Google Spazzing

[mike]

Google is on my nerves.

I'm working on a site (another forum to be specific) and I've been able to manage several top 5 results for my target terms/phrases that I track on pretty much a daily basis.

Everything was going along fine til - one day - I just dropped out completely. The day after that, I was back. Then gone again a couple days later... then back again.

Currently I'm gone again.

I made a blog post about Google's Spazzy behavior on WebProNews blog when I discovered that I was not the only one suffering from this.

I thought I was losing my mind there for a while.

[incrediblehelp]

The days are gone of stagnant or stable SERPs. I have been saying this for over a year now on WPW.

With search load balancing on over a hundred G datacenters, localization and personalization of search...we will not see stable results anymore.

As everyone can see it is just getting worse for those of us that run ranking checkers and use it as a metric for personal SEO gauges or for clients.

[incrediblehelp]

OK I read your post at the WPW blog.

I see you say it is not a datacenter thing, so we will forget that for now. I will also assume you have personalization turned off.

That brings us to Google Webmaster Tools. I have noticed some pretty big inaccuracies in there since launch. For instance the keywords they say you rank...you simple don't a lot of times. If their average rank tool is out of whack, then it is easy to assume other ranking tools are seeing the "spaz" or inconsistencies in the SERPs.

Last point could be localization, but I highly doubt they rankings would flip as much as this for something like that.

OK so rankings are fluxuations. I do know they hardly ever for very established websites. Websites that have been online for years. How new is this website Mike? Do you feel it has solid relevant backlinks comparable to other websites in the same niche that are not spazzing?

Google is so dependant on backlinks when "trying" to serve relevant SERPs. If you don't have them, then I cant expect much in the ways of consistency when looking at the SERPs for certain websites.

[mike]

Site isn't old but it isn't new. It's well over a year old. We picked it up in May of this year and I've been 'doing' things to it.

Looked like things were working too. Went from no listing to top 5 listings on some of my prime terms.... but then the Spaz kicked in and now im #5 one day, gone the next... Ill come back in 24 hours or so at some spot between #4 and #7 -- sit for a day or two --- poof gone again -- rinse/repeat.

This has been going on for a couple of weeks now. Multiple terms.


The site was a trainwreck in terms of SEO when we got it. Plus it's a forum (which makes it even worse).

I've managed to add a few links, redone it's url structure and a few other 'herbs and spices' kinds of things.... nothing overly aggressive, nothing shady.

After a month or so it started popping up for some nice terms, hung for a couple of days then the spazziness ensued.

It's making me manic/bi-polar.

[incrediblehelp]

Mike feel free to PM me the domain and other details so I can take a closer look if you like.

[mike]

Well, it's not a big secret or anything.. the site is the halo forum in my sig. HalOmega.com

Haha -- just did a link: query on it -- it's showing 4 now

That site is just in a complete flux apparently. Google doesn't know what to make of it yet I guess.

[incrediblehelp]

Originally Posted by mike

Haha -- just did a link: query on it -- it's showing 4 now

What does it show "usually"? Have you done some link building or just letting it grow on its own?

Have you changed the architecture of the website recently? You know for sub-categories like:

halomega.com/ halo-2-mlg-discussion

[chrisJumbo]

Why is it you believe it is not a case of all of the different data centers? Of course, Halo's got be hugely competitive and I would bet the more competitive the more apt rankings and placements are to swing depending on what the comp is doing. You are going up against XBOX, Amazon, EBay, etc.

cd :O)

[gerardkelley]

It's a similar thing for me. I had posted about it a few weeks ago and even though I got some good advise, I really didn't get an answer. I rank 25-35 all of the time for jewelry boxes. When I rank at all for jewelry box (singular), it's also 25-35. But most of the time I'm not there at all. I can search through 500 pages on many data-centers and find nothing. Then for a few days I'll be back. It's been like that for most of a year. I can take some consolation from the fact that jewelry boxes is searched for more than jewelry box, but I'd sure like to be found under both queries...........

[hitsusa]

Big G is defintely wigging out.

Take a look at today's #1 and #2 positions for the phrase "fundraiser" (no quotes necessary).

Those spots are now held by two different Wikipedia pages.

I'm pretty sure that not many people will actually want to look up the definition of the term twice...

[Orion]

Something I've been finding more and more which I've attributed to the growing data centers for all SE's (Google especially) is location.

I'll get a client (and it doesn't matter where they are from Japan, US, Canada, EU etc) call saying we lost our rankings!!!! I'll query and they are right where they were. I get them to do a tracert and they end up at one IP I'm at another (google.com) with different results.

I've tested having them change their DNS settings to use the google IP I was showing good results at and they get the same SERP's I did.

So there really is something to it. If you find bad SERPs one moment tracert it and copy down the IP.. when you get a good SERP see if that IP isn't different, and check the nodes you passed through along the way, you'll find that there is often one point along the way where you change direction.

reason.. you got me.. I can only speculate and not too convincingly lol.

I always tell clients, top rankings are great! SEO can help, top 10 is awesome.. but NEVER NEVER NEVER take your eye off the real goal.. Profit. There are a million other ways to drive targeted traffic and some can have a much higher conversion rate than SEO. Don't put all your eggs in one basket, balance your marketing so that when you happen to disappear from google for a day your staff doesn't sit around waiting for the "You've got mail" beep on their computer...

maybe this one was 3 cents worth? lol.. =o)

[lkcheng]

Originally Posted by mike

Google is on my nerves.

I'm working on a site (another forum to be specific) and I've been able to manage several top 5 results for my target terms/phrases that I track on pretty much a daily basis.

Everything was going along fine til - one day - I just dropped out completely. The day after that, I was back. Then gone again a couple days later... then back again.

Currently I'm gone again.

I made a blog post about Google's Spazzy behavior on WebProNews blog when I discovered that I was not the only one suffering from this.

I thought I was losing my mind there for a while.

I have experienced the same. My site has gone and back repeatedly to top 10 in 3 months. And eventually the site stop fluctuating and fix at page 3. i try to get back my ranking but I fail. I hope you don't end up the same.

[hawksm]

I have seen these fluctuations too. It seems that new domains fluctuate more than old domains. Also Mike maybe halomega never ranked well previously and now since you are optimizing it, G is looking at it as new. Jaan, I notice that webmaster tools mis-reports ranking too it is almost useless when you can't trust it. It's google for christs sake, you would think they would report their own data accurately. Logically, it must be a datacenter issue. It is almost like google is trying a "quality score" type of thing with natural rankings in different datacenters and updating. I noticed that when I launched a new site with no ads of any sort, i would first start to see traffic from google organic coming from a specific region of the US. Another thought..maybe you are not considering is the adjustments and fluctuations of the competition and google's reaction to those adjustments. - my rant/2 cents.

[mike]

Originally Posted by chrisJumbo

Why is it you believe it is not a case of all of the different data centers? Of course, Halo's got be hugely competitive and I would bet the more competitive the more apt rankings and placements are to swing depending on what the comp is doing. You are going up against XBOX, Amazon, EBay, etc.

cd :O)

I don't think it's the datacenters because I checked them.

I'm back in now.

Not as high as I was (it's sitting at 8th I think and sometimes I'm 4).


It fluctuates between 4th - 9th --- and then completely out of the top 100 from one day to the next.

Previously Haolmega.com wasn't a top 50 result for that term. It's kinda generic and fairly competitive I guess, but the competition is weak. It was rather easy to move into a top 5 SERP in Google. I'm doing pretty well in Yahoo and Live for that term as well. Ask -not so good and Google just depends on the day...

All in all, it's been good progress. Google's flakiness has been a real pain in the butt though.

[Webnauts]

Mike here are some issues I would take into consideration:

1. You have some DNS problems: DNS Stuff: DNS tools, DNS hosting tests, WHOIS, traceroute, ping, and other network and domain name tools.

2. The keywords relevancy to page content is 42%, which is poor. As you sure know that can trigger spam filters.

3. Repetition of keywords in your description and keywords meta tags. As you sure know, such stuff can trigger filters too.

4. The words sex and sexy are found in your content. Could it be that they possibly trigger adult filters? Did you probably consider using the ICRA meta tag?

5. I checked your HTTP headers and I got this:

HTTP/1.1 200 OK =>
Date => Sat, 30 Jun 2007 23:32:41 GMT
Server => Apache/2.0.59 (CentOS)
X-Powered-By => PHP/5.1.6
Connection => close
Content-Type => text/html; charset=ISO-8859-15

You have in your headers these meta tags though:

<meta http-equiv="Pragma" content="no-cache" />
<meta http-equiv="Expires" content="-1" />
<meta http-equiv="Cache-Control" content="no-cache" />

If I was you, I would add that stuff in your .htaccess file:

<FilesMatch "\.(html|htm|js|css|php)$">
Header set Cache-Control: "private, pre-check=0, post-check=0, max-age=0"
Header set Expires: 0
Header set Pragma: no-cache
</Files>

To see what I mean test your forum and then my seoworkers site to have a better picture what I am about with this tool: HTTP / HTTPS Header Check

Also you might would consider adding at the very top of you pages this piece of PHP:

<?php
$this_mtime = filemtime($this_page);
header('Expires: Sun, 19 Aug 1962 08:00:00 GMT');
header("Last-Modified: ". gmdate("D, d M Y H:i:s") . " GMT", true, 200);
?>

and then add in your .htaccess file the following rules:

ServerSignature Off

FileETag None
Header unset ETag

RewriteRule .* - [E=HTTP_IF_MODIFIED_SINCE:%{HTTP:If-Modified-Since}]
RewriteRule .* - [E=HTTP_IF_NONE_MATCH:%{HTTP:If-None-Match}]

I do not want to say that all above will solve your problem.

Though if they don't, they will sure make your site more spam-filter-proof and search engine friendlier.

You and the search engines will save a hell a lot of brandwidth.

[mike]

Thanks for the advice John. I'd be surprised if those things are causing me to flip flop in Google like I am (currently back out by the way) - but I'll certainly see about getting them cleaned up.

[Webnauts]

I am glad to hear that you are back out again.

Be so kind and let me know, if that happens again. Maybe I can have a closer look for other possible issues.

[mike]

Out as in the bad kind of out. As in not 'in'.

It'll show up again here in a day or so...

[mike]

And just as I suspected... back in the top 10 again today.