Google seems to be dancing

I have started a poll Thread - please drop by and vote.

http://forums.digitalpoint.com/showthread.php?t=33442

I in no way mean to imply that Google is manipulating results for adwords/profit. My thinking is that (again) if Google lost data/records that they may be cached/stored in groups similar to Googles Directory Categories.

Thanks,
Caryl

 

Actually, now that I looked into it more and ran some searches in Google, my pages are all ranking much worse, many not evern found in the top 50 where last week they were in the top 5 (I am talking about a commercial site of mine) - I sure hope this is true:

 

Sorry, I did not. I'm not much of a spreadsheet data collector, but that is one term I watch daily. It was a very obvious shift.. the entire top 10 for "vbulletin" moved from including 4 vBulletin services and advice sites to only listing large vBulletin forums.

 

Could this be a devaluation of anchor text from forums? That would certainly fall into line with what I am seeing. Again it is pure conjecture on my part, nothing too scientific. Is hould say footer links on forums to be more precise.

 

That matches with the vBulletin shift. The pages that got dropped depended on IBLs from forums. They all likely had an unnatural linking structure in Google's eyes-- sitewide links in forum footers is how the skin and service sites were ranking. Nearly 100% of my IBLs (naturally) come from sites using my skins which include a link in the footer.

 

Hard to say isn't it? But they may be devalueing forum links in general or footer links in general, or anchor text. It's all conjecture and hard to nail down (for now) the cause.

 

From my observing, it looks like sites that actively optimize or appear to optimize are being hit the hardest. Also, looking through my link exchange partners this morning, 10 - 15% are completely banned in google.

Alexa - PR0
Amazon - PR0
'www'.shopping.com - PR0, shopping.com - PR6
shopping.hp.com - PR0

Something major is definitely going on, and I don't think it is anywhere near over. Since a toolbar PR update is due, Google's results have definitely lost relevancy, and the datacenters are still bouncing around, I don't see any way that it is done with.

 

This sux ass, I went from around 8 in serp to 300+ for all my keywords. God I hope this changes back soon.

 

Alexa and shopping.hp.com yes, the rest all divert to some other page.

The root domains do indeed have PR.

http://www.amazon.com has PageRank 9/10.
http://www.shopping.com has PageRank 8/10.
http://shopping.hp.com has PageRank 0/10.

 

My sites aren't relying (or have any that I know of) forum links [and yet that are affected too].

 

Perhaps an adjustment to the third quarter fnancial results???

We'll know more on the 20th I guess

Remember Yahoo, Chitika - that bites I assume.

 

Its all conjecture at this point; and probably premature. Footer / forum link devaluations could be just one part of this new mix. Maybe an all-out assault on what G thinks 'purchased' links look like.. collateral damage would be inevitable.

 

I think maybe Google introduced a new pooper scooper to clean out their sandbox.

 

This dance is very strange. The kwt tool shows a huge drop for ½ of my kw's, but McDar's tool shows them all to be at healthy positions in G. So I'm not sure what's going on. The dance seems to be happening daily. One day I lose rankings (only in the kwt) and the next day, they are back. Go figure.

 

But which is true for the future? DP (API) Or the dc's on Mcdar?

 

Perhaps footer links, but I have no forum links to my sites and they all got hammered.

-Erik

 

I haven't seen any sites come out of the sandbox on this one. Anyone?

 

anyone else see old cache dates of sites ranking ahead of them/

 

15th October....

 

i see a couple at the 10th of October