My theory about the Google update [Archive]

cbp

11-19-2003, 04:49 AM

I was getting bored tonite - still depressed from the loss in the world cup semis .... so I have been spending time looking around a lot of forums (I am posting this here as you are all a much nicer bunch of people).

There are a lot of very angry webmasters out there who's sites have dropped 100's of places in the rankings (eg "Google is broken and they must fix it"). There are also a lot of theories being advanced as to why ... every time a theory is advanaced, a couple of messages later an eg is posted showing the theory to be wrong. Some theories have focused on that sites that are "over SEO'd" are being hurt (eg anchor text, title, HI etc match up too perfectly and Google may be looking for a bit of mixing it up); another idea is that anchor text in internal links may be discounted; keywords in anchor text often comes up in a lot of the theories ... as soon as these theories come up, an eg is given to disprove it.

So many sites seem to have really gone out the back door. BUT, all my sites have gone up in PR, up in backlinks, up in the rankings and, most importantly, up in traffic in the last 2 days. I think the webmasters who's sites have gone up are too busy working on improving their sites and not notice the search results and are too busy to post to forums to say how good it is --> bias toward disgruntled webmasters --> "Google must be broken" "I hope they fix it soon" "etc"

I have looked at lots of sites that have dropped to see what is the difference between me and them (its hard as they are all from different niches). The only thing that I can see that is different with my sites and those that appear to be dropped is that I do not go that hard after links - I do not have a lot of links to me, BUT they are all from sites of a similar theme to mine .... maybe Google have started doing a deeper analysis of pages that links are from and giving a greater relevancy boost to links that come from sites that are more relevant to the anchor text and keyword(s) of the site being linked to. Maybe keyword(s) in anchor text from pages that are not of a similar theme to the keyword(s) are being discounted ....

That my 2c ... what say you?

CBP

rlrouse

11-19-2003, 09:29 AM

I think you're absolutely right. The webmasters who bear the most losses tend to speak up the most. This is understandable because I've been there myself.

I don't really see big changes in the algoithm at this point.

janeth

11-19-2003, 10:34 AM

Google is doing the links last which makes no sense to me because the links also effect ranking.

We have lost a couple key words and gained a couple Google Guy did give an email address you can email to let them know of any problems.

I think that means everybody is still pretty much where there going to be.

We have not started looking at what all they have done yet because they are not finished.

But at this point we have not paid attention to any of the theories going around. I know there seems to be a lot of angry people trying to say what the problem is.

But I do see a lot of the searches still with the to sites not using the key words on there site but getting there by links only.

kjohnson5576

11-20-2003, 11:22 AM

I've been hit hard. I'm not sure why, but I only rank high in the area that contains my domain name. all other areas where I was in the top 10...I can't even find my site now. Could it be links are affecting the site. I have lots of links (>450) in my link directory but google only recognizes about 30 of them.

I thought the whole idea of gathering links just to gather links was a waste of everyones time... and perhaps google finally caught on to the hypocrisy and did something about it. I for one would welcome a change in the link importance. I just wish I knew what it was.

My top competitors are still ranked extremely high even though obvious spam exists on their home pages and many have redirect URL's. They do however spend considerably more money than I on AdWords, which may be a new factor to consider.

minstrel

11-20-2003, 11:54 AM

I have lots of links (>450) in my link directory but google only recognizes about 30 of them.
Google may only report 30 but that doesn't mean the rest aren't recognized. Others have suggested various explanations for this, including the hypothesis that Google only reports backlinks above a certain PR (maybe 3 or 4).

kjohnson5576

11-20-2003, 12:25 PM

I don't know about that. I am linked to many sites that are PR4 and above that do not show up in my links. One I might mention is our friend rlrouse from this discussion. His PR is 4, and we have been linked for months. Yet neither his site or mine show up when looking for links in our respective domains.

I also noticed a funny thing. When I looked up links on one of my competitors, a lot of their own pages were listed as links. The same when looking at rlrouse's site. When I look up my links, none of my pages are listed, just links. I wish I could figure this linking thing out a little bit better. As I said, I've been faithfully placing links for the last 11 months, but most show up in google as "Pages that contain the ..."

Alexa shows I have 207 links, MSN Shows 222, Alta Vista shows 390, All the web 225. Google shows 30.

A pretty big difference.

janeth

11-20-2003, 01:52 PM

Hi kjohnson5576,

I hate to here that I know you have always given great advice and tryed to help a lot of people.

I think something went wrong at Google. It looks like they where going after people that where spamming the system and they missed them and got the innocent people instead. Doing this right at Christmas is really bad and will hurt a lot of people. I think they will fix the problem but it could take weeks.
I would focus on some other ways to market right now starting with press releases and more links. Done right the links can also generate as much or more then the search engines.
If you have money to spend the options really open up.

janeth

11-20-2003, 02:37 PM

Google has not finished yet as far as the links go because we are still doing a lot of changes with our links page

rlrouse

11-20-2003, 04:25 PM

For whatever reason, it sometimes takes Google several months to report links, but Google does recognize the links and gives you credit for them (as long as they're from pages with PageRank>0).

Try this:

1 - Type this into the Google search bar:

http://www.discount-leather.net

2 - now click the link in:

Find web pages that contain the
term "www.discount-leather.net"

You'll see that there are 500+ pages with your URL listed on the page. Most of these are links I'm sure.

It just takes a while for them to show up with the Link: command.

I hope this helps.

rlrouse

11-20-2003, 04:46 PM

Out of curiousity, I used the Site: command on your URL:

site:discount-leather.net -skdjs

It shows 320 pages indexed, but you have just a handful showing with the link command.

I don't know anything about your linking structure, but it appears that you may have a linking structure where you have one page linking to another page linking to another page, etc. with few links back to the homepage.

You need a link back to the homepage on every page on your site. This does at least two things for you:

1 - It channels PageRank from your internal pages back to the homepage. If you add a Home link to every one of your pages your homepage PR may well go up within the next couple of index cycles.

2 - Since each page would link back to your home page, all of your internal pages would show up with the Link: command. The link command only displays pages that link to that particular page. Any page without a Home Page link won't show up.

Another thing to consider is creating a Site Map page. Link to the Site Map page from every page on your site. To get some ideas and see tons of examples, just do a Google search for sitemap.html and you'll find plenty.

minstrel

11-20-2003, 09:06 PM

1 - Type this into the Google search bar: http://www.discount-leather.net

2 - now click the link in: Find web pages that contain the term "www.discount-leather.net"

Wow - thanks rlrouse. I just tried this... if I enter "link:www.psychlinks.ca" I get 19 results. If I enter "+www.psychlinks.ca" (including the quotation marks, which is the search phrase rlrouse's instructions reduces to, Google lists 622 links - that's a pretty big difference.

Nice tip, rlrouse!!

kjohnson5576

11-21-2003, 10:45 AM

Thanks for the tips. I have a graphic link on each page going back to the home page. Do I need a text link?

Also, great insight about updating your homepage on a daily basis. I spent about 50 hours putting a new shopping cart system on my site and haven't been updating the home page as often as I should..so that is also some good advice.

As for losing rank, it's taken my daily visitors from slightly over 500 a day to less than 250 on average. I've stepped up my advertising with Google Adwords, plus just opened up an overature account. I'm still with shopping.com and plan on listing on MySimon for at least the Holiday season.

Sales are going great, but I have to wonder would they be double with better rankings?

Anyway, thanks for the help

rlrouse

11-21-2003, 12:31 PM

I have a graphic link on each page going back to the home page. Do I need a text link?

I think so. I have a graphic link on every page as well, but I also have a "Home" text link in the navigation menu on each page. I can't prove this other than with my own personal experience, but I believe Google has an easier time with text links.

CobraRock

11-24-2003, 10:35 AM

Hello All,
I too have been effected by some of the re-rankings on Google, but some of it doesn't make any sense. For example, the keyword "Stainless Steel Fasteners" does not have any of the same results. Everyone who was on the first 3 pages is gone. What was replaced wasn't realted information. In fact, the New Zealand Yellow Pages occupies the 2nd place ranking. Why in the world would Google rank the New Zealand Yellow Pages as a matching source for buyers looking for Stainless Steel Fasteners in the US?

Another industry where I've seen a dramatic difference is in the Trade Show Industry. The keyword "Trade Show Display", "Trade Show Booth", and "Trade Show Exhibit" have all been replaced by completely different results that are of lower quality. In this case they are a little more on target because directory sites are primarily listed, but every company in the top 30 is gone. I alwasy say top 30 because I usually don't look past the third page when looking at the changes.

I would agree that Google is trying to do something to combat the "spammers" and other sites that aren't playing by the rules, but at whose expense. Google users are ultimatly going to suffer and I only refer the the search for Stainless Steel Fasteners as the example.

I would also hate to see Google create lesser results to play up the importance of AdWords and more money. I'm no expert on the law, but this has to violate some type of law. As Google grows more powerful on the Internet and they become more infulenced by corporate greed there is a potential for them to abuse their own system for more moeny.

Since Google's inception they have always had the best search technology and now that webmasters have figured out how to reliably increase their rankings for specific keywords I've seen the quality of results go up. The purpose of getting ranked well is to match your products or services to the needs of the buyer. It's not like webmasters are trying to target unrelated keywords because that doesn't do anyone any good. In my opinion, that would be the same as Pop-Up and banner ads, which, for the most part is unrelated information.

Sorry to go on for so long, but this just doesn't make any sense to me. Why degrade the quality of your own results for the small few who are really unethical. In the long-run it just hurts everyone, including Google's users. It also opens up Google to a world of backlash, and that has been seen in business one to many times. A la Microsoft and it's monopoly woes. So here's an intersting question... Who's watching Google to make sure they don't abuse their standing in the marketplace?

dthievin

11-24-2003, 01:56 PM

btreloar

11-24-2003, 02:51 PM

To: dthievin -- I think you must have heard wrong. Google doesn't sell or rent keywords. They sell AdWords, but those are "the cute little ads up on the right margin".

Other than that, and other sponsored links that appear above the natural links, Google doesn't sell keywords.

n2deep

11-24-2003, 02:51 PM

One of my sites has been drastically affected by the google update. I do not employ and spam like techniques and have one of the leading brand names in the industry.

Using my most important keyword on the 11 major search engines, my site places on the first page on 7 engines and second page on 2 engines. On google/aol...no placement!! :( I used to place on the first page consistently.

This is a major issue...I will continue to watch this forum for solutions and updates.

Thanks,

David

janeth

11-24-2003, 02:59 PM

Hi n2deep,
Where was you ranking before the last Google update?

jmeth

11-24-2003, 03:00 PM

Add me to the list of confused complainers. Traffic to my site, http://www.SubscriptionConnection.com, dropped from about 1000 visitors/day to the 600-700 range while we moved from the top 10 rankings of many searches terms to way, way down. I couldn't figure out why and thought it was perhaps that new competition, with pages more optomized for search engine placements came on the scene; but it is comforting, though still painful, to learn that this seems to be a generally common experience. I'm still trying to figure out how to react to this situation and wonder whether it will continue or our prior excellent rankings will return.

janeth

11-24-2003, 03:15 PM

Google has a new filter my understanding is that it was used on popular key words only.
Many sites disappeared totally from there rankings because of this new filter. I also understand that because of the problem they went back and made some adjustments and some of the sites returned but not all of them.
I also understand that this new filter looks at the way the text is used on the page and determines if it is used properly.
I think this is correct but if anyone wants to jump in here please do so.

rlrouse

11-24-2003, 07:40 PM

jmeth:

I checked your backlinks on Google, and you don't have all that many. A few dozen links would do wonders for your site.

awall19

11-24-2003, 07:48 PM

Thanks for Syndicating my post from Search Engine Journal guys :)

I recently wrote a couple articles which are more in depth

The Life Cycle of a Search Engine (http://www.search-marketing.info/newsletter/fanbase.htm)
Google Sells Christmas (http://www.search-marketing.info/newsletter/buyads.htm)

(MOD note: duplicate post in other thread deleted)

SearchEngineZ

11-24-2003, 07:51 PM

I answered a few SEO queries at Google Answers relating to sudden drops in ranking following the recent Google update.

After browsing a lot of forums I have decided to try and describe what is happening:

Google has introduced a filter:

"Google recently introduced a new keyword phrase filter during its most recent update. Some phrases were unchanged, but many highly optimized and highly competitive phrases were drastically altered."Story Here (http://searchenginejournal.blogspot.com/2003_11_01_searchenginejournal_archive.html#106933 768963966352)

The filter is targeting highly competitive (commercial) keywords and phrases.

Any site that is doing well for such phrases loses the ranking benefit of the following:

- text of internal links containing those keywords
- text of reciprocal links containing those keywords
- those keywords in the URL

and possibly (I haven't seen any proof):

- keywords in the title
- keywords in H1 tags
- high density of the keywords on the page
- text of non-reciprocal links containing those keywords

Typically the page most affected is the home page. Often this is due to linking internally to it with keywords, rather than the traditional "home".

PageRank remains unaffected. Rankings for keywords and phrases not affected by the filter remain the same.

The unfiltered results can be seen by adding -mt-tb.cgi to the search query. This was first mentioned at the Register, prior to the recent update:
Register Story here (http://www.theregister.co.uk/content/35/33448.html)

(Mod edit to shorten URLs)

weegillis

11-24-2003, 10:40 PM

Whatever this novice is doing must be in the right direction, our ranking jumped to the first page in the past week, up from the second the week before.

I've been trying to learn how to code well formed xhtml & css, with the help of you folks, of course, and hundreds of hours of hair pulling.

I am very pleased to be ranked at #8 out of thousands of Main Street Projects going on all over the world. Wish I had more confidence when it comes to knowing when I've got things right.

All I can attribute our rise in ranking to is the continued effort to create well formed, validated markup, with meaningful content on every page. It's a slow process, to be sure, but one has to be happy, even elated that Google is giving us recognition.

We're trying to be accessible, but I know we must have some flaws or shortcomings in that area. We're trying to be informative, yet I know we're only scratching the surface until we get some writers on our volunteer staff.

We don't have a lot of links outward, maybe 50-60, and have about a thousand on-site links. Only about a dozen sites link to us, but I have turned down several opportunities for more. If they are not highly relevant to our content, we don't want them.

I use a lot of title/alt information, and have begun removing the links from images, in a move which I believe goes toward accessibility. If it's not text, it's not a link. I've also instituted a standardized link identifification system, but like the image links, this is not yet site wide.

More and more I strive to create simpler, tighter code, and more and more we move up the rankings.

I don't believe links are what they were once cracked up to be, and I for one thank Google for finally putting their foot down. I mean, aren't they the ultimate link farm? What use have they for a site with hundreds upon hundreds of links.

Most of the sites I've seen with scads of links have very little content of their own, and I would never return, though I do write and tell them so (what a jerk, eh? And I think I'm being nice :-).

Because this guy has publicized himself using some SEO program that submits to thousands of SE's and newsgroups, message boards and whatever else they can get away, I don't mind sharing his url with the group. I can't see it bringing him any business, and I think this a perfect example of what not to do:

worldwide woodworking dot com (http://www.worldwidewoodworking.com).

Now, the owner doesn't have a clue what his program is doing, though I'm sure thousands of list subscribers are aggravated by it.

I recently unsubscribed from the html-tidy list because it has been the target of a major spamming attack, and I just got fed up with only every thirtieth post being relevant, or related to html-tidy in the slightest. Heck, most of the people posting were not even interested in tidy.

We can't blame him (the owner of w.w.), he, like myself, just doesn't know. I wrote and asked him about it, and asked if he would stop running the program. Seems like a nice enough fellow. Maybe he will, and maybe he won't.

The program is called Traffic Seeker. I haven't researched it myself, but wouldn't mind hearing your folks' take on it.

Anyway, take a look at the site, and see if it isn't a shining example of fragmentation of site themes. Everything from what he sells, (plans, patterns, and software) to magazines to books to webmastering sites (not this one though, I told him about it). All the affilliate 'detritous' you can imagine in pages and pages of links.

Using eight theme related keywords from his home page, I couldn't raise him on Google, unless I used his name, which starts with Z. (s-i-s)

If this is the thing Google would like to do away with, well I'm all for it. I might feel differently if we were actually selling something and needed an aggressive marketing plan; but I'm convinced that you don't need a sledge where a little push with the thumb will do.

What I also wish is that rogue SEO programs would be stifled somehow, if not outright banned by ISP's.

Any comments, pro or con? I'm all ears!

luvdavy

11-25-2003, 03:11 AM

I'm surprised. I just scanned the above messages, and unless I missed something, nobody mentioned the sale-of-keywords issue.

I am admittedly a newbie. But I was standing in line at an airline check-in queue a few months go and began speaking with a woman who was wearing a Google T-shirt and a veritable Google employee. That's when I first learned that money indeed talks and that Google makes a monumental profit through the sale (or rental) of keywords. No, I'm not speaking about the cute little ads up on the right margin.

In effect, she explained, it really wouldn't matter much about the link/algorithms if numerous others have "purchased" the keywords that people use to find what your website offers. Obviously paid customers come first in the search results.

I had a very sad thought tonight. From what I am seeing on all of the main search terms for travel and real estate, nothing is listed in the first 100 or more results except directories...newspapers... links manager sites that contain the words. It's been that way ever since Google "broke". None...not ONE of the regular real estate agency websites or vacation condo rental places are showing anymore. There is no way that all of us got booted...we are talking hundreds of sites. So I started trying to figure out why, all of a sudden, even the most obscure little directory site would take precedence over even the top vacation sites. Interestingly, if you do a real estate search for a small, insignificant city, the regular agent sites still show. But do it for any major resort area, and all you get are directories.

What's a good reason for that? Because we all advertise with Adwords. Last summer they probably made $10,000 per site from most of us. But when we get placed in the top 2 or 3, we don't have to do the pay per click anymore. And which sites DON'T use Adwords??? Directories. Newspapers. Free links pages.... I hate to think Google has turned on us...but I can't come up with another reason for this. How can anyone think that 10 pages of directory sites for Daytona real estate is a good search result? Why else would 25-30 websites that have a PR4 and PR5 suddenly disappear?

Something is rotten in the state of Denmark. South Carolina, Florida, and quite a few others are spewing methane too. Does this fit with any of the other major changes you all have found?

awall19

11-25-2003, 03:19 AM

luvdavy

11-25-2003, 04:11 AM

Google is based on math. As soon as they tried to sell keywords, it would show. Also their business model would get flushed down the toilet.

Google works so well because it has stayed clear of the paid inclusion industry. They maintain that they will NEVER sell organic search result space.

The current organic results are biased toward information. The web is still viewed as an information source at least as much as it is a commerce platform.

My home page tanked just like yours did. I started learning and adjusting in other ways though. There is no reason to allow airport hearsay to control your line of thinking.

Business requires change. The internet is fast business. Overnight Google changed the face of online advertising.

Their search results are rather competitive to what they were before they made this change. Now these same search results are harder to manipulate.

Does that mean I am angry? Did all of my customers pages tank?

No and no. Large sites will notice that the traffic that was lost from their home page is made up for in other areas.

Create content for the consumer or wither...that is the reality of the internet. I think we are better for the change.

Sorry, but I don't agree with that. Our site has all kinds of content. I did that long before I started getting "relative" links. We've got attractions pages, photos, maps, government links, airline information...you name it. I worked long and hard on content. So now, every crappy directory for travel that exists for no other reason than to sell ads is the only results you get for all the competitive vacation terms. And don't they have wonderful content? Links. Period. I'm sure all the vacationers this summer will be impressed when they do a search and come up with our local newspaper and 3 dozen mindless directories. Good move, Google. Or perhaps it was...for Adwords.

Jan

salubritas

11-25-2003, 04:51 AM

Here is an alternative to -mt-tb.cgi, which is easier to remember:

Add -trackback to your query, this pulls up the old results.

My homepage used to rank #3 for the main phrase I target, now it is nowhere. I am going to try to de-optimize the page a little and see what happens.

shoi

11-25-2003, 05:10 AM

same here
we have PR6
newcomers with zero PR, and zero inward links, and so-so content, but with adwords leapfrogged us.

salubritas

11-25-2003, 05:29 AM

I think AdWords is a red herring here - I use AdWords and it has not prevented me from disappearing from search results.

I believe Google when they say AdWords and search results are two completely separate things.

rlrouse

11-25-2003, 06:39 AM

If buying AdWords campaigns got a site to the top of the SERPS, the first page of the SERPS for any keyword would simply be a copy of the AdWords listing to the right. This would make Google look silly and unprofessional.

Here's a simple test:

Search for any 10 keywords of your choosing. Look for each of the AdWords advertisers that come up on the right in the regular search results. How many of those advertisers come up in the top 10 of the SERPS? Not many would be my guess.

achronister

11-25-2003, 10:11 AM

Jan,

Regarding your fall in placement, travel industry keywords may be one of the competetive filters Google has started using that was mentioned earlier. It could be the reason all travel sites have fallen.

Just a theory and my 2 cents.

Aaron

Xcalabers

11-25-2003, 10:31 AM

Here's something a little off topic that just occurred to me. What if I write a short script to search google for my targeted key words and have the script "click" the top placed adword on the right.

Then I stick the script in a loop with a counter of about 100,000. Would all the advertising money drain out of my competitor accounts and I could then post my own adword with position number 1?

salubritas

11-25-2003, 10:47 AM

Xcalabers, ouch!

Google (apparently) are very good at catching AdWords scripts, by the way.

But if the script works can you send it to my site and generate some extra revenue from my AdSense ads? :)

Cheers

thecrane

11-25-2003, 10:57 AM

This google debocle is driving me mad. 2 weeks ago my website http://www.logogolfproducts.com had a page rank of 1 out of 10 and we had 6 backlinks. Our main search term was "logo golf balls" and we were #12...our 2 main competitors were numbers 1 and 2. As of yesterday my page rank jumped to 4 out of 10 yet no backlinks went up, although I have TONS out there yet to be indexed. I thought maybe Google had crawled my site with some new updates I had made but they still have the old version cached. I just don't get it?

But the weirdest thing is my 2 main competitors fell off the face of the earth in "logo golf balls" and I went up. Yet today I am not even listed in the top 1000. It is like this is changing by the hour.

When will the madness stop so my hair can start to grow back?

shoi

11-25-2003, 11:23 AM

If buying AdWords campaigns got a site to the top of the SERPS, the first page of the SERPS for any keyword would simply be a copy of the AdWords listing to the right. This would make Google look silly and unprofessional.

I follow your logic and I would like to think so - perhaps more likely some individual working for the company gave them a little boost.
I know my industry; I had never heard of these people, then their new ad banner shows up (banner across the top, rather than adword) and within a few weeks they come up number one. Pagerank ZERO. Inward links ZERO. Information content minimal, just product pix and prices. There just is no proper explanation I ever heard.

janeth

11-25-2003, 11:58 AM

Hi shoi,
What is the name of the company and for which key words are they ranked?

Thanks

rlrouse

11-25-2003, 12:44 PM

There just is no proper explanation I ever heard.

Give us the URL of that site and we'll try to help you figure out what's going on. A little detective work may shed some light...

tnt

11-25-2003, 01:54 PM

I'm one of those that really took a hit with the new Google rankings. So naturally, I'm quite upset at the entire Google dominated SEO game and I can't wait for MS to gobble them up and make the monopoly official. Then the entire look of the web will be relegated to one common cluge of the GUI of the Explorer browser, MSN, and the ranking "content" of Google.

I've been a web designer for about six years, one of about ten million of course, and about two years ago I followed all the SEO rules and set up a new site at a new URL. After about a year and a half I wound up #2 on page one for "freelance web designers." I actually started to make a living, modest as it was, from my SEO positioning by picking up on those that wanted to hire a freelance designer to build their web site. And I was able to place many of my clients on page one for their category in a matter of months by guiding them through the old SEO "rules."

BUT, In the past two weeks I went from page one #2 ranking to PAGE 17. I have no idea what Google algorythims actually do, and none of the old school truisms seem to work. So basically, I'm out of business for the moment. I'll have to begin a new marketing approach and this time, hope I have enough in savings to keep my bills paid until I achieve some success, and I don't think I'll rely on the search engines. Too infinitely fickle and basically broken, IMHO.

For example, what if you've spent a ton of money to develop a flash site involving dozens of movie clips where content is basically vectored graphics instead of text content and/or text links? Or you're a photographer whose site consists mostly of jpegs, or a graphic designer whose site is mostly images? What if you have the hottest graphical splash page seen in months? What if you use DHTML, complex frames, or call multiple URL's in a matrix of frames, and keep your text content down to a minimun to satisfy clients that will click away in a heartbeat if you bore them? It might look and work beautifully, but Gogle will punish you.

Your site might be a World Class award winner in it's category, or choose to graphically represent your manufacturing or retailing firm in the most sophisticated way, or use streaming video that cost you a bundle to produce, and Google will rank you well below a clumsy site with red H1 tags and purple text over a yellow background simply because you LIE in your content about what a great flash [whatever], photographer, or graphic designer you claim to be, or about [whatever] you claim to sell, manufacture, give away, or offer.

You're not allowed to hide content or links for the purpose of design, even if they contain prefectly legitimate content, and meanwhile the Adult sites have already begun to use fake blogs to fool the unfoolable fool of a Googlebot. I've not only been hit by Jennifer's Blog and all the others at my newest URL, which is only weeks old, but while my link was up there for it's fifteen minutes of fame on one of those fake Adult blogs, a spider actually came by the blog and indexed it.

So it seems to me that Google has just single handedly moved back web design ten years in a single stroke, at least in terms of SEO and positioning. Understandably, from my point of view, I hope they choke on it. They've become just too clever for us all to keep up with.

So please forgive me if I'm just a bit under the weather at the moment and sound like a bitter cynic. I'm not a cynic. I'm just fed up with SEO, and especially with Google and their 70%+ dominance of the search engines and directories.

withouraloha

11-25-2003, 02:26 PM

Sorry for the blatant title use, but the fact remains...

my site has ranked #1 for all of our targeted keywords for over 2 years on google. Our secondary keywords we have always ranked in the top 10 for the past 2 years.

This month when google screwed up we are nowhere to be found, along with every one of our competitors who also ranked well. We were all replaced by a bunch of crap, that is totally irrelevant information, such as directories and newspaper clippings, a botany course, T-shirt sales, travel sites and other ridiculous things that have nothing to do with Hawaiian gifts, Hawaiian flowers, tropical flowers, Hawaiian leis or Hawaiian gift baskets. These are all product searches. People do not search for Hawaiian flowers because they are looking for T-shirts or a botany course. Geez.

The results that were all dropped have one thing in common, besides being the leaders in the industry for Hawaiian gift sales, we all used adwords. You used to get a listing of adwords, with the exact same companies listed in the regular google results.

Now, you get a listing of irrelevant crap with a listing of all of us in the adwords. People have to click on the adwords, since the results are SO crappy.

It will backfire though, because for all the extra money thay are making, I will not use them anymore for searches. I tried in vain for the past week to find everything from my cousin in Seattle to cheesecake and Kiln companies. Nothing relevant came up for any search. No one will use adwords if no one uses google. I had to go to the yahoo directory, which believe me is not easy.

I am assuming they will fix it, since there is a bigger prize over the Holiday advertising. They will loose their following.

janeth

11-25-2003, 03:23 PM

tnt

11-25-2003, 03:44 PM

Just a follow up for anyone really interested in this topic.

After being kicked from page one #2 to page 17 on Google, I visited some of the sites on page one that have replaced me. Many have NO keywords visible from the search category visible in the title, on the index page, or elsewhere. One of those with no keywords visible that ranked page one did have something I didn't. Massive link popularity.

I had about 300 to 500 links pointing to me, which took considerable time using old fashioned, honest techniques, contacting and trading relevant links. The site I'm talking about on page one that replaced me, just for reference, had 29,476 links pointing to them! And 29,450 or more (alright, I'm exagerating, but very, very little) were from BLOGS.

Using AlltheWeb I checked several of the blogs, and not one actually had a link visible. So they must be rotating, and somehow, it's only logical to guess that these blogs trade links dynamically, and by playing massive odds, expecting spiders to come along and occassionally index the page containing the temporary link. I'm not sure how yet, but that's the only logical conclusion I could personally come up with. No small web design firm like the one that replaced me has the resources to manually trade 29,476 links.

It also sheds light on why some of the Adult cam sites have begun to use totally FAKE blogs to display referrers. This is a topic that's been addressed elsewhere in this forum. Some are using mechanisms to display referrers like http://www.blogtricks.com/. But I'm still not sure how of if displaying referrers finally ends up displaying links back to your own site on other pages that ultimately get indexed.

That's an update, for anyone that might want to know.

salubritas

11-25-2003, 05:38 PM

But I'm still not sure how of if displaying referrers finally ends up displaying links back to your own site on other pages that ultimately get indexed.

I don't think displaying referrers does help the site but it explains to me why we have been getting hits with these fake referrers - by firing out millions of requests with fake referrers the scammers are bound to hit some sites who automatically display referrers, hey presto you have a new back link. The gamble is that the page will get spidered before the referrers are replaced - its the same principle as spam - just playing the odds.

Just remembered that there is a pattern to the fake referrer hits - you get one every few hours rather than many in a short time, which will increase the odds of getting a back link.

luvdavy

11-25-2003, 06:44 PM

We lost a lot of key words also. But we have never used adwords.
It is ruff but you have to always remember never put all your eggs in one basket. We have lost about 400 visitors a day and I hate it but it will not put us out of business or cause us to change what we are already doing.
We always knew that at any time Google could do something and we could be gone so we planned for that.
We will be back at the top of Google before the year is out but it is just another part of marketing our web site not the total part.
I think this is a lesson to be learned yes I'm upset at Google I will not use them to do any more searches but I do not want to see them gone. I just do not want them to be the only fish in the sea anymore.

I don't really think that "using Adwords" has any bearing on this new filter. What I DO think is that Google was able to analyze the Adwords to get all the highly advertised search phrases and get us all booted from them. Now we will have no choice but to purchase the Adwords or sink. So much for the "integrity" of Google that I have always believed in and touted to others. I'll bet Bill Gates is sitting back and smiling, too. Google's loss may be his gain. And unless this filter is removed, it will be well earned. At least Microsoft makes no secret of its paid search and marketing.
And don't you know all the directories are singing about happy days right now? They're upping their advertising prices and looking forward to a huge increase in revenue. Since only the directories and newspapers show now, our best bet is to pay the big bucks and get a huge ad on their homepage. I'd like to see Adwords totally boycotted, but of course that won't happen.

Jan

bbbuffalo

11-25-2003, 09:00 PM

What do I do now? I am a novice at this also, and have lazily enjoyed a top 3 ranking in google for quite some time for keywords Atlanta DJ

Now I am not even listed in the top 1000!

What do I do next?
Thanks
Neal Howard
http://www.atlantasbestdj.com

SearchEngineZ

11-25-2003, 11:51 PM

I think the problem Google is trying to fix is pages ranking higher than they deserve to, because of the weight given to them by reciprocal link text, internal link text, and keywords in URLs.

They still give each of these traditional keyword spots weight overall, because for non-commercial sites they improve search results.

But to filter out overly-optimized sites (that have done nothing worth penalizing) they have removed the weight from keywords in the links and URLS.

They seem to have used Google Adwords as a database of terms that are commercial. Why not? If someone bids on it, it's competitive. Hopefully they only included terms with multiple bids.

I'd be interested to hear of any search affected by the filter that does not have Adwords appearing.

My point is:

Google has not judged that the affected pages are spam!

Google has merely decided that most of them had been a higher ranking than they deserve. Not higher ranking than the webmaster's effort deserves, but higher ranking than sites better answering the web searchers needs. Keep in mind that web searchers are more likely to be seeking information than sales pitches.

The examples that have been brought to my attention are pages that the webmaster would be very happy about - due to how much money they have been making from a little easy SEO work. They need to realise that they were fortunate to have it good for so long, but now that Google has improved the results (from a searcher's point of view), the good times have ended.

------------------------

I think an earlier post qualifies as a typical case:

2 weeks ago my website http://www.logogolfproducts.com had a page rank of 1 out of 10 and we had 6 backlinks. Our main search term was "logo golf balls" and we were #12...our 2 main competitors were numbers 1 and 2. As of yesterday my page rank jumped to 4 out of 10 yet no backlinks went up, although I have TONS out there yet to be indexed. I thought maybe Google had crawled my site with some new updates I had made but they still have the old version cached. I just don't get it?

But the weirdest thing is my 2 main competitors fell off the face of the earth in "logo golf balls" and I went up. Yet today I am not even listed in the top 1000. It is like this is changing by the hour.

The most likely reason for why that site has dropped dramatically is because they offer a link exchange (against Google guidelines), and they ask for links to use the same text - text that includes the keywords they were ranking well for.

The purpose is obviously to affect the SERPS. The filter stops those links from having an affect on search ranking.

SearchEngineZ

11-26-2003, 12:01 AM

What do I do now? I am a novice at this also, and have lazily enjoyed a top 3 ranking in google for quite some time for keywords Atlanta DJ

Now I am not even listed in the top 1000!
http://www.atlantasbestdj.com

You have dropped because of reciprocal links.

Because the name of your site contains the keywords, as does your URL, reciprocal links are bound to include those keywords.

Reciprocal links are against Google guidelines, as they can artificially inflate ranking.

I like to believe that if they were one-way links, your ranking would not have been affected.

minstrel

11-26-2003, 12:37 AM

You have dropped because of reciprocal links. Because the name of your site contains the keywords, as does your URL, reciprocal links are bound to include those keywords.

Reciprocal links are against Google guidelines, as they can artificially inflate ranking.

I like to believe that if they were one-way links, your ranking would not have been affected.
I don't believe this is correct. Can you tell me what your conclusions are based on?

SearchEngineZ

11-26-2003, 12:48 AM

stitches

11-26-2003, 08:21 AM

I am new here and all my keyword rankings dropped along with my sales. I am the first to admit that I am a novice but I generate enough sales to pay all my bills. Now with this new Google update my hits have dropped along with my sales.

I joined this group because after reading a few 100 posts you all seem like nice people and try to help each other without flaming one another. So I am hoping that I can get some good advice from this group.

thecrane

11-26-2003, 08:33 AM

So what you are saying is that because I have the code on my links.php page that is against google rules and that is why we had the problems we did?

Or are you saying we were penalized because we link to the same sites that link to us?

At least Microsoft is up front with you before they bend you over...Google doesn't even supply you any lube!

rlrouse

11-26-2003, 08:46 AM

You have dropped because of reciprocal links.

I use reciprocal links heavily (with fixed link anchor text) with all of my client' sites, and except for 5 or 6 of them, all of them have increased in the rankings with this latest update and enjoy higher traffic.

These sites are in diverse industries and target a very wide variety of keywords so I doubt that Google has selectively devalued keywords.

I keep reading here and there about this big new reciprocal linking penalty, and I just don't see any evidence of it.

SearchEngineZ

11-26-2003, 08:57 AM

After seeing a fresh example of filter suffering, it seems to me that reciprocal linking is not a factor, but rather many links to a site that use the same text.

It's an easy way to find automated linking, but unfortunately the instance I saw was a site that only had links from Open Directory and its clones - all of which obviously had the same link text...

My latest thought is that it is all ratios and numbers. The suffering pages have:

- too many inbound links with the same text (a downside of having a URL and site name that include your main keywords)

-or-

- too many internal links pointing to your home page that have the keywords in the link

-or-

- too high a keyword density on the page. Whenever I see SEOs saying 5-20% I cringe. That just isn't natural. Once per paragraph feels better

achronister

11-26-2003, 09:16 AM

- too many inbound links with the same text (a downside of having a URL and site name that include your main keywords)

-or-

- too many internal links pointing to your home page that have the keywords in the link

-or-

- too high a keyword density on the page. Whenever I see SEOs saying 5-20% I cringe. That just isn't natural. Once per paragraph feels better

I have not seen any evidence of this in the sites I track. My competitors all have many inbound links with the same text, an irregular amount of keyword links pointing to their home page.

All of these sites have maintained their ranking. The only thing I have seen are sites ranking high when I can't figure out why for the life of me.

minstrel

11-26-2003, 10:59 AM

From looking at all the examples that have been affected by the filter, the common denominator is either keywords in internal links, or keywords in reciprocal links. Keywords in the URL might also be a factor. Google has been penalizing reciprocal links for years. Their guidelines explicitly state that they don't like them. The penalty used to be PR0.
I'm not sure how you're defining "reciprocal links" or "keywords" here but I know of no statements or practices by Google that would suggest reciprocal links are penalized, unless you are referring to so-called "link farms". Here's what Google does say:

Excerpt from Google Information for Webmasters (http://www.google.com/webmasters/guidelines.html)

- Offer a site map to your users with links that point to the important parts of your site. If the site map is larger than 100 or so links, you may want to break the site map into separate pages.
- Think about the words users would type to find your pages, and make sure that your site actually includes those words within it.
- Try to use text instead of images to display important names, content, or links. The Google crawler doesn't recognize text contained in images.
- Make sure that your TITLE and ALT tags are descriptive and accurate.
- Keep the links on a given page to a reasonable number (fewer than 100).
- Make use of the robots.txt file on your web server. This file tells crawlers which directories can or cannot be crawled. Make sure it's current for your site so that you don't accidentally block the Googlebot crawler. Visit robotstxt.org (http://www.robotstxt.org/wc/faq.html) for a FAQ answering questions regarding robots and how to control them when they visit your site.
- Make pages for users, not for search engines. Don't deceive your users, or present different content to search engines than you display to users.
- 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?"
- Don't participate in link schemes designed to increase your site's ranking or PageRank. In particular, avoid links to web spammers or "bad neighborhoods" on the web as your own ranking may be affected adversely by those links.
- Don't use unauthorized computer programs to submit pages, check rankings, etc. Such programs consume computing resources and violate our terms of service. Google does not recommend the use of products such as WebPosition Gold™ that send automatic or programmatic queries to Google.
- Avoid hidden text or hidden links.
- Don't employ cloaking or sneaky redirects.
- Don't send automated queries to Google.
- Don't load pages with irrelevant words.
- Don't create multiple pages, subdomains, or domains with substantially duplicate content.
- Avoid "doorway" pages created just for search engines, or other "cookie cutter" approaches such as affiliate programs with little or no original content.

tnt

11-26-2003, 12:08 PM

I confess, I'm having a tough time finding the rhyme or reason of it.

Some pages that have risen above me have 100 times more link pop than mine (probably thanks to blog abuse of hidden linking to referrer logs, and perhaps to the fact that Google bought Blogger and is said to be crawling Blogs virtually on a daily basis now rather than every 30 days or so for dot coms), while others have three times LESS. So link pop is not the absolute arbiter here. Some have virtually NO keywords from the search visible anywhere, while others have almost the same as mine. So title, description, even content keywords seem to be skewed. My original page had very few if any reciprocal links so reciprocal link penalization seems to have little to do with it. And I've never paid for AdWords. I never needed to because I came up above most of them anyway. (Maybe Google is trying to tell me they WANT me to start now.)

All in all, I'm having a heck of a time finding a pattern here. But the fact remains I went from page one, #2 position, to page 17 and from two or three form replies per week (translating to a job or two per month), to zero. Nada. No income. So naturally I'm a bit miffed at these changes, good or bad, fair or unfair. My bill collectors are unconcerned with Google.

But at any rate, here's a couple more little web gems regarding Google.

First, a very interesting page condemning Google's page ranking methodology and accusing them of deliberately zeroing competition: http://www.google-watch.org/pagerank.html

Second, just to show how screwed up Google's new ranking algo actually is, a recent page explaining that under their own new methodology even a search on Google for "search engine" returns Google at 21 while it returns AllTheWeb at 2: http://google.blogspace.com/archives/000983.html. I guess they figure they're not reall a search engine after all. Perhpas a potential sales portal for page positioning?

Go figure.

minstrel

11-26-2003, 12:34 PM

just to show how screwed up Google's new ranking algo actually is, a recent page explaining that under their own new methodology even a search on Google for "search engine" returns Google at 21 while it returns AllTheWeb at 2: http://google.blogspace.com/archives/000983.html.
LOL... that's "google.blogspace" though of course but still it might be worth emailing that bit to Google with the subject "Done tweaking yet?"...

kjohnson5576

11-26-2003, 01:51 PM

Thanks for all the help (see first page of this thread) I managed to move my site back up to a PR5 and also got many internal pages at a PR4 just doing the changing home page, internal Home Links, etc. Yesterday I checked some of my rankings and I was still not doing great, but better. Today is much better. I acutally reached #1 on a page I was ranked #5 on yesterday. Also, I might mention, Yesterday, #1-4 rankings each had a PR0 on the page in question.

Also, while cruising my rankings, I came across a code that I wondered if anyone knows what it does:

<html><script language="javascript" src="http://redirect1.vip.store.yahoo.com/cgi-bin/referadd?et=3fc39d93&r=http://www.google.com/search%3Fsourceid%3Dnavclient%26ie%3DUTF-8%26oe%3DUTF-8%26q%3Ddiscount%252Dleather%2Bjackets&catalog=onlinediscountmart"></script>

This was at the top of what appeared to be an affiliates page. What I don't understand (ok, none of it) but the why is google.com listed? Have they somehow managed to script their way into a top spot?

Really appreciate someone taking a look at the script and explaining it.

Kent