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This time. Remember 'Black Monday' RC?
(edited by: rcjordan on 8:35 pm (gmt) on June 22, 2001
All the pages of a site seems to gain ranking.
The combinations of the keywords work fine.
If you were ranking fine for a three words phrase, now you can rank fine for any combination of that keywords.
SERPS are pleasing.
A couple of weeks ago AV was giving us 5% of our referrals. Then, for two glorious weeks they sent us 10%. Now they've gone, like the Swamp Thing, back to where they came from, carrying our referrals with them.
I'm just about ready to go...
I have a test search I've used for three years to check the serps. It's the same format I've always used. The results are showing different data to three weeks ago. Before you say it, these are NOT new pages. The new data was already in the db, it's just that they are now showing up on P1.
It's still following the same route as what I posted here on what results it's displaying, rotating I mean and not phrase matching and "free stuff" searching:
[webmasterworld.com...]
Ooops, sorry, I should have stated newer refresh. :)
Weird thing I noticed a little over a week ago was that I had a few brand new sites listed on June 6 that were placed on the second page. Just for a few days only to be dropped back down into the abyss again.
I wonder if they are throwing new stuff near the top for a short time to see if it pulls in any hits, if not then they get dropped back down. Or, what seems more like AV-style, display some different results for a few days then change everything back to normal.
I'm still pondering why they dropped the phrase matching words on the "number of Web pages that contain your search terms" line. Now they just show all the words separately instead of also showing the pages that contain the phrase in addition to the separate words.
This is really getting strange.
I have one site listed 2 and 3, 3rd being indented that is on the 9 out of 10 refreshed rotating results.(if you know AV then you know what i'm referring to.)
On the oddball rotated results I'm at number 9 and 10. Now the second page(indented one) is a totally different page on my site than the indented page on the first set of rotated results.
I've seen this on a few other sites I have listed.
Sound confusing? Well the term Altavista means confusing in the lost language of the DEC tribe.
Soooo, little tip here, if you really look into how and why they show those indented results, you can kill two birds with one stone in the results if you play your cards right.
Not sure if it's related, but when I said refreshed I meant re-clicking the search button under the same search term and not the refresh browser button.
Too bad AV doesn't turn the traffic anymore, it would make this a whole lot more interesting. We're pretty much just doing this out of habit now, eh?
I think so! My overall traffic has dropped 50% because of AV's mishaps these past 4 weeks. I've been working like crazy trying to get it back but I'm really wondering if it's worth the effort. I've been seeing some results turn up where the top 30 sites are all sub-domains riding with the same doorway template. I've reported this numerous times to their spam reporting address but they won't do anything about it. Not even a reply.
They are really starting to show the signs of serious money troubles IMHO. It's like they have an anything goes attitude to what they allow in their results because they lack the man power and cash to fix it.
:) :) :)
I'll top that: June 13th.
It's good to see AV update, but I'm not really happy with the results at the moment. I don't know whether I should start submitting my fine-tuned pages or just forget the whole thing and focus on something else. As rcjordan said, AV is no longer what it used to be.
Anyone any other news/information?
I do have severe doubts about their paid spider scheme though, and the Pandia article sort of hits the nail even though they are actually referring to Ink.
The problem lies with the fact that returns are polluted with Goto... the top 3 are 'featured sites'. The dilemma is in paying for something when for popular terms the best you can hope for is #4. And who is to say they won't make it the top 5 or 8 or whatever in the future (can anyone trust AV on their past habit of grabbing cash at the expense of their core product)?
This significantly devalues their scheme. Many people will see that they are trying to have their cake and eat it all at the same time.
If they dump Goto their scheme has a good chance of working as the index will hopefully restore the faith of those who have lost it. If they keep Goto (or at least keep the results at the top of the page) they will be fighting the battle with an arrow through their heart.
