Google seems to be dancing

what. your site has the feeds? or other sites rank ahead of you:?

 

most of my feed sites where sluaghtered weeks ago, I boubt any of feed site rank for anything now

 

I don't know but I am very interested to find out!

That's why I'm reading this thread -- to find out what people have to add.

Analysis.

You take some data, you make a hypothesis, you test your hypothesis against more data, eventually you call it a theory, you test your hypothesis against all available data, people start calling your hypothesis a fact.

It is never over. Welcome to the dynamic environment of continuous improvement.

This is how science is done. It's not pretty, but it is the most effective methodology ever devised for achieving progress.

If you don't like brainstorming, this probably is not the topic for you. Please feel free to partiticipate in other topics which are more your speed.

 

The problem comes in when there ends up being multiple variables in what caused the changes. Looking at it from a marketing standpoint, it makes analysis impossible, and if the same is the case here (multiple variables), coming up with a truly accurate model will also be nearly impossible.

So far every theory I have heard so far based on observations has been quickly disproven by another observation.

My conclusion at this moment is that there are multiple variables that have been changed, or google messed something up, so we are trying to figure out something that cant be figured out, because it is messed up. Its like swapping squares on a rubix cube, You can make a single side colored easier, but you cant ever finish the whole thing.

 

Did somebody just go bye-bye???

Will.Spencer, who the hell were you quoting???

Caryl

 

He was quoting 'teamshop' back on post 584 (or somewhere around there). Teamshop was commenting on another stunning insight from Fryman

Will, I agree.
Brainstorming is all about throwing everything out into the open. Once you've got all the available information you can try and decide what is or isn't relevant. Discard the crap, then try and make some sense with what remains.
Everyone throws up possible theories, and they get discounted one by one - discounts are only valid if you can show solid facts why they're not true - at the end, someone will fire of a theory which no one is able to successfully firedown. This theory then gets worked on until it either turns into fact or gets blown apart.
At the moment, the only viable theory that I haven't a) seen destroyed by others, or b) haven't been able to say is pure crap from my own facts, is Caryls theory of missing data.
I think that only time can destroy that one.
What we really need is someone to join in who has a massive number of sites - obviously they need to actually track things within those sites. They are the people who have the stats to prove/disprove numerous theories without having to rely on what someone else reports about their own sites - I rarely trust what people say about their own sites (many people tend to bend things when it comes to discussing their own sites).

 

When do a site:www.blah-blah.com for my site, I see lots of links without descriptive text. I mean lots, like, ah, 28,100. I use os/commerce [aka exchange project] and what I see google doing is indexing the images off of the category pages; for those that know it's the 'buy now' image.

Now this image either is a link to default.php with add-a-quickie, or it's part of a form that posts to product_info.php. In both of those cases, those pages never render but are redirected to shopping_cart.php. Google appears to be indexing the title text from these intermediate pages (which can't exist because of the redirect) and thus my keywords went poof. The interesting thing is that the pages that end up displaying after the title text all have robots no-index, no-follow rules but the initial pages don't, couldn't and shouldn't for that matter.

So perhaps this whole mess with google has to do with this redirect issue and unexpected consequences of following images over text links.

 

heh - I had the same thought.

 

"bird-houses" "bird houses" and bird houses bring up the same results.
bird-houses brings up something entirely different.
Same with sleeping bags. Clicking on bigagnes.com, #4 for sleeping-bags, I don't see sleeping-bags anywhere... And what about http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sleeping_bag ?
Why them, and not McDar's site?

 

The results I'm seeing for sleeping bags are pretty relevant at the moment. With the obvious exception of the ebay crap which ended at the beginning of Oct.
Obviously I was seeing different results due to the geo targetting which sent me lots of uk relevant results.
I've not bothered looking futher into the results to see whether they actually sell the stuff from the link provided, but at first glance the results aren't bad.

 

Don't mind brainstorming or hypothesis as long as there is some real data to support it, just throwing out something to see if it sticks with nothing to support it was what I was commenting on.

 

I've seen alot of forum posts removed from the serps. Used to searching for some terms in my niche gave listings for high ranking sites with a post about my niche but otherwise not related at all.

Now, the sites listed are mostly authority sites in my niche.

 

had 4 oscommerce shop drop serps really bad.

 

Maybe you missed the first part... web-hosting paypal brings me up at 16, I was at 15. web hosting paypal (a more normal search) shows me at 91.

But this is just the opposite of what McDar's site is doing. That's where I am confused; I got to thinking about Scroogle when I found someone clicked thru on web-hosting paypal last night.

Another I just searched out is web hosting-paypal, I come in at #8, same for web-hosting-paypal. And for hosting-paypal, #11. hosting paypal #35. I dropped 22 spots for that one...
I am seeing this at *.*.*.104 d/c's. Haven't checked others.

Am I not affected by what most have been in this event, but by something different entirely?

 

So has anyone seen any improvement?

Has anyone seen a similar effect at yahoo! ?

I seem to be affected there to some degree as well.

Sad days

 

You got me trying things now.
I have to say that I have absolutely no idea where my sites ranked previously if I inserted hyphens into my keywords.
But certainly I rank considerably higher when I insert hyphens.
I doesn't make a lot of sense. I know that certain of the keywords definitely donot appear on the site (text, filename or url) with hyphens in it. I also see a big difference in the number of returns for a hyphen search.
Which leads me to believe what ?? Damned if I know.

 

My positions have gone up during this period. Not much, but I have not seen any negative impact.

 

Yahoo has been bouncing all over the place for my sites for quite a while. If I didn't know better I'd say there was a duplicate out there . One day I'm #1 next day I'm #50 next #3, next no where, then #1 again. This movement seems to make little difference to the traffic from Yahoo, so I gave up trying to work it out.

 

I am looking at my postion before, for the straight phrase, such as 'web hosting paypal' (15) vs. now (91) vs. 'web-hosting paypal' now (16).

Didn't your site have 302 redirect problems at one time?

 

yall seo sinnners try to use the beloved goog for personal gain, repent now