I came back. I was out from 6/22/2006 until 9/29/2006. My first problems started on 9/22/2005, meaning this crap has gone on for a year. I have no idea if I "fixed" it or not.
Mine too Lexiseek. Started 9/24/2005 for me. Started improving may/june 2006, on June 27th, about noon, I fully recovered my positions... only to be plunged back into nothinginess a few hours later. I haven't fully recovered my positions yet, but saw dramatic improvents over the last few days.
People, I'm a noobie to this scene but because of that I've done an awful lot of reading/watching/seeking/learning. I hit the scene shortly before the Big Google Dust-up and the week in question was the week I was going to deploy my first ever AdWord campaign ! DOH ! Timing is everything ! Right about then all-hell broke loose in the ad-word community and Adwords disappeared almost entirely from some search pages ... for a period of time. I was by then, a member of the Adword Mentor Forum and if you want to read some real in-depth investigations/discussions and findings about what really happened, go hang-out there for a while ! (Note: you have to subscribe to that forum) To get to the point though, while the answer is still not clear-and-simple, some of those big-players in the AdWord game who were suddenly out-of-pocket many thousands of dollars a week (or day in some cases) were in 'in-the-ears-of ' their personal Google reps (like you wouldn't believe) and what you have said here sounds pretty close to what I heard coming back form those reps via the AWM forum. Along with participation in other forums and extensive reading, it seems that because of a couple of law suites and user feedback that the quality of their click-throughs was poor, Google are now using this new Quality Scoring based on unique content, favouring of NON MFA landing pages and they also love sites with depth and lots of unique-content links. KW's still seem to matter, but PR now seems to be more heavily based upon content which is very SPECIFIC and UNIQUE to the KW's rather than use(and abuse) of the keywords themselves. That's my 1/2c worth !
Automation_Man, This thread has nothing to do with the recent AdWords shake-up, it's about people losing and then re-gaining traffic on a very specific set of dates.
Surprise surprise, my index page has totally vanished from the UK only search again! Whilst staying at #1 for the main KW on the non UK only search and the .com search! I was back for like a WEEK!
Yeah, I'm not 100% yet, but still. It's like watching a zombie arise from the grave My trouble started on 9/22/2005! Can you believe it? If these problems hadn't occurred, I would have earned abother $10,000 in the last year, based on my calculations. But I'm not bitter!
Yaaa, google making fully bulshit starting June 27th My traffic still the same, but the site affected got PR8 this update. And now what? No indexed pages, no traffic, but PR8 is there any sense? (even if it is end of July PR export)
Well the bulk of my troubles started then as well and I would have earned more this year as well. But I am quite bitter. I see PR improvements finally. I really hope this hard work on SEO pays off. I have become a Google drone, and it's affecting my IRL ~ how do you explain to computer illiterate people why your obsessed with a search engine.. lol. >_<
For those unaware, there was a thread about that September 22nd event. (Don't bump it!) Caryl had a great chart linked there, seems it is no longer up. I think it may have been what Matt Cutts has been referring to as a 'Data Refresh'. He mentioned that they have been doing them for about a year a few months ago, perhaps that was the first???
Another major reason that Amazon ranks so well is that probably millions of people link to it or return their often to buy books. I just checked--it has over 25,000 links.
Matts full of shit....he posted what we already knew here in DP that an Update was underway...hell I predicted it would end on the 10th...... Anyway I think youre almost dead on and maybe the data refresh is whats farging things royally... I think the first however was April after the Feb March BD SNAFU July 22 Data refresh # 2?? killed sites. August 22 #3 Same MO???
I believe your prediction was for it to happen on the 10th of October: http://forums.digitalpoint.com/showthread.php?t=108437 Since it is only the 4th, I suppose you still have a shot at it, though. That would make 3 in 3 months, what with the August 24th and September 29th PR/BL exports. There are three sets of backlinks up at last check... search these forums for the keyword 'jagger' for some good reading.
Well I should have clarified, but that would be the end date an update isnt complete till its ended in my book, but for fun Ill go for January 11th 2007 for the end of the next full IBL / PR update.. Your data refreshes on the 22s or there about,, dont count sorry You like mick jagger???
My index page has returned again today for the second time. Each time I changed the title very slightly and on the next crawl it came back. I suggest anyone with the same problem gives that a try.
FWIW, I also dropped my pages from Google's Cache. I was tired of looking at the broken snippets in there. I'm pretty sure dropping the pages from the cache didn't help anything, but since the rankings came back, at least it didn't hurt.
The broken snippets are usually because Google has picked up text from the body of the page related to the search terms. Just make sure those terms are in your description tag and it should use that instead.
Well its however long since i plummetted like a stone, and no recovery what so ever, granted meta data is a little spammy but by no way reflects its drop in results , page rank, visitors etc... the site is now a ghost ship sailing on its own with no crew, anyone else seen no recovery what so ever over any of the months ??
No, we have not seen recovery, only a slight improvement. I see more sites are lost in the past few days.