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ruperto
Joined: Nov 18, 2003
# Posts: 71
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Posted: 11/25/2003 10:20 pm
I'm really glad I hang around this forum. That was a great observation about how adding the garbage trailers in your search shows results similar to pre-screwup Google. Amazing, I can see all my top ranking results again.
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SearchEngineZ
Joined: Nov 24, 2003
# Posts: 55
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Posted: 11/25/2003 10:24 pm
If I had to apply any sort of scientific method to the several hundred posts that I've read on this subject, the vast majority feel this update is lacking.
Correct - the majority of posters are biased, they are here to find out why their site has dropped.
Google is extremely good at covering their arse in their Guidelines. One paragraph says a lot:
Avoid tricks intended to improve search engine rankings. A good rule of thumb is whether you'd feel comfortable explaining what you've done to a website that competes with you. Another useful test is to ask, "Does this help my users? Would I do this if search engines didn't exist?"
On the same page they say this, which I feel is very relevant to the discussion at hand:
It's not safe to assume that just because a specific deceptive technique isn't included on this page, Google approves of it. Webmasters who spend their energies upholding the spirit of the basic principles listed above will provide a much better user experience and subsequently enjoy better ranking than those who spend their time looking for loopholes they can exploit.
... I consider keywords in link text and URLs to be exploited loopholes
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excell
Staff
Joined: Mar 19, 2001
# Posts: 14504
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Posted: 11/25/2003 10:27 pm
As someone who builds and markets websites as a profession I believe I have a right to discuss with my peers what is happening across a broad range of industries and a variety of topics without it being seen as "complaining" or being seen as a pouty webmaster not getting their own way 
Our discussions may be based on our own sites or may not be. If marketing and web building is your business and you have folks wanting to know what is happening, what to do or not to do,, then all contributing opinions and examples are good material.
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unreviewed
Joined: Dec 07, 2000
# Posts: 6776
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Posted: 11/25/2003 10:42 pm
ecmast, great post, you hit the nail on the head.
In the past we have optimised for relevancy, and now people are "seemingly" accepting the current Google results and are preparing to self teach anti-seo.
Instead of keywords, we'll target what?
If we want to sell drums, we'll talk about percussion instruments. Unless of course we really wish to sell percussion instruments, in that case we'll talk of drums?
Does that about some up what Google is dictating? Assuming Google does have a message.
OAC, I was going to quote that old thing, "if all others around you are panicking and you are not..."
But you know what? I couldn't remember how it went exactly. In the past it wasn't a problem, I'd just take a portion, "if all others around you are..." put that in Google and I'd have an exact quote. Not today Pete, try it yourself.
I don't see this update as something to be tweaked. I don't see a benefit to the user or to Google. Pete, where we disagree is you think this is NOT a mistake, that this is a sophisticated algorithm change that will, with tweaking, improve the results for the general public. How ... you have yet to correlate a theory that will take us from today to tomorrow. In other words, you fail to admit that this is indeed very different from all past updates. In addition, you will not admit that Google's results are the worse by far to date.
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Curt
Joined: Eons Ago
# Posts: 3718
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Posted: 11/25/2003 11:02 pm
The sad thing about all this is...
Honest SEOs really try to target the right words to match their content which actually helps Google to show more relevant results (generally speaking). Now google fouls up the system by removing the highly relevant sites for highly competitive terms just for the sole purpose of thwarting the SEOs that want to rank under the right terms. Talk about shooting themselves in the foot.
Remember, Infoseek = dead... if this keeps up Google = dead too.
Infoseek fought harder and harder and used stupid techniques to fight the SEOs. In their quest to fight SEO, they lost out ultimately. Now Google seems to be on the same track, kill all highly optimized sites at all cost to good SERPs and show the left-over garbage SERPs for hot keywords. Google is definitely showing themselves to be the enemy of honest SEOs. Now the spammy SEOs will take over because they are the only ones left in the SERPs.
The SEOs helped to make google relevant and now Google kills the SEO effort. Definitely shooting themselves in the foot.
BTW, using: keyword -junkywordhere
...works to restore the original listings for now anyway. No need to insert 2 or more additional operators to see your original rank--only one additional operator is required to restore listings as they were.
Very interesting find. Kudos to SearchEngineZ for finding this interesting situation and posting about it.
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tdubya
Joined: Eons Ago
# Posts: 186
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Posted: 11/25/2003 11:05 pm
I was at about no.9 till this last update on a two-word phrase now I'm nowhere to be seen but if I go to google.co.uk click "Pages from the UK" I'm suddenly no.1. I don't see how I could be the top UK site but not even in the top 10 or 15 pages on a normal search. Perhaps the new filter is not being applied when you use the UK filter
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cabbagehead
Joined: Eons Ago
# Posts: 532
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Posted: 11/26/2003 12:21 am
I just noticed something very interesting. I used that tag mentioned earlier in ther post "-mt-tb.cgi" after each of my keyphrases and found that 9 of my 12 sites have improved this month as I expected they would ...many are now on the first page, where I expected they would be about now.
... so I guess this means that the index continues to be updated indepdent of this filter...by applying the filter you're not simply seeing how things would look before the filter, but rather how things would look *without* the filter. Very interesting. It really is just a filter. Huh.
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newsphinx
Joined: Apr 15, 2002
# Posts: 145
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Posted: 11/26/2003 12:29 am
Really enjoy reading this thread. My applauses to everyone, especially to Unreviewed, OAC and SearchEngineZ!
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Silv
Joined: Aug 10, 1999
# Posts: 1668
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Posted: 11/26/2003 01:06 am
... I consider keywords in link text and URLs to be exploited loopholes
Or, it could simply be a good navigation technique. If a sub-page on your widgets site contains only information on blue widgets, I would think it makes perfect sense to link to it with the phrase 'blue widgets' - not as exploitation, but as a way of indicating to your visitors what is ON that page. Seems simply logical to me - what else would you link to it with? "more stuff"?
As far as keywords in URLS, the same may apply there. I name pages related to their content so that I remember what they are, and so that users remember them should they need to reach them via type-in.
I'm quite aware that both techniques are used in SEO, and like anything else can be abused. In this situation, however, it's not just the abusers that are getting hit - people using good design techniques (techniques that lead to a good user experience) are suffering the same fate, as Keensurfer mentions above.
That's been my problem. I've enjoyed some pretty fantastic rankings for terms that are 100% relevant to my sites - on pages that I've done nothing to optimize for Google, and everything to optimize for the user. I always thought this was a great sign that Google had it together. Honest techniques reaching the top whereas spam got buried. This is no longer the case. The results I'm seeing, from a researcher's perspective, are either irrelevant, reptetative or completely spammed out.
I would think that the folks repeating the same keywords in the their title tags and in bold at the top of their pages over 20 times (one of the types of sites I've seen replace the older results) would be more of a concern than linked text, but perhaps I just hate how they make search results look.
As far as the timing, yeah - definitely ill. I'd agree that it probably didn't occur to them, and I guess it's not really their responsibility to think that way.. but I sure wish they would. My own personal loss aside, the economy could use a good, stable Christmas season. While I'm sure some sites are benefitting from this and the lost sales aren't going into a vaccuum, it sure doesn't help out the 'stable' part. I think we'd all be a lot less alarmed if this had happened in early January.
In the end, I applaud what Google seems to have been trying to do; cut down on the spam in their index and make it harder to manipulate the search results... I simply think that their attempt failed. If I were them I'd put it all back and concentrate on other things to improve the product.
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cabbagehead
Joined: Eons Ago
# Posts: 532
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Posted: 11/26/2003 01:07 am
Intersting, I'm playing around with that flag thing at the end and I've found that 50% of what I follow a hyphen with works. But they don't all return the same results. Perhaps these flags are signals to remove certain filters (?).
Cases in point.
1, Using "-s" flag and the end ogf the phase, I'm #16.
2. "-b" flag, I'm #18.
...of course I was on the first page 1/2 hour ago ... but these two are consistant at the time being. It's very interesting.
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searching123
Joined: Dec 09, 2000
# Posts: 136
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Posted: 11/26/2003 01:21 am
Google Australia has been delivering this so called "filter" for at least 5 months now (see http://www.jimworld.com/apps/webmaster.forums/action::thread/forum::google/thread::1061375118/ ) on what seems to be the most popular terms. So I'd have to say it is here to stay.
Google is definately heading in a different direction and has probably been testing this at other locations as well.
Unfortunately over the last few months Google seems to have been hit by a number of highly spammed sites showing in the top results so obviously something had to be done.
However I had predicted Google would do this at Christmas in the US simply because they are running a business just like everyone else, so "poor timing" to their competitors is "good timing" for Google. Anyone remember the Christmas of December 2001?
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cabbagehead
Joined: Eons Ago
# Posts: 532
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Posted: 11/26/2003 02:26 am
Searching123,
if they're been running this algo in Australia for a while then surely you guys already know what it is and how to work with/around it. care to share what you guys have learned and how you've adapted?
Thanks.
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loudNRG
Joined: Eons Ago
# Posts: 32
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Posted: 11/26/2003 02:52 am
No one here should be viewed as whining because of the current Google problems.
But, from my point of view, Google owes SEO's nothing.... Don't crucify me for saying this.
If they change their algorithms for better or for worse from an SEO perspective, live with it cause its their search engine and many have benefited from the free listings for a long time.
There is no contract that guarantees things, so if you want security go a different route, which is exactly where I'm heading.
Inktomi for the new year... This will be the one to watch and it will give Google something to think about.
Good Luck
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OAC
Staff
Joined: Jan 25, 2001
# Posts: 6794
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Posted: 11/26/2003 03:06 am
unreviewed:
http://www.miscellaneousetc.com/bluemage/001365.html
Courtesy of Google
"you fail to admit that this is indeed very different from all past updates. In addition, you will not admit that Google's results are the worse by far to date."
I won't because they aren't. I got smacked last time, due to bad timing in making some changes. I felt bad but I didn't shriek and moan. I just tried to figure out what had happened and whether my client and I would get some relief, in the near term. I did and we did.
I recall howls of rage of unacceptable search results last time, worst results ever, garbage results, this is the end for Google, cries of conspiracy, forcing people to use Adwords etc. etc. etc.
But they fixed it.
They'll fix the worst anomalies this time but they aren't going to restore the status quo. I haven't drawn a conclusion about the search quality yet because I know there are adjustments to come. Maybe after they are made I'll cross sides and join with you. OTOH, maybe I won't have to. LOL.
Also, re the keyword1 keyword2 effect, I thought noticed a similar effect in the last major update, but obviously on a lesser scale. I may be wrong on this but this might just be the next part of a change begun last time.
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searching123
Joined: Dec 09, 2000
# Posts: 136
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Posted: 11/26/2003 03:12 am
"Google is definately heading in a different direction"
The -whatever is the old algo.
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SearchEngineZ
Joined: Nov 24, 2003
# Posts: 55
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Posted: 11/26/2003 03:58 am
Update:
I have just seen a site that has unfairly lost a valuable high ranking due to the filter. Their crime - the only (PR4+) inbound links are all Open Directory or Open Directory clones. So I'm thinking that Google isn't looking for reciprocal links - it's looking for inbound links with the same text and making an assumption that something is going on. I doubt they figured that cloned DMOZ entries would trigger it. Or else they knew it would, but they have an ethical policy against any algorithm that includes or excludes content from specific sites.
The situation can be found by searching for "cufflinks" at Google Answers.
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Marky
Joined: Eons Ago
# Posts:
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Posted: 11/26/2003 03:59 am
Someone wrote: "Will Joe Consumer notice it so severely that he votes with his feet and abandons Google? Probably not"
Do you all remember how Google became the SE of choice?
I do. It was the early adopters, the experts. Thay started talking about this new search engine made by two brilliant guys at MIT. The experts started using it, and the experts started recommending it to the other people at work and at school.
Soon you could hear average Joe saying, with a bit of pride in his voice:
"What search engine I am using? Well, Google of course, it's the best you know!"
Average Joe listens to the "Local expert" and will always try to follow the "Local expert".
We are the local experts!
If we start talking about how Google isn't hip anymore and that we are using other SE's it will spread my friends. And it will spread quickly.
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excell
Staff
Joined: Mar 19, 2001
# Posts: 14504
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Posted: 11/26/2003 04:24 am
Marky, I would rather give google a chance to settle their also first before turning folks at large elsewhere.. sure I have had to change my search engine of choice but not time to shout it from the roof tops locally as yet, to all who have ears, I don't think
Give it time.
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Keensurfer
Joined: Nov 05, 1999
# Posts: 885
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Posted: 11/26/2003 05:10 am
Something I learned a long time ago when investigating user problems of a product...is that the user may not know exactly what's wrong, they may even tell you that the wrong thing is broken...but usually when they perceive something is wrong, there is. I'm certain Google must see the smoke and will put out the fire. Psssst...it's over here!!!!
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drongo
Joined: Jun 28, 2000
# Posts: 511
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Posted: 11/26/2003 05:40 am
Well said Marky lad!
If we all simply recommend AV, Alltheweb, or Ink to anyone we talk to thats a lot of people, the ball will soon start to roll.
Yahoo! should change too that would make a big difference! I frankly don't know why they dont put up ink results (which they own) right now.
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