The folks at Google are dumb! Matt Cutt however, might not be the smartest one of them, but he has some usefult information in his blog. The only thing is that you really really need to read between the lines. What he was saying in his blog about "over-optimizing" is probably just exactly what a lot of us have done and we need to look at our sites to see what might be over-optimized. SEO has been a thing we've been doing for some time and it's easy to overdo it. We need to learn to say "Stop, it's probably enough now!" What we also need to learn and that is that most of the things we read about SEO are not new things. People have doing the same things a while before the masses find out abolut it, and then it is usually too late. Google probably read all the forums, ebooks and everywhere else they can find SEO tips, and they act accordingly to what they learn.
Okay, lets say your rights -- define over-optimizing. Is making sure that one's site is 100% valid to W3C HTML/CSS specifications, cross device friendly via multiple stylesheets and completely accessible over-optimizing? Is using concise and accurate titles, descriptions and keywords over optimizing? Is properly using HTML syntax (e.g. <Hx> tags) such that pages are still logical to SGML type devices and plain text browsers over optimization? Is providing comprehensive intra-site navigation such that users can quickly go from page to page within a site over optimization? Is promoting ones sites via directories and soliciting links such that one can build up non-SE traffic over-optimization? Is hiring PhDs to write science articles on current issues that would be of interest to my target readers over optimization? Is making an RSS feed available (with short descriptions of articles) for readers to subscribe to and other websites to pick up over optimization? Is designing a site for users and promoting that site to users over optimization? Don't you see, your comment about over optimizing is vague and meaningless?
The prhase "environmental chemistry" is not seriously competitive. The phrase that is really important for me is "periodic table of elements" My site has one of the highest (e.g. top 10) PR pages on the periodic table of elements on the Internet and it has traditionally (like since SEs first evolved) been on page one or page two of almost all search engines (that had indexed that page). My site is no where to be found for that phrase or hundreds/thousands of others, that I traditionally show up for in the first two or three pages of SERPs. I am seeing virtually no recovery beyone the a handful of terms. -- Edit-- An example term that I normally do very well on and is not at all competitive is "einsteinium". Normally I'm on the upper half of page one for such terms (currently #8 in MSN Search) but am on page #14 currently for Google. These types of placements are my bread and butter and it isn't like I'm spamming the index. There are pages on my site that shouldn't rank high for their releated terms and I see no problems with Google or any other search engine ignoring any lame pages that are on my site. Those pages are primarily designed for users and sometimes a sliver of information is better than no information from a user standpoint. What I'm having problems with is Google deranking entire sites when their pages are heavily linked to by obviously organic links from really high quality sites (e.g. .GOV), have existed for years and regularly get updated.
Ken, None of the above is over-optimizing! What I was saying was that a lot of people are talking about using H1 tags, bolding texts and all that type of on-page SEO. BTW, I searched for "periodic table of elements" and you show up on 9th place out of 36,300,000 pages!!!!
I make heavy use of <Hx> tags but for the purpose of structuring my content and making the use of style sheets easier. Almost all of my pages contain at least H1 and H2 tags and many also contain H3 and H4 tags. Yes these can be abused for SEO purposes, but they are also legitimate structural tags that the W3C really encourages people to use for accessibility and structural reasons. This is my traditional placement with Google. I haven't been seeing this placement and I just did a search three minutes ago. My AdSense page view reports also aren't revealing an appropriate level of traffic for such a recovery. Maybe this is only on a few data centers. I can only hope this is a sign that a rebound is eminent.
Here's my post July 25th... normally Google is responsible for atleast 65% of traffic. Lovely isn't it.
KLB, I checked in McDar using periodic table of elements and Google Datacenters that starts with 72* have you all listed on 9th place. Some of the data centers ending in *.99 and *.104 and *.107 also have you on 9th sa maybe there is a change going on! The only bad thing is that you never know with Google, up one day and out the next! Hope they keep it up for you!
That is not a valid URL Below are a list of the three valid URLs and Matt Cutts blog Results 1 - 10 of about 69,000 for www.mattcutts.com Results 1 - 10 of about 551 for http://www.mattcutts.com Results 1 - 4 of about 50 for http://mattcutts.com Hope this helps... Ive written Matt Cutts is nothing but a puppet on a string since he started.... Nobody... seriously thought this guy was going to dish out anything earth shattering or ground breaking did you???? Be for real lol....
Ken, Go to http://www.mcdar.net/Q-Check/datatool.asp and enter your search term "periodic table of elements" and notice the search results for IP 216.239.53.99 You will see that your search term ranks several hundred spaces higher than the other IP results. The exact same results for keywords on our site have dramatically improved on this IP and several others over the course of the last day. The increase in traffic has been small but increasing. I am convinced that this is a Google issue and not anything to do with your site, my site or thousands of other sites. My hope is that there is a recovery of data in process.
I agree with you, while it doesn't make me feel much better, the one thing about my site is that we can point to it as a poster child for that there is a problem within the googleplex. If a site like mine got taken out by these updates, thing of how many other good sites must have suffered devistating falls in the SERPs. I know personally I've lost over $5,000 in revenue from this mess thus far. BTW, I do plan on keeping everyone informed as my site recovers rather than simply disapearing when the situtation has cleared as is so often the case in these situations.
It has to be an internal Google issue since both of our sites are recovering data on the same IP's at the same time. Especially since both our sites are unrelated but share the exact same indexing issues.
I'm seeing the same recovery reports in posts over at Webmaster World from different people. There is no doubt that this is an internal Google issue that I'd love to see the light of day shined on. I really want to know what happened inside the black box over these past few months. What is Google doing to prevent this from happening again?
They will never disclose any problems and most likely something will happen again. We were down for 25 days last October. I have lost over $9k that can't be recovered at this point. Our Insurance Directory is our main source of revenue. It generates income from subscriptions (currently over 750 listing agents), Adsense and Commission Junction. Traffic is down 85% until today. I am glad that at least this might be the fix we have been waiting for. I will continue to build alternate traffic sources and be happy that at least we still got several thousand people a day from Yahoo, MSN and links.
If you lost $9,000.00 you should 1. Call the police and report such. or 2. Fire the person who thought a search engine should be responsible to build their business. Lost something you did not have??? How does this happen?
I agree. I would suggest General Chat - he certainly isn't contributing anything useful to the Google threads, and he just continues to embarrass himself publicly when he tries.
I also agree. He just sent me a couple of emails saying he was going to build a duplicate of my site to take away traffic. The guy is just lame. He critizes anyone who relies on search engines but he spends all of his time in search engine forums. How do I report him?
If he's insulting or harrassing you, use the little triangle with the exclamation mark ! in it at the top right of a report - that sends a report to moderators and admins. I think you can also do that with any PMs where he is threatening or harrassing you.