9384 (not my url)
it is also a Supplemental Result

[webdude]

Okay,

One question on this even though I think I understand it pretty well.

If I search KW KW and my site is #5, but when I apply &filter=0, my site is #385, does that mean that there are 380 pages being penalized before mine? If that is the case, thank G for the filter!

that's G as in Google :-)

[sean]

webdude, usually it is because most of the pages in front of you are from the same site, i.e. an example of the filter working correctly.

[webdude]

Well, whatever the reason, I think I like the filter. It keeps one site from dominating the first several pages of the results. It appears that every site (at least on my KW KW search) gets about 2 links per return. That seems reasonable to me. It keeps a majority of the over seo'ed stuff from hitting the regular returns. It seems to be domain name sensitive.

[dazzlindonna]

right webdude, i dont think anyone was ever complaining about the filter when it worked properly. before this last update, its use was limited to keeping sites to a limit of 2 listings. good - fine. no problem with that. but currently, at least for some searches, it is kicking out pages that don't have even one other listing. now, a page that normally ranked in the top 5 (with no other pages in that domain ranking for that term), is gone from the results UNLESS you add filter=0 to the url, which then brings it right back to its previous rank position. If that were because it also had other pages ranking for the term, then it would make sense - but it doesn't.

[prairie]

Could it be that filter=0 ensures that each URL listed in a set of SERPs links to unique resources?

Meaning, Google won't show 10 URLs on one page which all point to another page in turn?

[Metaphorically]

It may be meant to work that way, prairie, but for my site I get no listings without "&filter=0". Google might think I'm a dupe of the top listing, but it comes from another totally unrelated site that doesn't actually contain the search phrase (and I can't imagine it would get linked to with the search phrase either).

[prairie]

Does anyone know if this thing can be bypassed by aquiring more/better incoming links?