RB, agreed that they look like penalties, but why do you think it duplicate content that is the cause?
I chose two (2) random links from these results. www.russian-liaisons.com/russian-women/36-40/Russian-Brides-I-393.htm www.russian-liaisons.com/russian-women/31-35/Russian-Ladies-I-92.htm and ran them through this "Similar Page Checker" and the results came back: http://www.russian-liaisons.com/russian-women/36-40/Russian-Brides-I-393.htm is 62.717219589258% percentage similar to http://www.russian-liaisons.com/russian-women/31-35/Russian-Ladies-I-92.htm
62% does seem quite high though.. I'd be tempted to add in a paragraph of unique text on each page, to try and get that percentage down.
It seems with this update, google is leading us against it's own "Guidelines": "Make Pages for users, not for search engines" "Avoid tricks intended to improve search engine rankings". Well you know what? I have many dynamic pages that are in place to "help" my users. Edit.asp?id=100384 is different then Edit.asp?102349 but you know what? they probably look just about the same. If google cant seem to figure that out and is penalizing everyone in the process but at the same time telling us we shouldnt code for it, then I'm with lowrider "to hell with them".
Personally I don't think it's dup. content. My pages have been pretty much the same style ever since I started in in 1998. Too many links too fast or un-themed links from the Coop I'd buy. But not duplicate content. I checked some of the top 5 sites for my KW's and they all came back with similar content of anywhere from 52% to as much as 80% or more. And their still in the top 5. For the hell of it I went into Froogle and checked some of their pages. They ran from 41% to 45% similar. Almost any site that uses a theme or page template is going to have a lot of similarities. Adding a unique paragraph to each page wouldn't be that difficult. Hiding it in a layer wouldn't be difficult either. But I'm not going to do it. I'm not a programer and I designed the site so it was simple and easy for the user to use. If this isn't good enough for Google then to hell with them. I'll just concentrate on MSN and Yahoo.
I think I just have to wait it out It has got worse Still 60k pages in google Still PR6 But no referrals from google Emails to google remain unanswered Spammy competitor with 16 duplicate sites rules the roost
Same thing here leeds. Not in any of the SERPS and yesterday dropped from all categories in the directory. Not a single referal from them or visit from any spider. Which is strange considering the number of links pointing to it from the Coop? #1 page for most of my KW's has hidden text/layer with nothing but KW stuffing on it. Interior pages of the site comes back about 80% similar and is a network of sites with different design and name but basicaly same content. If that's what Google wants then so be it. Hopefully one day it will come back to bite them in the arse.
well I had hardly any weight pointing to my site but did have sitewides so I suppose anchor text was a little over done Who knows Yahoo and MSN love me so I get combined from them what I got from G
OK, gonna throw my two cents in cause I know I have a clean site. As usual its a long damn post..... So if I go south in Google, it's gonna be bad neighborhood stuff or the co-op. I'm not bright enough to do anything we'd consider "Nasty" SEO. My Site will turn 8 months on Feb 1st. Ranking dropped big time last two weeks across the board. Here is the catch. I have seen this 4 different times all related to my link exchange campaigns for targeted KW's. This was my most agressive one time campaign and added roughly 300 new reciprical links within a 7 day window. I have not added a link in a week as I was burnt out. My ranking are now on the way back up for my KW's that dropped. ( I just ran a rank report for G this morning ) I have used the co-op to gain top positions for KW's in MSN and Yahoo and then used link campaigns to solidify those top positions gained in MSN and Yahoo. Like the former phrase, once I lock this one down with natural links I will shift the coop to another targeted KW Phrase. I have the position of screw G, but that was way before the Co-op. It was for sandboxing my site....lol The recip site has a PR 5 and 902 pages indexed - which is indeed about the entire site - with 259 back links. All as of the last update and rock solid. I am seeing no de-indexing of my site. I am running both site based reciprical coop and two other sites are pointing to this site. I have one site one way with about 2000 weight focused 100% weight on 1 phrase another one way with about 700 weight site focused 90% on one phrase adn 10% on another (these are approximates) and the reciprical has like 5000 weight - the one all this points to - is running 4 phrases with the bulk of the weight going to the singular and plural version of the new KW phase I am targeting and the other two designed for Yahoo and MSN indexing of some deep pages. I have not been shy, like most, about focusing to a set of targeted KW's. If you add the no follow you will kill the network. The target domain will remain un named. Might be a special Google Snitch in here exchanging co-op domains for high G Rankings...lol This has worked quite well in MSN and Yahoo, and when I am not exchanging links it appears to work to some degree in Google to add position to a sandboxed site. When not exchaning links, I have definitely gained in Google. I run one adv per page. One thing I noticed when I was trying to find duplicate pages for my site ( I'm sure we all read the same crap about this with 302, copy sites etc) was the fact our PHP script is the same. Mine had the "I'm getting" de-indexed file look for google which got me doing a search. Sure enough a bunch of you guys came up when searching for "ad_network.php"... in the end was a ton just on a search for the file name. So, I added some unique relevant content to it. I believe I mentioned this in an e-mail or post when I did it. I did it for each of my PHP files in fact. If G is targeting the co-op, they can't use the file name, they have to use the content. This is the ONLY way they will be able to target who is co-op. The code on page could me anything. However, the code giving commands is unique to the co-op. Now, I won't say they are or aren't targeting the co-op. (see link schemes) I don't know. However, last time I checked, PHP can be indexed by G whether code or content.....While I am no PHP guru....My files content is much different than yours. If you believe it is a duplicate content penalty, this is the one thing that every co-op member has in common. Want to put a google, msn or yahoo engineer to work and keep them busy, encript it or randomized character throughout the code in some way, or add some content. Personally I think we should look at making these files either encripted or unique for each site using random stuff. Cheers
Is it possible that this is nothing more than GG’s defense against muscling your way to the top with enough links? A large number of links with keyword rich anchor text (in a short period) sure looks like an attempt to exploit GG’s weakness: "lots of links with dense anchors". Perhaps once the pattern is recognized and a threshold is reached, additional links begin to count against a site, maybe by a factor of 3x for example. That would automatically begin sending a site lower in SERPs for the keywords in anchor, exactly what we are seeing. Aggressive link building over the past 6 months or so, seems to be the common thread. /*tom*/
I was thinking this too. Could be that every link added affects an existing link(s), no matter if it is a link from another site or within your own. For me it's either that or a duplicate content filter is devalueing my product pages sending them way down from page 1 to oblivion. Could be a combination of both I guess.
OK, I take EVERYTHING back. Officially de-indexed tonight in update sdhowing on data center - 216.239.53.104 Appears to have spread to one other so far. If this continues to migrate I am toast....I mean toasty 5 pages, with remaining falling under "similar" and get 7 total when you click this. Shows 905 pages total but just 7 all together non existing pages (meaning no-co-op adv are on them) All these pages listed no longer exist and haven't for 4 or 5 months. Now, lets add the topping to the cake. All sites running co-op are toast in the update whether receiving weight or not. Nice Nice...lol To think, G probably updated just for the co-op advertising network...may they burn in hell....lol Sigh......... Ok. no weight, no use unless sean plans on changing the weight factors to MSN with G PR as the boost or traffic, page views. If that goes I stay and say F*ck google and the sandbox. Granted, I haven't ranked for G for nothing anyway since my "new site bump". Regardless, not indexed by G makes it hard to get link partners that are savy much less weight in the network for links needed to maintain top positions and traffic in MSN and Yahoo. I Think Sean, you need to Freeze Co-op weight until we can create a solution as everything I've done is up & up for my sites and appears G has sniffed out a way to identify and tag our bottoms. Cheers
Yet another one of my sites is down and it hasn't been anywhere near the Coop network... Jesus, My sites are just falling apart...
I'm on the way to being de-indexed. Down to 176 pages in G with most being listed as "supplimental results" or similar pages. I'm sure it won't be long before I'm completely gone also. This has caused my weight to drop down to 1728. Soon it will be zero also I'm sure. The bummer is that over the past week I've still had 42744 page views with 5 ads per page for a total of 213720 ads displayed. So I would tend to agree with chaney, need to figure something else out as far as weight goes besides Google.
I'm seeing this too. All of my pages running the coop have been de-indexed. Everything left in the index is stuff that hasn't been around in months. I agree with the above poster. Screw Google, I can live with MSN and Yahoo. However, by strategies with them are based strongly around the Coop, and the coop is based on Google weight. I think we need to consider using something else to validate weight. One notable difference: I use a Mambo module for my sites, so my ad_network.php is a different filename and location, and the same for ad_network_ads.txt. However they're finding it, they're not using the filename. Question: Does anyone know if turning off the coop makes an improvement?
The google based weight is there for a reason - to stop linking to bad neighborhoods. If your site is delisted thats not a good sign and the reason you won't have any weight.