Hooray, I'm on Page 1! Oops, No I'm Not!

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  • SEO
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Google has a new feature called "Shuffle." And, no, this is not the Google Dance. With this new feature, if you click or reload the page, Google scoots your favorite sites, based on your web use history, to the top of Page 1.

I didn't know this until --

After spending about three weeks worth of free time backlinking and building content like crazy, I input my keywords into Google. I was elated to see my site on Page 1 for a bunch of competitive long tail keywords, as well as a really competitive main keyword that I had not been able to get into the top 300 for.

But the next time I ran the searches, my site was nowhere. Then it was on Page 1 again. This was like a Google Dance in doubletime. So it turns out that Google has this new Shuffle feature, which is supposedly designed to boost the sites with real content, and drive down the sites that are full of B.S. that no one wants to look at. Naturally, Google is rocketing my site to the top of my search results because I've been to it a bunch of times to work on it. As far as Google is concerned, it's my favorite site.

I ended up having to Google my site on my wife's computer in order to see what my true rankings were.

As far as my site, my on and off page SEO efforts have driven me from Page 20 for most of my long tails to Page 4, 5, 6, or 7. So I will still be building backlinks and content.

As far as this shuffle feature, I do not like it, because the last thing I want is the same 30 or 40 loyal viewers coming back over and over again to look at new content. Folks like that generally don't click on an Adsense ad.

I am guessing that if this feature stays in place for very long, this will be the death of autoblogs and microniche sites, because they will slip lower and lower in the rankings as a result of being shuffled out repeatedly. Not a problem for me, since I operate an authority site, but the competition in my niche with other authority sites is intense, and it is only going to get worse.
#hooray #oops #page

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