Checked the SERP's this morning for my main 1-word and 2-word search terms and my site is nowhere to be found. A google pattern seems to take place every 3 weeks or so, just like the "no longer exists" dance. I was not listed in Google at all a couple months ago for these terms, then I was listed and my position hardly wavered more than 1 spot for maybe 3 weeks. Then a movement (higher, thank goodness) where I was my highest google rankings ever for these terms. That was maybe 3 weeks ago, now today GONE.

Does anyone have an explanation or similar experience with their google rankings? I don't know if I should panic or just wait a day or two for things to settle but with the holidays coming I am worried that I am screwed.

FWIW I did make some changes to my home page a week ago but find it hard to believe that these changes would drop my completely out of the index. They were relatively minor changes and certainly nothing that would be considered spam.

Anyone with any ideas?

no idea but I have this same problem. I started promoting a brand new site form june and I got better and better rankings months by months. I was in the top3 for various keywords but this afternoon I checked my rankings and boom. Where am I? nowhere!

I think we can start panic the latest on monday. SOmething must happen in 2 days, or not at all.

3 sites i had that where number 1 just disappered for there search terms

I might have linked to bad neghbor hood

or something, I'm starting to feel sort of sick

I have the same problem, it spans 30+ sites and all of them have been affected. I have multiple sites on multiple IP's and all of them have been killed. Only crap seems to come up in the google search results... If you are listening Google... "NOW is not the time to be fuk-in around with your algorithm... Christmas is coming for Christ's sake!"

Misery loves company. Nice to know it is just not me. I am holding out hope that I will reappear as high, or higher, than ever soon. I would be really worried if I found out I was now #647. It seems that I am not ranked poorly, just not ranked. We'll see I guess but this all makes me feel like crap in the meantime.

i noticed some of my competitors sites have dropped also, just not as much as mine

I checked my logs (nothing better to do since I have no orders!) and googlebot has visited my site more today than any day since 9/12, when my traffic went down until 10/11. So the pattern looks like every 30 days. By 12/15 I should get traffic back - right when Christmas shopping is basically over. Just when I *thought* I finally established a solid google presence everything goes into the crapper. I need to go drink.

Yep, there is some sort of "update" and "dance" going on.

Other forums reported it about 36 hours ago, and it looks like it might continue for another few days too.

Yeah, same results. I had some #1 positions and they seem gone.

I know my sites aren't banned, though. Unimportant, nondescript keywords that others don't compete for, seem to be doing okay for my rankings --- just not my important keywords. Dang!

Same thing is happening to my competitors. It's strange -- directory type sites and news sites are scoring better than individual company sites.

Hello everyone,

Just thought I'd add a bit.

I have had some very strong rankings for some very very competitive terms in the health industry. Some of the most important ones (the ones for my homepage) just totally disappeared yesterday. I mean, nowhere to be found. I looked in the top 300 and I don't exist. I made no changes to my site, nothing. To go from being in the top 10 to nowhere definitely hurts.

Worse yet, the sites that have filled the spots are horrible, borderling irrelevant. This is objective assessment on my part...I'm talking almost no content in most cases, things like that.

However, I have not been banned from Google. My site is still in there if I type in my URL.

It's very very frustrating to say the least, but I can't believe these changes will be permanent.

So, let's all keep our fingers crossed and hope things revert back to "normal" soon.

-Dan

Check again mid-week. The situation will be totally different.

I wish I could share your optimism. For my situation the top results are still the same, as they always are. The #1 result has been #1 probably 98% of the time for the last year. If it falls it goes to maybe #2 or #3. I sure wish I could understand why, because the site, to me, looks very ordinary and its hard to figure how it has been "optimized" for such a high ranking for a very competitive term.

What's more distressing to me is the complete crap that outranked me when I was pretty damn happy with my rankings, and obviously WAY outranks me now. I don't know if doorway pages, or mirror sites, or what the proper technical term is but they have an almost identical home page hosted under numerous url's, many of them free web hosting sites. The top 3 inches of their home page (and bottom 3 as well) is nothing but a listing of search terms. You cannot easily read them they are in such a small font and hard-to-read color. One or two clicks takes you to the "real" site which has a completely different look and feel.

Sadly, all I make of this is that the honest guy, the guy following the rules, takes it up the keister. The lesson here is to lie, cheat, spam, ignore and break every so-called rule because - let's face the facts here - you are rewarded for the behavior while the honest approach is punished.

I guess my next SEO strategy is to just get a couple dozen free web hosting accounts, plaster a custom, keyword overloaded, spammy home page on it, and have it link to my "real" site. Seems that these pages gain the high rankings easily and will drive people to my real site.

It is obvious to me that google's algo cannot enforce their rules adequately, so the rule breakers benefit while the guy putting up clean, relevant, on topic content gets the shaft.

America is a great place, ain't it!? All the benefits and rights go to those who cheat and break the law.

<<Check again mid-week. The situation will be totally different. >>

And you make this statement because???

SEOK said: "I have the same problem, it spans 30+ sites and all of them have been affected. I have multiple sites on multiple IP's and all of them have been killed."

I have 6-7 websites. Most of them have lost a few positions in rankings while they had been #1 for 4-5 months. One of them completely disappeared (it had already disappeared in June for a few weeks).

I recently cross-linked a bit more and i was wondering if it was not the reason. Perhaps Google is getting more clever in finding out cross-linking patterns even if websites are on different IP.

SEOK, are your websites cross linking? to which extent?

If google has become more clever how does this "gateway" site rank #6 out of 3,260,000 when the site itself (where this site redirects to) is not ranked at all?

Isn't this just a doorway page, on a free hosting site, with no useful content, keyword spam, and redirects?

The site is www.anzwers.org/trade/xxxx/

I have left the actual site name out to protect the guilty.

The index page is filled with what I would consider spam. Click on a category and it takes you to another page within that domain, clicking on that page redirects you to the *real* yahoo store domain.

Maybe this is a completely legit set up? I guess I should just follow suit and instead of being unlisted in google for a relevant, optimized site I can get highly listed by setting up a page of crap.

This is all so frustrating.

>> And you make this statement because??? <<


Googleguy: "Give it two or three days for results to settle"

See: http://www.webmasterworld.com/forum3/18296.htm (500 post thread)

nmottet, Some of my sites are crosslinked but only the relevant sites. Each has unique content and most sites over 10,000 pages listed with google. I am pretty sure this is not the root cause of the problem. Many of our individual product pages remain relatively unchanged in their listing status but the home pages for all of the sites have dropped considerably for many terms we used to in the top 3 for. The only thing I can think of that is causing this is that google is again readjusting how they compute inbound links to the homepage. My guess is they are running results without the benefit of external links. This is the only reason so many useless unlinked sites have attained high rankings.

Well this is a first for me... I read here every week that a site or two is gone from the serps and my sites are never out but this time I have a monster money maker gone for no reason - super clean site, good linking, no spam just gone.

g1smd

I think a better interpretation of GG's comment is - The situation MAY be totally different.

And, not wishing to dampen anyone's spirits, my experience is there are usually very few major changes from the first batch of new serps to the final serps when all settles in a typical Google update.

Just a quick tech note... When I use allinanchor: The site I refered to above is right where it should be for it's key phrases.


Looks like anchor text is not being included in the algo right now.

Gosh, I really wish it all straightens out soon!

In a couple keywords where my sites got dumped, top ranked listings don't make sense. They don't do the surfer any good. They're just directory or news sites; they need to be sites of companies that offer the product.

I agree, the index is really looking poorer for this update.

Sort of the same happened with one of my sites today.
My index page disappeared from the serps for some 2-word phrases, but no change for 3-word phrases. Internal pages retained their positions , almost no change.
I have another site with very similar content for which there was no change at all.

This is interesting. When I use allinanchor: my site ranks very well. Without it I am nowhere. I thought my pages were optimized well for my main keywords, but perhaps this means that the ONLY reason I was ranking well was because of keyword links to my site? I actually thought my backward links were rather weak and that the bulk of my success was from my content.

Does this mean that backward links are of minimal value? Or that they were of great value, especially with anchor text that matched your keywords? I am at a loss here - has my site as is just been sent off to google never never land? Google is rating highly some very spammy sites, I guess it's time to follow that path????

>> And, not wishing to dampen anyone's spirits, my experience is there are usually very few major changes from the first batch of new serps to the final serps when all settles in a typical Google update. <<


This is not an ordinary update. Google used to dance monthly, then it went to some sort of rolling update.

Their directory hasn't been updated for over 7 months, until a couple of weeks ago. Google added a couple of new datacentres last month. Lots of things are happening.

Give it time to settle.

Results across the various datacentres are quite different for some searches, and remarkedly similar for others.

My experience is that google still has a major monthly update, just like the "dance". Every 3-4 weeks I see a change in my rankings. Between changes my rankings rarely move, and even then they move by one or two spots. I have seen my site disappear for a full cycle only to return ranking higher than ever. Starting on Nov 15th my rankings for my main search terms were gone. If the past few months is any indication I am due to be ranked nicely come December 15th, right in time to miss all the Christmas sales. I sure hope I am wrong.

I just fail to see much difference in google since the "dance" has gone away. The index's behavior still looks pretty much the same to me - a big update monthly with next to no changes between updates. The one big change I do see is that spam is highly rewarded by google, so when in Rome do as the Romans do....

I came back from a very nice weekend vacation to find that all 12 of my sites are completely GONE from Google for their most optimized keyphases. What the hell?!?!?!?

The extent to which there has been an algo shift is dramatic. It would be one thing to see a site drop a page or somehting but to see all of these highly ranked sites dropping so substantially (often completely off the chart) seems to suggest there's either a huge penatly that's been issues for a particular SEO technique (such as overuse of the image alt tag or something), or that we're just in the middle of an index churn, as suggested earlier in the thread.

If anyone notices any patterns, please post. I'm going to do some alanysis tomorrow and I'll post whatever I can find.

FYI - I just did a check of all the Google country domains and this issue with one of my sites disappearing is not the case on Google domains. For instance, it's missing from Google.com, and Google.au, but not missing from Google.it, Google.de, Google.fr, or Google.ca (french).

i think it should be given some time. A few observations I have seen. First I am seeing well ranked and established web sites who have had things in place for a considerable time frame 6+ months continue to do well. New sites, contents, linking seems to be affected - and clearly to me 'all' filters are not in place at this time. note - a lot of geocities, tripod, etc. i am seeing rankings change somewhat even in the last 24hours, but filters typically won't dramatically change your own site's rankings. just the general landscape

I see a little bit of old data - old title tag (6 weeks) duplicating index content of fresh cache.

Short term - continue on - wait, and continue to develop good quality content that draws both visitors and search engines. Things may shift this week.

Long term - i give it a few weeks before fully evaluating changes. the rankings/index don't seem to currently coincide.

Big picture it reminds me of the changes experienced in feb/march of this year. That is when we last saw 'regular' updates (all change at same time with propagation across the datacenters). At that time, it was stated that previous datasets were used to implement new algo/changes. This was done because the previous datasets known value was required to evaluate the change. I think this might be a similar case.

A few days to a week with filters being implemented, then a while (weeks not days folks!) all index data will be updated to coincide eventually.

I would not make drastic changes, yet.

Right on Pongo, thats what I see. Results semm to be disregarding backlink text and even PR.

I hope they sort that.

Meanwhile its interesting and enlightening to see how well our sites perform for various keywords..."naked"..

Well the "wait and see" game isn't much fun, is it? Panic now or panic later? Reality is waiting a month just to see what happens, then figuring out what to do, then doing it .... means potentially 2-3 months in the tank.

The Christmas budget for my household just got downsized in a huge way. I was expecting the next 6 weeks to be my best, by far. Now it looks as though it will be among my worst. What is tough is there is really no way to know why my site has disapeared. I could understand a big move up or down, but completely disappearing?

I did an allinanchor: for the two keywords where I am gone, and the SERP's put me right about where I was as of last Friday, maybe 2-3 spots higher. If I ranked 10th, including anchor text, and now rank 8th only looking at anchor text, isn't is reasonable to assume that anchor text was not the sole reason I was as *high* as 10th?

All the while I see the top 5 sites are still the top 5 sites, and I see spammy doorway sites with very high rankings. It just doesn't make any sense to me.

Questions

1) How old is the content of the pages in question? Not google's cache date, but how long has the pagename/url been in place in relation to the sites internal structure. One month, six? How Long?

2) How long have external links (if any) been in place previously?

The index page had a major change back in May 2003, with only minor revisions since. I do update the content occassionally and the last updates were Nov 7th and 11th, and it disappeared from google on the 15th.

As for external links, they have been in place for some time, that is to say I have probably added maybe 5 per month the last several months with a guestimated total of 150+.

3 months ago I dropped completely out of google, then came back and had slightly better rankings each of the last two months. Then, as now, there were no significant changes to the site in any regard, just minor changes of adding some new products, minor cleaning up of a format I wasn't happy with, etc.

I wanted to check google across all its data centers. There used to be a tool that did that. Does anyone still have the link for it? thanks

A couple of many google dance check tools - careful, there is a reason people don't depend on them

http://google-dance.miniunternehmen.de/
http://googledance.seochat.com/

Regarding your timing rocket_rob, that drop 3 months ago could be key if 'part' of the dataset does not coincide with the index. just a reasonable possibility and some weight towards seeing what happens since you are not alone on the Nov 15th scenario. waiting for things to settle sucks, but what other options are you considering?

<<waiting for things to settle sucks, but what other options are you considering?>>

The option I am most seriously considering is creating a variety of doorway pages and keyword spam-filled redirects to get traffic.

You may think I am joking but I have a competitor who ranks sixth with such a site hosted with a freebie provider. It is allegedly against everything google stands for. I used to rank tenth for that keyword and was very happy with my traffic, so I know that for ranking 6 that site is generating some decent traffic.

This site has several, that I have been able to find at least, of these sites which all lead to their *real* store where you can actually purchase something.

Google is just like everything else in the USA - crooks and cheaters are rewarded while the law abiding bast@$#s get the shaft. If you can't beat 'em, join 'em.

New site online back in May. Has been #1 since. Not moved at all in this update.

Appeared in the Google directory for the first time just two weeks ago (had already been in ODP for 5 or 6 months).

Every page links to the index page through the company logo at top left. Clean navigation. HTML 4.01 Valid Code. Uses title tag, meta description tag, headings, lean HTML code with CSS.

No index page problems. No drop out of SERPs. Still at #1 position. What update?

All my sites still have number 1 rankings , just not for the compettive terms they used to rank number 1 for, the non-compettive sites havn't budged a bit ,

g1smd is your one site that hasn't changed for anything compettiive?

The only pattern i thought i was seeing was sites that that have more then a couple (800+) keyword links seem to be penalized for those keys words , and the sites i have with say < 500 keyword links are untouched.

But upon closer look my sites only have hit on the most targeted phrase the ones most included in the anchors, but only to a degree.

It seems to vary site to site, one site has 100% reciprocol keyword links still number 1 , the next gone

Maybe I'm writing prematurely, but I must admit I have the sinking feeling that the results we have so far are it, and there won't be much new changes.

Over on the webmasterworld world so many people are complaining that I think it's ample evidence that Google screwed up. Nobody's perfect and I am not going to join any conspiracy theorists.

I can't speak for sites in other industries, but here's a brief example.

I started a site in Jan of this year, 95% content, with 5% or less text recommendation for the products I use. All quality linking.

Google rewarded me. Ever since inception I slowly and surely climbed in the ranking, especially for my competitive index/homepage keyterms.

Recently I hit my all time high with a ranking of #8 for my major keyterm and #11 for a secondary one for my hompage. My Google PR hit 6. Looked to me that everything was right and fine in the Universe. I checked on my competition quite frequently, no animosity toward them, and I readily admit there were some very good content dense sites in the top 10 to 15 with me, with strong Google PR's.

Then this update, dance comes along, whatever the h*ll you want to call it.

Boom, my homepage/index page just disappears off the face of the planet, nowhere to be found for the two very solid and competitive phrases I had #8 and #11 for. I literally can't find my site in the first 300 listings.

Now, I now for an objective fact that my site is eons more relevant than most of that garbage populating the first 300 spots.

Worse, even the top 10 to 15 spots were taken over by mediocre sites.

A couple sites of my former competitors disappeared too. And these were very well done, content rich sites.

One of the sites that made it into the top 5 sites for the major keyterm that I was #8 for is a FRIGGIN FRACKIN DEAD LINK! A URL that doesn't even work.

Many of the others are just sites that are out to sell you products, with LITTLE relevant content (and surely not as relevant as what disappeared). To top it all off, almost all these sites except a few minor exceptions have lower Google PR scores than the sites that vanished. PR 4 and 5's compared to PR's 6 that just disappeared into the Bermuda triangle that is Google.

I will give it more time (what else can I do), but I haven't seen any changes at all in the last couple of days. Nothing.

My feeling is this crappy new update is pretty much all done.

All I can say is if many of the webmasters at Webmasterworld claim to be white hat and just vanished like me, that Google users find the results they get for search terms disappointing and move to competitors, and therefore, the market itself which has so amply rewarded Google for being the best begins to penalize them for deteriorating.

Dan

Well, its obvious this was a very adverse algo change for users and webmasters alike. I'm pretty confident of two things:

1. Eventually (whether it be tomorrow ot next month) this will get corrected.

2. There are some people getting chewed out in a big way at Google at the moment.

It's clear this is a massive, widespread problem and thus I think we can rest easy that this is not going to get overlooked. The real question for me at the moment is just how long this will last. :-

This is a strange thread for me because I'm not seeing anything like the changes you guys are referring to. None of my sites seems to have budged much and my stats for who's placed where for particular keywords hasn't changed much either. Nor have I noticed any changes on Yahoo.

This is a weird one. Some sites I administer have not budged from their good rankings. Other sites enjoying no. 1 rankings on competitive keywords have just vanished. It seems to be dependent on what niche you're in.

I had wondered whether this was a new Google algo regarding reciprocal links/ internal links, but that doesn't explain the wildly differing results for different sites. Some have gone from Google.com & Google UK, others remain on Uk bot disappeared on G.com. And some remain exactly wehre they were...

I some movement today on one site's keyword phrase. Previously no. 1, down to 96 now up to 55 tday - small comfort.

Panic or patience?

Google should put in their guidelines anyone who tries to make there site rank higher is going against our guidelines, it would make this update make more sense

From my viewpoint, Google still has problems. Sites I monitor have been dropped MONTHS ago and still have not returned. Placements of other sites haven't budged, and new sites that have been submitted aren't showing. Frustrating to say the least...

"It seems to be dependent on what niche you're in"

Not necessarily. A site 'all-hotels.com' is still #1 for the term "hotels. Meanwhile, my site which was #12 and climbing for "discount hotels" is now nowhere to be found. FYI - this site has been in the index for over a year now, though it's recent ascent to higher rankings began maybe 3-4 months ago.

Also worth noting, I have several speciality sites (e.g. city + "hotels" that have a good 12-15 pages of content each. Each of these was climbing rapidly and I was looking forward to 1st page results this month. All of these sites are completely gone.

So, perhaps the travel industry was one of the niches hit hard, but apparently not all sites are affacted. And, these sites are not all on the same server either - only thing tying them together is (a) they link to each other from the links pages (along with hundreds of other sites), and (b) they're all travel/hotel related.

Just out of curiosity, does anyone know of a site with a substantial links page that wasn't affected? I wonder if something like that could not be a filtering factor (?). Just a thought.

My site has a "Hot Links" page with about 100 or so links to other sites. I still rank #1 for my keywords (sweepstakes newsletter). I'm not sure links are a huge factor...

I have three sites.

All 3 sites link to each other and two of them link to each other on the homepage.

Just a simple link that says "Our Sister Site" followed by the Keyterm and URL.

Besides this, all other links are in my links directory and are high quality. And my site also has a bunch of high quality links directing to mine without links going back out to those sites.

I have been trying to pinpoint some sort of potential Google penalty.

3 of my competitors who disappeared and had excellent content sites also cross linked to other sites of theirs.

I know some other sites that cross link in other industries and I checked them and most of them vanished as well.

Maybe this is partly to blame.

God knows why. What is so wrong with having a link from one of your sites to the other? Just one simple link? Especially if they related in theme, which mine are.

My Google PR is still 6, so that has not been penalized, and my sites are still in the Google directory if you type their URL's directly.

This whole thing is just really really annoying and frustrating to say the least.

I am just sitting here thinking: "Well, I've followed all the rules of getting quality links, writing good and relevant content, got a strong PR, etc" and was rewarded for it, for a while. Now I see a bunch of junk sites populating the top spots.

I guess I'll give it a month. If nothing happens by then, then it's time to emulate the trash that's out there. If Google wants trash, then trash is what they will get. In the end, they will be slitting their own throats.

Dan

my site with lots of links are gone, but only from the most target search phrases

my sites with less recip links < 300 seem to all be ok, actully maybe google would consider them having even less links then that because they are relatively new

By the way, since the crosslinking thing is the only common denominator for sites that disappeared that I can see, I have unlinked my sites from each other just to see if anything happens in a couple of weeks.

I'll report back if I notice any changes.

Dan

Google should put in their guidelines anyone who tries to make there site rank higher is going against our guidelines, it would make this update make more sense

I don't know about that. Some of the sites that seem to have replaced the former top 10 just look like pure spam - repeating keywords more than 5x in the title, and big blocks of nothing but the primary keywords in the text. Reminds me of Altavista 5 years ago.

Of course, this is for the keywords I'm looking at. Others may be different.

i have a little group of sites that a very much linked togather and link to a lot of linkexchange sites, they are sitting pretty,

kind of discounts that idea


Silv, I see spam for some of my results too

I am just bitter for having my sites removed from the index

Not that I am postitive they are really out, but I always expect the worst

Same here guys,

A client's site I had at #1 has dropped out of sight and can only be found using its domain name.

I made a couple of small changes hoping that a freshly-changed page will help matters.

Good luck to all!

P.S. Anyone have any tips?

There has been some more crosslink zapping this time, but that always happens every now and then. I never, ever aggressively crosslink.

My taking on this? Purely conjecture - but seems to pass most of the tests -

Google is looking for overtly SEO'd pages and has done the following:

User enters search phrase and Google checks database for pages matching the phrase.

It then checks for links to that page (both internal and external) and sees if the link text matches the search phrase in greater than xx% of the links - if so, score 1 SEO point.

It then checks the domain and if it is a match for the phrase, if so, score 1 SEO point.

It then checks to see if the phrase is an exact match in the page title - if so score another SEO point.

It then checks the meta description, H tags, keyword density, bold text, alt tags, outgoing link text for an exact match for the search phrase - if there, score more points.

It then checks for the competitive nature of the phrase by looking at the number of SERPs returned and depending on the number of SERPs devises an on-the-fly optimum SEO score. If you are over that, you get a penalty on that search term - not the page itself. Other search terms may not trip the score and the page will still rank high for them.

I first saw this coming into play over 9 months ago and got zapped on quite a few sites for very compeitive phrases, while the sites increased PR and still got traffic for the thousands of secondary phrases they came up for. But I was pushing the envelope with 100% of links all bearing anchor text matching the search terms, along with the domain name and on-page factors.

This update appears to have reduced the SEO score and instead of catching the few has got the many who have been concentrating on the ABC of optimising for Google.

I follow the ABC of optimising for Inktomi so none of my sites has been zapped by this update. Most have improved their rankings radically

As I said, this is just my opinion and many more factors are probably involved in this algo change. But I learned my lesson some time ago and changed my strategy - and have not been hit. So maybe there is something in my analysis.

Here's on more possibility. Is it possible that excessive image and alt/title packing is now being penalized? In all 12 of my sites my transaparent spacer gif used for formatting tables is names "discount-hotels.gif" and the title and alt are all "discount hotels". Perhaps there's a filter that is now going after this?

This and the links thing are the *only* things I can see that are consistant on all 12 of my sites that may have caused a problem.

Can anyone point to a site that is still using this image/alt packing technique that didn't get hammered this round?

I have had negative effects for alt tagging non-link images before this update

I think I agree with make me top

except of course I have sites that are an exception, but they of course are for less compettive phrases

which would translate into less key phrase filled links

It doesn't seem to go on a prcentage, I have a few sites that have their tags stuffed with their keyword and all the links contain their key word and they ares till fine.

Makemetop,

Thanks for the post. Your sentiments on what is happening coincide with mine more than anyone else's.

I had never crosslinked my sites until just a month ago for the first hand. In any case, I have eliminated the crosslinks as of last night, so we shall see what happens.

I can count at least 10 sites that have disappeared for their index page from Google and they ALL crosslinked with other sites of theirs. That is really the only common denominator I can elucidate so I am going with that for the time being.

My experience is also jiving with yours in the sense that my sites are still ranking OK for other pages. It's just the index pages that have been zapped for their major keyterms.

Can you explain what you mean by this statement: "But I was pushing the envelope with 100% of links all bearing anchor text matching the search terms."

Seems clear to me, but I just want to make sure I am understanding you here.

Let's say one of the main terms for my index page is "dietary supplements." Whenever another webmaster with a quality site related in theme would ask for my site description and Text link info, I would tell him to use the word "Dietary Supplements" in the Text Link part. Is this what is considered an "anchor?"

It was my impression that this was something we should be doing because a great many SEO's have said that you should always try to get the keyterms you are going for in the hyperlink from sites linking to yours.

Anyway, if this is what you're saying, what can possibly be done about it? It's out of my hands now..except for the extreme measure of emailing those webmasters and asking them to remove those keyterms from the Text Links.

And if I did this, no alternative would seem to make sense. That is, what would you ask them to use in place of these keyterms?

Anyway, I'm not going to take any extreme measures now. Just unlink my sites and see what happens.

Even if Google is penalizing for crosslinking and anchor links, the purported reason is always to make search results more relevant. To this end, they have clearly backfired because, with some rare exceptions, people are getting garbage results from what I can tell.

-Dan

Well, up until now, I found using that technique with the alt/title tags very effective. Moreover, Software such as GRE and IBP even recommend you do it - so even though it seems a bit spammy to me, it just seemed to be legitimate so I've been using it.

Now, looking at all of the top 10s for my keyphrase however, I am seeing that none of them have any alt/title tags padded with a keyphrase more than twice.

So here's my guess: Google's new algo has factored in a significant penalty for either (a) excessive optimization of image alt/title tags and/or (b) excessive use of unatural links pages. My guess from hearing back from people about links, is that it's probably more to do with the images thing. Just a guess though.

Can anyone confirm that either:

a. a site is still placed well with a competitive phrase and uses image alt/title packaging

b. a site is now gone that did *not* use image alt/title packing?

Thanks.

My site dropped from #13 to #385ish on Google AOL and Yahoo on the same day. No cross-linking. No image ALT tag packing. If the site is permanently penalized I'd love to know why because it's a big mystery to me. But I'm reserving judgement until next week. This mess should be cleared up by then.

Really? No alt packing at all huh? Over use of a transparent image with the keyphrase in it? Anything related to that?

FYI - I just got an email from Google yesterday. They assured me there are no penalties on my site (one of them that is now gone) and said that whay we are seeing is not permanent. You can read into that until the cows come home I guess but at the very least this seems to suggest we're talking about an algo change, not a penalty leveraged against any particular site. The sheer volume of those affected implies this as well.

The dating industry is very affected. Totally different results for dating keywords now. If you search for dating tips, the 10th site is h**p://***.zefrank.com/date_1/navigation.html

Totally offtopic and other poor results

>It was my impression that this was something we should be doing because a great many SEO's have said that you should always try to get the keyterms you are going for in the hyperlink from sites linking to yours.

That, I fear, is the problem! People have played this card too hard and Google has reacted accordingly.

As for percentages, I think it depends on the competitive nature of the phrase. This makes things really hard to pin down, the goal posts change on every search as the penalty applies to search phrases and NOT the page itself. So Google could say quite truthfully you do not have a penalty on your page or site. The penalty on the search phrase on your page is created only at the time of the search and is calculated differently on each and every search

So, on some searches it could be over optimisation of alt tags tipping the balance, on others - crosslinking, on others a too high proportion of anchor text in links using the search phrase.

My frank feeling is that they will turn down the filter a notch or two. There seems to be rather a lot of collateral damage!

Hi,
Same deal for me. top 5 rankings in subsites linking to my main site are gone in their best terms.
Spammy listings replacing relevant ones.Online price comparison sites taking over. Hopefully temporarily.

To go from top 5 in 3 sites under key terms to disappear is ridiculous. Financial killer.

Certain terms are holding but why i do not know.

Our main site is holding steady but none of the others.

PPC game here i come!!!!!!!!!!! Geez

Thanks for reading, cshopinc

Haha - I don't think you should be rewarding Google for screwing up the SEO balance, by paying into their PPC coffer.

You have a couple that were not affected, and some that were? Please - can you tell us anything and everything they do and don't have in common? I think you're in a unique position to hopefully shed some light on what's going on.

We are a yahoo store. The yahoo store pages are holding but the subsites linking to our yahoo store are the ones that are gone.

They are totally different looks and diff text so they usually compliment each other well in the engines.

I hope the linking to the main site is not an issue.

The ppc game stinks but i do not have a choice. i must get visitors.

We sell window and bedding. The competition for identical products is mindboggling.

I cannot stand spammy doorways killing us or big comparison directories taking the good spots.
That is an even trickier ppc game.

Hell, I have know idea what is up!!!! google will hopefully correct itself. I am praying.

Thanks, cshopinc

Here are the viable possibilities I've heard to date:

1. Google is using a 6-month old set of data to verify an algo fix, and we may see a revert back to original data once the test is done. I'd personally have a hard time believing that Google would be testing stuff in production (i'd get fired if I did that) but someone did point out this was the case about 6 months ago.

2. New algo for points deduction for sites posessing certain charateristics such as :

a. Links Pages - which signal an intentional manipulation of PR. (most likely)

b. Unatural HTML - excessive inclusion of images or alt tags packed with keyphrases. (very possible) Most likley specifics I can see so far are: links pages, packing images/alt tags.

c. Overly optimized Content - content obviously intended to manipulate google such as %ages of density etc. (less likely).

My thoughts - start analyzing everyone's sites that have been affected and compare them against the results now in the top rankings and look for patterns. Can anyone who's been affected please post their site and the key phrase they use to have, and the position they were at? Let's all work to get to the bottom of this.

Here's my info. If you can also post yours so that we all have a pool of examples from which to begin building a pattern:

Here are 5 sites with notable rankings that are now gone:

1. TravelUSA.com - Key Phrases: "Travel usa", #1; "USA Travel", #4; "Discount Travel", #8; "Travel Deals", #4

2. Hotel.us - Key Phrases: "Discount Hotels". #12

3. Reno-Hotels.us - Key Phrases: "Reno Hotels", #12, "Hotels in Reno", #10

4. Denver-Hotels.us - Key Phrases: "Denver Hotels", #12

5. Nashville-hotels.us - Key Phrases: "Nashville Hotels", #14

It appears that if you over-optimized then you have fallen out of the rankings.

With this update, the white-hats are doing better (finally).

ok,

I'm not sure if you read my pervious post , or makemetop's early posts

but the pattern seems to be this

site heavy optimized

1) lots of keyword links (my experience)
2) whatever other people do to optimize

for more competive search terms

My question would be this

does anyone have site that was dropped that

1) Doesn't have lots of keyword links pointing at it and/or
2) was targeting a relatively non-competive term
3) has been dropped from a search term that was not conatined in any of its incoming links text

It would appear that if google wanted to punish people for using the anchor text in incoming links this would be the way

You could not punish people for non-competive terms because they might be the name of their business

for example if your business is "jeff's general store" and you had a ton of incoming links which said ""jeff's general store" you can't be kicked because are not trying to manipulate

there wouldn't ge any competition for ""jeff's general store" whch would be the indicator

cabbagehead,

I think point 1 has some potential merit -- that is, Google is using data that is 6 months (or more) old.

Some of the results that I'm seeing for where my homepage/index used to be are old garbage sites that existed 1/2 year ago or so.

This keyterm is very competitive, so it doesn't make sense that out of all the potentially great sites that could fill the top 10 spots there would be any garbage sites.

But about 6 months (or so) one of these top spots was taken by a site with a nonfunctioning URL. That is, a DEAD URL that when you click it just says "This URL is no longer active."

Ever since this time, the results slowly and surely started to improve, with quality content sites beating out the riff raff.

The dead URL link disappeared along with much of the rest of the garbage.

Now, with this latest update, that dead URL is back -- and yes, it's still dead cuz I checked to see.

I can't speak for other industries, but the "white hats" are not winning where I sit. If the problem is so-called "overoptimized sites" then the solution is an even bigger problem -- sites with almost zero content, populated by links to just sell you things, low PR scores, and cheesy redirects.

The way I look at is this: will your site (or page of your site) give the visitor valuable, relevant content regardless if they buy anything? If the answer is yes, that is a good site. If the answer is no, then your site is not a value to visitors.

-Dan

Upon further reflection, I don't think anchored text links are the problem. For my site, half of the text links going to my site are just the URL of my site. I didn't start asking for so called anchor text links from other webmasters until a few months ago, so I can't have THAT many.

Also, the webmaster who was ranked #1 for the keyterm that I (and some others) were booted from is still #1. And I have looked at many of the links going to his site. And they are all anchored text links using the keyterm.

Just a few thoughts.

-Dan

I don't know about the white/black hat stuff, I'm not philosphical person

I have never seen an industry so cauhgt up in morality, usually just legality and lawsuits are the only concerns other then the bottom line

I still see spammy sites doing good for some things, and i see my sites gone , I don't remember it saying in the google guidelines that you shouldn't get links with key words in them

but I'm you can interret those guidelines many different way.

Well my site has keyword anchor text on many links, many being maybe 1/3 to 1/2 of 150+. It's funny that google only shows 8 backlinks but yet I could be penalized for 50-75 backlinks that google doesn't like. Which is it, links good or links bad?? And if I sell purple teddy bears at joesstuffedanimals.com I can get penalized for using "purple teddy bears" in link text? I can't use "purple teddy bears" or "teddy bears"? I must use "joesstuffedanimals? So the only guy who can use that keyword text link is the ONE guy who got the domain purple-teddy-bears.com? He has a permanent and insurmountable advantage with google? That is just stupid.

I can show you a site ranking very well that is crap. Keywords spammed in 6 pixel type - the color, size, and content all make them not worth trying to read them. They are there for one purpose - search engines. Then 2 clicks and you are redirected to their *real* site. I *thought* that went against everything google stood for. I tell you what, if my site had that site's ranking I wouldn't be here right now, I would be busy filling orders and counting my money.

From what I am seeing the most plausible explanation is that the data google is using is 6 months old. That would explain (most) everything to me. Why google would do that, or "test" a new algo on Christmas shopping season eve is probably another topic. Why that would lead to many observations of garbage sites ranking well is a mystery as well.

Is there a way to find out from google whether your site has been "penalized"?

ferret,

Don't worry about the white hat/black hat stuff. In the end, it doesn't matter. Because if Google starts to rank spammy, garbage, low content sites highly and penalize and boot content relevant, rich sites just because they may be a bit "overoptimized" in some fashion, then the majority of people will start spamming Google like crazy.

That's just the way the world works. The bottomline dictate the actions of most people, not philosophical white hat/black hat stuff. I guarantee that 85% or more of people following the rules -- white hat -- only do so because they were taught by Google that is what they want in their search engine.

If reality starts to show otherwise for a prolonged period of time, however, you can bet your bottom dollar that people won't give a damn about being a white hat anymore.

A little off topic...

Anyway, I agree with Rob. I think penalizing for anchor text links is absolutely ridiculous.

Anyway, I am going to keep my fingers crossed for everyone here, and hope that anyone who got booted for no reason and replaced by spammy garbage sites soon sees their site reclaim their spots, or better.

-Dan

Looking at my logs is just bizarre. My main search term indeed has a small amount of traffic, all of it from netscape. I have 2.5 times as many hits from google as netscape but zero on that search term. Since netscape uses google that seems a bit odd. I also, for the past two days, have seen search phrases that are nowhere on my site. My site sells lingerie and I have had hits from "fredericks of hollywood" and "victoria s secret" search terms when NONE of those words appear anywhere on my site. (Ok I lie, I assume that "of" is probably on my site somewhere!) How in a million years is my site relevant to those search terms? If you search on "cadillac" is it relevant to be taken to a Kia dealership?

I think the results we are seeing just suck, but what do I know?

I'll shut up and go away but how the #@&@*!! does this site outrank me in google?

Under Construction
Under Construction. The site you were trying to reach does not currently
have a default page. It may be in the process of being upgraded. ...
www.cariadlingerie.com/

How such a site can get listed is beyond me. 144 backlinks and absolutely no content. Amazing. I'm sure google users are finding this site very useful.

I wasn't affected. But I've read all the posts here and on WmW. My sense of what happened, for what it is worth:

First, look at it from Google's point of view. There has been lots of Google gaming by SEOs, due to the fact that Google is make-or-break if you are dependent on income generated from the web.

Second, perhaps over 90 percent of this is from dot-com domains. Sure, there's the occasional dot-org adult site, and there are the country TLDs, but if the spam that concerns you is coming from e-commerce, then going after dot-coms is good enough. Exempt everything from your anti-spam efforts that are not dot-com domains.

Third, of the spammers you want to target, almost all of them estimate their Google progress by evaluating their rank on specific keywords. And about 90 percent of these are using two-word phrases, since one-word matching is getting out of hand because of the size of the web.

Unless you disagree with me so far, let's take it further:

How hard is it to give a two-word score to every dot-com domain, or every web page in a dot-com domain, in terms of two-word frequency? For you programmers, let's put it another way: if you scan every page for two-word phrases in the title, in headlines, in image alt text, how much overhead is involved in coming up with a two-word frequency count for a page and storing this info in a supplemental database? Heck, just take the top three two-word phrases for each page. That's all you need.

And, when you are combing pages for links, how hard is it to add a two-word frequency count to the linked target site or page, based on the anchor text, or the URL text (domain plus directory plus filename)?

What I'm suggesting is that while one-word frequency counts of this sort may imply excessive overhead for Google, I don't think that two-word frequency counts would entail that much overhead, and could be managed fairly easily. This is particularly true since you are only interested in zapping the highest counts, and therefore you can throw out the data if sampling suggests that the count will be low.

Okay, so now you have frequency counts for two-word phrases for every site or page. All you have to do is establish a threshold for frequency vs. site/page size. Anything over the threshold is defined as a site/page that needs a penalty. You could also refine this, by doing an overall web frequency count for the most popular two-word phrases, and applying the filter to the top 20 percent or so. This will take out the most competitive SEO sites, while leaving the others alone.

You may disagree with my analysis, but the basic point I'm making is that the SEO community got carried away with the (accurate) perception that anchor text mattered a lot, and with the habit of measuring their success based on keyword ranking. SEO practitioners became too predictable, even though it was partly because Google itself was too predictable.

It's not rocket science for Google to throw a wrench into such a scenario.

Your points are well taken, but how would you explain my post above where a site is ranked without any content at all? It "must" rank solely on backlinks. After that I can show you a site which is nothing but keyword spam ranking IMO very highly. So repeating zillions of words in a small hard to read font that blends into the page background is now the proper way to do SEO for good google rankings?

I am peeved as hell. While I may not be the best kickball player on the playground I certainly shouldn't be chosen last! The complete crap that outranks me just makes me nuts. While some anchortext may be "overused" (whatever on earth that is) it may also be "highly relevant" to the content on the site. So now to rank well we should change all our backlinks to moderately irrelevant keywords, and add hidden keyword laden text and redirects to our sites? The more I think about it the more idiotic this all is. Now I am going to have a beer.

It did seem really easy to be number 1, at least for the semi-small fry I target

So I will have change my links I guess,

I noticed that lots o links is still good, high PR directory sites have retaken the number 1 spots , at least for my stuff

and I've just been penalized for the terms I had lots of linktext for.

First, Google can bite me. Yes, part of this is frustration speaking.

Most of the income from my sites does not come from the Google God. It comes from MSN. Of course, that can change.

I am peeved like others not because my index page dropped off...but because it dropped off and was replaced by absolute garbage, including outright dead links and spammy garbage.

Enough b*tching on my part. If the anecdotal evidence is right on Webmasterworld, Google will pay a much higher price than all of us unless they rectify it.

If they don't I will live just fine without them. But I don't think your average joe blow looking for information online is going to be happy clicking on deadlinks and redirects, especially in the first 5 results they see.

-Dan

> Your points are well taken, but how would you explain my post
> above where a site is ranked without any content at all?

In the scenario I suggested, it could be that the anti-spam programmer simply inserted a line in the code that said, in effect, don't worry about penalizing a page based on external links unless the keyword frequency count of those external links corresponds with the keyword frequency count on the page itself.

I agree with you that empty sites with ancient backlinks made it through this filter just fine. My favorite example is a search for "discount brokers" (don't use the quotes). The number two site has been an empty directory for at least the last year (look it up in the Wayback Machine), and probably months more than a year.

I don't claim to have the answer, and yes, I'm just guessing. I'm merely trying to shed light on the situation. But i