I rarely complain about what Google does, but this is just beyond ridiculous. This morning I needed to find a template. There was this one site that would always come up first in searches if you typed "free css templates". I can't even find it anymore. And I don't remember the URL. It was the only quality template site that was there. All they have there now is garbage. Useless, regurgitated garbage.
Welcome to SEO, may I spam your search results? Nah but seriously, One of the reasons many of those types of keywords are riddled with spam is due to dodgy SEO's that makes dodgy sites, filled with templates with backdoors in them and make them rank as high as possible to infect as many websites as possible.
Agree with you totally. One of my projects was ranked for 404 page that doesn't exist for more than 6 months. Right now Google display some ridiculous pages for search terms for almost any niche.
Yeah, this is very sad and I also have same problem with many of my favourites websites. Nobody cares about bookmarks, if you know how to search for your favourite website. For me it is easier to remember the search keyword instead of finding it in my unorganized bookmarks. When you find a true useful website you believe it is there by right and it will stay forever but things changed and now websites are dancing as they are in Dancing Stars show I think Google intentionally is killing SEO. It is pointless to invest in SEO if you can loose your rankings in a day no matter how authority and useful is your website.
I've noticed similar things lately, @qwikad.com. I find it mildly amusing, because with every Google algorithm update, they tout the fact that now there's less spam and more relevant results, yet...does it ever appear that way to the average person? Me thinks not.
The funny thing about these algorithms is -- the more they "give us what we want" they more we get enclosed in a digital bubble where everything starts to look the same.
I have been through a similar situation where I use to Google a keyword to find a tool related to server headers (did not bookmark it) after Penguin 1.0 that site disappeared, however I tried to Bing it and sure enough it was there ... so Bing that keywords you may find the site you are looking four In the last two years Google was focusing on preventing webmasters from manipulating their results, they totally forget about quality and user experience
I'm seeing the same thing. Even after all the algorithm changes and updates and good ol cutts saying with pride that they've reduced the spammy search results even more, they are still there and sometimes worse than before. Just saw it the other day... keyword was SEO (city name). The first 5 or 6 listings were god-awful websites which caused pain to my eyes and illness to my stomach! When you looked past the...ugly aspect of them, they were just single page sites really.. and provided no real value to the unfortunate soul who stumbled onto them. UNDER all of that crap was an awesome SEO Agency site.. it provided many great marketing articles on the site, provided tips, advice and real value.. definite "white-hat". I felt so sorry for them since they were leaps and bounds more knowledgeable and professional then all the other spammy results above them.
Probably they got hit or something. Rarely good sites fall from positions, unless they do something to get more sales, which is something normally now days. I wonder what will happen when the new Penguin update will come. Since October 2013 Google didn't updated so many business who "laid down" will see the reality soon.
Well, "css templates" or any other similar search has always been a spammy niche and mostly it has been occupied by several major companies that everyone knows. No wonder that in this niche as well as, for instance, in "payday loans" or "<any pharma>" you will see drastic changes day after day: tons of spammy sites come and go.
Ohh! I thought I am the only person who noticed it, been doing web researching for quite sometime and I just notice this search result irrelevant to what I need.
I think we can't do anything with that because it's google and google's has its own rules and standards
It was time when we used to just click top 3 results and find it whatever we were searching for. Now we need to open all 10 urls in 1st page to check the relevancy of our search. Anyone noticed this?
I noticed it also and It is taking too much time to view each and every link google provides. Long keywords is not working very well either.
I know a very competitive keyword that, for the last 20 months the positions 1, 2 and 3 has been the same in Google.