30 replies to this topic

[Hichem]

Matt Cutts has tweeted that a Penguin update is now live ..

I hope the serp will be better now ....... Time to clean up the mess they've made ..

Edited by Hichem, 27 May 2012 - 07:13 AM.

[BusinessWebDesigns]

I didn't notice any more drops or increases, would like to know of anyone that saw a drop in ranking from the latest penguin update.

[Michael Martinez]

Matt Cutts has tweeted that a Penguin update is now live ..

I hope the serp will be better now ....... Time to clean up the mess they've made ..

People who keep hoping that Google will clean up the SERPs with a "Penguin fix" do not understand what Google is doing.

They are punishing what they feel are bad marketing practices and they are perfectly willing to take a hit in the quality of search results. They knew that some queries would start serving junk after they took out all the aggressive Websites.

Maybe the search quality team is working on ways to adjust the algorithm to find better-behaving Websites that are more relevant to these broken queries -- maybe the Web spam team is hoping people will clean up their marketing practices.

Either way, you are wasting your time and effort by criticizing the SERPs. Google is NOT going to reverse course on this process. Websites that were there before will NOT come back unless or until they make whatever changes Google deems necessary -- and perhaps there will still be some sort of "time out" penalty.

I see a lot of blog posts and forum discussions these days where people point to broken queries in Google's search results -- perhaps on the assumption that if enough people do this Google will relent. That is a false hope. It's NOT going to happen.

Google's engineers would have reversed course by now if they were going to do that.

[piskie]

I remember back in the 80s when aggressive management needed to make an ailing business leaner and meaner to get back into profitability.
A commonly used fix was to cut staff until quality of service suffered.
Then if necessary take a small step back.
It was brutal on personnel, but it delivered rapid results.

Eliminating the dross from SERPs using aggressive filtering is clearly getting rid of unwanted sites.
It is also affecting a small number of quality sites.
So following the established "Cut till it hurts" principal, there could be minor tweaks, but any significant retreat is almost certainly out of the question.

[Jill]

I do agree with Michael here. For the most part, Google is doing what they always do, spreading a whole bunch of propaganda by hitting sites that will be the most vocal about it. That way you get lots of articles say that spam no longer works in Google, even though it still works about the same as it always has.

[Hichem]

@Michael

We are not on the same page ..
I'm not hoping for websites to come back to the top, I was talking about the real mess Google created ..

You said they are finding ways to to rank relevant websites bla bla bla ..

I will only respond with one example , the website shown in here
http://insidesearch....gh-quality.html
as an example of bad practice , was ranking for that particular keyword "pay day loan" till the 1st of May !! Obviously it was taken down manually after the buzz it created ..

so simply stated, whatever the webspam team is doing, they are doing it wrong, period


@Jill

Good point.
I've collected some data, and the results were really funny !
what a mess ..

Edited by Hichem, 29 May 2012 - 07:35 AM.

[Jill]

I haven't seen very many examples of bad search results other than the same 1 or 2 that are being thrown about in forums. So I'm not sure if it's true that the results are worse. (They look about the same as they always do to me.)

[Hichem]

If the exact same website and keyword used as an example in the official penguin update blogpost are returning ridiculous results , the I don't think I have to go and try every single keyword out there to see the bad current serps ...

besides, every webmaster out there is complaining seeing poor quality websites outranking him for the major keywords ..

Personally, my main website was outranked by 3 ridiculous pages from tripadvisor .. went from 4 to 7 for a major keyword .. big drop in traffic - sales etc ...

the website is 16 years old, have millions of natural backlinks and tons of information .. got outranked by an almost empty tripadvisor pages ..

Maybe this isn't a good example as we all know the weight google gives to the big boys (and it's increasing everyday, especially youtube videos now (they say the reason is to give people mixed results !! (if I need to see a video I'll click on video serach resulsts or go straight to youtube !! but this is another story )))

it's obvious that I'm pissed off right now, so it's not exactly the time for an interesting conversation ..

I haven't seen very many examples of bad search results other than the same 1 or 2 that are being thrown about in forums. So I'm not sure if it's true that the results are worse. (They look about the same as they always do to me.)

Edited by Hichem, 29 May 2012 - 03:49 PM.

[BusinessWebDesigns]

Results also look worst then your not ranking in them. =)

[torka]

besides, every webmaster out there is complaining seeing poor quality websites outranking him for the major keywords ..

Uhm.... not every webmaster.

Our main corporate site is about the same place as it always is for our main search terms, our traffic is holding steady, and where there are sites that outrank us, they're clearly industry leaders that (frankly) deserve to be in the top spots. And on any searches I've tried to conduct over the past week or two, I've found what I was looking for easily, usually on the first page, generally at or near the top spot.

Maybe it's just that the people complaining are really vocal, and the rest of us who don't see any changes don't feel compelled to flock to the forums or publish impassioned blog articles to note that nothing's changed.

Seriously, I understand it's frustrating. And I understand that there are probably some verticals, some keywords, where things are "all shook up." But honestly, I personally haven't noticed that much change in general search queries as a result of any of the recent updates.

--Torka

[Hichem]

Penguin (said Google) affected 3% of the search queries ..

We will see how you'll be doing if your "corporate website" lose two or three spots to almost empty pages from "industry leaders" , losing thousands of visitors daily

Hell my website was up and full of content 3 years before tripadvisor saw the light !!!

If I was outranked by worthy pages, then it's okay! Google is doing a good job ! but the general feeling , and the vocal webmasters see their websites outranked by garbage !! this is the real problem .. and yes it's frustrating ..

Uhm.... not every webmaster.

Our main corporate site is about the same place as it always is for our main search terms, our traffic is holding steady, and where there are sites that outrank us, they're clearly industry leaders that (frankly) deserve to be in the top spots. And on any searches I've tried to conduct over the past week or two, I've found what I was looking for easily, usually on the first page, generally at or near the top spot.

Maybe it's just that the people complaining are really vocal, and the rest of us who don't see any changes don't feel compelled to flock to the forums or publish impassioned blog articles to note that nothing's changed.

Seriously, I understand it's frustrating. And I understand that there are probably some verticals, some keywords, where things are "all shook up." But honestly, I personally haven't noticed that much change in general search queries as a result of any of the recent updates.

--Torka

Edited by Hichem, 30 May 2012 - 01:02 PM.

[Jill]

We will see how you'll be doing if your "corporate website" lose two or three spots to almost empty pages from "industry leaders" , losing thousands of visitors daily

I'm confused. If the pages above you are basically empty or not good, wouldn't the searcher look down a few spots and still click yours?

[torka]

Well, given that we've survived all the other "tempests" Google's managed to throw at us, I'm not all that worried.

Beyond that, we don't depend on Google (or any other "free" search) for our traffic. All told, search only accounts for maybe 25% of what we get. I've got multiple channels in play all the time, and can easily step up any of the others if one starts to slack off. So, no panic here no matter what.



--Torka

[Hichem]

I'm not ready to give up 25%
And I think I lost more than that, something like 40% ... That's a lot ..

Well, given that we've survived all the other "tempests" Google's managed to throw at us, I'm not all that worried.

Beyond that, we don't depend on Google (or any other "free" search) for our traffic. All told, search only accounts for maybe 25% of what we get. I've got multiple channels in play all the time, and can easily step up any of the others if one starts to slack off. So, no panic here no matter what.



--Torka

[chrishirst]

And I think I lost more than that, something like 40% ... That's a lot

And therein lies your problem.


You have to reduce your reliance on "organic" traffic from search for your conversions.

What Torka meant by "25%" is that their search referral traffic is only 25% of the total and therefore losing that does not make such a huge dent in the revenue from the website.