New Google Update

[richkoi]

Sunday my hits went through the roof. Sure enough I am back on top. I hope this is a sign that things are getting better with Google.

Has any one else noticed a flux in their possition since Sunday?

http://www.bambooheadquarters.com

first page keywords: bamboo plants, bamboo nursery
third page: bamboo

Rich

[redcircle]

My site was #1 for about 2 weeks then it dropped out of site for one of my keywords and my other keyword dropped from 2nd to 5th.

[jackson992]

Well I looked at your site as I also have a diamond section on my site:)

I see you are ranked #1 for large diamonds over 2.00 carat. However, large diamonds by itself has over 1 million pages competiting with you so it's going to be tough to get on the first page for that term.

I'm not seeing a huge amount of the term "large diamonds" on the page. Maybe you can help your ranking by repeating this more.

One thing you have to be extremely careful of. You are spamming IMO in your keywords tag. You have both Large Diamonds and Large Diamond repeated there more than once by themselves.

By the way, where is your affiliate program:P

[Mel]

I am noticing some sudden ranking shifts on Google this morning perhaps indicating yet another mini-update.

I am especially pleased that one of our search terms where we had for a long time (prior to florida) held #1 rankings and which dropped off the edge of a cliff after Florida, is now back at #10. Our policy was not to update or modify any pages until things settled and could be better understood, and this now seems to have paid off.

Glad to be able to give Google a pat on the back instead of a brickbat for a change.

[Mel]

The only thing I can say is that Google still seems to be finding its way back from Florida and has been more or less continuously for the past two months.

Pages which ranked #1 Pre-florida dropped into an abyss so deep I couldn't find them, but this morning one of them popped back up at #10. No changes to that page in the past few months and no increase in links (that I know of).

I think we still have a ways to go before we are back to the standards of relevancy we had pre-florida.

[Mel]

Originally Posted by theWolf

It seems like today (01/24/2004) at around 4pm PST the google database has changed again. One website I maintain that used to be 2nd for the keyword "Large Diamonds" http://www.Large-diamonds.com is now not even in the top 1000 !!! (altough it stil has PR5)
Even my competitor has disappeared. Other sites I mainain has changed too (good and bad changes)

"Hilltop Algorithm"
"Expert Algorithm"

What the #%@$%@ is going on?
While I am writing this post, GoogleBot is crawling one of my websites.

Let's see what happens.
Any idea?

Hi Thewolf:
I took a quick look at your site and noted that almost all of your links are either from one particular site or are internal links from your own site.

That second site is located at the same IP address as your site and strangely enough both of those sites have the same phone number listed. I show the TPR of large-diamonds.com as having dropped to zero.

I suspect that what happened is you got caught in one of Googles filters.

[Unclefussy]

Strange Google.
Yesterday for 4 search terms we were
1. #10 today #56
2. #1 today #28
3. #17 today #48
4. #3 today #21
Yet unchanged in the other engines.
Up and Down. Up and Down.
Come on Google get it right.

[Mel]

Have you been tweaking your pages since The Florida update?

I have some pages moving in the other direction that have not been tweaked since before Florida.

[janeth]

It look like another Florida has started.

It may take a couple days to figure what there doing.

It looks like we lost "web site design" all togeather.

I'm fixing to do some searches and see what kind of results I get back. Has anyone checked to see if the results aer any good?

[Unclefussy]

Yes I have.
I started a complete site rebuild just about that time, did the look of the site first then the tags.
The tags did not change much, added some tags, moved the TITLE to the top.
Then yesterday I started to do me monthly check on placement and then today after seeing this post did a recheck, there are the results.

[klyve1]

I wish I could say the same!

I have several sites that have dropped off as if they never existed!

Sites with 1-5 positions that have been there for months and months now disappeared.

For me this update is drastic.

[theWolf]

Jackson992 - what do you mean by affiliated program?
I am open to suggestions.

Mel - What is TPR and why did it droped to Zero?
The reson I have two websites with same phone number is because it is the under the same owner managed by the same people, but different product and different type of customers.
Should I move one of the websites to a different IP (different host maybe?)

[sandym]

I have 5 sites that have maintained top 5 rankings for over a year.....now none of them can be found in the top 100.

[Tonymdive]

I was shocked to day to see results on Google searches very similar to the ones when the Florida update hit in Nov.

Web sites that yesterday were in the top 10 spots for several keywords were suddenly dropped.

It seemed to hit only certain keywords but was pretty much across the board for those keywords.

I had just completed some optimization on two of the sites and gotten them in the top 10 back in Nov. when the roof fell in.

They had been in the top 10 and dropped and back in the top 10 in the last month.

But today 6 or 7 keyword phrases just took gas. DROPPED completely.

Has anyone else seen this.

[Cyrilo]

My websites also disappeared. Looks like google has added more filters of banned words, and now only reference websites with meta-content are showing up : does anyone know about those filters ? Any strategy to pass over ?
Thanx
Cyril

[Cyrilo]

This pool to know more about the last google updates : some of us are happy and drinking champagne, others are now crying because they disappeared from google. Use this pool to know the general feeling about this updates. Updates personnal analyses are also welcome :-)
Cyril

[larryweiss]

Has anyone checked to see what effect the directory rank had on yesterdays mayhem. One of my sites showed a pr3 in the directory, but pr5 on the toolbar. After last night my competitors with higher pr in the directory, (although the same pr on the web) fared better than I. They got badly beaten too, but my hit was worse.

[geoffreygag]

Seems like round #2 is here as far as Google Florida shake OUT.

Some search terms drastically increased in position as well as off the screen

[geoffreygag]

Many claim to have Google itis, some won't admit thay they do have these symptoms.

Now that Google Forida #2 is here this week, will you get Google itis?

[mediahound]

Just saw this in the link to google on an adwords box on a website.

"This blank space brought to you by Google"

There were no ads in the box, and it appeared to be a new page, before the three hour wait for mediabot to come in and check things out.

Has anyone else seen this on any sites? Or have I been in my cave too long?

Has google been doing some serious backend changes or what?

I had a site ranking #2 for a very popular real estate term fall off the face of results. Boo hoo, back to the drawing board on that site...

You guys know I own free-hit-counter.com, right?
Well, I'm happy to report, that the service has seen growth with every single day this year. (as usual)
So while some sites may have seen fluctuations, dont despair, its not an internet catastrophy going on. Just keep your site geared to your user and dont keep your eggs in any one basket. And dont rely on just any one engine either. Well, PPC people need not worry about that. Keep spending what you can afford if it's PPC and a profitable product, and you'll do good. Optimise your ads title and descriptions, use this as an opp to get people that are used to clicking on their favorite site when searching, and now that they cant find it, they're looking for new sites to visit. So, it's a win-win situation after all.

Has anyone seen that adwords change yet?[/url]

[Manmohan Hebbar]

Hello Friends,

Just joined the forum and already in the middle of Google update :-) Looking forward to a great time with all at Webproworld.

Manmohan

[minstrel]

Hello, Manmohan:

Welcome to WebProWorld...

We may have to retitle this thread "Google Grief Support Group", judging by the posts so far...

[citypublife]

I know many of WPW members have suffered from Google dances. I am suffering today. Now, I don't mind if I'm beaten by London Pub and Bar websites that have the information that searchers are looking for. It means I have to try harder, and add more, relevent information.

However, what I do mind is when somebody types in the term "pubs and bars in London" and Googles first 3 pages are filled with results about Hotels, Restaurants, Magazines, Hong Kong, Specific Areas of London, Entertainment, Pub info about towns/citys Miles outside of London, Property, Gay Websites, Holidays, Flights and so on.

Pretty much, (apart from one or two), the only websites listed that are dedicated to London Pubs and Bars are the 3 Paid for listings on the right hand side of the page.

Which leads me to ask the questions.

Do Google manually return crap results so that searches will click on the Paid for listings. (PPC)?

Is there really a secret algorithm applied universally which treats all websites equally?

Up until yesterday I believed that Google returned very good results for the above search term and different combinations of those words. Now, our own site as well as some of our good competitors have disappeared from at least the first 3 pages.

Looking at the source code of some of these sites, it just doesn't make any sense at all why they should be above dedicated sites on the subject. Unless of course, Google are trying to increase PPC for those search terms.

Consider this, if they "force" website owners to take up PPC and can show that the rate of increase for PPC take up is x rather than y. Then, they can inflate their opening share price. We wont desert Google because there isn't a decent competitor, (although I would argue that at this point). Potential shareholders don't care that it returns crap results, (they consider past results and future potential).

Come their public launch, Google will be laughing all the way to the bank, while the guy in the street who had a dream and helped Google build it's valuable database of small businesses is left wondering what the hell went wrong.

In short: The reason nobody can figure out their algorithm is because they are not using it or they haven't bloody got one and are returning manually doctored results which will encourage more people to pay.


www.citypublife.co.uk

[simonm]

retitle this thread "Google Grief Support Group"

I couldn't agree more.

All my smaller sites have dropped if not vanished, though my larger sites have retained position though dropped marginally. I think it is florida 1(a) rather than Florida 2 in that the changes I saw in more recently created web sites (within the last year or so) are now being seen on older ones (more than two years old). Also the poor showing for two word search terms that match part or all of the domain name now works for three word terms.

SEO'd pages within a large site appear to have more chance of success than similar or the same on a small site. Also optimised home pages don't have a chance - unless it is for a known brand or company name that also isn't a generic term.

Basically the changes that I started 'hesitantly' to make following Florida will be carried out for all my sites. Also more adwords and a prayer that more people start using Yahoo and Alta Vista - which aren't broken yet.

[vintagedge]

We have been enjoying top 30 rankings on Google for the past several months for 6 or 7 keywords. Yesterday I gave up searching after going through 12 pages of results. We have just provided Froogle with a data feed of our products and found then listed with photos as we provided.

Could it be that Google will be going to "information" type results on Google and shopping type results of Froogle?

I am really confused (as it seems everyone is). Doing a search for vintagedge.com in Google certainly brings up results (yesterday was over 100 pages indexed) and page ranks for our main pages were 4 last week - now we are nowhere to be found.

Karen
vintagedge.com

[Unclefussy]

Up until yesterday I believed that Google returned very good results for the above search term and different combinations of those words. Now, our own site as well as some of our good competitors have disappeared from at least the first 3 pages.

I have to agree with this one, all my searchs returned JUNK.

For years we had the #1, #2 or atleast the #10 spot for most of our terms.

In the last two days we have dropped from #3 to 21 and #1 to 29 and #10 to 56 in some of our terms.

Others that we have always done good in we have flat gone away.

Today doing checks the returns are some of the worst I have seen.
Yahoo too the same is happening to us, while MSN and Altavista and the others hold up. Sort of.

Hope this changes.

[citypublife]

I'd like to make it clear. I am not bemoaning my web pages being dropped out of site. It's the nature of the beast. I accept it.

What I am complaining about is the quality of Google results and am suspicious about their so-called top secret algorithm.

The results returned for people looking for "London Pubs and Bars" and different formulations of the term, are a complete joke and look as though they have been randomly selected.

1 & 2 are of the same site. Not dedicated, but have pages which are relevent to the subject. No complaints. PR6.

3 is a tourism site with 37 pubs out of 8,000. PR4.

4 a restaurant guide with a couple of pubs thrown in of a small area of London. PR5.

5 Lists about 30 pubs of 8,000 and has a PR0.

6 & 7 Good website with large listing of London Pubs. PR4.

8 Largely a site for other stuff has 23 pubs on the site for a small area of London. PR5.

9 Pretty much same as 8 with a few more pubs. No PR available.

10 About 40 pubs listed with little or no information. Even tells you to look in the phone book to get the number. PR4.

Page 2 & 3 are much worse. Not one site from the first 3 pages are dedicated to allowing people to search for London Pubs and Bars. There are about 20 fairly good and acceptable websites that were here and have now disappeared. What for? To be replaced by 90% rubbish. Funny that the 3 that are PPC have been dropped too.

Google would have us believe that page rank is important. Not so, given the above results. Some of them do not have the words pubs or bars in the title, keywords or descriptions.

There is no logical explanation for these results as far as I can see. Google claim to have made improvements in its results since Florida.

Don't make me laugh. It's all spin, designed to keep us baffled, increase PPC, add mystique to their organisation and increase their market value.

Could you imagine what would happen if it was discovered, a week before their stock market launch, that Google really didn't have an algorithm at all, or that it was as simple as abc, it was a hoax or spin to confuse the competition.

Further, can anyone on this board rank the helpfullness, politeness, response time, quality etc. of their customer service department. I'd PR them a big fat zero.

You watch their next party trick. When the the value of the dollar rises against the pound, they'll switch the way they pay us for Adwords.

I repeat, I am not bemoaning my web pages being dropped out of site. My hits today took a small drop compared with some that I've heard about. I'm just sick and tired of the stranglehold and monopoly they have over the small businesses that built their database and if it wasn't for people like us, they wouldn't have a market value to present to the stock exchange.

I for one hope there is a backlash and they get what they deserve.

www.citypublife.co.uk

[greeneagle]

I was also reindexed and many pages have better PRs yet I made no changes since last round. All of my clients haven't been yet though.
Ken

[larryweiss]

Is it not true that Google is going public. Might this be a strategy for forcing us to pay for ad space. That would drive their revenue through the roof, and make the stock seem way more valuable than it is. If I could get a couple of jillion dollars just for ruining my business, I would do it in a heartbeat.

I am definitely noticing that in my area, dip molding, where I was until Saturday, #1, and am now #113, high ranking sites have these things in common.
Lots of pages
Directory status
Both

For myself, I was in the habit of using google for all my searches, and now feel that they stink. Whats the new good engine? Altavista?

[Unclefussy]

larry said

For myself, I was in the habit of using google for all my searches, and now feel that they stink.

That is the way I feel also.
I do like Alta and use it a lot.

I liked Yahoo way back when and used it all the time.
Then there WAS Google.
After Yahoo dropped Google, Yahoo was looking good again, till yesterday when they showed Google returns. Now today they have dropped Google again and I am back where I was. (I speak of our site for search)

I think it was greeneagle that said 2004 would be a bumpy year, January is on the way out and there was lots of bumps.

I for one liked Yahoo way back when and hope they can take the ball back and come out on top of Google.

[newyouwellness.com]

My site deals with weight loss a highly saturated market http://www.newyouwellness.com

I obviously have some work to do optimizing, but today I went from PR6 to PR5 and my inbound links have dropped from 120+ to about 68.

Is it likely that my rank has dropped because my inbound link partners rank has also dropped...all 800 or so?

And will someone tell me why Google can't make up it's mind over how many inbound links I have? Doing a search for just my domain name in quotes I have over 900 but Google only recognizes about 68 as inbound links...

I just can't figure this out! Damn this is frustrating (banging head on wall * * *)

[minstrel]

Originally Posted by newyouwellness.com

My site deals with weight loss a highly saturated market... will someone tell me why Google can't make up it's mind over how many inbound links I have?

Yes it is a highly saturated market and that's one of the problems Google is trying to tidy up - see my reply to your post in the Google forums.

[Mel]

Originally Posted by newyouwellness.com

My site deals with weight loss a highly saturated market http://www.newyouwellness.com

I obviously have some work to do optimizing, but today I went from PR6 to PR5 and my inbound links have dropped from 120+ to about 68.

Is it likely that my rank has dropped because my inbound link partners rank has also dropped...all 800 or so?

And will someone tell me why Google can't make up it's mind over how many inbound links I have? Doing a search for just my domain name in quotes I have over 900 but Google only recognizes about 68 as inbound links...

I just can't figure this out! Damn this is frustrating (banging head on wall * * *)

If its any consolation, many others are also reporting a drop in Toolbar PR (TPR) and in a couple of sites that I have investigated this was not because of having less inbound links but because some of them dropped below the threshold below which Google does not report IBLs with the Link: search (which is what the toolbar also uses).

A drop in the PR of sites linking to you will also result in a drop of your PR, which may or may not be visible in the Google toolbar PR (TPR).

I don't know if any of your rankings for search terms have dropped but I can tell you that in my case some of my rankings have increased while my PR dropped.

I would advise you not to obsess over TPR. There are many other things which make up the Google ranking algorithm (Google says over a hundred) many of which are IMO much more important than TPR.

If your objective is to get higher rankings for your pages. concentrate on things that will help your rankings, like getting good inbound anchor text links from expert sites, which by the way will also boost your TPR, (though you may not be able to see it).

Its likely that the actual number of your inbound links has not dropped, only Google's reporting of them.

I prefer to check my links at Alltheweb where a fairly comprehensive list of the pages that link to you is readily available.

[newyouwellness.com]

My host (we are looking to change) who does our shopping cart, goes down often enough for 1/2 to 1 1/2 hour at a time. Could this be part of my problem also?

And yes, I am interested in the bottom line. Often I find a huge discrepancy between the Alexa toolbar and Googles. A high PR site you might think would have great traffic and does not, and low PR sites seem to be able to generate a lot of traffic. While I realize you can purchase traffic, that PR rank just does not seem to make a hill of beans except to show other webmasters your a worthy link partner, that's it.

Jim

[Mukul]

Hello,

My site www.script2please.com was ranked betweek #1 and #5 for 50+ keywords and just last week we got #1 in "custom web development"

I was beginning to expect growth in sales when last day we lost all search rankings. Now we are not even in top 1000 :(

Regards,
Mukul

[Mel]

Originally Posted by newyouwellness.com

My host (we are looking to change) who does our shopping cart, goes down often enough for 1/2 to 1 1/2 hour at a time. Could this be part of my problem also?

And yes, I am interested in the bottom line. Often I find a huge discrepancy between the Alexa toolbar and Googles. A high PR site you might think would have great traffic and does not, and low PR sites seem to be able to generate a lot of traffic. While I realize you can purchase traffic, that PR rank just does not seem to make a hill of beans except to show other webmasters your a worthy link partner, that's it.

Jim

Hi Jim
If your host goes down often it may be that googlebot would not spider you, and in extreme cases even drop your pages from the index. If you have all your pages in Gs index I doubt that is the Problem.

I totally agree with your assessment of TPR except that PR does help your rankings a bit.

[sherwin101]

am on the losing end...

and right now i feel i did squat for our SEO and that i was just a lucky recipient of the random Florida award; but heck no, our page was the most relevant one (for the key words, even think we're the only ones who really 'own' them) and now we're nowhere to be found.

good days and bad ey? I'm limited to free marketing hence my reliance on Screwgle; but hey, there's life after SEO right?

[greeneagle]

I had some significant PR changes on secondary and terciary pages. They seemed to be more related to recent traffic increases because I have made no page changes nor increased number of incoming links since last update.
Ken

[jaca]

I started reading this thread and decided to check my ranking under "Virtual Assistant British Columbia". I was listed 5th and now I don't list at all. I was crawled a few days ago and there was a couple of PR changes (up), but that shouldn't have anything to do with this, should it?

I simply don't understand why I don't show at all anymore. Help!!!

[jaca]

Update to my last post. When I took out the " " marks I show at 15. Whew, at least I am there, but why the drop?

[seto_kaiba]

Ok, This weekend a couple of clients fell off the face of the planet on the wonderful world of Google. I knew this was coming, but wasn't too sure of how it would effect me. I need these sites to be among the top in google searchs, otherwise we do not seem to get near as many leads coming from the internet. These sites were fine until this weekend, what happened? and what can I do as steps to getting these sites back up and in the top 5 atleast? Can anyone please give me some assistance...

[LH]

One of our sites had several terms ranked fairly high on Google. One was #1 for couple of months driving a lot of traffic from both Google and Yahoo! It all abruptly stopped. Last registered traffic from those engines came on January 22... I noticed it just a few days ago. I've tried looking for our site using the terms that used to keep us on #1 and wasn't able at all.

What's the logical explanation to this?

P.S. Site in the signature is not the one mentioned here.

[Mel]

Hi Jan
Google rankings do fluctuate and the fluctuations have been more extreme the past couple of months as Google tries out new accessories to jazz up its algo.

I have a couple of sites which initially ranked very well in Google, dropped totally off the map after Florida, then came back yesterday with as good or better rankings than Pre-Florida with no changes to the pages at all.

I think it may still be a couple of months before we get a handle on what is new with Google, but I'll bet they get back to relevant search results before they go for thier IPO.

[Christof]

Just joined in, thought I'd give you all my 2 cents worth! After A LOT of hard work I have had a top three ranking at google for about 2 years for "sleep mask", "eye mask", "sleeping mask", "sleep masks" etc, etc. About 24 hours ago, I dropped to 70, 137, etc, etc. This has really jeopardised my business! I haven't made any drastic changes to the site recently, so why has it happened? I'm very upset with google!

I've followed google's webmaster's instructions as best I can, so now I'm really confused. I don't mind being "taken out" by a better optimised page or site, but when you're yanked for no good reason it's pretty hard to take.

[cbp]

This has really jeopardised my business! ... I'm very upset with google!

This may sound harsh, and with due respect...but if you have a business model that is dependent on a FREE listing and traffic from Google, you need to find another buisness.

CBP

[Christof]

Fair call CBP, I was being a little melodramatic! But you do tend to rely on those results after a while. I guess it's like running a tomato farm. You get one big hail storm and that's it till next season. Back to the drawing board and some PPC.

Does anyone offer any google ranking insurance?

(wry smile)

[greeneagle]

Looks like a strong backlink quality adjustment going on too!

Ken

[red]

"Am I the next one?..."
NO, I AM!

The exact same thing just happened to me on the same day. We were #1 - #4 for 30 different kw phrases for months and months and all of a sudden we're in no-man's land...9 pages in.

"What's the logical explanation to this?"

I was told this morning by a WPW moderator that Google is right in the middle of the latest update and that things should level out for "most of us" pretty soon.

I hope that's the case for you and I. Good luck

[geoffreygag]

Can some one provide with some insight as to why in these days my PR at google went from 5 to 6.

[minstrel]

Originally Posted by geoffreygag

Can some one provide with some insight as to why in these days my PR at google went from 5 to 6.

What you hear most about are people who are concerned because they are seeing drops in PR and/or SE rankings - but that's of course not the whole story. Like you, some are seeing improvements.

Just enjoy it and don't ask too many questions :-)