Looks to me like Penguin 2 was an across the board attack on almost all "webmaster" sites. It's pretty shocking. I think it is pretty clear where google stands with webmasters now. They have made their point. Warrior Forum Pre-Penguin 2 Alexa Rank: 150 Post-Penguin 2 Alexa Rank: 350 Wordpress.org Pre-Penguin 2 Alexa Rank: 80 Post-Penguin 2 Alexa Rank: 160 Hotscripts.com Pre-Penguin 2 Alexa Rank: 2000 Post-Penguin 2 Alexa Rank: 8000 Vbulletin.com Pre-Penguin 2 Alexa Rank: 4000 Post-Penguin 2 Alexa Rank: 8000 Digital Point Pre-Penguin 2 Alexa Rank: 400 Post-Penguin 2 Alexa Rank: 1000
Next, go look at companies that have made deals with Google Disney made a deal with films on Youtube, apps on Play, Fiber, etc. etc. Pre-Penguin 2 Alexa Rank: 800 Post-Penguin 2 Alexa Rank: 500 Amazon is reportedly the leading Adwords spender Pre-Penguin 2 Alexa Rank: 800 Post-Penguin 2 Alexa Rank: 500 Of course, Dropbox is down, because they compete with Google Drive and surely has very little to do with them spamming anyone. Priceline went from 1200 to 600 as they came to outspend Expedia on google adwords. Expedia used to be at 300 and now they are down at around 500. Follow the people who are making deals and spending money with Google and they serps are better for them.
On what grounds do you think they are "stupid" and "hateful" Personally I respect them for trying to make the results fairer.
i respect your opinion; but i see that many websites publish his links as spam; but google not punish him; its not fair
But don't the "stupids successives updates" show that they are trying to address the problem? If there weren't updates there wouldn't be hope
The updates are the problem. Take a look at the alexa report for wpmudev.org, the affiliate link in your signature. They got hammered by penguin as well. I'm sure they will be laying off a few people, as well as many of the sites listed earlier. I suppose if you work in a warehouse for amazon, your prospects might be looking brighter, but you'll find more people losing that winning on a forum like this with advent of panda and penguin. This is not just a black hat thing, despite the messages coming out of google right now.
Just because a sites Alexa rank is falling doesn't mean their traffic is, it can't be used as a reliable tool to judge anything.
Google penguin is about weeding out sites which spam and cannot be an useful result for the users in search. These kind of algorithm updates by Google will certainly clean up the web and help them provide the best possible & the most relevant results to the users. Data refreshes & constant updates to Panda & Penguin is what has bought the best out of Google in the recent years. These updates should and will continue for the Good will of the world wide web.
So are you saying the sites listed in the first post are "weedy" sites? Google is not motivated by profit in their search results? They are only about good? I have some wonderful land in the desert I want to sell you.
Google IS NOT about "fairer". They are all about big business and who spends more with Adwords... I don't give a shit what anybody says that's the damn truth...
I don't think people realize the enormity of the updates this year. It is a game changer. This is one people will be talking about for years.
If Google was trying to get the big boys to spend more money, don't you think it would be wiser for them to gradually reduce their rankings in the organic results, forcing them to spend more in adwords? Google has made it no secret, they are favoring brands more and more in the search results. This is something they've been completely open about and pushing forward with for the past couple years. Does it suck for the little guy? You bet it does, but there's not really anything you can do about it. Your only option is to stop building websites and start building brands. Here's a few interesting articles on the subject: http://moz.com/blog/why-big-brands-get-all-the-breaks http://www.seobook.com/google-branding An interesting quote from one of the articles: Be a brand builder, not a website builder.
So small brands have been hit as is evidenced in the first post. Sounds like Eric is implicitly saying small companies are part of the "cesspool" and big brands are not. The real issue in my opinion is Google doesn't find it cost effective to maintain a search engine, and would rather just put the big brands in the results and hope the results will be trusted. I think they are living in a bubble that will burst. Why bother finding the best results? That is too expensive. I get it. Stand by and watch as places like this forum get smaller. I "get it", but that doesn't mean I support it or believe there are not better ways. When there is only one provider for a product or service that dominates, quality starts to suffer eventually.
Well, the problem is that it's Google's pool and they can kick whoever they want out of it anytime they want, for any reason. If your websites live and die with each Google update, you're not building brands, you're building websites. Brands can survive without Google, can you? You either play by Google's rules, or you get your traffic elsewhere. It sucks, but that's how it works.
So give an examples of small brands that are doing well instead of using esoteric double speak like google.
Google is a company and can make all the changes it wants to improve its bottom line, and its relations with its corporate partners. But umpteen artificial sets of changes later, let's no longer refer to the search engine results as "organic" in any meaningful sense. Let's not refer to SEO "rules" when the rules may go out the window with the next algo change. Google is only consistent about rewarding its big boy friends, and burying the small guys, under the cover of accusing them of spam.
Not sure why you're getting irritated with me. I don't make the rules - Google does. If you don't like the way Google plays, you don't have to try and get traffic from them. It's really not difficult. As for your question, there's plenty of small online brands doing fine with these updates. But, I'm not sure what this does, as I can pick sites that prove my point, while there are surely examples of sites that have been hurt by this update as well (such as ones in your OP and sites like Techcrunch and Mashable). Small, branded fitness site that is unaffected by recent updates. Small, branded online marketing site that hasn't died due to updates. If you want a prime example of a company that doesn't rely on Google at all and survives fine, how about Facebook? Facebook is one of the largest brands out there that does horribly in the SERPs, yet they seem to do ok.
Neither of your examples are actually "jumping" this year. They are both flat for the year. If you look at the Search Percent for Niche Pursuits it is down for the year, so strong evidence it too was hit by Penguin. I'm sure there are some isolated cases of improvement, but mostly we are seeing google get lazy and just trust the big brands know best when it comes to search results. I personally don't shop at too many big brand stores except buying gasoline. It's not in protest. I just find better value elsewhere. I'm sure I am not alone.
dvduval, you are not alone. We also find better values in smaller stores in malls. And I can not think of the last time I bought gas at a major brand as the convenience store chains here offer more than say bp or shell. Online, always hunt for a better value. Amazon comes usually at the top price wise for just about any product, so hard not to buy at Amazon.