Hi Guys, I have a site which is about 4 years old and up until the recent update was doing quite well in a non competitive niche. I had used co-op ads on this site and my site had reached no1 for its primary search term in both Yahoo and MSN and had gone from approx pos:30 to 13 in Google. I pointed some more weight at this site with different anchor text and the site moved up to no3 in Google. Then the update happened!! I'm still no1 in Yahoo and MSN and according to DP's tracking tool my site is outside the top 10,000 in Google. I have manually searched the serps and checked with McDar and my site actually ranks at about 280 in Google. a not so nice drop of about 277 places and dropping! No changes have been made to the site whatsoever other than the recent addition of more links from co-op. The site is not ecommerce, does not sell anything, it just promotes an offline service I provide so there is nothing that can be changed. I'm concerned that this may be co-op related but would appreciate any advice/information anyone has to offer. Should I sit this out or remove the ads? I also use co-op on another not so important site that is listed in DMOZ/Google directory etc that until the update ranked at no13 in G, now it ranks around 190, hence the concern that this is co-op related. This site isn't so important to me. It is the first site I mentioned that is my bread and butter site as it promotes my main job and is my main source of income. The co-op has provided me with a lot of visitors and I believe it has got me to the number1 in the other SE's so I am not slating it, I just cannot afford to lose the Google traffic to my primary site. I look forward to any advice anyone wants to offer. Regards, Frustrated!
I know that you know this, but to keep from confusiong newbies I should point out that Digital Point's tracking tool doesn't search out to 10,000 places. It searches as far as you asked it to, and the maximum is 200. If it is higher than 200 (or whatever you specified) it lists it as 10,000 best regards wiz
Hi, Its actually been a while since i read the details on the DP tool so it had actually slipped my mind that it doesn't report back over 200, but its really the huge drop that concerns me. 200+ or 10000+ = no traffic for me but good point anyway. Regards Frustrated
It goes without saying that #177 might as well be 10,000. I have mentioned this point before, but I think it is relavant. Of the 84,000 search-based visitors to our site in September only 887 came to our most popular key word. The sad thing is that I have never made any attempt to optimise for that particular word. The top 50 keywords only account for 13% of the keyword-generated traffic. In fact the top 12561 keywords in September represented only 57% of total keyword traffic. I still obsess and pull my hair out when my favorite keywords slip off the front page, but it doesn't affect our business Which, I suppose, is the way you want it. When your income drops to zero when your keyword slips to #11 you can't have much of a business.
Well your not the only one. We we're recieving about 3,000 uniques PER DAY from google alone and since the update, we're lucky to get 25 uniques! Its funny how the latest update took all the popular sites and gave them the worst spots in the google lineup. We went from place 4-5 on many popular terms down to places 250-400! I hope this gets turned around soon!
I just find it frustrating that google decides because I have invested time and effort increasing links to my site I must be spamming the search engines and as a result decides to place totally irrelevent sites above mine. Out of the top 20 results most of the are local directory based sites that merely mention my site and there are others above me that have absolutely nothing to do with my keyword they just happen to have a word inside of the keyword. eg: My site sells widgets and non related site mentions widge in a completely different context or it mentions a person called wid for example. So much for quality serps. My 65 year old next door neighbour even commented to me the other the day that she no longer uses Google as she can never find what she's looking for yet Yahoo giver her perfect results on every term. If only the number of disgrubtled users was big enough to make G sit up and listen!
I mention her age by the way as she is a typical non SEO SE user who has no idea about the goings on inside google but even she has noticed a change in the quality of serps G now produces.
I've had multiple non-computer-savvy individuals approach me since Jagger began and told me the same thing. Some said they've taken to typing in a search keyword, and skipping directly to page #5 to get the accurate results... -- Derek
Thanks for the support! I actually run a business that sells a service in a niche field and dont have the luxury of having a multitude of search terms that will find the visitors. there is ONLY 1. I have about 40 members and earn approx 4k per month and it only costs me 4 hours per week doing something i LOVE so i would say its a better business than most. What I was saying is that due to the new Google changes the serps have becomee irrelevent and I am finding it difficult to attract new members from out side my local area. My business relies on members coming to my premises so it therefore pointless promoting it outside of my local area. I obviously advertise offline and do not rely solely on Google but I have noticed a huge drop in G visitors and as a result the possibility that I may be losing new members. If it stays at 40 members I'll survive but for other webmastes less fortunate than yourself they may not. Lets hope Jagger3 is as kind to you as the previous updates and if its not that you receive the same level of empathy from DP members that you have shown in this post. Feel free to leave Neg rep also.
I tend to agree that the SERPs are more irrelevent now than prior to Jagger, but if you moved from #1 to #11, and the first page is clearly irrelevent right now, wouldn't users click the 'Next Page'? Most of them, at least? I can see very few people going past page 2 or 3, but most people will go to page#2 if the first page is truely irrelevent... -- Derek
A lot of people i've spoken to are simply switching to Yahoo and MSN rather than digging through the results in Google which is a good thing as I 'own' the number 1 spot in both. The problem withy google though is that i haven't simply been dumped onto page 2 but page 20-30. The results for my keyword phrase 'keyword in local town' produces pages of mainly directory sites listing my site and other websites that relate to 'keyword' but nothing specific to 'keyword in local town' I could understand it if there was major competition for this keyword but there isn't and when you search for a 'local' business you do not want pages and pages of businesses that match/closely match or simply mention the business everywhere but your local area. What i find interesting is that the only change to this site in the last 4 years (remember this is a business card type website and not content based) is the addition of weight from the co-op. It seems like google is actually penalising these links rather than simply ignoring them. I am actually tempted to point all my weight at my main competitor and see what happens but I guess than would just be wrong! I recently heard about google bombing and if this really is the case then google needs to sort the problem out otherwise there will be alot of unhappy webmasters who have been penalised through no fault of their own. Heck if it does work I may even get everyone I know to point weight and begin an aggressive linking campaign against a high publicity website. Lets see how long google continues to punish inbound links once the media gets hold of it. (Assuming goole bombing does actually work)
White-hat SEO's will only take so much abuse before they turn black hat, IMO. Even the nicest dog will be turned mean if you kick it and starve it enough.... -- Derek
I agree 100%. I have never been tempted to try anything even slightly black hat in the past but I am determined to see if it is the co-op weight that has caused this huge drop. I ranked 1st page for my keyword for years and thought a bit of extra weight would push me into number 1 spot, not down 200-300 places. I cant understand how I can suddenly be deemed not worthy of a top 200 position when the websites above me are dross! I wish I had not pointed the weight but hindsight is a marvelous thing. If google simply ignored the links then surely i would've retained my positioning. it's clear to me that based on two sites that have co-op weight behind them and have both dropped significantly that Google is penalising quickly developed inbound links. If this is the case my next little experiment will prove it (to me anyway - I'm sure even then there will be critics). It may take some time but when the results are in I'll post back!
By the way, the site at number 1 contains paragraphs of hidden text, keyword stuffed html comments and more. Maybe it is time to start playing dirty. Its obviously what the big G likes these days!!
It's hard to have a well-controlled experiment while the Jagger update is still ongoing. I'd wait until phase 3 is considered 'done' by the greater SEO community... -- Derek
Yes, you're probably right. Its just so frustrating sitting this one out. Something has to change but the cynic in me says it wont improve till after xmas when everyone has jumped on the adwords bandwagon but i'll wait and see. Any ideas when the 3rd stage is due? I remember seeing a post where someone gave a rough indication but cant find it. Do you think we're talking days or weeks?
Matt Cutt's blog indicated jagger2 started last week mid-week(which it seemed to), and then jagger3 "the week to follow", so I suspect jagger3 should start within the next 72 hours. Who knows how long it will take to propogate to all data centers... And then there will probably still be some more-than-normal flux after that. I'd suspect it will be declared 'done' somewhere near November 10th... -- Derek
I appologize for posting a much more negative post than I thought. What I meant was that it is scary to rely on goggle putting you on the first page for just a few key phrases. I readily agree that millions have been made and will be made by these kinds of businesses. Unfortunately I don't sell those kinds of products, so I have to be satisfied with making thousands. For what it is worth, we dropped 20% in sales during the Jagger change, though our web traffic hasn't dropped at all. best regards wiz
And my apologies for coming straight back at you.. Its difficult to say nothing when you're at your wits end. As I said in my original post I wouldn't mind the drop in serps if the results above mine were actually relelvent to the search term but over 95% of the sites above me were cr*ppy local listings type sites and worse. I'm sorry to hear you took a hit and I can only imagine 20% equates to a large chunk of earnings so i hope you manage to bounce back. Do you know why your earning suffered if your google placement and traffic wasn't affected? Talking of bouncing back, my site has today jumped to number 9 so back on the 1st page at least --For now!!-- just 8 more cr*ppy listing sites and a black hat competitor to get rid of and I should be back at number 1...