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ak Joined: Dec 17, 1999
# Posts: 180
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Posted: 11/16/2003 12:46 pm
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. |
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drongo Joined: Jun 28, 2000
# Posts: 511
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Posted: 11/16/2003 01:09 pm
I agree, the index is really looking poorer for this update. |
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harpo Joined: Jun 18, 2001
# Posts: 231
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Posted: 11/16/2003 01:31 pm
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. |
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rocket_rob Joined: Eons Ago
# Posts: 156
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Posted: 11/16/2003 01:35 pm
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???? |
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g1smd Moderator
Joined: Jul 28, 2002
# Posts: 10060
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Posted: 11/16/2003 04:37 pm
>> 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. |
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rocket_rob Joined: Eons Ago
# Posts: 156
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Posted: 11/16/2003 05:08 pm
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.... |
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cabbagehead Joined: Eons Ago
# Posts: 532
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Posted: 11/16/2003 09:26 pm
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. |
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cabbagehead Joined: Eons Ago
# Posts: 532
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Posted: 11/16/2003 10:33 pm
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). |
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Logan Moderator
Joined: Aug 14, 2002
# Posts: 3749
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Posted: 11/17/2003 08:31 am
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. |
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drongo Joined: Jun 28, 2000
# Posts: 511
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Posted: 11/17/2003 09:44 am
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".. |
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rocket_rob Joined: Eons Ago
# Posts: 156
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Posted: 11/17/2003 10:14 am
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. |
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Logan Moderator
Joined: Aug 14, 2002
# Posts: 3749
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Posted: 11/17/2003 10:51 am
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? |
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rocket_rob Joined: Eons Ago
# Posts: 156
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Posted: 11/17/2003 11:26 am
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. |
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davaddavad Joined: Aug 02, 2001
# Posts: 928
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Posted: 11/17/2003 11:31 am
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 |
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Logan Moderator
Joined: Aug 14, 2002
# Posts: 3749
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Posted: 11/17/2003 11:57 am
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? |
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rocket_rob Joined: Eons Ago
# Posts: 156
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Posted: 11/17/2003 03:17 pm
<<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. |
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g1smd Moderator
Joined: Jul 28, 2002
# Posts: 10060
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Posted: 11/17/2003 05:10 pm
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? |
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ferret77 Joined: May 31, 2002
# Posts: 354
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Posted: 11/17/2003 05:34 pm
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 |
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DANXtendlife Joined: Eons Ago
# Posts: 58
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Posted: 11/17/2003 05:41 pm
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 |
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cabbagehead Joined: Eons Ago
# Posts: 532
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Posted: 11/17/2003 07:06 pm
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. :- |
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