32 replies to this topic

[ephricon]

[Deleted part of quoted post. Please don't quote whole posts.]

If you've been doing The Right Thing in general (ie. writing solid customer-friendly and appropriately keyphrase-rich content, getting good relevant inbound links, designing a logical site structure with easily followed navigation, etc.) then why would you have to do a major overhaul simply because ONE search engine is broken?

Well with regard to one of my clients whose site has fallen from #1 for many terms to hovering on the fifth and sixth pages, writing enough volume of high quality content to compete with national-level sites simply isn't an option. Its not in the budget as the client is a very small firm. Up through now, good optimization of the sites and a respectable PR with good optimized content (for the little amount there is on the site) has been enough to get us #1 in Google (and consequently very high in other engines) for regionally based search terms. The client is regional so this is fine...

I mentioned a "major overhaul" simply b/c dropping from #1 to #50 in Google is a huge deal for the client, especially b/c the local terms we target are only searched a handful of times each day. Being as he was the one site that actually relates to the terms, his #1 spot drew a very high % of clicks from those searches, and also drew a high % of leads.

I'm not sure the latest stats, but I've heard roughly 1/2 of US searches are Google-fed (either Google or an engine they feed). This is huge to me - way more than enough to make me panic if this remains the case. At #1 we get lots of traffic. #50 will get virtually nothing for this type of site. At 1/2 of the searches, losing our pull in Google knocks out roughly half our online marketing!

I realize I am whining, and that many of you have the same problem. To you, my condolences. I'm thinking the industry my client is in is having some serious filtering going on. Unfortunately searches with the keywords and region used to produce sites of actual companies (in this case law firms in the region), but now the same Google search seems to yield only national-level spammy-type sites that are completely useless.

Here's to hoping the "settling" picks up the pace and returns to normalcy for those of us adversely affected.

Ok I promise I'll stop my complaining now!

Edited by Jill, 05 February 2004 - 08:18 AM.

[Randy]

The Google percentage is more like 80% from the last stats I saw ephricon. That includes Google, Yahoo!, AOL and some of the smaller search properties. Which would seem to make your point even stronger.

Now, this may sound slightly silly, but I'd advise you to talk to your client and try to give them a feel for the changes the industry is going to see. Try to get them to adopt a Long-Term plan, rather than chasing the latest changes at one search engine. Nobody has exact dates, but these vast industry changes are coming sooner rather than later in my estimation.

Check to see where the site in question ranks via PostitionTech's Pure Inktomi Search. Nobody knows for sure what Yahoo! will switch to, but I have a couple of friends in other parts of the world that are getting INK results already in Yahoo, and the info they've sent me for several searches seem to be pretty darned close to the Pure Inktomi results.

Also check to see what their ranking is over on the new MSN Search that is in beta testing. No public release date yet, but if I were a betting man I'd say we'll see this one roll out in 2004 too. For the moment MSN is using a modified version of INK results.

If they're okay on those two, they'll be sitting pretty before too long. Y! and MSN control about 43% of the market by themselves. Definitely too much to ignore.

The bottom line, in my mind at least, is that if you make major changes now for the sake of trying to please the current Google, you may be hurting yourself exponentially in the long run. Keep adding content that will benefit your users of course. Keep expanding the keyword phrases you're targeting so that you reach a wider audience of course. But don't revamp everything for the sake of the current silliness at Google.

It's fairly obvious that Google is still tweaking, so the changes that please their algo today may wipe you off the map again next week. Plus, if the changes you make hurt the rankings on the other existing or up-and-coming search engines, you're basically writing off half of the market in order to please the other (broken) half.

Maybe I'm just stubborn, but I simply won't do it. Perhaps that's because I've never liked chasing the latest algo change. Or perhaps it's just because I've been through this too many times before and have become jaded by the knowledge that well written, valuable and relevant sites always seem to make a leap back to the top after these types of major updates are finally over.

[ephricon]

Yeah that's good advice - you know, me trying to have patience and all...

That's part of my problem is that the Nov. update was really the first one I'd ever noticed, as I've only been doing search engine work for about 6 months and fairly moderately at that... The November update didn't really hurt me, and in fact helped me a bit.

I like the site in question's rankings in both Inktomi and MSN - as its #2 and #1 for my primary key term, respectively. Much better than my current 58 in Google...

Since I'm still fairly new, and my skills and techniques are not necessarily the best available (due to lack of experience), most of my clients are smaller in nature, with less content, less time, smaller budgets, etc. Thus, the finances don't really justify spending too too much time properly executing the same broad time plan I would do with a larger client. For this reason I tend to focus on Google (hence the 80% as you mentioned) and as I've seen the other SEs seem to fall in line relatively close.

Thanks alot for your help. I'll try and be patient until this current silliness passes and hopefully all will be well and things will be similar to normal.

[rzehr]

I have been astounded by how far Google has degenerated with the Gladys update.

All my pages are still indexed, my PR (4) hasn't moved, and most of my inbound links still show, but my site (which was getting 2-3 of the top 20 results on Google) is no longer in the top 40. On MSN, Inktomi, and other engines, including the Beta versions, I am still getting top-5 results consistently.

Instead of reasonable results, 90% of what comes back on my search terms in Google is now useless garbage, IMHO.

For example, Pre-Gladys, "heel lift" returned a bunch of articles on the topic, some vendors, and a lot of generally relevant and useful information about such orthotic products and about heels lifting in ski boots, etc. Pre-Gladys, Google deserved their reputation for providing the most useful results most of the time.

Post-Gladys, you get the "Tar Heel Lift Truck" company and a lot of irrelevant bulletin-board trash that I view as highly unlikely to interest Anyone.

I find it hard to believe that:
a) the mainstream press has not noticed the change from excellent to garbage results (at least I haven't seen any articles), and,
b) that the Googlies haven't quickly reverted to an earlier version.

As a registered prognosticator, I predict that if they don't get it right, and soon, Google will be an also-ran on the search engine scene within a few months. Remember how good we all thought AskJeeves and AltaVista were when they were new?

I've been waiting two weeks now, and changes in Gladys' results have been trivial and I no longer believe that they will straighten it up any time soon.

I have changed from Google to Vivisimo for my default web page, and expect that when a few million others do the same, the Googlies might figure out that Gladys has booted it big-time.

The only explanation for this that makes any sense at all to me is that they are making the main results worse in order to force commercial sites to pay for AdWords - I've had to re-activate keyword ads that I had discontinued when the organic results showed me as top dog. I've gotta believe that their adwords revenue has increased a lot since Gladys, and perhaps they think that this is a good thing...

[Randy]

Welcome to the HR Forums rzehr !

Count yourself lucky that they left you alone the first go-round with Florida. Many weren't that lucky and got slammed right before the Christmas buying season.

There are several threads regarding Gladys, Florida and other things Google, as well as the other engines that might interest you in the Search Engine News category below. You might want to check those out also.

[rzehr]

Thanks, Randy - I've been lurking for a year or so, and have read much of the material over time.

Still amazed by the obvious loss of "relevancy" Gladys produced. As far as I can see, once you hire too many people, they have a tendency to want to justify their jobs, and start messing with thigs that work fine.

Remember "New Coke"? Want to speculate whether Google will go back to "Classic"?

[Randy]

Nada. Not a chance in the world rzehr. I don't think they can afford to revert back totally at this point. Too much new and very capable competition is on the near horizon that they'll have to fend off. So they need to try to keep improving their methods.

Also, if Google was going to simply back out of everything they changed they'd have done it already. Remember, this all started 2 1/2 months ago, not a few weeks ago when the second round hit.

Now that's not to say that Google won't keep tweaking until better relevancy returns. IMO the tweaking will continue to happen once they've got everything in the index using the new algorithm. In fact, that's when we'll likely start seeing massive improvements.

If they don't improve things over what is there right now? Well there simply won't be anything to worry about because everybody will be using one of the other search engines within 6 months anyway if that comes to pass.

[Scottie]

Welcome rzehr!

Glad you decided to come out of lurk mode!

[Jill]

I have to say that after Florida and things seemed like they were starting to come back from many people, I was completely shocked when they turned the ratchet even tighter for Gladys!

That tells me that they are happy with the direction they're going.

I guess they like directories and comparison shopping sites. Go figure!

Jill

[projectphp]

I guess they like directories and comparison shopping sites. Go figure!

I like it, myself. I think people who search for generic stuff want generic info. Directories, comparison sites, reviews and articles are all part of that answer.

Actually, I don't like the directories, but everything else is good. IMHO, when in doubt, variety is relevance.

[ephricon]

I've seen the directories pop up for alot of 3 and word 4 (thus more specific) terms too...

Sure if I did a search for something like "shoes" or "dvd players" maybe a directory or shopping site would be helpful as they would give me a wide range of those items. If I was searching for a type of shoe made by XYZ Small Company and wanted to find a retail store that carried them in Houston, Texas I might search for a real specific search like "XYZ shoes houston texas" - this is when I am bothered that a national-level directory or comparison shopping site pops up. This search is clearly for something specific, and should return specific results.

[qwerty]

I'm actually in the process of building a directory on my pet project site. The links page was getting to be too big, so I figured I may as well go for that hub/authority factor by replacing it with a couple of hundred pages organized by category. It also gives me the space to say more about the sites I'm linking to.

Of course, most of the pages are still blank, so I've left the whole area orphaned for the time being, but whenever I have some spare time I add a few new links to it.

[ephricon]

Yeah I have a couple of regional directories I'm working on - but since they are personal projects and not clients themselves I rarely find the time to work on them. I would like to eventually combine or unite them with other regional directories - as finding something local in Google can sometimes be a real chore...

[mcanerin]

On thing I've offered to do for all my clients (and none of them so far have taken me up on it) is to create a directory for their niche. A good one, not just a scrape from a Google search or subsection of DMOZ.

Their thinking is that they don't want to pay me to (basically) create something that also helps their competition, no matter how little. Also, I notice a LOT of newbies and less successful business people trot out the "I don't want any outgoing links on my site because I want them to stay on my site" argument, and I think their objections are a reflection of this kind of thinking.

What I think they don't get is that done properly it would help them a lot more, not to mention the fact that if both they and their directory showed up, then they have 2 chances to get traffic.

Since Florida, I've been even stronger in this opinion. I think it's their loss, but you can lead a horse to water...

Ian

[ephricon]

Yeah I agree - I think if you are confident in your offerings and services than the more traffic the merrier - even if you "risk" having people leave your site. If you do you job and make a positive impression they'll be back.

The amount of traffic and penetration in major SEs a directory can get is impressive. I'm all for them when appropriately thought out and executed.

I just get frustrated when they get better placement b/c they have one page about a topic and a huge PR (or other factors), whereas another site might be optimized, have good PR and feature lots of content about a subject but may fall behind a directory in the rankings. This seems to be more prevalent with the latest update.