Before joining the network, I was about in the 20 range for photography forums, and the 80-120 range for the other 3. I was #1-#5 for allinanchor for all 4.
I've been tracking a couple sites that arent mine, and they have had mixed results.. Shawn had an eHarmony page move up quickly, jump to the #1 spot above eHarmony.com and now drop out. KarateDepot has the #1 spot for "wrestling shoes" using (i believe) the ad-network as its main source of links. Shawn's eBay page holds strong at #4/5 but with added links elsewhere(I think) RustyBrick's Vonage page is #2 - not sure of outside of the network linking- perhaps he can shed light into that.
Gotta remember that Shawn's ebay page isn't linking out, plus he has the power of the DP site behind that page as well...
Yes, that's the danger... what if you end up linking to a "bad neighbourhood" ? Not necessarily, though... still waiting to see what ends up happening with my postion in the SERPs before I make any decisions.
I think you Guys and Gals are all jumping to conclusions that can't possibly be supported. I have a Pharmacy site that Shawn won't allow into the coop program. It had 4 or 5 keywords all in the top ten -- they had been there for months and months. Everyone of the keywords, plus a couple others that where top 30, got dropped between 20 to 40 places in the SERPs. In fact a couple of them dropped out of the top 200 as of today. I had been steadly building link to this site, but nothing unusal had been done on the site since Sept 12. So it certainly isn't coop ad sites only that have been affected.
I thought I would do a little more looking and to my total amazement my SEO Services page <http://www.compar.com/internet/seo.html> which has almost no optimization other than the coop ads is now ranked #2 for a search on "seo services". So the coop ads certainly haven't hurt this page.
I agree Bob. Based on some research today, there appears to be no real pattern. I apprears to be very random to an extent.
Like I said- there is no evidence for or against the fact that the network is playing any role in the changes, it could be dozens of different factors, but its better to look into it and make changes if necessary than to ignore it and not track it.
I think most of us are. But how can one make changes if one cannot discern the pattern. Does anyone have any golden nuggets of insight?
Nothing yet- if we keep looking, Im sure we will be able to figure it out together.. To be honest, I think its just a Google algo change, nothing related specifically to the network
That's exactly what I think as well... but I think that the weight of the links coming from the network is involved... it appears that my weight = nothing in the SERPS right now, for both allinanchor and actual rankings.
I saw on another forum that adding &filter=0 to the query string brings about different results. http://forums.seochat.com/showthread.php?p=145839
I think blaming the ad co-op is premature, there is a thread today at webproworld with lots of people complaining about changes in Google SERPs: http://www.webproworld.com/viewtopic.php?t=33686 (sorry still not allowed to post live links!!)
I have not lost a single spot on any of my ad network terms, however I have lots of members that (During the link update) were complaining that their positions went from great to non existant, and many of them if not all were not on the ad network so I dont think it is causing any harm. I checked many of my friends pages as well and they seem fine. Oh and btw here is an example thread about the serps being "all over the place" http://www.seo-guy.com/forum/thread5226.html
I only gained better rankings as well. I only recently joined the coop. Wait another week and we can draw some real conclusions.
Few days ago i lost my good rankings for one of my sites, but today this site is back. There was some problems with unfinished google update. Normaly I can see benefits from the coop after 2-3 days.