candysmith
Joined: Nov 19, 2003
# Posts: 35
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Posted: 11/20/2003 04:05 am
Hi Dan
Yes, you are right, they are indexing new stuff quickly. What isn't happening is that those 'dissapearing pages' are not coming back even when changed. But it can't take too long before they realise what rubbish is being returned by their engine.
Ciao
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ferret77
Joined: May 31, 2002
# Posts: 354
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Posted: 11/20/2003 05:47 am
Well
How long do think I (we) should wait till its final
and what looks like the best remedy
Since I don't seem penalized for combinations of key pharases invovling a few non-optimized words thrown in, and I actually seem to be doing great for some sub-parts of my key phrase
for example I have site that is optimized for "location activity(ends in an -ing)"
I'm doing better then ever if you just put in "location" which is sort of humorous
and I'm still doing great for "location activity somesubsection of the activity"
it would appaer that changing all my anchor text to perhaps a few key phrases strung togather might be the move
I would get penalized for one immposiblely loong never searched on phrase, but would rank well for parts of it, which would be my targets anyway
of course this would also make each link worth a lot less in terms each targeted phrases, which is pretty much what it looks like google wants
or I could drop all my recip links and maybe I wouldn't be held accountable for them anymore
is my hat gettting darker?
[ Message was edited by: ferret77 11/20/2003 06:01 am ]
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quirkie
Joined: Nov 20, 2003
# Posts: 2
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Posted: 11/20/2003 07:01 am
I'm so glad I found this forum...my disappearance from Google is boggling my mind. I had a dozen keyword phrases in the top 10, with half of those at #1 & #2. Like many of you, I'm not even in the top 100 now.
It sounds as if many of you are far more expert than I, so I'd like to know if anyone can explain this:
When I search for my term (and I fine tune it sooooo much that I can actually find myself), the description Google is returning doesn't match anything on my homepage. Even checking the cached page, I can't match the text for the description it has returned to text on my current home page or the cached page. It's not in the meta tags....it's nowhere. Now, I thought that Google pulled the description that it returns from somewhere on the home page?
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Logan
Moderator
Joined: Aug 14, 2002
# Posts: 3749
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Posted: 11/20/2003 07:17 am
welcome quirkie, glad you found us ... perhaps we can answer a few questions for you - i'm also sure you can help out by answering a few questions for others - feel free to jump in whenever you can.
Is the 'description' you are seeing the one related to odp/dmoz listings? That is another alternative 'source' outside of surrounding text content from the page or the meta description.
Regarding the flux, i have had one site that was hit drastically rebound (into top three) while others have stayed consistent. I'm still waiting and continue to build as normal with anticipation that things are not forever set. I think a lack of or addition of filters is in play with a combination of 'some' data sets dating back 3-4 months at one point (Nov 14/15)... as the filters are applied and the complete data is brought up to date i anticipate little 'changes' in the overall concept of keyword rich quality content being king if you have strong link exposure. It still works for me.
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Bry
Joined: Sep 30, 2003
# Posts: 207
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Posted: 11/20/2003 07:34 am
Man this thread got long overnight. Well I was hoping things would be back to "normal" today but so far they aren't which is the crappy capper on my already crappy day. There are several things that stick out to me about this situation and I'll share them with you guys:
THE MOUNTING COMPETITIVE THREAT:
Yahoo and Microsoft have both made highly aggressive moves towards improving their search capabilities within the last few months. Google cannot ignore these threats or else they would lose market share and resulting revenue very swiftly.
THE THREE SCENARIOS:
One or all of the following things are happening:
1. They are testing a new ranking algo (which sucks)
2. They are putting 6 months worth of dancing into 1 big dance
3. There is a technical problem and they had to rollback to old data
Those are the only 3 logical explanations for what's going on that I can think of. If you can think of any more, please feel free to add to this list. I'm guessing it's #2 because doing a completely new algo just isn't necessary since they already had the best algo. #3 is highly unlikely because of all their redundancy, but you never know.
A CONVERSATION I HAD WITH SOME PEOPLE:
None of the non-SEO's notice any change in Google results. That's right. None of them. They all still love the results Google is spitting back. We hate them because our site's have dropped, but Joe Shmoe is still happily using Google and loving it. So for now we all just need to suck it up because frankly, I don't think Google cares about our tiny subsection of the population.
A THEORY ON WHY:
If I were Google thinking from a business perspective, I would have several factors that would affect my decision to do whatever they are doing on live data, or in the Google labs. They have obviously weighed these factors very carefully and decided to do whatever this is in the public datacenters instead of Google labs. It will be interesting to see if they lose traffic due to this. After all we haven't given up on them; we're just upset. Heh. But whatever they are doing, I think it's because of the Yahoo / MSN threats that are looming.
That's my .02. Do with it what you will.
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buff
Joined: Nov 20, 2003
# Posts: 16
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Posted: 11/20/2003 07:38 am
Hi everyone. New member so patience please 
Wondered if everyone could test this for their high competition phrases. I think also only relevant to homepage SERPS.
I had a high competition non-exact matched phrase (no quotes) in top 5 (more than 4 1/2 million comp sites on Google from Wordtracker data). The search phrase was
an example phrase locality
Homepage lost from ranks (still indexed) but I seem to get the old good SERPS if I search for
an-example-phrase-locality (i.e. the same search but with hypens!!...)
It originally looked like a roll back of the PageRank index but is this just a problem with the Google query parser????
Thanks...
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Pongo
Joined: May 27, 2002
# Posts: 665
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Posted: 11/20/2003 09:24 am
>>> But whatever they are doing, I think it's because of the Yahoo / MSN threats that are looming.
Yep - I think so too, and when yahoo and msn do take a bigger share of the search pie we will not be hurt so much by the monster that is google.
If I had my Yahoo traffic back right now it would hurt a lot less for sure.
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Pongo
Joined: May 27, 2002
# Posts: 665
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Posted: 11/20/2003 09:41 am
I notice that googlebot is hitting harder deeper and more often at the site that was negativly affected by this current update...
Anyone else?
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Bry
Joined: Sep 30, 2003
# Posts: 207
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Posted: 11/20/2003 11:21 am
Well this has gone from bad to worse. Site from #13 to #300+ in the first few days of madness, and now it's completely gone. I'm just going to try and forget about all this until Monday and then I'll really freak out if it's not back in the listings.
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g1smd
Moderator
Joined: Jul 28, 2002
# Posts: 10060
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Posted: 11/20/2003 12:29 pm
>> One or all of the following things are happening: <<
- They are factoring in a million extra or changed ODP backlinks which they haven't done for 6 months.
- They have just updated the Google Directory for the very first time in 6 or 7 months or so.
- They have just brought 3 new datacentres on line (and taken at least one old one offline).
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candysmith
Joined: Nov 19, 2003
# Posts: 35
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Posted: 11/20/2003 01:17 pm
hi gsm1
I think yopu've hit the nail on the head - >>- They are factoring in a million extra or changed ODP backlinks which they haven't done for 6 months<<
My crazy new rankings are all related to ODP listings. Pages I have in ODP are coming up in 1, 2 or 3rd spot, all the rest have dropped by 50 - 100.
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Keensurfer
Joined: Nov 05, 1999
# Posts: 882
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Posted: 11/20/2003 01:48 pm
Seems that if the "Google needs to improve due to competitive pressures theory is correct, Google would be wise enough to pick a better way of doing it than weighting DMOZ heavily. I'm a bit stymied at the moment.
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ferret77
Joined: May 31, 2002
# Posts: 354
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Posted: 11/20/2003 01:58 pm
I see results still changing now , hopefullyit is not over
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001
Joined: Sep 26, 2003
# Posts: 64
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Posted: 11/20/2003 02:03 pm
Man, this is a heck of a thread!!
Here's my 2 cents and what has happened to my site:
My site's new (Sep 1st) but I had my primary search phrase work up to 431 (VERY competitive term) and now it's gone for the phrase but my page is still in the index still in the index.
HOWEVER, my backlinks (Google BL check) have gone from 2 to 9 this week and my Page Rank has gone UP. Screwy, I tell ya!!
Also, Google since last week has now indexed almost all of the pages in my site (300+).
Bry, I agree with you in that Google is doing a GIANT update...they're NOT changing their algo. Any change would be minimal if thsere is one at all. They're tweaking and it's possible this could continue for another week or so.
Be patient.
Lee
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cabbagehead
Joined: Eons Ago
# Posts: 532
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Posted: 11/20/2003 02:06 pm
So, are you saying that you don't think anyone will do well without a DMOZ listing? That seems unlikely. I mean, they haven't even been updating that directory lately, and seemed to have lessened it's significance in recent changes....
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rocket_rob
Joined: Eons Ago
# Posts: 156
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Posted: 11/20/2003 02:08 pm
Does google really count DMOZ more so than any other link? First off, DMOZ seems to be down more than it is working. Secondly, getting listed in DMOZ is nearly impossible. Would google really put a high weighting on being in DMOZ? DMOZ is a volunteer system with editors who are your competitors. Let's see, how quickly is an editor going to put my listing in the index? It is just total B.S. I wrote two months ago to update my DMOZ listing and never heard a word. Requested a more accurate sub category and a re-writing of the link, since it is very poorly written right now. Nothing, so it is a huge listing of poorly written links that is rarely updated and is down more often than working!
Face it, many of us are screwed until mid-December AT LEAST.
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john_dush
Joined: May 07, 2000
# Posts: 144
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Posted: 11/20/2003 02:30 pm
Bry <<the crappy capper on my already crappy day>> Fantastic! It made me smile, even though we're all doomed.
I agree with Ferret, it's not over. I've seen my major site do a Lazarus from 100 back to top page (although not no. 1 where it used to be) Now it's gone again way beyond 100. And then... the homepage appeared on a term I've never targeted on the 1st page, now that too is nowhere. What's going on - the dance from hell?
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Bry
Joined: Sep 30, 2003
# Posts: 207
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Posted: 11/20/2003 02:39 pm
John, I'm glad someone could get something good from my craptastic day. How did you find your site on a term you never targeted? Random searching? Or do you have a tool that finds all your top rankings somehow?
This is truly the dance from hell.
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dibbern
Joined: Mar 22, 1999
# Posts: 17
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Posted: 11/20/2003 02:45 pm
For what its worth, here's the pattern (if there IS a real pattern) for how Google hit my 15 travel related sites:
1. new sites (less than 90 days) have dissapeared. They were heavily optimized, including anchor text, and other <h>tags.
2. older sites have held their top 3 placement - it could be their age, or the fact that we had not yet updated them with the optimizing of the newer sites.
Someone else said this, and its the same for me: the newer, optimized index page for some sites has gone from #1 to nowhere, and a NON-OTIMIZED inside page has replaced it in the rankings. So it seems to me, its not a penalty against the whole domain.
The inside pages that gained ranking have content value far below the dropped pages. Its a poor replacement, but I guess I'll take it!
It could still be just a date/age thing, but then why wouldn't my *old* page versions be listed instead of the newer, heavy-optimized versions?
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bupper2
Joined: Nov 20, 2003
# Posts: 12
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Posted: 11/20/2003 03:00 pm
For what it's worth.
"Gone from Google" has nothing to do with keyword stuffing. All the sites I have that are keyword stuffed remained fine and relatively in the same position.
"Gone from Google" has nothing to do with hidden text. I have a site loaded with hidden text and it has remained unchanged.
To me it seems to apply to relatively new sites or sites that have undergone recent significant changes. The two sites I lost ground on both had no keyword stuffing and no hidden text.
It may have something to do with very competitive keyword phrases. I have one site that is optimized for two single word phrases. Last week my site would come up very well for both phrases. This week I still keep the same rank for one of the keywords (far less competitive) and completely lost the second keyword phrase (the very competitive keyword). This site is relatively new (less than 3 months old). This site is in the DMOZ.
Another site I lost was a site I recently completely reworked. Adding a lot of fresh new content. It has basically fallen off of Google. Theoretically it is still in the search engine as I can find it by doing a search for a very very specific keyword phrase that no one would ever search for. However this site fell off google 3-4 weeks ago shortly after I revised it. This may have nothing to do with what happened this week. Interestingly I revised it in the very same format that I revised the first site I mentioned (the one that's less than 3 months old). This site is not in the DMOZ.
So can anyone dispute these theories based on their own findings?
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