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eMEraLdwPn
02-02-2005, 06:50 PM
did google make a dramatic change today? A LOT of key terms i was ranked #1 for just yesterday, i've now dropped to pages 2, 3, 4, 5, and not even ranked at all anymore. many other terms i was ranked in the top 5 for have also decreased... i don't think i've found a search term i managed to stay the same for actually. no one else has said anything yet, and it's been a few hours since my traffic cut in half, so i'm guessing this has only happened to me...

the only reason for this happening that i can think of is last month i had a ridiculous amount of downtime, and a lot of my pages got reindexed as either dead links or error pages - could this be the reason i dropped so much? but if so, why did i drop on every term all at the exact same time? this really sucks... :mad:

Chris
02-02-2005, 07:34 PM
Downtime could definitely be the culprit.

ozgression
02-02-2005, 09:48 PM
There are talks of a big Google update on quite a few webmaster forums, eMEraLdwPn, so you may not be alone.

Jaffro
02-03-2005, 06:06 AM
As far as i know i've had no downtime but I've also just noticed a drop in all targeted terms for me. It wouldn't supprise me if there was an algo update from google, and it happens to occur fairly soon after msn search comes out of beta. Seems planned to me, but then again i am suffering! :)

After a killer january its goning to be a real shame to see a dreadful february!

chromate
02-03-2005, 06:24 AM
Oh man. Just checked all my rankings. There has been a major Google update - I'm absolutely certain. Nearly all of my sites have dropped! :( Really not good at all.

MarkB
02-03-2005, 06:57 AM
One of mine, which had disappeared into the ether, has been reborn. Still ~#80 or so, but better than nothing ;)

Emancipator
02-03-2005, 07:15 AM
this is why i hope msn can gut out more then 2% of the market so I am not so dependant on google.

eMEraLdwPn
02-03-2005, 07:48 AM
i probably just lost about 1/2 my total traffic =\
anyway i think that i suffered from the google update because of my downtime, not from any algorithm changes... i think they updated toolbar pr? i'm noticing some differences anyway. a lot of my PR3 dropped to PR2, PR2 to PR1, etc. i also had about 90,000 pages indexed before and now closer to 70,000.

not sure about why everyone else took hits but i'm hoping mine is from downtime.. heh...

Emancipator
02-03-2005, 07:56 AM
for the record im fine... :) I just was making general chit chat.

s2kinteg916
02-03-2005, 09:35 AM
Yeah i got demolished !!!!! too.....

Chris
02-03-2005, 09:38 AM
My survival site dropped 1 spot down after being #1 for 3 years.

chromate
02-03-2005, 09:42 AM
My cabohydrate counter site dropped to #5 after being #1 AND #2 for about year. Doesn't surprise me that much though. Its PR is only 4! Seems to be the low PR sites that have been hit bad.

Emancipator
02-03-2005, 10:22 AM
hmm im surprised my sites have not dropped since the PR is low on all my sites.

Dan Morgan
02-03-2005, 11:23 AM
I went to top spot for the search term that brings me most overall traffic - BUT this was on the last day of January (resulting on about 2,500 visitors per day, up from around 1,500).

Trying to check DP now to see whats happened based on what all you lot are saying but its slowwwwww..

chromate
02-03-2005, 01:49 PM
Yeah, wasn't even working when I tried. Said it was down for maintanance. ;)

So then. Obviously a big Google shake-up - but does anyone have any ideas what the alg changes are? Let's waist no time. Let's start SPECU*ATING!!! Muhaha :)

eMEraLdwPn
02-03-2005, 03:07 PM
i've heard a lot of people saying they give up on google and they're going to concentrate on yahoo / msn now... doesn't seem like a terrible idea :p

Jaffro
02-03-2005, 03:11 PM
I dont think there is a need to target a particular se. I believe that you can target every se without damaging rakings in another - however my site has just slipped down 6-10 places in google :S

nohaber
02-03-2005, 03:17 PM
No changes in my rankings. Still holding on to top10 rankings for most keywords. Lack of DMOZ/Yahoo listings are setting me back. I'll be buying a Yahoo listing next month. IMO, LocalRank kicks a** now.

eMEraLdwPn
02-03-2005, 03:18 PM
some of my terms i dropped from #1 to page 7.. i'm just hoping whatever they did they undo, fast

GTech
02-03-2005, 03:39 PM
I have no doubt something very real just happened. I went from number 10 to number 1 out of 10,600,000 results.

I've been floating from 7-10 for the past month or so.

Time to check my other sites.

Emancipator
02-03-2005, 03:42 PM
hmm my traffic has spiked today so you guys could be right on a change. and i agree on the not targetting an engine, i target nothing.

moonshield
02-03-2005, 04:00 PM
've heard a lot of people saying they give up on google and they're going to concentrate on yahoo / msn now... doesn't seem like a terrible idea

Let us hope they do.

Kyle
02-03-2005, 07:26 PM
I'm hurt pretty bad.. Usually my affiliate shopping pages were the only thing that ever fluctuated greatly when major Google changes happened.

This latest update has brought trafifc to our reference sections down over 50%..

Extremely significant, especially after having excellent rankings for years and beating the Florida, and other updates. I would have to assume this is temporary, especially with our 11 dmoz listings.

ozgression
02-03-2005, 08:18 PM
So then. Obviously a big Google shake-up - but does anyone have any ideas what the alg changes are? Let's waist no time. Let's start SPECU*ATING!!! Muhaha :)

Yes, let's. :)

If legit sites are being hurt, let's hope that the SPAM sites are also being hurt (hard).

Blue Cat Buxton
02-04-2005, 01:54 AM
Whose winning - I havent seen many that have made considerable gains ?

MarkB
02-04-2005, 02:11 AM
Looks like a backlink update too (sorry if that's been mentioned!). Gains all round, there. Now to see a PR update :)

moonshield
02-04-2005, 04:30 PM
I have some newish sites that have backlinks but no pages indexed. Odd indeed. Google deep crawled about 2 weeks ago, maybe they will be listed soon.

chromate
02-06-2005, 07:13 AM
Is it me or has there been yet another update? I just checked digitalpoint and my rankings have just got terrible right across the board. My south beach diet site has literally disappeared. >:-/

Chris
02-06-2005, 08:08 AM
Ditto Chromate, my coupon site is completely off the radar.

A thread in sitepoint where I mention my coupon site ranks though... stupid Google.

MarkB
02-06-2005, 08:37 AM
A client's site, which had numerous #1 positions, has also fallen completely from the results. Interesting.

nohaber
02-06-2005, 08:41 AM
Hmmz. Looks like another update. My software site got up for all keywords but still not No1 :mad:

Yoda
02-06-2005, 09:58 AM
My largest, most profitable site has experienced a significant dropoff in traffic over the last few days.

Yoda
02-06-2005, 10:00 AM
I should add that my PR doesn't seem to have dropped. Go figure. Hopefully this is temporary; looks like nearly everyone here has seen a negative effect.

Shawn
02-06-2005, 10:43 AM
Not to piss you guys off or anything -- but this update was absolutely great.

I increased rankings on everything, even with search terms I haven't ranked on in the entire history of my site.

MarkB
02-06-2005, 11:37 AM
Then congratulations (you *******) :p

cameron
02-06-2005, 12:07 PM
I generally like this update, based just on rankings. Traffic wise though, I'm not seeing any change yet. Hdskate.com is finally listed for "skateboarding" after two years of being online. God-games.com got listed under a bunch of new keyphrases. Web Difference took a dive though and has been knocked out for every search term I was tracking.

I no longer understand how PR and ranking relate. Both of the sites that improved actually lost backlinks and PR, while Web Difference gained links and stayed the same PR.

MarkB
02-06-2005, 02:57 PM
Funny thing is, the client I mentioned has received more enquiries this weekend alone than they have in all the week previously. Maybe they've risen for phrases I'm not tracking?:)

eMEraLdwPn
02-06-2005, 04:01 PM
i'm #135 when you search for my hub site. chris is #1 :p
somehow i doubt these results will stick in their current state, they're far too messed up...

Jaffro
02-06-2005, 04:17 PM
Looking at the rankings over the past few days and they've been changing each day. I dont think this is several updates but a good old fasion google dance spanning a few days maybe more :) As normal i cant see any pattern to the rankings but it does seem to have improved the result quality. I dont think its over yet tho, going to be watching this space carefully! :)

AndyH
02-06-2005, 06:49 PM
I am seeing the opposite. My game cheats site is actually showing up in the top 100 results for "nintendo 64 cheats" and "xbox cheats" and I havn't seen any falls.

paulfitz
02-06-2005, 07:31 PM
Well I took a hit from google at the start of Janurary. Luckily for me MSN has ranked a few sites highly so traffic hasn't changed too much - just a change of ratios (google providing 20% traffic now roughly).

Westech
02-07-2005, 09:37 AM
Interesting. Google's never been nice to me, but now things seem a little better.

Two older sites that never ranked anywhere now rank within the top 20 for some phrases with one keyphrase at #3.

crazymonkeygames is still a big fat N/A.

Yoda
02-07-2005, 09:48 AM
Looking at the rankings over the past few days and they've been changing each day. I dont think this is several updates but a good old fasion google dance spanning a few days maybe more :) As normal i cant see any pattern to the rankings but it does seem to have improved the result quality. I dont think its over yet tho, going to be watching this space carefully! :)
Yes, I've noticed the same sort of thing. Drop on Wednesday, but not a massive one...but a continued drop over the next few days. If it were one single drop in ranking, I don't think it would've slowly descended over a 3 or 4 day period.

Not sure what you mean by a Google dance, but I certainly hope this is not quasi-permanent. Result quality depends on subject, I'd imagine, as I'd like to think my quote site was quite relevant to the searches it used to bring in.

Anyway, I'd certainly echo the previously voiced hope that MSN and other search engines pick up a bit of market share, to reduce this kind of overnight downswing.

MarkB
02-07-2005, 10:21 AM
I'm just checking positions again in Digital Point (I can't believe a content site, with unique content, would fall so dramatically!) and my client's site is looking to be back where it was on Sunday morning. Weird.

Kyle
02-07-2005, 10:53 AM
I'm just checking positions again in Digital Point (I can't believe a content site, with unique content, would fall so dramatically!) and my client's site is looking to be back where it was on Sunday morning. Weird.

Survive Outdoors has 11 dmoz listings. Our content pages that target words like Frostbite, Sunburn, and Hypothermia have fallen drastically...

We have been listed in DMOZ for some time with anchor text Frostbite, as well as Sunburn. We're in between result 100 and 200 for the term sunburn...

What the hell? I'm very concerned.. Nothing changes when doing &filter=0, so I'm not sure whats going on or whats wrong.

Chris
02-07-2005, 11:04 AM
Could this be, in a roundabout way, a result of the new blog link changes? (although I don't do any blog promotion myself).

Also, for what its worth, other than my coupon site the only other drop I've seen is the 1 position drop for my survival site. I don't monitor the hundreds of keywords my literature site is ranked on, but the few I do monitor have shown no change and traffic has stayed the same. My sword site rankings have stayed the same as well.

Yoda
02-07-2005, 11:35 AM
Could this be, in a roundabout way, a result of the new blog link changes? (although I don't do any blog promotion myself).

Also, for what its worth, other than my coupon site the only other drop I've seen is the 1 position drop for my survival site. I don't monitor the hundreds of keywords my literature site is ranked on, but the few I do monitor have shown no change and traffic has stayed the same. My sword site rankings have stayed the same as well.
I face a similar problem, in a way: the quote site obviously gets most of its traffic from searches for specific quotations, so there's no primary terms I can search for to determine what is causing the dropoff. That's what really has me scratching my head: how can the drop be so widespread, across thousands of indexed pages?

I'm genuinely stumped. Anyone have any insight as to what this might be about?

moonshield
02-07-2005, 01:33 PM
this site ranks very very well on many many searches, I have noticed that much lately.

Jaffro
02-07-2005, 03:34 PM
blog linking, haven't done it myself but i seem to remember some chit chat about it improving rankings easily or something (cant actually remember). It would be good to see google update to filter out any 'easy' seo, we all want content to be king always :)

PS - seeing improvements and steady returns back to 'normal' ranking positions for me in most of my targeted terms. however it could all change. I think i'm going to wait to next week before deciding that its 'settled'.

chromate
02-08-2005, 04:06 AM
I've seen a couple of improvements. But only to the extent of moving up 1 or 2 positions on page 1 keywords. My SBD site is still no where to be seen.

Emancipator
02-08-2005, 08:49 AM
I think Chris could be onto something. I dont use blog links and have not dropped at all. In many cases I have moved up.

chromate
02-08-2005, 09:18 AM
I've never used blog links, and I've had serious drops. Having said that, I do have a few blogs where people have linked to carbohydrate counter. I don't think it's just the nofollow thing but that may be a part of it.

Still doesn't explain the big drops though, like Chris's coupon site and my diet site.

Westech
02-08-2005, 09:51 AM
It doesn't have to all be due to blogs, though. People could be editing existing links on non-blog sites to include the nofollow tag. For those of you who have dropped, do you still have around the same number of link:yoursite results in Google?

chromate
02-08-2005, 09:58 AM
not sure here. I never pay much attention to the backlink count.

Chris
02-08-2005, 10:13 AM
I don't think its blog links. My coupon site gets almost all it's links from my other sites.

I have had some listings come back to life today. Looks like its still changing.

Could be that for some reason Google only had half an update or something and sites that didn't make it into the first half were temporarily dropped.

chromate
02-08-2005, 10:17 AM
Hope you're right. :) I have listings in some datacenters, so maybe they've finished updating and some of the others haven't.

Emancipator
02-08-2005, 11:00 AM
well my listings held strong, so i cant say.. in fact my traffic was up 25% so who knows.

Percept
02-09-2005, 03:36 PM
I'm late yto the party but I saw some drastical things.

The desk02.be website (1 page) which has +400 forum backlinks with anchor "webdesign" or "desk02" had been completely dropped from the SERP's but it was still in the index. I had no idea what happened cause the term "desk02" isn't exactly a competitive term so I asked some DP-ers what the problem could be and they told me it was a duplicate content filter ( dek02.be didn't redirect to www.desk02.be ). I actually missed the fact that there was an update so I added a htaccess to handle the redirect.

Now 4 days after adding the htaccess file we're back in the SERP'S for "desk02" but still only the second page.

I didn't really belief the duplicate content filter theory (but added the htaccess to be sure) so it has to be the update that screwed things up.

Mike
02-13-2005, 02:23 AM
On digitalpoint I just see a load of red numbers. Unfortunately, nearly all of those are indicating I have dropped out of the serps completely.

chromate
02-13-2005, 06:17 AM
Yeah, it's a horrible sight! All red numbers and n/a

Interestingly, I noticed that I'm no where to be seen in msn either for my south beach diet site. So I wonder if I had some down time that I didn't notice or something to cause the drop from both engines.

Mike
02-13-2005, 09:45 AM
Down time on one of my sites is why it's dropped I think, but for the others...who knows.