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!!

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.

"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.

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).

[DELETED]

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.

Hey Paul,

Can you tell us exactly what type of backlinking you were doing? Were you using spun content?
Thanks

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!!!

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.

[DELETED]

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!

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.

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.

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.

ive never used a single automation tool......as many others that got hit.......

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.

Yep you must

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?

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!

[DELETED]

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.

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.

Yes, In my search this is #1... Google is really weird in this update...

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.

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!

Haha, me too!

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!!!!

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.

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.

you try to say google still not so intelligent for link farms or spun content?

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?

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

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.

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)

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!

[DELETED]

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.

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.

Is this REALLY the case??????

That is quite astounding, maybe mr Cutts has been offered more money by the other team? maybe this is his farewell gesture?

So do all the illegitimate ones too.

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!

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...

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

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?

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...

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...

Arright, I'll monitor this spam site as a thermometer of crap in the SERPS!

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.

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?

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?

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).

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.)

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.

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

[DELETED]

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?

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??

What are you talking about? :confused:

Please stop with all of your banal comments and say something useful once in a while.

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.

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.

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...

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.

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.

I'm getting the same result from all of the browsers I've tried. Results seem to be consistent across browsers on my end...

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.

Just saw this posted on the Google Webmaster Blog, you gotta check this video out, it provided (at least for me) some greatly needed comic relief. Some strong language, but beyond that I thought it was hilarious. Check it out.

Hitler's Reaction to the recent Google update (04-24-2012) - YouTube

Yup, time for a beer.

tweetattacks.com blank page still number one for 'twitter marketing software'

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.

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

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]

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.

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!!

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.

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.

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??

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

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...

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

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.

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?

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.

[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:

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).

Check out the duck dude

www.duckduckgo.com

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.

Lucky for you mate!

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.

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

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.

Correction: Penguin is the new Google algo thats coming off the diving board.

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.

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!

I guess it's time to build new sites....I don't see my sites returning any time soon...

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

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.

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?

I have never used Google analytics, ONLY used PIWIK and my sites got killed.

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?

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.

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?

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'.

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.

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.

Paid link on Yahoo via PRWeb. Google needs to take down that backlinking network :rolleyes:

[DELETED]

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.

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...

Just seen this on another forum, "very" interesting

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!

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.

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?

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.

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.

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.

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

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.

[DELETED]

Good to hear. Did you make any changes to your sites since Penguin rolled out? Im not seeing any movement at my end.

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

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.

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.

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.

[DELETED]

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?

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?

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?

lol. Bump from the dead.