Lastest Search Function Update on Google: Changed Alogarithms?

Google has made some latest changes for ranking website

[hawk]

Hi all,

I have been testing some of my keywords on Google to recheck their rankings and was shocked to see the new results for over 50 keywords. Yes, you got that right; the rankings have drastically dropped for most of them.

As a result, I had to do some further research and made a few quick conclusions. I don't say that these are all conclusive 100% findings, but anyone out there can re-check their rankings in Google and provide their valuable feedback.

1) For a very competitive keyword, if you optimize a perfect webpage that has all the relevant content on it + Tags et all, even then that would not rank well. Reasons could be a) If the google bot finds some permutation/combination of that keyword on the homepage i.e. index.html or index.htm and that website is listed in OPD with the keyword in the description, it will fair better than an optimized page that lies in a sub directory.

Unfortunately, if Google bot finds many homepages of a few websites optimized a bit for that keyword, it will only show those results first.

1)http://www.domain.com (fairs better than)
2)http://www.domain.com/page.html
3)http://www.domain.com/folder/page.html

So guys, if one wants to optimize his/her website in a way that all the pages serve as good gateway pages and then target competitive keywords, its very bad news from Google.

In any case, if those keywords are present on the homepages of other competing site, your web page will not show up, at least not in the top 10 or 15, unless their are fewer sites competing for the same keyword.

Earlier, one could target any specific page and optimize it for any keyword, of course there were some ground rules to take care of, but the new updated changes on Google not only show poor results (I think) but making it more difficult for search engine optimizers to use many competitive keywords under one domain. At the most, use your best keyword on the homepage and hope that google does justice to it.

FEEDBACK:

I would welcome feedback from you guys out there and share your new experiences with GOOGLE and how can we overcome this latest menace.

Thanks

HAWK

[glengara]

Like you, I've lost position on many KWs. However, I'm going to wait till the next update before being convinced the present changes are 'permanent'.

[mykel]

Hawk: I suggest you look through some posts in the Google News forum. There have been hundreds (if not thousands) concerning the new ranking Google is using.

[soapystar]

ive noticed this too...where before the most relevant pages of a site were showing..now only the home page is being served,..if your keyword is not on it you cannot compete...seems like google is realy struggling to get the algo right..seems like the 4th big change since the update...for many searches just clicking refresh brings new results....but this homepage thing is crazy...you could have the most relevant page for a search..but if its not your index page then google doesnt seem to want it!...looks like whereas before you needed a new page for each keyword...now you need a new site!

[jpavery]

I gained tremendous position over the last dance (from three to two). But we have been making a steady climb over the last four months. Back in June we were around #35.... now we are number two or three for several variations of our KWs.

I had asked ODP to change our description since we have moved from selling really fuzzy blue widgets to smooth red widgets. It took a while, but when they did we got to the top on google.

We also run an affiliate program. People will link back to us for more information. A site that sells smooth red widgets from 20 different manufacutres also sells our brand of red widgets - they links back to us and only us... what does that appear to tell google about us?

Of course we think google did a poor job when our own site drops from 1 to say 30... but maybe they have done a good job?... they must look at the whole and not the individual parts (the individual parts being someone saying that #1 in their area of interest is held by a spammer) - so as a whole I bet the google index is better than before.

I think web sites that are not tricky are being rewarded.

jp

[promis]

Do not agree. My homepage has PR6. I optimized really well another page from my site with PR5 for same two word competitive search term appearing in homepage. My PR5 page jumped on 8th Oct. to first position. My homepage remains in 15th position for same key phrase which is not even in my Dmoz description. 2nd, 3rd... positions are homepages of other sites. My PR5 page got its PR on its own merit. It has no inbound links yet.

[jpavery]

I believe that certain KWs are ranked differently or affect the algo differently.

In my industry (a) google will report 35,000 pages for my relevant KWs... for other industries (b) KWs you may get 1 million pages returned.

Getting ranked into the top 10 for industry (a) must be very different then getting into the top 10 for industry (b). I cannnot see the algo being applied evenly... the sheer number of competitors must affect how the algos respond.

but then again I don't work at google.... so this is all speculation. but I guess the point is I look at some results and I can understand them and then I look at other results and they confuse the heck out of me....

for example - I run a website for my parents - the orginal domain name, which we still have, is five words hyphenated together. It became a pain in the a** to read out the web address over the phone... so I registered a new domain that is one short word and did a URL forward to the longer one. Well guess what? Google has now indexed both! Scared the **** out of me because I'm worried that google will re-evaluate its index and call me a spammer! The short name now ranks #1 and the longer one ranks #5! same content!