Google algo change today?

by 526 replies
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I am seeing massive drops on one of my sites across most terms. Is anyone else seeing big changes today?
#search engine optimization #algo #change #google #today
  • Yse I am too. It has just happened. I have lost a massive massive amount of rankings for my entire business. I am feeling borderline suicidal.
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    • Same. I feel really bad because I really worked hard and my sites are good quality.
    • I agree, i mentioned in another post i had actually lost some sites altogether!? This is Google asserting their dominance in an era of no Competition - You must do what we say

      Where's a good rival when you need one!? What about Facebook becoming a Search Engine!!
  • One of my best sites jut got hit today. So much for "Write good content" It was 100% niche focused. 100% custom content. Well written quality. No warnings from google and no explanation. Sites that are above it, a lot of them are crap.

    Oh well. Time to figure out what the new game is.
  • Same here. 100% unique, hand written. So much for trying to produce useful content. Google comes. Google judges. Google flips the table if it deems you unworthy.

    They have every right to do so, I can understand that. I'm just sick and tired of slaving on content 8-10 hours a day for beans to see it fall like that.

    Sometimes you just wonder if being straight-forward with your efforts pays off.
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    • Hold on to your hats, guys - this update smells really funny.

      I've lost all rankings to pages - they aren't even showing up at all, but I have a massive increase of rankings for tag and category pages.

      All that and I'm still on first page for my main keyword.

      Methinks this is another blip. Don't do anything rash - I wouldn't be surprised if it were sorted out by morning.
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    • "Reward High-Quality Sites"
      Ha Ha Ha.
      On one of the biggest keyword
      "Make Money Online" there is a blank wordpress page on the top 10 (#7 in USA). With ONLY 1 SINGLE WORD- Make.
      So the definition of 'High Quality site' is- It should be light weight, neat & clean (every empty thing can).
      Remove your all content, keep only in domain/sub domain/page name.
      & Title, off course- 'Make'
      P.S.- Latest this site is now #1 on above keyword.
      Follow New Rule ASAP.


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  • ugh...So we are back to "make money online" returning an empty page on the first page of serps? Doesn't give me a warm and fuzzy.....
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    • Lost all my page 1 rankings for the homepage due to the update. Though the interior pages are ranking still.

      I have noticed that my homepage rankings are swinging a lot, from 300 to 90 back to 200 - all within a couple of hours.

      This might be a glitch (hopefully).
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  • same here ....lost ranking for most of the words i was ranking for...but as someone else mentioned am still on page 1 of google for main keyword....before today i was rank #1, this morning #2, noon #4 and now #7..........all other words i was on page 1 for are gone....on page like 9 for the one....ugh....

    you really think this is a blip?

    lost 90% of traffic to my site...wow

    any more info??
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    • Now it looks like almost all of my sites were hit. HARD

      A few of the sites NEVER had any link building done ZERO. they were 2 of my original sites that i built before I new about links and never bothered to afterwords as by then I new enough to realize that the niches were not very good.

      I am deleting all my google analytics and webmaster tracking as the only thing I can think of at this point is google hit all the sites I OWNED. Related them to eachother and devalued all of them.
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  • ive not noticed any change to my sites. My newest adsense site which i built about a month ago continues to rise in the serps :-)

    i drastically try to improve my bounce rate and time on site on all of my new adsense sites now and it def helps in rankings

    paul
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    • Hey Paul,

      Can you tell us exactly what type of backlinking you were doing? Were you using spun content?
      Thanks
  • I need people to tell me its just a glitch. I feel completely terrible. I personally feel if G does not roll some of this back, that this may effect the economy. I'd say its the biggest change G has ever done.
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    • I agree, this really really sucks! I've been using google adwords since the site was launched, spending around $750 per month to drive traffic to the site. This was losing me money every month up until this month, which I was on track to turn a small profit. All that money wasted?!?!?!

      Come on google! Get rid of the crap sites, but don't trash the good sites trying to promote themselves against long standing fierce competition!!!
  • Is it confirmed that G has rolled a new update? Does this has anything to do with the recent killing of blog networks and penalizing sites?
  • Yup. All my 10 adsense authority sites got wacked. Had many page 1 rankings on each website. They are now between page 5 and nowhere.

    There are some individual pages that are still ranked on the bottom of page 1 and 2. And hey what a surprise. I never did any backlinks to them using spun content. All the other pages I was using spun content for backlinks for the past year or so.

    So thats probably what nuked my sites. Anyone else see that same pattern?
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    • Maybe they aren't finished with me yet, but I still have a couple keywords not impacted or only dropped a few spots, but I used the same SEO techniques with all my keywords. Not sure why 90% of my keywords aren't even ranked anymore but some are(a very small number) are still in the top 10.
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  • yeah this is bizarre...something seems wrong here....right?
  • i checked 10minuts ago, no change with my sites serp. same as before.
  • I'm thoroughly sick of Google.
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    • I agree! They have all the data they should need with google analytics installed, plus cookies every where tracking our every move. Can't they tell from all that data what sites give the best user experience? So what if we promote our sites through tools and other automated methods that may costs us money. How the hell is that any different that Coke spending money to promote themselves to your kids with ads on kid channels or even us paying google to post our links through adwords?!?!

      This is BS!
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  • im not sure what went on during the other algo roll outs because this is the first one that affected me....but does all this seem fishy?

    did this type of stuff happen during the other ones?
  • Very weird - My best Adsense site, went from page 1/1st place to second place and I have 17 pages of great content. Now number one spot for my keyword has one page, and it only has 10 links on the page, no content, only the keyword in the domain name and it's a .com where mine has the keyword in the domain name but a .org.

    Google is strange and I hope they will fix this.
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    • Google's ranking changes are a total roller coaster. They do this all the time and change the game entirely.

      Are you getting any visitors from the other larger search engines? See if SEObook still has their Rank Checker tool available and working. It might not be a bad idea to also pay some attention to getting ranked on other SE's and not just Google alone.
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    • That is nothing. I have 1000's of pages of content, a PR 5 site, and 11 years old site and now I am nowhere to be found. I am glad I do not get the majority of my business off G. This is beyond ridiculous. I do not even rank for my companies name without the .com now and I was #1 earlier today and have been for years. My Facebook page ranks #4 though. Pretty LOL if you ask me. This will obviously have to be tweaked. The results are nowhere close to being helpful to the G user.
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  • im not sure...but i am hoping to wake up tomorrow and be sitting pretty again....my rankings dropped yesterday evening....i got a solid 23 visitors today....sick
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    • Yep, it is definitely inconsistent. I used the same SEO process for all my keywords and most dropped, but I still have a #1 positioned keyword, and a small handful in the top 5 and 10. But most dropped 50+ positions or aren't even ranked anymore.

      Like I said, same site, different keywords going to different pages, but same on-page and off-page SEO technique.
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  • One of my website always got hit every time Panda comes but always back after couple of months and yes search engine is all about mystery and weirdness
  • Every single one of my sites found a major boost in the SERPS today, and the ones already at #1 are still there. Look's like my manual labor and white hat tactics are paying off. I do feel sorry for all that were hit by this but it's a wakeup call that automated SEO tactics and junk backlinks are only a temporary solutions.
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    • ive never used a single automation tool......as many others that got hit.......
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    • Not everyone that got hit today used black hat or had bad content. I have a wide variety of sites ranging from sites about my interests to sites about my work. Most fared well with very little change up or down.

      One site did get hit hard and for me it is the one I would have least expected.

      The site is about a legal claim against an insurance company. I am a Lawyer by trade and I put this site together a couple years ago to help people make this specific type of claim without needing to hire an Attorney.

      The content is 100% original and it clearly explains the claim and how to make it successfully. It was sitting at #5 for the main keyword and in the top 12 for several others. It is somewhere around page seven or lower now for all keywords. The first page now has sites relevant to the topic, but they are all sites looking to sell the information I was giving out for free.

      I was not asking for anything in return and did not even have my name or telephone number of my Firm on the site. I know that the user looking for this information has lost a valuable resource. BTW, most of my Adsense sites and Amazon sites remain where they were.

      The reason I write this is that a fair number of posts here seem to insinuate that if you got hit it is because you were doing bad things and deserved it. If you believe this, then you should drink the Google Kool Aid because you obviously believe that Google is perfect and can do no wrong.

      The truth is, that this update, like the one rolled out and reversed last week (or whatever that was) has hit some legitimate sites and has made some search results look downright stupid.
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  • 12 years old authority site in my niche just got smacked. I feel sad for that guy because he worked really hard to produce quality content (What G! Gloat about all the time) and now he is nowhere to be found and guess what? My crappy .info domain with low quality content (it was a an experiment project) is ranking at #2. I think someone at G! is high on weeds. Last week they messed up with "Parked Domain" penalty and now this huge mess. Loving it! :d
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  • Just remember, not every site thats hit will stay hit. Just like previous changes Google makes corrections and alterations to their initial algorithm to improve it.


    The shift to Google's algorithm is likely to affect, at least initially, some websites that aren't clearly violating its guidelines, according to a strategy paper for Web marketers released earlier this month by the search-engine marketing firm iProspect.

    "Based on experiences with Panda and virtually all large algorithm shifts, we do expect sites that don't appear to fit the description of the intended target to nevertheless be caught up in initial sweeps," the iProspect paper said. Panda was a significant change in Google's search algorithm, launched in February 2011, that also aimed to boost the rankings of high-quality sites.

    Google Begins Penalizing Search 'over-optimization' | PCWorld
  • So do we even know if this update is based on our onpage SEO or offpage SEO? Is it a particular type of site, content, backlink types, etc. that is being targetted?
  • About 50 of my websites tanked, most of them I had linked with spun content to High PR blog networks...they were also almost all EMD
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  • It looks like my sites went up with my competition falling off the map... seriously I'm so glad I dropped google in every sense. Ever since I dropped adsense and analytics my sites seem to stay more stable in the rankings.
  • Should we remove articles from the spun blog networks that point to our sites?
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  • What is everyones thoughts in interlinking ON site content? I feel that if your site has any obvious on-site SEO action going on it might look fishy to G? But this is just kind of a spur of the moment thought I've had.. Like overlapping content and lots of intersite anchoring, etc.. ?
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    • I have wondered about this lately...

      Everyone and their mom is talking about Over optimization blah blah blah...yet I've yet to see anyone define exactly what that means?
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  • Hello!

    I am a webmaster of Argentina. For here also suffered negative changes in the standings.

    Keyword Position 1 on google: currently not on google.

    It has happened with several sites.

    I hope this will not be here. I have hopes that Google will need to finish the update. I hope things improve.

    Greetings!
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    • I guess all we can do is speculate at this point. I've worked very hard for a year and a half on my site. All original content, all linked effectively (SEO'd but not overly SEO'd). I was finally ranking enough keywords to make a small amount of money but now, they are all gone. I lost a bunch at first, then G pinged off the rest one by one. I'm still hopeful they will come back, but have deleted analytics from my sites also because the three keywords that were getting the most clicks according to analytics were the first to get tossed. Hummm!

      Speculation of course, but there has to be more updates. I have a good site and what's in the top 10 right now are NOT good sites - and a few are not even related to the keywords.

      Sigh, I'm going to start looking for a J.O.B. now - so tired of working for nothing, seeing success for two months, then getting buried by some Algo update that doesn't make any sense. And no, I didn't do blackhat marketing, I have withstood all other updates so far, so it seems like I am doing something right!
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  • This is bad news, I have many sites of all kinds and this is affecting all of them all.. I was up until 3am UK time going over this, many good sites have gone and we are left with spam and directory listings?

    One of my clients sites took a bad blow 100% white hat with plently of unique informative content.. dropped from 1st to 12... being a local site this is terrible news.. whats in its place... yell.com?

    I am praying this is an update with a "MASSIVE" glitch, google folk if you are reading this please fix this... this update if not changed will be a business killer, we have enough to worry about in these bad econimic times.

    Please roll back this change....
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    • Same here. I run a security site in the midlands uk which I rely on for new business. I,ve been promoting it with some spun articles recently with good results only to find that last night I no longer ranked until I hit 6th or 12th page. The sites I sat against had very poorly designed pages in comparison with hardly any content for them. The only thing they had going for them was domain age and optimised on page keywords. Other than that they loaded incredibly slowly and looked rough and unprofessional. I feel like I have wasted a huge amount of my effort over the past 2 years building the front end to my business only to be arse ****ed by some back links that google consider spam. This flies in the face of their supposed focus on quality sites. Having some spammy links to a great looking and quality site should not be a litmus test of it's value. Come on google, this is bad judgement. You are going to cause massive trouble for businesses. This is the last thing we need during crap economic times. I shall have to go use my skills emptying bins if this one sticks. I'm sure everyone feels the same here.
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  • Wow...

    This is perhaps the hardest off-site SEO hit yet. I've had massive ranking drops for many of my sites. Looks like SEO has really changed history today.

    Funny thing is many spammy sites are still ranking. I've had sites not part of any blog networks or blackhat backlinking totally thrown out of their #1 rankings.

    This algo change, combined with the nearly white background text of the top 3 results now being PPC (drastically reducing organic clickthrough rates) is a sign that SEO as we know it, is dead.

    I hope this was an error on Google's part and some massive corrections are put into play soon. This update has not helped people looking for information.
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  • Google suck my ranking
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    • By now this site has like a hundred links from IM money make forums (relevant), because people like you link to it. There is not reason why this site shouldn't be number 1.
    • I agree - Google seems to have lost its mind! How can a blogspot site with no content rank number one for a highly competitive term like "make money online?" Perhaps people linking to it today has helped it out, but how did it get there in the first place???

      I'm not one to get angry quickly, and post the usual "Google Sucks" comments when things like this happen, but I have never had such massive rankings loss across so many of my sites before. I'm mystified.

      So much for following so-called whitehat site building/SEO methods, using 100% unique content on all pages, avoiding over-optimization, etc., etc., etc...

      I'm just hoping that this change will soon be reversed, because it certainly does look like a huge mistake on G's part. If it doesn't change soon, I'll be back here posting my own "Google Sucks" comments.
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    • Yes, In my search this is #1... Google is really weird in this update...
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    • before, if you sat at the SERP and clicked refresh... would the results change like they do? It's like they are randomized.

      i am not logged into gmail.
      i tried searching: 'make money online' and the gurucreation.com link changes from, "Real Ways..." to "Warning! Real Ways..." back and forth, but not always.
  • I'm going to chime in here too...there is definitely something wrong with Google rankings today!

    My main site has sat at #1 for main keyword for over a year, and today it dropped to #33! Several of my other keywords that have ranked on page 1, have dropped completely off SERPs, nowhere to be found!

    What gets me is that several of my crappy YouTube videos are outranking my site for nearly every keyword that my website used to rank for! This is true for most of my other sites as well.

    All of my content is 100% original, written by me or guest writers, and I've never used spun or duplicate content on any of my sites.

    WHAT'S GOING ON HERE GOOGLE???
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    • Ha ha, just check my ranking for keyword mentioned above, and it has now dropped to #36! That's a drop of 3 places in the last 20 minutes.

      Of course, my super crappy YouTube videos are ranking above it for the same keyword! Just ridiculous!
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  • 90+ % of my adsense sites have lost their top 3 positions.

    Handful of my affiliate sites have gone up. The other have again lost their rankings...

    There are tons of article directories and web 2.0 pages now ranking in top 10...

    it seems seo is dead and there are so many bad thoughts floating around my head...
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    • Haha, me too!
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  • I lost Whole Page Rank of my keyword and today is the worst day.......
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    • Sad thing is I am paying Google $800/month for adwords for the site the last 5 months that dropped and was going to make my first profit on it this month. Now the only way it will get traffic is to keep shelling out money to google for visitors!!

      Why is it ok to pay them to promote your site, but you can't do the same with others?

      Judge the site not the links!!!!
  • Here's for the "Post 24th April Algo Update Support Club (P24AAUS). Kind of catchy?

    I'm not one to complain, but seriously, I'm still mystified that Google would walk on their own principles. I don't know where to begin...
  • Got hit too....All of my website gone...I never used any automated link building techniques...All white hat and manual labor...

    Some of those sites where 5 years old...all gone....

    A buisness generating thousands of dollars a month now reduced to nothing....Wow

    The onlt website still standing is my Ecommerce store, it is in fact stronger than ever...
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    • Don't get too depressed. This is only one day so far. For all you know the results could re-shuffle and you might gain your lost rankings back.

      Don't panic. It's too early.
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  • This google algo change effects only english sites? I have non english sites and I noticed drop in rankings today for many domains.
  • This is exactly what's happened to me also. Keywords which were on page 1 are not even in the top 50 now.

    Traffic has dropped by around 50% yet there's still spammy blogger blogs, etc.. ranking high in the SERPs. What is going on?
  • This isnt good.

    All of my sites have been hit as well, and I implement strictly white hat techniques.

    What the ****?
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    • Hey "googlemac" Thanks for sharing another one of your simplistic, uninformed comments! :p

      As reported on this thread and several others, many people including me have seen drastic drops in rankings for their sites, for no apparent reason. This seems to be much more than the common "google dance" which most of us here are well familiar with.
  • Yea major changes on my sites too, some way up some way down. Yesterday we jumped up a ton and now we are gone for some, hold on to your hats, these next few days may be a roller coaster ride.
  • The article on google says the update will take a few days to implement could just be "dancing" I would let the results settle before you freak out too much.
  • time to change your criteria of preference,,,
    move to yahoo n bing
  • Just out of interest....

    ....how many of you have been using backlink "filters" to protect your money sites.

    IE - You build links to site A, site B, site C, etc, and all of these point back to your "money site?"

    The specific example (payday loan) given by Google (can be found in Bing, it's been de-indexed in Google) has links on site 1, that are cloacked and point at site 2, I *believe* that site 2 was then eventually being pointed to site 3, the money site.

    This might be the footprint.
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    • you try to say google still not so intelligent for link farms or spun content?
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  • Christ. I feel sick, honestly.

    Every single one of my sites are gone, and I dont use link building services!

    Surely this wont stay like this, will it???

    Out of interest, is anyone seeing an improvement in their positioning or is everyone getting spanked?
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    • I have been building new websites with no backlinks and they're doing very well. So is my main blog.

      Really, though, just take it easy. As long as your sites aren't deindexed, there's a chance they'll return to their former glory.

      What do all of your website have in common?
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    • No positive change for any of my sites yet. Yeah, I'm feeling sick too...this really sucks!

      lots of people are seeing dramatic rankings drops on their sites. Check the link to this thread to see what people are saying about this algo change:

      Blogger: Official Google Webmaster Central Blog - Post a Comment
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  • The only keyword i am still on page 1 for is my main KW (it is my static homepage/EMD),went from #1 to #6, which sadly brings me the least amount of traffic....all others KW i was on page 1 for and all other pages on my site..gone...im confused
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    • Ok, guys I thought I would share some insight. I was penalised 10+ months ago on my 2 main sites at the height of the whole panda thing. I assumed it was panda and couldn't possibly fathom how I could recover from an algo change as I truly believed my sites were of the highest quality. Anyway, 10+ months on I sent a reconsideration request 3 weeks ago after just changing themes on these sites and fixing some redirect issues. Minor fixes. Within 4 days I got a message telling me a manual penalty was revoked! All that time and it was a manual penalty lol.

      Anyway my point is this. These sites had been returned to partial rankings for the last few weeks and as of last night they have dropped for all terms. I had not done anything since they recovered, nothing at all, they are intact, as they were when manually reviewed.

      WTF is google thinking then with this latest algo update? I feel reasurred that the algo isn't complete yet, well I am hoping, and many sites will come back. It seems too drastic of a change and none of it makes sense. What is worrying is that eccomerce sites in my opinion seem to not be effected. Even the smallest of sales pages consisting of 10-15 pages of products have gained or stayed as they were. P.s My sites that were effected were review sites on weight loss products monetised by adsense and affiliate products.
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  • Ive got a keyword here that went from pos 2 to pos 682
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    • It seems that my reputable, long-term E-commerce business has completely tanked (nowhere to be found for any terms) I had been ranking first page for 20+ terms for probably over a year.

      The funny thing is that I have a couple of blogs that I created many months ago that maybe have 1-2 articles, "extreme" on-page keyword optimization, and backlink blasts, and these sites have gained in the serp.


      My #1 Competitor that has nearly 10x as many backlinks as me, mostly pure spam (blog comments, profiles, edu, anchor text heavy) is still holding strong.



      Summary:
      Legitimate business with huge following/customer base tanks, crappy blogs with almost no content that I forgot about gained.


      I'm sure I can still get by based on the high percentage of loyal/regular customers I get but the business growth has been driven highly by organic traffic. This is not good and I really feel for people who have been affected to a greater degree than myself.
    • For what it's worth.....I only had 2 of my sites slapped out of 10 (all my sites are/were on the 1st page of Google for multiple kw). All of them get their links from the same service (I'm lazy..). The 2 sites that were slapped have anchor text links (and the anchors are crappy....I was in a hurry) on the home page that go to sub pages where the other 8 do not. This is the only difference I see between the sites.

      As I read the sentences on the 2 sites where anchors were placed, well, grammatically speaking, they are a bit off.

      ......and I wonder about the examples that G gave about spammy links for the update yesterday. It clearly shows anchors that are not grammatically correct ON THE SITE ITSELF.

      Anyway....my two cents....

      Slap (no punn intended)
  • Yes this happened to me too! I lose many ranks which i had from months!
  • Google trying to find a way to push there own products like blogspot and also PPC?
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    • I was making money for google! I was spending on adwords to bring people to my site and earning through adsense, which google took a big chunk of. It was a win-win for them!
  • This update makes no sense. I had one site that was on page 1 for 3 years, I created only a few backlinks probably 3 years ago to article directories. It had many articles ranked on page one which I created no backlinks to, they where also on page one for several years they are now all gone. I even had authority sites linking to my site because I did reviews of their software products and they linked to those reviews from their site. The site actually had very few backlinks 30 maybe and most of them done naturally. Doesn't make any sense.
  • Lol. This update is so random. Out of 3 Websites, 2 lost rankings and 1 is now ranking pretty good for many terms! oO
  • Is anyone seeing IMPROVEMENTS????????
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  • Im noticing a trend here. I would like to know if others are seeing this as well....

    Pages that are now ranked well include...

    1. Plenty of social widgets.
    2. Deeper pages (pages in the serps are much deeper onsite) eg somesite.com/category/something/keyword.html
    3. A lot of user comments. Plenty of articles with lots of comments.
    4. Categories (usually in the side menu)
    5. No ads
    6. Phone numbers and emails??? Weird (maybe thats just what Im seeing here)

    What about you guys?
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    • OMG! This is so true! Some of them...

      Deeper Pages: In Germany now someone is ranking #1 for the term make money online with a url like that..

      daosdijo.com/topsites/1000/online/income/money/earn/online/internet/extraincome

      The website has categories on the side. But 0 content, Just some images and 20 outgoing links.
      What is wrong with google?
    • One of my only sites not affected was a 5 month old site. Low backlink count but some high pr backlinks.
      It has no comments.
      No Likes or google plus one.
      does have some backlinks from social sites.
      No spinning of content.
  • yep one of my squidoo lens moved up
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    • Yeah Im seeing squidoo lenses here as well. One of them is ABSOLUTELY STUFFED WITH KEYWORDS.

    • Though I still believe SEO still works, I'm moving more towards "social engine" based marketing not search engines. Testing out the concept with my new site.
  • I too as many others have been hit this morning. By this time of day I usually have 200-300 unique views, and I have a total of 4 between my 10 best sites.

    I have CTR theme on 4 of those sites and those sites have definitely been hit.

    But I have also been hit on sites that don't use the CTR theme.

    With all the prime examples of total bull crap SERP results I too think this may just be temporary.

    lots of crappy search result examples here

    http://jlforums.com/search-engine-optimization/major-google-update-(april-24th)/
  • LOL. All sites with google analytics and in webmaster tools dropped. Those using "Getclicky" haven't been touched. I don't think social signals have anything to do with it, my site has over 9000 Likes and many quality comments daily. If I am being honest it appears that backlinks made from spamming spun content out there may have a part in this, as these links show up in webmaster tools. Yes, you are gonna say if that the case then bla bla bla could do this, but only connection I could find. And no, I didn't make these links, I payed an SEO company to post unique articles to directories. I guess unique means it has to be truly UNIQUE lol. Where is the nearest bridge?
    • [ 1 ] Thanks
    • [1] reply
  • my site uses getclicky.......but i also have analytics....
  • Banned
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  • I am monitoring some pretty competitive keywords in the web hosting industry, and all I can say that there is a huge shift in the positioning of many sites that used to rank very well.
  • Just checkout the #1 site for the key word: (As on 25th April)
    One blank blogspot.com site at the top with no content or pages.
    Absolute quality site. Hahahahahahah!
    Has Google become insane?
    For almost all keywords YouTube & blogspot.com mostly on first page. Google is just wanting to make huge money!!!!!!!!
    • [ 1 ] Thanks
  • Still seeing loads of good sites rank below spam, I do hope google is going to fix this. This has to be the worst update ever..... if it has not got a name I would call it...

    "The Reaper"
  • LOL - search for "social networks" "social networking sites" etc - where's facebook?

    Search for "online auction" or "online auctions" - where's eBay?

    LOL they've either:

    a) really cocked this up majorly
    b) are deliberately sticking naff results up to try & catch bing with their trousers down (copying results)
    c) are rolling out a series of changes over a number of days, with us having to wait until the whole update is done to see the finshed article.
    • [1] reply
    • That is quite astounding, maybe mr Cutts has been offered more money by the other team? maybe this is his farewell gesture?
  • Yep "The reaper" just about sums it up, I hope the Google folk realize what they have done and fix it. I too have white hat sites which are taking a dive, I totally agree with dealing with link spam but this is ridiculous.

    How long until we start seeing the sale of link cannons aimed at competitor sites? this could be the start of an out and out war when the desperation kicks in.
    I say to Google .... With great power comes great responsibilty. "Please" think about the consequences of your algorithm change, there are hundreds of thousands of people who's incomes you are now taking away.
    • [ 1 ] Thanks
  • Wow. This update is complete sh*t. I'm sorry but......what just happened!?
  • Banned
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  • Pretty much the only site of mine that was not affected is my local SEO business website that targets keyword such as "city SEO" and "SEO city". I'm still ranking #1 for both of those terms and I used the same backlink techniques as my other adsense sites. So I'm thinking now that it might not have anything to do with backlinks, but onpage factors. Also my clients's sites were not affected at all either and those used the same backlink techniques as well. So I don't know what to think right now.
  • I was starting to think there was a Google update today...
    least im know on my own for this one, Remember when building links - now use link diversity, and make it more natural.

    damn Google!
  • Why would you target optimization of Title, H1 and anchor text, when 99.99% of people building websites have been optimizing that way? You're not going to separate wheat from chaff very well by doing that. I'm sorry but every legit webmaster uses that technique.
    • [1] reply
    • So do all the illegitimate ones too.
      • [1] reply
  • So yesterday and last night I noticed huge rankings drops for my sites and clients sites across the board. Losing several hundred spots on many keywords. However I am seeing a big bounce back today for many sites and keywords jumping several hundred spots up. I think we need to give this a few days wait, for it to settle before coming to any real conclusions.
  • It looks like some of my websites were affected and some were not. Of those that were hit, in some cases a few keywords are still ranking while others have dropped off the search results entirely. This will obviously take some time to shake out.
  • Google gone Crazy, Really Super CRAZY!!!
    • [ 1 ] Thanks
  • From a guy on my forum that says he used to work at Google:

    For what it's worth.
    • [ 9 ] Thanks
    • [3] replies
    • My 30+ sites with Adsense have made a grand total of 68 cents today! Maybe I'll crack a dollar in earnings before the day is done!
      • [2] replies
    • Hopefully this pans out and we get back to the old SERPs again soon.
    • A massive DUH on that one. Any idiot with a computer can tell that what Google thought was being rolled out is NOT what is in fact live and rolled out.

      I bet they revert back to the old algo and put this update back into testing mode for a re-take in May or June.

      I'm just glad none of our client websites have been negatively affected by this. Must be doing something right...
  • What about your Alexa rankings?
    Mine has dropped over 100K.
  • Banned
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  • My site went from #1 to #550, completely off google. Pretty pissed & depressed about this. Hopefully this gets corrected soon.

    Odd thing is, the sites that Ive been developing and are only around page 3 currently, didn't move at all in the serps



  • profitmonarchs.com/get-fit-using-these-simple-and-easy-methods/

    Open this post and click on the first anchor text "pay day loan"....You will be redirected to

    checkintocash.com which is still ranking high on Google for "pay day loan" keyword.

    They must be laughing hard on google.
    • [ 3 ] Thanks
    • [1] reply

    • Hahahaha. I'm laughing. I find it hilarious when multi-billion dollar companies embarrass themselves. Tough to laugh if the changes are making you lose money, but still.... HAHAHAHAHA
  • I'd say keep calm and carry on...there's nothing any of us can do at the moment to change anything because nobody has a clue what Google are up to.
    I had a site with around 50 keywords ranking on the 1st page of Google now all around the 300/400 mark, the 1st pages now have been replaced by you tube and daily motion videos and a couple of internal forum pages with a mention of the keyword and usually Amazon taking anywhere between 2 and 4 of the top places. All the sites that I was in competition with have been wiped as well!
    My crappy sniper sites that I built last year and have neglected are all ranking 1st page!
    Either Google haven't finished what they set out to achieve yet and the SERPS will reach some sort of equilibrium or they will have to revert back, if not they will be a laughing stock
  • Everyone keeps saying stuff like "I have 100% unique content...my website is better than others that are now ranked higher!".

    I guarantee just about every single site that got hit used some sort of link building strategy. I think people have actually convinced themselves that it's ok to build links artificially when it clearly is NOT.
    • [1] reply
    • So, what do you propose there BabyGotBackLinks, a "build-it-and-they-will-come" strategy, where you do no link building of any kind, and expect people to just magically visit your site because it is so great? This seems to be a very naive and unrealistic expectation.

      Is it even possible not to "build links artificially," and expect to get any organic traffic? I say this because link building is nearly unavoidable these days if you spend any amount of effort trying to get traffic to your site.

      For example, if you have done any of the following things even once, then you are guilty of "building links artificially."

      1. Submit an article to EzineArticles or other article directories.
      2. Submit your site URL to a website directory
      3. Make a blog comment or guest post with a link back to your site
      4. Participate in any forum with a signature link.
      5. Make social media posts, such as Tweets, Facebook, LinkedIn, Pinterest etc., with a link back to your site
      6. Submit your site's RSS feed to aggregators
      7. Register on any site where you need to put in a website URL.
      8. Bookmarking
      9. Submit a press release about your site.
      10. Upload a video to Youtube with a URL in the description
      11. Upload a PDF (with just one URL link) to a document sharing site.

      All of these would be considered "building links artificially" as you are doing something other than putting content on your own site. According to you, all of these things would not be O.K.

      What is O.K, in your opinion?
      • [ 1 ] Thanks
  • Woke up this morning all happy and cheerful to find 2 of my sites have vanished from google?the were both ranked on page 1 and now they are gone.i have checked to make sure i have,nt been deindexed and i have,nt.im still on page 1 in yahoo and bing...If i had a cat i would kick it.
  • i have a site which was sitting on page 1 for over 400 days for over 10 highly searched keywords... today... its around page 20-30
  • DAMN THIS ****. I lost rankings for all my major sites though some of my smaller sites went up. GOOGLE- THIS IS WAR NOW. I've basically lost tons of revenue on all my authority sites.
  • A few people are now posting in the webmaster central blog about a poor guy who has commited suicide because of this, the chaps business was on the edge and this totally destroyed it overnight.

    Very sad indeed...

    This is hitting people harder than Google realize
    • [2] replies
    • There seems to be some weirdness with this update.

      For instance, I have a page, where I have a subpage on rentals. So, my main page is "keywords" and my subpage is "keywords rentals". What strange is that my page "keywords" page has dropped of the map, but "keywords rentals" is now on page 3 for "keywords". The "Keywords rentals" page is still #1 for "keywords rentals", so the whole site has definitely not been penalized.

      That's definitely wonky. Why is my subpage ranking for my keywords over my main page? Why has the main page vanished into oblivion, but the subpage is still flying high? Weird.
    • Are you serious? Can you share a link please...
      • [2] replies
  • Seems sites from years ago who done no seo are replacing the ones who have. Opens up possibilities to rank for seemingly impossible keywords.
  • Hey look! It's Google's action plan for controlling the internet.

    Step 1 - Kill all SEO companies by devaluing any links from articles and blogs.
    Step 2 - Laugh hysterically as SEO companies lose clients due to drop in rankings.
    Step 3 - Encourage website owners to request reconsideration for their decline in rank.
    Step 4 - Decline the reconsideration request and point them to Adwords as a solution.
    Step 5 - Watch as site owners flock to Google adwords and pay loads of cash!
    (mwahahaha)

    Just sayin'. I'm one of those that's really taking a hit and I run a legitimate business. Guess I'll be laying off employees and finding a job if this doesn't turn around soon.
  • OMG I am so glad I'm not on my own. One of my sites has been link 1 or 2 page 1 for about 2 years for all my keywords. Today 2 dropped out totally and others have dropped over 50 places or so Gutted. All 100% unique content too, and all totally niche related.
    • [1] reply
    • You're definitely not alone, many people have experienced drastic ranking reductions today on their sites, including me. Been feeling kinda sick about this all day long...
  • I'm not suffering personally but in my niche there is a new-kid-on-the-block with sites that are 2% content and 98% in-your-face-SEO - they're ranking mighty well!
  • okie...we need to change the strategy again...

    here we go again~arg
  • Everybody.. dont panic!! This change is basically going through all sites backlinks and discounting anything that is crapspun/nonrelated.. all sites then have to be reranked based on the final results. So in the meantime, a humongous 'google dance' is occurring.. kind of like taking a neatly stacked deck of playing cards, throwing said deck up in the air, going thru and taking out the 'jokers', and restacking the deck again. Your sites might even improve as a result.. stay tuned..
    • [2] replies
    • Arright, I'll monitor this spam site as a thermometer of crap in the SERPS!
      • [2] replies
    • I think the silver lining in this Massacre is that Google is finally revealing its evil agenda for all and sundry.

      The only surprise to me is that most people who got hit (still) think Google is only out to make the web a better place, when that is far from the truth.

      The main purpose of this update/massacre is simply - To nuke most internet marketers (because internet marketers are the ones actively getting links). It does not matter quality site/non quality site.

      Google hates Internet Marketing with a passion and supports Big Business/Govt. It's so obvious; it is literally right in your face.
      • [ 1 ] Thanks
      • [1] reply
  • "Great user experience"
    "High quality content"

    Type in "share trading" in Google.com and check this ****ty site out that is currently ranked 4th.

    Share Dealing | compare share trading accounts - moneysupermarket UK

    HORRIBLE!
  • Somebody wake me up please, this really is a horrible nightmare!
  • I thought I was alone in this... but honestly it does not feel any better...

    My main site and 2 main keywords stayed in the top 3 spots but I lost ranking from about 10 other smaller keywords.. fortunately they only accounted for 5% of my traffic... my second site was dropeed from page one to oblivian.. can't even find it in the top 100 pages of Google.. My third site stayed on page one unchanged... This is the weirdest algorithm change yet... When Panda came out it did not affect any of my sites... this one stings a bit.. it is kind of a scary thing having your whole livelihood tied up with one company like this.... not sure what you can do.... if I had to pay for advertising it would be like $400 a day to get the exposure I was getting.. who can afford that?

    There is a crappy site that has moved above me for one main keyword that just looks terrible..

    I do not employ any black hat schemes or link exchange pyramids... I don't pay for links... We simply build backlinks in blogs, forums, submit relevant articles, etc... really am not getting this at all.. I have felt sick to my stomach since about 4pm yesterday..

    Oh yeah my site gets re-indexed 2 to 3 times a day so Google seems to like it... really not sure why I have been punished...

    Geesh....
  • Just thought of this- didn't even put two and two together. NONE of my sites that had no AdSense on them were hit yesterday- the sites that were all had it... maybe a coincidence... but 30 sites stayed same or moved up, and 5 that didn't had Adsense... (I mainly do strictly Amazon)
    • [1] reply
    • I don't have any adsense on my site or any google analytics stuff. My site is a job site for one particular job in a particular niche and has been hit hard. Normally we get 30 applicants a day (which for our niche is normal as it's quite unique) but now we're just getting 1 Really screwing us up and I've really made sure it was serious quality stuff on there. No black hat either. All white hat. Perhaps it's time to go do the darkside?
  • heads up: the site I have that tanked on the 24th seems to be back now. It's had more unique visitors in the last 5 hours than on the 24th and 25th combined. It also came back in serps. Not to where it was, but I'll take a bottom of the first page.

    For what it's worth.
    • [2] replies
    • I've had my worst day in years. Adsense earning today at an appalling $1.43 for all of my 30+ sites.

      One of my sites that held a #1 position for 6 different keywords for more than a year straight, has now gone to #29 ranking or worse. Can't understand how my site could dominate the SERPs for these keywords for so many months, only to have them virtually disappear today.

      I hope things improve soon...
    • Where did the site tanked before coming back to bottom of page 1?
      • [2] replies
  • You know, as an ex government employee, if something like this happened in our IT dept, we'd be ORDERED to ROLLBACK, immediately.
    • [1] reply
    • Banned
      I dont get it either although I do understand why my Dutch site got slapped. I used English content on blog networks with "obvious" Dutch keywords in it. And that was one of the things this update was exactly about (as Matt himself wrote that on his blog with examples).
  • Google is the Boss. They want everyone to pay with their Ads. They love the the big companies. Nothing we can do about it.
  • Here you go. Try these in google.com

    confidence training for dogs

    pos 5

    oct99

    TRIPOD PAGE FROM 1999!!! Look at the page title - "oct99" its the DATE of publication.

    how to breed goldfish

    pos 9

    How To Breed Goldfish

    Another crappy blogspot blog ranking.

    diet plans for men

    pos 8

    Diet Plans for Men

    This one is just horrible.

    how to speak japenese

    pos 9

    Learn to speak Japanese, Japanese lessons, plus hiragana and katakana talking page!

    Stuffed with ads. Reminds of the old infoseek days.

    mathematics training

    I was searching in google.com and got an indian result?

    the page timed out and i got this error "504 Gateway Time-out"

    pos 7

    http://www.math.iitb.ac.in/atm/
    • [ 4 ] Thanks
    • [1] reply
    • I'm hooked on these dang examples. You can't help but laugh.

      I do rather wish I was this site ranking #3 for "vacuum cleaner reviews" (which gets 40,500 EXACT searches a month!): vacuumcleanerreviews101 DOT org

      Which, if I'm reading this right, was just created on March 16, 2012...

      Almost makes you wish the algo stayed like this. I could build sites like that with my eyes closed. (And check out that backlink profile.)
      • [2] replies
  • Google in Australia for Cooking Schools and the 1st position you get is a an ATM
    (Cash Machine)

    Insane
    Google is broken
  • The other strange thing I'm seeing is that the tiny bit of long tail traffic I have retained to my .com site is from google.co.uk, India and Germany - I'm not getting anything back from the USA
  • But something has to take the top 10 positions. So when Google eradicates the high quality sites about breeding goldfish because they are commercial intent and have been optimised to rank well, what's left? Crappy sites that are poorly built, poorly written and haven't been optimised.

    Let's face it, who really is going to create a site about breeding goldfish if it isn't for commercial intent? Maybe someone who really is interested in the subject (I'm assuming this keyword does have search volume??), but probably someone who doesn't know how to build a website effectively, write effectively and certainly someone who doesn't know how to optimise a site for users and SEO for the SERPS.

    So what are we left with? Probably the very types of sites we see dominating the SERPS today.

    Well done for levelling the playing field Goggle, I'm sure this is what your users really want.
  • Is this a penalty or just a temporary loss of rankings? Is there a chance these sites can come back or is it better to just start new sites?
  • I see there has been no change :-( I was expecting some sort of shuffle :-( Gonna go have a nice cup of tetley tea, put on jeremy kyle then figure out a way to get my income back.
  • Im seeing a bit of moment on one of my sites. Up to pos 58 from 993. Was at pos 1.

    Interestingly, the backlink count for this site went from 30,000 to 6. WTF?

    By the way, that vacuum cleaner site is ****en horrible.
    • [1] reply
    • Man I don't know what's going on with Google. Keywords that I have ranked at no. 1 for years I suddenly drop off completely or a few pages down. A couple of my websites don't even rank No. 1 for their website name any more! I also created a blog to rank for a keyword I've been trying to rank for a long time now. I created the blog last week and its suddenly at No. 1 for that keyword. Its a brand new site, hardly as any content and barely any backlinks. We're also seeing so many other crap sites show up on the first page. This better be temporary because Google has completely broken their results.
  • No real change in my site traffic, except some older sites are down. Earnings were poor yesterday, but that might just be a bad day.

    I don't do much link building. Go figure.
  • Please quit saying build quality content, and a friendly user experience!

    Check this out!

    This is a total failure if I have ever seen one!

    Look at these results for "bread machine reviews":

    #5 breadmachinereviews.tripod.com
    #6 breadmachineratings.wikispaces.com
    #7 topbreadmakersonline.weebly.com
    #8 bestbreadmachines.webs.com
    #11 breadxmachine.insanejournal.com
    #12 breadmachinesx.wordpress.com/2011/12/14/selecting-a-bread-machine/
    #13 bestbreadmachines.tumblr.com
    #17 xbreadmachine.livejournal.com/

    This was actually #10 youtube.com/watch?v=9wJLkEJSwjE - Not even a video anymore..

    And they are all pointing to this site:

    breadmachinereviewsx.com

    Which is on page 2 at #16

    This guy owns the first two pages with CRAP content....

    So much for quality content with good user experience right..
    • [ 1 ] Thanks
  • hi,
    Google changed their algorithm. i also lost my site ranking,now what we will do for improving ranking.
    • [1] reply
    • Build quality content and continue to do quality backlinking, get links from multiple places, post good quality comments, participate in related forums, get press releases, do web2.0 linking, bookmarks, add social linking to your site such as facebook, twitter, youtube, and google plus.

      Just keep pluging away...

      Dennis
  • Banned
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  • Well google have made an intresting mess of things. Both me and my major competitors websites have dropped of the face of the web. sure my website isn't perfect but the only reason I can see me loosing rankings is due to 'over-optimisation' of keywords but even that is kinda pushing it for a explination. Funny that now my site is ranking for "related-Keywords" and both my facebook page and twitter account are now ranking on first page for a major keyword I've never even targetted with my main site.
    Though the #1 spot is now taken by a trashy single image flash website (haven't seen on of them in a while)
  • weebly, tripod, blogspot...????

    WTF?
    • Banned
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      • [1] reply
  • I am hoping to see some good news. Does anyone see positive results with any of your sites yet?
  • I've only been doing IM properly for 2 months, have 5 sites, all of which have plummeted off the face of the Earth. Thinking of just packing this in, looks like I missed the glory years big time. What are we supposed to do? Just hang in there and see what happens? How long do we give it?
    • [1] reply
    • my site - 1 year old - 125 primary keywords - about 100 dropped in serp beyond our galaxy i think - while my competitiors with their 10-15 year old site still occupy page one for the best phrase.

      if needed, can i move my .com site to the same name .net domain
      example >>> www. dog. com
      site to
      example >>> www. dog .net
      and start over by removing all unique on page text
      or will i have to totally revise my site's html as well ????

      >> question to matt cutts - can a domain/website recover in a reasonable amount of time - or will violating websites be punished for ever?
  • Wait for re-crawl guys!
    This mess can't and won't stay for long.
  • Is it possible to get exact detailed algorithm formula to watch? Is it the top secret?
    Has somebody ever seen this algorytm in own eyes?

    1. Backlinks .... % influence?
    2. Content .... % influence?
    3. Visitors .... % influence?
    4. Site age .... % influence?
    5. Other factors ...% influence?
  • I have to say im on both ends on this, i have had trouble with my main site loosingranking for a lot of keywords. I even have a thread up about it and i guess that thread is the same as this reason.

    On the other hand. One of my first tryout websites that i made (im new in IM) that the only backlinking i have done is 30 bookmarking submissions when i started the page 2 months ago. And with a total of 4 pages of content. that havent got ANY impression for over a month.

    Yesterday this site was on Page 1 for the 2 main KW.

    I have no monitizing on this site what so ever because i had kinda let the site die, since in my opinion had made some big mistakes.
  • Hint:
    Matt Cutts answers to his Boss - his boss answers to shareholders - Shareholders want more money - Google makes more money from ads - deep inside Google doesn't give a cr*p about your site.
    • [1] reply
    • If Google is so desperate to make as much money from ads as possible, surely they would be bumping up every adsense site out there??
      • [1] reply
  • I think this change is still in motion - several of the KW's i watch now return different results in the serps than earlier today.
    One thing i notice is discussion forums are doing well in rankings - weird....
  • [DELETED]
  • That vacuum cleaner review site is just awful.

    He would be making a good chunk of money if he put together a better website.

    40,500 exact searches a month and he puts up some Adsense.............
  • on 25th April 2012 . google Panda is updated and dropped the rank
  • So, i assume google has made no statements, or released any info as of yet about this change, besides the pre change info they put out???

    Do a high % of people think the change is still in progress, because i have not noticed any shuffling in my niche for about 24 hrs now.......
  • Even I dont find any major changes
  • haha. Most of my sites are fine. They don'r have any quality content either
  • Hi Everyone,

    I really did not know about Google change his alog.

    I also check my website ranking this is very useful news for me.

    Thanks for sharing such a great information.

    Regards
    Mike
  • Banned
    [DELETED]
    • [1] reply
    • What are you talking about? :confused:

      Please stop with all of your banal comments and say something useful once in a while.
      • [ 1 ] Thanks
  • My site Website Purchase Agreement was ranked first for the search term "website purchase agreement"

    It got slammed back to page 83.

    Yet this piece of copied **** below, which is a DIRECT COPY OF MY SITE, is currently ranked page 3.

    website purchase agreement sales contract

    WTF????????????????
  • i think Google did not do any update .. just ROLLBACK to the 90's where people built site via tripod .. this is sick!
    • [1] reply
    • I'm seeing some of mine creeping back up again. Although one keyword still not in the top 100 but hopefully it's straightening itself out. Did a weebly site too to test it out and in the process of doing some links towards that. Strange though, some of my higher PR sites which I use for articles are on first page google for some of my keyword whereas before they were no where. This update is weird.
  • Yes, 3.5 Google Panda Update (rumoured)
    • [1] reply
    • My sites are dead too....sites which were not spam but niche related and updated with content yet Google does what ever he wishes.

      This calls for one solution guys - Google is no longer as it was years ago, it is not friendly or rational, so if you (and me too) want to succeed online I say it's time to find out traffic sources than Google...that is my answer and solution to these crazy changes and shifts every time.
  • For all those people complaining about spammy crappy sites now filling many of the top spots in their niches, most of the tops spots in my niches are now filled by .gov, .edu and big brand sites :-(
  • These 4 sites are ranked first page for financial related terms.

    » 10 Ways to Simplify Your Budget :zenhabits

    Organise Your Finances

    http://www.scientificpsychic.com/alpha/money.html

    Organizing Made Fun: How I organize my finances

    This is APPAULING.

    I seriously feel like Ive gone back in time to 1996.
  • Banned
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  • Still lost my 2 main sites but have noticed sub-domains from the 2 sites are now starting to appear in searches?
    • [1] reply
    • Haha, I did a search on Google for "search engine" and here are the top 5 results:

      #1 Dogpile.com
      #2 en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Web_search_engine
      #3 AltaVista.com
      #4 DuckDuckGo.com
      #5 TheSearchEngineList.com

      DogPile is #1 and AltaVista is #3? Seriously???

      Looks like we've gone back in time to the 90's. And some people say there is no such thing as a time machine :p

      I think I'll watch Back To The Future this weekend...
      • [1] reply
  • Banned
    [DELETED]
    • [1] reply
    • So here's something funny with this update. One of my main keywords which I ranked no. 1 for years and brought in a ton of traffic, fell off completely.

      But guess what sites are now ranking high for this keyword? Websites talking about my site. Yup, sites now have pages ranking that do nothing but 'review' my company yet my site is nowhere to be seen. That doesn't even make sense.
      • [1] reply
  • so our thoughts on this are basically.....no on knows. I have heard a lot people on other boards saying they think backlinks in general have been de valued and PR doesn't matter anymore....what does this leave us?
    • [1] reply
    • Come on, it's ridiculous to speculate at this point, it's only been a few days, and people are already making conclusions on backlinking and PR? Get real.

  • Dust seems to have settled in my niche...with no movements in the last 24hrs i dont know what to think......
  • if G wants searchers to get the best results, G should be evaluating websites for content and useability, and should punish only those sites that have neither AND invest in BLs to waste searchers time. Just because a site has loads of crappy BLs does not by itself mean the site is not of high value.
    • [ 1 ] Thanks
  • huh...I got # 6 from # 490 on Google.co.uk - I did not used only well written articles blast on web 2.0, article directories and press releases along with some bookmarks and story submissions. But, I know this huge jump may be due to current changes on Google... However, I am not going to stop, going to keep working....

    On the other hand, totally lost positions of my client's site on Google.fr where too I had applied almost same methods, but still working on it without stopping...

    So, I cannot conclude about backlinks strategy at this point....
  • I think the weirdest part of all of this is that I am getting entirely different results when doing a google search from firefox vs chrome, safari, IE

    I am getting the same results from everything but firefox.
    • [1] reply

    • I'm getting the same result from all of the browsers I've tried. Results seem to be consistent across browsers on my end...
      • [1] reply
  • I can confirm like so many others, my sites have been hit HARD. I have lost roughly 65-70% of my traffic, and although I've certainly used link building techniques such as BMR for most of these sites, the content itself is original and of value to people searching for the keywords they rank for (or used to at least).

    And in one niche where I have multiple websites that were getting 500+ visitors each daily and were each at least a year old, the only website that experienced a boost (by double) was one in the same niche that is only a month old. Go figure.

    Anyways, it sucks, but first off, I'm confident they will come back. I've had sites nosedive for whatever reason and then comeback in full force before. Not because of an algo change, but because ultimately I believe Google does want websites with good content ranking well.

    In this case, we have TONS of examples of search results on the frontpage that I can guarantee you Google doesn't want there. I am fully confident that this change isn't something that they just launched and it's done with right away. There will be readjustments and rankings will continue to fluctuate. I believe if your website has original, non-spammy content that can be useful to people, it will eventually come back. And let's hope it comes back even stronger.

    In the meantime, although it will be a temporary hit to my income, I'm gonna find the positive in this and work on new things. I've grown a little complacent since my sites were doing quite well, so now's a time to try new things and start using some domains I've had parked for a while to test out new projects.

    Try to stay calm and see the positive in this. Believe me, everytime I refresh my traffic stats it makes me sick, but I also believe that at the end of the day there are some very smart people working at Google and it doesn't take a rocket scientist to see this isn't the end result they wanted.
  • My site is/was an authority site ranked #1 for several keywords in its niche. It contains high quality original content , has plenty of "natural" links. The pages that have tanked are the ones that I used link building on. I used a variety of link building campaigns including BMR . I think I was guilty off using over optimised anchor text.

    About a month ago I got the GWT warning for unnatural links detected and my rankings went from page 1 #1 to mid-bottom of page 1.

    2 days ago these same pages dissapeared from the serps althogether but pages with no link building done to them are still ranking as high as ever.
    The question is, is this a penalty , a re-ranking or what and do I build more de-optimised links to these pages or not.

    So confused by what's happening right now and like others I'm not sure what is the best way to proceed.

    Any advice would be gratefully received.
    • [1] reply
    • It's too early to strategize - give it a week and see what happens. You could do all kinds of things just to realize that it was just a re-ranking by Google.

      Let's remember the hundreds of millions sites out there - Google can't possibly rank everything properly within a day or so. G has data centers around the world - it takes time for them to talk to each other, analyze data, and rank.
  • I just can't believe something.com simply ranked on the first page as search term of "something".

    They are nothing else but "something".

    If you search for "blank", blank.org appears on the #1 spot, the site indeed blank page.


    Bing is a useful tool somehow, don't just stay in the Google box.
  • I had noticed that few guys are confirming that they are still up and they are saying that they did not get links using anchor text much, they had used URL links as well as spread anchor text for many keywords.... - May be we should note this point...!!!
  • Quick question - I know Google sent out a warning to webmasters about "cloaking" - I assume this doesn't apply to affiliate links that are cloaked with something like pretty links does it?
    • [1] reply
  • I'm trying to stop being concerned for the moment considered the absolute chaos the SERPS are in right now. There are many examples posted here already. I'm just going to try to relax and hope things move around a bit.
    • [1] reply
  • Someone in another thread said that this Penguin update won't be rolled back apart from maybe some minor tweaks. Is this correct?
  • I, myself got hit pretty hard.I was ranking #1 for my keywords and then suddenly my site disappeared and then came back on 15th position. With a little backlinking and etc I managed to bring it on page 5. it's there for about 3 days now and no change. I am doing all I can, and i hope I see some improvement again. I already lost alot of money and time as the site was being quite succesful.
  • I still can't believe negative SEO is a reality. WTF are google doing? Where does Matt Cutts live?
  • Hey things have settled in my niche QUITE NICELY I might add.

    Page 3 & 4 have 3 websites from the same 2%-content, 98%-SEO network from the same guy. But pages 1 & 2 are splendid.
    • [2] replies
    • tweetattacks.com blank page still number one for 'twitter marketing software'
      • [1] reply
    • Time to relax and let the smoke settle. If the sites do not bounce back, we must pick ourselves up and move in a different direction. I always felt funny about google controlling my traffic/revenue.
  • All mine and all of my clients sites have been relegated to beyond 100 ranking?
    The F...,,, is going on? My clients are screaming!!
  • People, could you please do me a favor? Either before or after screaming and panicking, and saying "wtf happened to my site", etc etc, can you please say whether you:

    a. used autospun or poorly spun content as part of your linkbuilding campaigns
    b. had backinks within non-related content, with or without spun content

    This would help narrow things down a whole lot. Thanks!
    • [1] reply
    • a. used autospun or poorly spun content as part of your linkbuilding campaigns


      b. had backinks within non-related content, with or without spun content

      • [1] reply
  • Jinx,

    Keep in mind, that the very example that Google provided with a spun article and obviously junk back link - the site that link points to is #2 for that very competitive term.

    "autospun content" is NOT the culprit behind this change.
  • Jinx,

    I believe just about all of my sites were impacted. Some were never SEO'd and others were SEO'd with just ezine and others were SEO'd with 2-3 articles per week to SYA. G slipped and I think we just need to relax and regroup with a new plan. Even if they come back, I do not like the fact knowing that G could slip again and again and again. I do not want to wonder daily if my sites are still ranked. This is a good time to look for other opportunities. A bunch of SEO companies have reach out to me and I simply chuckle. I question all/any SEO techniques at this point. G seems to penalize for white hat SEO. I have given some thought to going black hat at this point - nothing to loose.
  • Ok, well we're all in agreement that there is some disorganization going on right now, but thinking about it, like I said in another post, everybody is going thru a major 'google dance', like throwing a neatly stacked deck of cards up in the air, taking out the 'jokers', and restacking the deck. It's way too early, especially for sites like WebProNews, to be reporting this as an absolute certainty that this is the way it is now and forever. Let the dust settle! Besides, on the bright side, if G did mess up, well, who here has ever coded before? Have you not ever said "oops" and fixed it? So, bright side is, G is in the end human, as vulnerable and prone to mistakes as we are, which also means that they arent something to be so afraid of after all
  • A solid lesson in never relying on a search engine for most of your business, I've had my share of battle scars with google and that is why im stepping away from caring what that search engine really does.
    • [1] reply
    • I agree 150%

      If we want our business to succeed we need to find other traffic sources and never rely only on one source, especially when this source changes its algorithm or does whatever it wants every couple of months....time to move along and think of new things.
    • [DELETED]
  • Guys Cheer up for Every Algorithm There is an Anti , We are the Most Powerful We Create Demand and Supply it is our Field Not Google's, Other players out there , They Can't Go Against the Wind .

    Good Step toward Quality though , it is my play ground :-)

    Besides there is a Ton of Other Traffic sources Personaly Google is Second on my List ,

    Socialmedia is the best then google will pickup the Viral Effect.
  • Yes I agree, diversify your traffic sources.

    Personally I believe google messed up big time.
    On one search term that I had the #1 spot for, I've been replaced by a page from tumblr with 3 instances of duplicate content, all from Web 2.0 sites.
    I don't see how this improves user experience.

    I've always been slow to look for alternative traffic sources, but there's nothing like a swift kick in the ass like this to get me moving.
    I feel for those whose livelyhood is at stake, my income has slowed to a trickle but I consider this a wake up call.
    • [1] reply
    • Banned
      Same is the case with my keyword. In last week, I have seen around 4 sites to be in top 10 are not there ( I was at 2). Instead the guy sitting on top 1 has just a 1 page spam website. Google got to do something about it.
  • Banned
    I have this site build around 40 days ago. Was page 1 for my 6 main keywords and was getting around 200 visitors daily. Now those pages are no where to be seen. I haven't done any bad SEO.

    I hope its just a glitch. I had worked pretty hard for this and it was making me a decent amount of money. This is really sick and sometimes very irritating and frustrating.

    Did anyone got their rankings back till now?
    • [1] reply
    • one of my authority site is improving in position.

      while the 2 other minisites are down about 3-4 position from earlier. from no.2 to no.7 now.

      ive been optimizing these websites with difrent way on each other..

      my authority site that use the white hat strategy getting improve in position day by day.

      my other 2 website that use massive backlink strategi are decrease in position ESPECIALLY in this month! HELL!!
  • if only we can tell every internet users to ban Google and use Bing instead.. Google is broken, who would want to use anything that's broken? they should fix this asap!
  • It's weird because I have some sites that the rankings stayed the same or went up. One of my sites got hit hard for all the keyword terms and it was a PR2 site with quality content for 4 years...
  • yes, the shocking update ever.
  • O MY GOODNESS.... something called like "Penguin" webspam algorithm update on April 24th, 2012.... Same date that 2 of my main sites got hit hard, really hard . Goodbye $4000/month for me, have to rebuild again but it is just so confusing at the moment.

    SEO is dead, Negative SEO, OverOptimization, Really Really Private High PR Blog Network Works [for how long?].... :confused:

    But still, I do not hate google at all. I've already predicted that something like this would happen, just don't know when. That is why I can't let go of my offline job. But I am sure that I will still be in the game, might take many months again to rebuild...:p

    OUcchhh!!!!!!!
  • same here.. looks like I'll be pinned down on my day job office desk for a few more years
  • Hope guys over at Microsoft could see this in the other forum (or here):

    "..(users) will never leave the Google pasture until someone leads them by the hand. Of course if Microsoft would wakeup and put together some clever television ads pointing out the stupidity of Googles results, the sheep would have a hand to take hold of and walk them in a new direction."
  • Too many bad results, very cheap content websites are ranking high. This is a blunder of an update from Google. Hope they are reading into many of these forums, who are seriously questioning about the quality of results.
  • Hey if you feel you have been wrongly pushed down the SERP, you can contact Google directly. The head of the webspam team (aka Matt Cutts) tweeted: "If you know a site affected by algo update that you don't think should be affected, we made a form to provide feedback. goo.gl/nt3Pz"
    • [1] reply
    • This is good in theory. Unfortunately, they will receive too many submissions to take action. Like other posters on this thread, it is time to move forward. Bing and Yahoo continue to send a small amount of traffic to my sites and for that I am thankful.
  • Google didn't update the algorithm as mentioned by aygabtu because last month only Google announced that it will change the algorithm until 2012 end.
  • Still no improvement in the rankings. Still garbage sites ranking high on 1st page for good keywords.

    Someone in another thread said that this Penguin update has been rolled out and won't change apart from minor changes yet others are saying the update will take many days to be fully rolled out. Which is it?
    • [1] reply
    • It's over. Matt Cutts has already asked for feedback, meaning the main shuffling is done.

      However, Google updates all kinds of factors every day so you might still see shuffling.
  • Oh my gosh, so this is it? My sites were hit hard, no idea what to do now.
    • [1] reply
    • Some people on this forum say you need to buy a new domain if your site was effected by Penguin.

      I don't understand that at all. If this update is about "over optimization" then why can't you alter your on page optimization then wait for the bot to recrawl your site??
      • [1] reply
  • Always lost with Google, any idea which good traffic can get.
    • [1] reply
    • Just checked on Yahoo finance and the Google stock in pre-trading seems to be going down a bit, we'll see as soon as the NYSE opens in 15 minutes or so
      • [1] reply
  • Here is funny video that my lighten things up a bit - It did for me.

    Hitler's Reaction to the recent Google update (04-24-2012) - YouTube
    • [ 1 ] Thanks
    • [2] replies
    • Ha Ha!!!! excellent - thanks Janet - i just copied the link into Webmaster Central forum ...hope Matt Cutss enjoys it!

      cheers

      Marty


    • Hehe, Same video I posted in this thread on post #279. I guess you didn't see it...
  • So, my questions:

    1. Are backlinks good or bad thing nowadays?
    2. What backlinks are ideal reputation?
    3. Have quality backlinks some positive influence on new algorithm, or absolutely worthless?
  • Guys, take a step back and ask yourself if your site *really* is useful. Be honest with yourself.

    What have you all been doing this week? Writing 1, 10, 1000 articles?

    This week I've been building a membership site. In time it will get its own natural links. This is the way forward.
    • [ 1 ] Thanks
    • [1] reply
    • The stock market has opened half an hour ago and Google is down more than 3 points... ans they say in the stock market: The path of least resistance is down
  • Fact is that many of the penalized sites didn't have truly useful content, but many did. And it doesn't look like Google is returning results that are "more" useful at this point.

    Do I believe that the sites that have been knocked down will automatically bounce back?

    No. But I don't believe that this was a "set it and forget it" approach. Adjustments are still occurring and I believe that my affected sites will creep back up if I keep building original content built for visitors and NOT search engines.

    As for backlinking approaches, the key is not to spam, but that doesn't mean that you can't write articles that have backlinks. If a webmaster publishes an article as a way to get traffic, this isn't a bad thing and I really don't believe they will be "punished"

    Now if you blast the same article to 2,000 websites in a matter of a couple of days, then yeah....that's spammy.

    Anyways, it can be hard to stay upbeat. I've gone from $300 a day to $60ish. It's brutal, but since I'm not and wasn't using blackhat techniques, I have faith that it will turn around. Might take a couple weeks or a couple of months, but I definitely don't think that it's done and over with.
  • Hi,

    I want to say from the beginning I am not an expert in SEO or anything, and this Google update put my site ( which was at #5 a few days ago) right up to #1. Not a garbage site, but SEO optimized, review site, waiting for going up in serps one place at a time.

    Great for me, right?

    Well, not that great!

    Something is going on, probably the "shuffle" is not over, because for a weird reason, my site gets 1-3 visitors, when it should be getting 30-40 /day for that keyword. I know, not big deal ( 30 visitors), but for me it is. This is the first site that I ever optimized and I worked hard on it ( even though it is based on a kw with less traffic - it should get about 800/month at #1).

    Is this normal for a site on #1? I am very disappointed. I can not even imagine how it feels to have your site rank going down like what you guys are going through right now, but if it helps, I believe it is only temporarily.

    The traffic at #1 is not what is supposed to be. Something is not right.

    And if you are thinking to tell me about changing my description , put in a call to action, all that stuff, it has been there when the site was at #7, #6, #5, and it brought more clicks than now when it is at #1.

    I am wondering now if it was worth all my time and work...

    Any idea of what's going on?
    Sites going down the serps, sites that go up get no traffic? How is that possible?
  • The key will be to 'spam' better - higher quality links - rankings come from quality links - forget about all this 'quality content' - Google is just a program - you need original content, thats all - plus quality links
  • I have several sites and the effect is all over the place. I've never used massive linking or excessive offsite SEO, though I usually do try to use anchor text rather than the URL.

    Mostly, my sites are unaffected as a whole but many of them have a few pages that have been knocked way down for their key words. Some of them have pages that have dropped off the first page but are still on the second or third page instead of dropping by hundreds of places or even completely disappearing.

    One site which has not seen a material drop in position in the SERPs still seems to be suffering a major decrease in visitors, in the range of a 50% or more drop.

    I am very confused and will have to wait to see how this all shakes out.
  • I have 3 sites, 1 that I have had for 60+ days, and another recently started. The 60+ day old one is my main one, the other two are ones that I try new things with before changing things. Anyways with the Google Algo this week, I have to say my site looks good. I have all unique content, thoroughly researched. Some posts have videos,all have relevant images. All 500-600 words. My main KW only became ranked 3 weeks ago, coming in at 180ish. Beginning of the week was at 97, next day 85, then shot to 47, later in the day back up to mid 80's. As of right now sits at 37. I also have several interior pages ranking in the 50-125 spots. They have all been more or less up and down, but no real changes.
    I know I am fairly new to the Google game, but my advice to everyone is sit back and just study the changes. We all knew "Panda" was coming. We all knew the SERP's would dance. It's dancing and the dust has to settle. As much as Google tries to screw with SEO, they must have a plan. They would not be giving irrelevant search results for fun. The dust has to settle.
    I am not going to do anything to my site for the next 7 days or so. I am going to watch the analytic's and see what is happening.It's the only way to play their game, learn and move forward.Good Luck to everyone!
  • [DELETED]
  • i noticed it and it really helped me as i moved up the serps for my target keywords.
  • Well I am in Great Company. I built a website from the scratch with lot of original content. I competed against the best and got the regional No1 ranking and a respectable Adsense earning. I never over optimized or used any automation. I did diversify my link building and never indulged in huge spammy blasts.

    Now the site which was in NO1 rank regionally is replaced by a inner link from a respectable newspaper site and I could see lots of youtube and other useless links in the top while I was put at 50 - 70. I am dancing.

    Hoping against the hope that things will get back to normal. What we must do to get things to normal?? Has the word come out? will we get back our rankings??
    • [1] reply
    • I made some on page adjustments and my sites are already returning. However, not to normal at least yet. Time to do more work to make Google better I suppose and with any luck I will get back to the top.
      • [3] replies
  • [DELETED]
    • [1] reply
    • Lee...

      I'd be willing to maybe step up but the problem with your proposal is that conversions are out of the control of the SEO. I could get you traffic but I can't make it convert. Why would I want to potentially waste time (and money) driving traffic to your site if your site doesn't convert?
      • [1] reply
  • Banned
    [DELETED]
    • [1] reply
    • Guys...

      Stop reading what you WANT and read what the actual words are.

      Matt Cutts said even if you report a site that shouldn't be ranking or quality sites that aren't ranking, it isn't going to change anything. He said this is an algorithm update, and manual exceptions will not be made. HOWEVER, he said he would pass the information along to the engineers to see how they can improve on the next update.

      It's funny... because only 3% of sites were supposed to be hit, but if you come on here or listen to the SEO community, it seems like 90% were hit.

      This is what Google wants.. to get rid of the manipulation.. now in a couple months everyone will feel all warm and fuzzy inside because they adapted and are back in good shape.

      It's an ongoing battle.
      • [1] reply
  • Even the Authority High PR sites with quality content and diversified links lost the rankings. We cannot predict at this stage What Google wanna do. So lets wait for some time.
  • There's still time to sell those $7 WSOs.
    • [1] reply
    • [DELETED]
    • Ha ha, yeah, maybe that's what some of us should start doing!


      Pretty frickin' funny, the whole video. I've had to watch it several times, it's kinda growing on me... :rolleyes:
  • my traffic is gone. Not even do any spamming post on that site. it is an online video site.. sad..
  • My site was hit hard on midnight of the 24th of April, I was having steady sales prior to that night and now it's pretty much drip dry.

    Google use backlinks not for the benefit of the searcher but for the benefit of the Google shareholder, think about it, they analyse all your websites and know exactly what your target keywords are from your back link portfolio and traffic stats, with all that info your a sitting duck, and with the power Google has, they can very easily work out who will sign up to Adwords on a major serps drop. If you don't give them any clues then they don't really know, hence all these dudes saying the best SEO tactic is doing no SEO, they're right!! as then google is unable to decide if you're a good candidate for their Penguin (Adwords Transferral Scheme) penalty they are running.

    I blame myself, not for the link building, but for not seeing the obvious dependency I had on Google. On my tax slip I'm classed as a 'sole trader' but in reality I'm an indirect employee of google.

    What doesn't entirely kill my business can only make it stronger and if I can survive business wise until I have zero dependancy on google and grow bigger without google then I will look back on this event and be thankful it took place.

    Google is a tired search engine these days, it doesn't really know where to turn next, they've even resorted to asking the general public to report their own appalling top of page 1 serps results back to them since this Penguin fiasco! Surely they have the ability to tidy up after themselves by now.
    • [1] reply
    • You do realize that with every algorithm update, there are just as many sites that go UP in rankings as there are that go down? Google isn't "punishing" anybody, they're simply trying to make the SERPs better (whether or not they're doing a good job of it is another question).
      • [1] reply
  • Strangely enough, my traffic appears to be the same.

    The big change however is the time onsite. Sites that were 5 mins average, are now less than one minute. Only thing I can put that down to is non relevant search queries.
  • DuckDuckGo FTW!!!
  • I have two Real Estate websites ranked page 1, and many KW in #1 position the last 6 years, contents are all 100% original, one of the KW was the most competitive in real estate with first 2 pages mostly affliates, yahoo real estate, zillow except myself (it has brought me millions of dollars in real estate commission! last few years )then few days ago seems like all my page 1 ranking went poof ala david copperfield guy

    My leads dried up almost overnight - from Riches to Rags - Welfare office here I come!
  • ROFL , torrent files ranking higher than exact match keyword domain with quality content. Christ, G fuc*ked up bigtime.

    Im also jumping on the Bing wagon, ive had it with G.
    • [ 1 ] Thanks
    • [1] reply
  • Updates in google's service sucks ..
  • I had a 700 page site getting 500+ views a day for years and that got wiped out with this update.

    Not that bothered though as something like this happened to me before a few years back and I learned my lesson... DIVERSIFY!

    I see a lot of you guys getting hit but most of you are thinking how to get your site/s ranked again. Yeah I understand that but this should be a massive sign telling you that you're putting all your eggs in one basket... Any business that does that is doomed for failure.

    Just sayin'

    James Scholes
    • [1] reply
    • I completely agree with you, James.

      Since Google Panda, I have moved away from SEO.

      Right now, all of my websites has been wiped out from page one and I don't care any more because I have diversified.

      For me, SEO is too risky because it is something I can't control.
      • [1] reply
  • Seriouly? it is today?
    I don't notice that point, my site just keeps in the same. Nothing happens there!
    • [1] reply
  • [DELETED]
    • [2] replies
    • Site looks good but the content is indifferent. There are thousands of sites exactly the same. You also have too many ads before I can actually read something.
      • [2] replies
    • Why is your content beneath the fold?

      So sites that don't have much content "above-the-fold" can be affected by this change. If you click on a website and the part of the website you see first either doesn't have a lot of visible content above-the-fold or dedicates a large fraction of the site's initial screen real estate to ads, that's not a very good user experience. Such sites may not rank as highly going forward.

      Matt Cutts
  • Google gmail change by this time. they offer free 10 GB by this time.
  • Banned
    [DELETED]
  • This is bizarre but you can't hate Google if you want to succeed in IM. I think from now, all webmasters should treat their websites as a professional business. focus more on quality content and build genuine backlinks.
    • [1] reply
    • I had 3 sites hit. I just took off a page that I believe was way over optimzied over 3.5 % I believe now down to under 2%.

      My girlfriends site disappeared and she was not over optimized though. Not sure what happened there. I had not touched it in a long time. I left it alone and watched it climb to number one just on the name and a few articles on the page.

      Her's is more of a consulting site for teaching men how to dress and my market comes from my dating site traffic but it was kinda cool to see her site at #1.

      My one dating site evaporated. So I guess I will have to de-optimize that site next week. My youtube videos have not been touched and still rank on page one for their key words.

      That seems to be the one thing I do well (videos on youtube).

      I am going to use videos to market for myself in the near future while my sites fight their way back up.
  • My site continues to hover in the upper 30's after spending the beginning of the week in the 90's and moving down. Now I am not a IM guru or know all that is going with this update, but a lot of people are up in arms about it. From my perspective it looks like this:

    The internet is a pool, Google Panda is the new Algo coming off the diving board. As it hits the water, the sites(pool water) gets all mixed up and lands everywhere. Thus everyone's sites are all over the place. As the water settles, the deep end will fill back to it spot from the water lost in the splash. In other words, the algo will continue to go through all the sites, probably starting at page 1, and start trashing sites that are not relevant, blank, old with no content. Over a period of weeks, the Algo will detect that the "aged" sites that are no longer updated are irrelevant and start moving those.

    This was a HUGE Algo change, from my understanding. Everything was jumbled up and IF your page/sites are relevant and have done the White Hat SEO, along with proper back-linking and provide great end user experiences, the Algo will put it in its rightful spot. If not, then the Panda found you out and its time to either revamp the site and start over, or scrap it.
    • [1] reply
    • Correction: Penguin is the new Google algo thats coming off the diving board.
  • Anyone who has a site that was affected, can you try this?

    Take a sentence from the index page of your site, put it in quotes and then search in Google for it.

    I did this for one site of mine that lost nearly all its Google traffic and the results show pages and pages of other sites, particularly blogspots and wordpress.com sites that have plagiarized my content. A couple of them even had a trojan on them, which was blocked by my anti virus software.

    I'm finding it really frustrating that a bunch of crappy thin sites with plagiarized content and viruses are ranking higher than my site with hundreds of pages of original content (or at least it was original before all these people copied it!).

    I've just gone and filed around 20 DMCA requests as a result to take down these evil plagiarizing sites. Grrrr

    Cheers,
    Suzanne
  • Have a look at changes to make to avoid over optimisation penalty. 6 Changes Every SEO Should Make BEFORE the Over-Optimization Penalty Hits - Whiteboard Friday | SEOmoz
  • Well, I think I'm going to bow out. I've been doing this for many years now. And I simply can't deal with the changes. There's no way to make a business designed to work for long run. And I'm not taking decades I'm talking a matter of 12-18 months.

    I'm bowing out. Best of luck to all of you.
  • To my human eyes I see a typical magazine layout. I don't like magazine layouts like this, so I would rank the site poorly if I were one of Google's human raters. To Google's uncaring robot eyes the above-the-fold area is either:
    • A large, empty space if Google doesn't process the CSS
    • A large image with no alt text or caption if Google processes the CSS

    Posts aren't much of an improvement. There's an ad, a line of text, and a large image just below the fold. The UX is very poor.
  • Banned
    I have a site with all original content, and proper structure, etc. etc. that Google always asks for. Was ranked high for many great keywords. Now the site is gone for the most part and replaces by crap sites for higher rankings.

    My non-love for Google just got a little deeper to say the least
    • [1] reply
    • I guess google will roll back.

      Do a google search for "quick loans" and check the bottom two results on page 1. They don't make any sense.
      • [1] reply
  • Yeh,i agree I had three sites that have completed vanished from the rankings, this is shocking and really terrible. But on the other hand I have many more sites that have been moved up in the rankings so I'm pretty happy about that. 50/50 really but I 'd like to know exactly what the other sites had done wrong!
    • [1] reply
    • Since I have nothing to loose with my previous sites, I'm thinking to use every possible black hat technique. If that does not work, I will black hat the crappy sites on the main page to bump them down. This has become an interesting game.

      In all seriousness, I agree with a previous poster. It is tough to setup any long term business model based on google. This might be a good time to bow out from google and move forward.

      BTW - whoever posted duckduckgo.com ... NICE! This is a great opportunity for another engine. I thought to create something similar. A search engine based on an open algorithm. I am certain it would have the backing from every major and not so major SEO company. What will it take to make this work? Traditional marketing - radio, TV, print, etc. I suspect most on this thread know the cost of traditional advertising, so the next logical question is - how do we fund the project? Traditional investors who see the potential of a new engine!
      • [1] reply
  • Banned
    I think it's time for me to create sites/products that are completely non-reliant on Google. First Adwords, now this. It's like building a business on top of a foundation of jello.
  • Banned
    Wouldn't the sites have bounced back by now, if they were going to? Or is it too soon?
    • [1] reply
    • I guess it's time to build new sites....I don't see my sites returning any time soon...
  • Im not sure what to do.do i build a new site with domain etc or stick with the old one.The old one has lost the front page but the subdomains are still ranking on page 2 and 3 .do i just change the front page or wait a while longer?
  • Banned
    I would move on from Google. You could rebuild and in 6 months the same thing might happen. Find other traffic sources.
    • [ 1 ] Thanks
    • [2] replies
    • Agreed. Google will change again and again and again. Unfortunately, they are changing for all the wrong reasons IMO. I also think about all the SEO companies that will loose their shirts. I have been approached by a handful for various reasons. Unfortunately, they offer little to no value at this point.

      There are no such things as white hat techniques anymore. It is worthless to SEO a site and have it wiped off the map during the next update. Site owners are far better off to do nothing.
    • [DELETED]
    • I dont rely completly on google ,i still have the number 1 spot on page 1 of yahoo,bing etc but google did bring in traffic and work
  • My site took a major hit as well. Wasnt "over-optimized". But what's weird is many of the smaller web 2.0 sites I created for back links (squidoo, zimbio, etc.) now outrank my main site!

    What has google done?
    • [2] replies
    • Seeing the same thing. My main site is wiped out almost completely, but the Hubpages I built for it (for backlinks) are still there and ranking well.

      Ridiculous.
    • I've found this evening that this has happened to me too - got 2 squidoo lenses that are now #1 and #4 for 2 keywords that are #68 for the main site. But I'm still dancing about. Yesterday I was near enough nowhere in Google Blog search, now I'm #1 for 6 keywords, so it's still bouncing around so don't give up hope yet.
  • my sites just bounced back up to where it was before the update. so that means they are still updating things. for the people that are thinking about ruining your sites with black hat seo just wait it out because google is still updating and you never know what could happen.
    • [1] reply
    • How far did you drop after the update and where are you ranking now? Is it your homepage for main keyword? Is it a EMD?. So you did nothing at all and your sites came back?
  • [DELETED]
    • [1] reply
    • I have never used Google analytics, ONLY used PIWIK and my sites got killed.
      • [ 1 ] Thanks
      • [1] reply
  • [DELETED]
    • [1] reply
    • This is an interesting thought. I have heard using analytics may cause problems but I quickly dismissed the concept. I have analytics on every site which lets G know all sorts of information. I thought by letting G know my extremely low bounce rates and lengthy time on sites would be a good thing. After giving this more thought, I am thinking to remove analytics from all sites and switching to another service. Now I think about it, what is G doing with all the information?
  • Google is update panda every days, they are just doing better and better search results
  • Not sure if this was already posted. (Sorry if it was already) but this is pretty good:






    NOTE: Taken from here.

    BTW, March of the Penguins was playing on TV today, but I just couldn't bear to watch it.
    • [ 2 ] Thanks
  • Instead of Penguin they should have called it Hyena.

    Google are certainly laughing at us lot...


    • [1] reply
    • For those of us in the US that are tired of whining.

      If you would like to hit the big G where it hurts. Take action!

      Fairsearch.org has a "take action" section that you can use to send a formal letter of concern to your senator.

      It is the most organized effort I've seen to date that is fighting google's monopoly on search.

      They have a very informative "what Google doesn't want you to know" section that you may want to checkout.
  • Didn't heard any drop from any of my client. Guys, create backlinks regularly and make it look natural. Always hire an expert. Best of luck.
  • [DELETED]
  • Guys,
    I've been on a black hat forum and there is some but very little consensus. One thing for sure, whether you only do white hat, black hat or some combo most people have taken a hit of some kind. Waiting to hear from some people who are trying specific things and will update in a week or so with the results. One thing for sure is that if you're completely relying on google for your main income, it would be like taking your entire 401k / IRA and putting it into only one kind of mutual fund or worse, all into one stock. you would not ever find a financial advisor who does not recommend diversification so why would it be any different here. Time to start thinking about other sources of traffic. As crazy as it sounds, I just signed up for some networking local events, putting up some ads in Craig's list for people who can locally promote my site at different events etc... it will be long, painful and may or may not pay off but think about it this way. Some of the best enterprises on the web were started, promoted and became househould names generating billions without ever using google as a main source of traffic.
    • [1] reply
    • I am all about a new NOT-for-profit search consortium with the sole focus of competing with Google and offering an alternative to Search, that will ultimately lead to a black Monday "noindex meta tag" for Google. The key is we need 1 billion websites on board. So we need to provide value first to them with a new unbiased search engine solution that searchers have already endorsed, show them metrics, and a value platform that proves we will provide more conversion/sales then google. At this moment, with 1 million legitimate small business webmasters going completely out of business because of this revenge-reactionary based algo update by Google on the very people that helped them get their start, we have some sway to convince. Bing sucks and they are Microsoft which are more power-hungry and greedy then Google, and Yahoo, well we all know they blow. We need SniperSearch for small business. This engine will not index any websites to the likes of Amazon or Ebay, or any brick and mortar business such as target, walmart etc... strictly small businesses (brick and mortar and online)

      This will take 5 years, and this is how it will work (open to suggestion, the Warrior Forum is a good place to do some firestarting):

      What we need to accomplish in phase 1:

      - a consortium of webmasters who can Truly prove they are working hard on their small business transparently for membership. This needs to be 10 million strong before rollout, eventually growing to 1+ billion legitimate website business owners and bloggers. A free membership, where we share ideas on what matters the most when ranking a website/small business for indexing and top ranking. Granted, this list of parameters will be totally subject to change and improvement that is solely based on our searcher/webmaster feedback on an on-going basis

      - we need to privately raise funds for a new search engine development, based on simple human moderated algorithms and the initial list we build from above.

      - a development team to build the engine's algorithm and a list of the multi-millions of sites that are requesting inclusion from our consortium. Build the crawler and also provide open metrics

      - mass social viral promotion through social network channels and diggs, reddits, etc... to promote it to searchers

      - a quality assurance team and customer support that we use as an avenue for feedback for both webmasters and searchers (absurd that Google doesn't have support), and act on their feedback to make sure all search results are optimized and empower our community with the knowledge that they can control their destiny in search by providing value and playing by the rules, which will NOT change in an instant, so they wake up in the morning, get their coffee, and say oh sh*t, i'm out of business.

      - Crawl Facebook, Linkedin, Twitter, etc for a list of sites to index, validate them through social actions and real communications with their social-base

      - Prepare a massive PR distribution to drop to raise hype and user interaction with our search

      - Really base SEO strategy for the engine on user experience, collect reviews from searchers, feedback at every corner and deliver a clean search result interface with more filter options and NO ADS anywhere distracting them from the best businesses under the search they have done. Maybe, we categorize the search results something like, Good, Better, Best or something... Let the searcher decide, by providing up to 30 results on the 1st page that they can filter

      - Mass email campaign to all participating webmasters about a black Monday "NoIndex meta tag drop" (our engine will not rely on this blockage, since it's the tool of a consortium with webmasters that approve of crawler access)

      - Create an openly competitive environment, but also one that endorses collaboration of mutually beneficial products/services (you sell shoes and socks, i sell shoes and socks, im way better at shoes, your way better at socks, lets do a JV, link to each other, announce that to search consortium and mutually help eachother in search, so i show up top for shoes, and you show up top for socks, and lets do business together, remove competition, replace with collaboration.

      That's what i got to start, i know this is quirky and outlandish, but it is time for an entity to rise up and challenge Google, as they continue to financially leverage their search for self-serving purposes, while destroying small businesses that are simply using a strategy that google originally used to start itself, dispersing and indexing unique content. Without Us, Google is nothing, who gave them the right originally to crawl all of our content, than subjectively choose what's worthy and what's not. Also, what remains now? Awful results, outdated blog posts, amazon (with awful panda-UNfriendly landing pages that do NOT provide a quality shopping experience) and ebay etc...

      This is not an impulsive reaction to the recent panda-penguin-polarbear-pterodactyl-deepthroat update which has destroyed search results for the searcher (which as we all know is Google's creed: to provide the best possible result for the searcher, complete FAIL), this is a proactive vision, which I will support and i have one question:

      WHO'S WITH ME?
      • [ 3 ] Thanks
      • [1] reply
  • Only the 'bad guys' have been affected lol, it's a shame for those who have unique content on their sites but still got hit because of poor link building ie. badly spun content...
  • Yes, Google did it again... Google made changes on 04/24 to its algorithms called Penguin.. .

    Copy of email below from Daniel Tan on changes:

    The new Google Penguin update went live on 24th April. This change was designed to
    punish pages that are "spamming Google". This includes pages that has little content,
    built in quantity merely to pass an anchor link, pages with keyword stuffing and
    cloaking that have always been bad and of course, hidden text, thin sites...the list goes on.

    Following this change, we see a sudden surge in "Negative SEO". Google is trying to
    punish sites from off-page side of the equation. That means, if someone were to build
    thousands of spam links to your site, you stand a chance to be punished.

    The demand of Negative SEO shot up right after Penguin's roll out. People started
    buying bad links to their competitors sites in an attempt to make Google punish them,
    and some did it successfully (scary eh!). My advice: Don't even try. What goes around
    comes around. You will never know how things will change in future!

    Hope it helps!
  • I haven't seen any recent changes,
    but I think that contextual link is best for this time.
  • [DELETED]
  • **** the penguin.

    Check out the duck

    DuckDuckGo
    • [3] replies

    • Great search engine. My sites rank extremely well in DuckDuckGo.com

      If more people start using this search engine I'll be rich in no time.
    • Fun! No ads, and useful as a basis for assessing how a site stands against its competition without (one assumes) any 'interpretation' - or is there? Surely Duck has to evaluate sites to compile a listing order. And so the dance starts again...

      It was interesting to compare G and Duck results for 'internet marketing'.
      • [2] replies
    • I tried out 'duckduckgo' for the key words 'TV repair Chicago' and the number one site was 'midway tv repair dot com'. Same as the Google result.

      The midway tv repair site has to total of 34 words on the whole site.

      So much for better content.

      Midway tv repair dot com does have a paid link coming from dexknows.

      So much for no paid links.
  • Duckduckgo actually yields great results.

    Oh, and there is no "page 1" results.

    The results just keep coming as you scroll.

    Much better, and more fairer for everyone.
    • [1] reply
    • I like DuckDuckGo. I love that there is no page one. I also love that I'm in position #3 for my keyword.

      I did a bunches of searches today and I found the results to be much more relevant. I've been getting some crazy and useless results on Google lately.
      • [1] reply
  • What can be done to come out of the sufferings ?
  • Banned
    [DELETED]
    • [1] reply
    • Paid link on Yahoo via PRWeb. Google needs to take down that backlinking network :rolleyes:
  • At the moment DuckDuckGo really provides much more relevant results than Google, does anyone know what kind of market share it has?
  • I guess it must be a coincidence, but the only 3 of my sites which weren't negatively effected by this update are not in Google Analytics, all my other sites are in Analytics. Two of these three sites actually improved in ranking.
  • I'm slowly beginning to see my rankings come back up I have moved from the 3rd and 4th page back to the 2nd and 3rd. Is anyone else seeing this with their authority sites?
    • [1] reply

    • Some of my sites are coming back up slooowly, others are still dancing.

      I have a mix of older sites and newer ones. Some with and some without Analytics on them.

      One I just started to build with only 1 article on it, no backlinks build yet, did not get hit at all. Was and is still on page 2.
  • my site have also been affected by the change
  • Italian funeral

    An Italian man was leaving a convenience store with his espresso when he noticed a most unusual Italian funeral procession approaching the nearby cemetery. A black hearse was followed by a second black hearse about 50 Feet behind the first one. Behind the second hearse was a solitary Italian man walking a dog on a leash. Behind him, a short distance back, were about 200 men walking single file.


    The man couldn’t stand the curiosity. He respectfully approached the Italian man walking the dog and said: “I am so sorry for your loss, and this may be a bad time to disturb you, but I’ve never seen a Italian funeral like this. Whose funeral is it?”

    “My wife’s.”


    ”What happened to her?”

    “She yelled at me and my dog attacked and killed her.”

    He inquired further, “But who is in the second hearse?”
    The Italian man answered, “My mother-in-law. She was trying to help my wife when the dog turned on her.”
    A very poignant and touching moment of Italian brotherhood and silence passed between the two men..

    “Can I borrow the dog?" the man asked



    The man replied, “Get in line..."
  • "My dream"

    Last night I had a dream

    In my dream a message was posted in a forum.

    The message said that 7 days from now on Sunday 6th of May 2012 hundreds of thousands of webmasters, their friends and their families would start to click on the advertising boxes in a Titan search engine.

    I dreamt that during the 7 days leading up to this the message was "copied and spread"

    "On that Sunday" millions of advertisers then "paused" their accounts through fear of these clicks.

    This action would cost the Titan search engine to lose millions in lost revenue.

    The advertisers would "not" though lose their money due to receiving the message...

    Although the Titan search engine was badly hurt it was "not" destroyed.

    Word then reached the real boss and "not" his minion who thought he was a "Cutt" above the rest.

    The "real" boss then acknowledged there was a problem and made a "statement".

    In my dream the Titan search engine was made aware of the seriousness of the situation and the webmasters were informed of "exactly" what was going on.

    They would no longer be ignored and their concerns would be addressed.

    The most important outcome of the message would be that the Titan search engine would more careful with its "future" implementations.

    It would promise to keep the webmasters informed and weigh up the consequences of its actions.

    So went my dream.

    .................................................. .


    This morning as I lay there I thought to myself....
    If the "right people" decided to send such a message i think it could actually reach a considerable number of people.

    After all some dreams do come true don't they.


    Startraffic
    • [ 1 ] Thanks
    • [2] replies
    • WOW man... let's do it... lets fix a date and make this thing viral... every forum where people have been lamenting the Penguin update, let's spread the world... It's time we knocked some senses in this Titan's head...

      • [1] reply
    • Just seen this on another forum, "very" interesting

  • Yeah, this was the day that all hell broke loose for me.

    I deleted my Google Analytics account first of all.

    It seemed odd to me that it was all my sites that dropped.

    all my sites in MY GOOGLE ANALYTIC's ACCOUNT.

    What I seem to be finding is that EXACT MATCH DOMAINS might be taking an hit for some reason.

    I'm seeing a lot more sub-page competition but that's just within my particular niche.

    All my sites are hosted on the same I.P.

    In order for me to manage them via Wordpress Multisite I have to do that.

    Has anyone seen their traffic plummet across 10+ sites all on different I.P's?
    • [2] replies
    • I searched for "make money online" on Google.co.uk after reading a comment on the google blog and at the 6th position i found this website makemoneyonline.co.uk which is actually a wordpress blog with just the hello world post modified just to say that the domain is not for sale, that's it!
      But the odd thing is that people commenting immediately after the penguin, were saying it was number #2 and on the google blog the guy who posted about it said it was number #4...
      So it appears that as more people keep commenting on that blog and adding content, the more it's pushed down in the rankings!
      • [1] reply
    • Good on you. I've told people to do this for the last 2 years. I witnessed it happening back then to my neighbor.. every site he had in Analytics was hit and the exact same format sites, even on the same server, were not touched. Crappy deal that they use the service against the very people gathering the data for them. I'll never use Google Analytics again.
      • [1] reply
  • I think Cutts didn't get laid on the 24th of April and decided to take it on the so called 3% of the sites
  • Banned
    Let's all storm Matt Cutts blog lol
    • [1] reply
    • I realised that my sites which were not negatively affected by the Penguin update, don't have any outbound links in the footer. However, my sites which were affected and moved way down the SERPs have an outbound link in the footer.

      The footer link is an anchor text link to the site of the person who designed the theme. I didn't put the link there myself.

      Could footer links cause a negative affect or is this entirely a coincidence?
  • I think G will have to do a bit of a rollback, this has been a very heavy handed update, there is public negativity building about it plus the serp's look very erratic, give it a few weeks guys for things to settle down, the serps will change again soon....
    • [2] replies
    • Google isn't going to 'roll back' anything. The true aims of all Google updates are higher profits. If this update is making them money (which you know it is because they test everything) they won't be changing it.

      This is the new Google reality.
    • Best update so far.
      So many spammers dropping from the game.
      They single handedly improved the quality of the interwebs.
      • [3] replies
  • What google hates..
    That we are willing to pay hundred - thousand dollars for SEO company

    What google wants..
    They want us to campaign our websites using adwords..

    They don't care about the webmasters and seo company that went bankrupt ..
    They don't care how many families are suffering because their online business collapsed ..

    They forget that they become very famous also because of the webmasters..

    The more we talk about google, they are getting famous each day..

    If we want to stop their monopoly, then stop using google.. Don't rely on them..
    Because they don't care at all..
    • [2] replies
    • How realistic was it really for these 'families' to rely on income that solely existed due to Google rankings? Worse, calling this a 'business' put these poor families into a mindset that they were doing something much more substantial than 'gaming Google' for easy money.

      Real business survive algo updates all the time, without flinching. They have more than one source of traffic. These strange 'Google-Only' monstrosities are not businesses.

      I'm not diminishing the pain these poor misled fools must feel now that they're been bankrupted within a few days of an 'algo adjustment,' but let's get serious here. Slapping up a few pages of content and spamming thousands of backlinks is hardly building a business.

      I've run a business for twenty years. Do you realize that even the most basic 'business expenses' add up to $40,000 a year or more? Do you know much paperwork and overhead a business has? Even small ones are costly to operate.
      • [ 1 ] Thanks
    • The reality at this point is that Bing and Yahoo are better. Their results are much more relevant which was not always the case. I have begun the switch to Bing and plan to take a closer look at DuckDuckGo.com which holds promise as well. Once the public gets hold of this, the tide will shift. A few press releases hear and there and poof, G will start a downward slide all because of greed.
      • [2] replies
  • Banned
    The bigger they get, the bigger the fall. It's just a matter of time I believe.
  • Yep, algorithm always change.
    I just seen the newest video released by senuke explained very details about this update.
  • my big site moved down a position from #'1 to #2, but it is the long tail keywords where I have lost over 50% of my usual traffic with this one site.

    Lisa Mills' statement - I have updated on site stuff, cleared out words that I believe may have been interpreteted as "over-optimisation", etc. This site has been #1 on Google since 2009.

    I also think the lack of fresh content is an issue [I accept that I have been lazy with this site in recent months] - is this a new filter perhaps?

    Anyhow, updated site, made sure that the on site SEO does not conflict with Titan's guidelines and add new content which I will change every month [I amange a local taxi company].

    Should I do more and is there a reason why the LT keywords that we used to rank so well for have vanished?

    Thanks
    • [1] reply
    • I don't think so, otherwise this doesn't explain the preferential treatment given to old, neglected or completely abandoned sites which are now showing up on the first page for many keyword
  • Banned
    [DELETED]
    • [1] reply
    • Fully agree! Think about all the white hat SEO books on the market. They became worthless overnight. As an IT consulting firm, we considered offering SEO services but not now.
  • Google is a complicated system. It can take time for the dust to settle after even a small change. It's not just changing a few rows in a database on a computer in some guy's closet. Google is reprocessing the entire Internet and synchronizing changes across a global network.

    Making the settling process less exciting for webmasters is a difficult engineering problem that I'm sure they're working on. Until then, rushing to change things is not wise.

    Work on becoming less dependent on Google while you wait for things to normalize.
  • Just get a good seo service to help you get out of pandas update youll be fine it worked for me
    • Banned
      [DELETED]
  • I just got a card in the mail from google - $100 in free adwords advertising! Sorry google, I don't think that's going to fix anything.
    • [ 1 ] Thanks
  • Sorry for coming off harsh. My websites are my babies. I spend well over 200k on my websites each and every year. So having no children of my own those are the closest thing in which I have. Literally you stop me on the street and say hey you have any pictures of my kids I will pull out an ipad and start bringing up my websites. So you can see with the time and money and personal investment why I am so quick to get upset about anyone I feel talking smack about one of them.

    You wanna know the true secret to SEO. I found this out long ago. The less you need google the more they want you. I have no desire or need for google personally. It can go under tomorrow and I will be just fine. *I did not know nor do I care I am ranking for a keyword in the UK. Does not interest me.* The only thing I would REALLY be lost without is gmail.

    I run a business and my business is to diversify. Never put all your eggs in one basket. The wider spread out you have your eggs the more chances of you having success in your business. Google and SEO is no secret it is just no one wants to admit the truth. Literally when you want to find something and I do this too. Do you not put in the name of the site as well. Like say I am searching for something like an obscure vegetable would you not put in the name of the obscure vegetable and then a source you would know has the information like wiki? Do you know how many people search for stuff with the last word being wiki like carrot wiki? That right there tells google man these guys do not need us but with all these searches coming in we sure do need them. Think about it...Google gives love to sites that do not need them.

    This is why in the past linking on blog networks and such has worked. You are saying hey google my site is popular look at all these links. Now a days it is not so simple. Google is catching on and getting smarter. They are not so easily fooled by such linking patterns.

    So what kind of sites get the best rankings.. Is it content? Well I can prove to you right now that content will not get a website ranked. What does content do for a site? You know what it does it allows you to rank for more micro keywords on it's own without even trying. Enough of those micro keywords will help to build your site into an authority in your niche. That is a long long slow road. It takes a lot of effort to build your rankings with content alone. For competitive niches look at having about 10 million word websites.

    As I said though content is not needed there is other ways. Have you ever heard of social bookmarking? Of coarse you have everyone has. Now let me tell you a secret. The older and more authority your social bookmarking account has in that social bookmarking site the easier it is to get your site ranked. You know why? There are others following you who will reshare what you share and these people have friends who will do the same and so on and so forth on and on and on again. This creates a viral traffic magnet. It helps getting your content indexed. It helps getting your content ranked. Google LOVES fresh content and a story going viral on a SB site shows google that it is FRESH and RELEVANT to what people want to know. This will get you ranked to the top of the serps. Sometimes overnight.

    There is also other things but those are the main points to think of.

    Fresh relevant content.
    Social bookmarking on aged accounts.
    Secret sauce
    Profit

    I have proved this formula time and time and time again in thousands of some of the most competitive niches. It is not broke so don't fix it. So there you go. All future google updates will actually be based around this so you might want to start making friends on SB sites. It will not hurt you.

    BTW Any tool you use to do this is fail if you must take some time and effort and pick your friends accordingly. Make sure they have a lot of followers and have power. If you ABSOLUTELY must hire a freelancer or outsourcer to handle the job.
    • [ 2 ] Thanks
  • Another update: About half of my sites have bounced back to page 1, the others are still dancing. They are not in the top positions they have been before, but at least made it back to page 1. FYI
    • [2] replies
    • Good to hear. Did you make any changes to your sites since Penguin rolled out? Im not seeing any movement at my end.
      • [1] reply
    • THIS is the reason people shouldn't be talking suicide or bankruptcy within the first few hours of an update.

      Page 1 means you're still in the game
      • [1] reply
  • Yes, there is again an update. My 2 sites dropped on April 24. Today, 1 has bounced back and now ranking at page 2 and 3. Before Penguin update it was ranking at top 5. I am not worried much because sites that dropped were only producing $3 per/mo. Both the sites are very similar though they are in different niches. Further i built same type of links for both.
  • Banned
    [DELETED]
  • half of my sites get de-indexed. i guess more will coming
    • [1] reply


    • Please climb down off your High Horse.

      You insult too many people here.

      A lot of decent websites without crappy spammy backlinks got hit in these past few weeks.

      Are all of these people "poor misled fools" to quote you?

      Put a sock in it.
      • [ 4 ] Thanks
      • [2] replies
  • If google stops updating than google will be full of spam site and we will not be able to get good results or useful information..
    Just go for proper SEO . you site will never go down.
    Thaanks
    Rajinder Ricky
    • [1] reply
    • So what is "proper SEO" these days? There are many webmasters who practiced what they thought was proper SEO as defined by Google, only to get hammered by the Penguin on April 24th 2012.
  • That's the problem. People with 100% clean "no where close to blackhat" sites were penalized too! THAT'S THE PROBLEM!
  • google algo is change ranking, keywords and so many more
  • Any updates guys. One of my site is still beyond #500 th, before it was in top 5.
    • [1] reply
    • No change apart from traffic is getting worser. Two days in a row without any sales. Yesterday was the first day of the year I had no sales, now its two days in a row.

      I don't think hoping things are going to change is going to work, we need to build backlinks then wait for the next update.
  • it looks like everyone been suffered with the recent algo changes in here!
  • Banned
    [DELETED]
  • The update appears to continue to roll out, sites I thought made it through are now losing big rankings this week.
  • Banned
    There is no such thing as proper SEO with Google anymore.
  • yes google algo is change yestarday a new virsion update penguin 1.1
  • hi friends how are you
  • Any artificially inflated keyword density (10% and over) is keyword stuffing and you risk getting banned from search engines.
  • Banned
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  • Hello! Google is a bit nuts nowadays. I think this may last longer. Well, for all of you who got hit, good luck on your plans. Best of luck!
  • If you are still suffering from Penguin, do a 301 redirect and get your rankings back. I did 301 on ALL my sites that got hit with a special 301 code I coded and I recovered all the sites back to page one and they have been there for 2 months now ranking steady.

    Just make sure you do the 301 properly otherwise the penalty will transfer and you will lose ranking again.
    • [1] reply
    • Do you need to buy new domains to do a 301 redirect? How do you do a 301 properly, do you have a link to a guide which explains each step?

      There has only been 1 penguin refresh so far around 26th May, so how have your sites been ranking steady for 2 months since recovering?
  • Yes, new domain. I don't have a guide but starting a service soon to help warriors recover their ranking with the same method I used. Since I did the redirects, all my sites came back and have been ranking ever since. That has been 2 months now.
    • [1] reply
    • 2 months ago was 28th April, which was only 4 days after the penguin update. How could you have recovered after just 4 days when the first penguin refresh wasn't until near end of May?

      How does the 301 recover your rankings? If it uses new urls then don't you need to build new backlinks to the new domain before you get your previous rankings prior to Penguin?
  • My sites got hit, I think 18th April, I did the redirect after a week, today is 28th June, that is about two months since the sites came back (roughly). Well, all I care about is that my sites came back and they are still ranking and not the dates because that is irrelevant.

    Because it is a 301, Google sees it that you have moved your site to a new domain so the backlinks that were pointing to your old site will now point to your new site. Like I said you need to do the whole thing properly to work. Peace!
    • [1] reply
    • I thought Penguin only started to roll out on 24th April, so if you got hit on 18th April what makes you think that was due to Penguin?

      Most people say that Penguin is mainly due to backlinking and over optimization, so if the backlinks which were pointing to your old site then point to your new site, why doesn't Penguin trigger on the new domain also?
      • [1] reply
  • Google is becoming God and doing whatever it likes
    • [ 1 ] Thanks
  • Well, I clearly know what Penguin is and that was what I was hit by. I have been following this thread since day one. The day everyone stated that they got hit is the day I got hit as well.

    Sorry guys, I may not be right on the exact timing since my sites came back but all I did was 301 but this was done properly. I cannot give everything away at the moment because I plan to start a service and I am also going to show my websites that got hit and came back through redirects so that everyone can see for themselves.

    I didn't do any black hat. I am a white hat kind of guy but even the white hat sites got hits when penguin algo. came.

    Anyway, I am only taking about what has worked for me. I may not be the only person that knows this system of recovery because I have seen few people in my niche doing the same thing and their sites I haven't seen in serp for a while is back and when you go to their original site, its a redirect to the new site so this system is working and effective.

    Hope that clears things up.
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  • Yes. My page rank downed from 1 to 0.
  • Banned
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  • i heard google now a day focusing on onpage seo and existing blog on site
    is it true for ranking and SERP???
    • [1] reply
  • Banned
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  • Banned
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