Recent content by gwarftron

This is what frustrates me. No matter how much research you do, how well you structure your content, add your sources, add a bio, links and information about the writers, how well you design and optimise your site's UX, etc. When a site like that rocks up and kicks ass on Google. It just shows...

I haven't really built links years ago. I don't know how or why Google does anything, nor am I closer to solving the affected ranking drop. I have noticed so far that receiving more links have helped my rankings though. So that's interesting of course.

I have a mix, but in the past year most of my links have been generic and none to a few exact keywords. I have dropped about 60-70% of my pre-May traffic. And since then I have removed most of my ads, Ezoic was a user experience nightmare. So that is fair if that caused me to drop - but no...

Another issue I just noticed with Google is that yesterday I was searching for a video on bonsai pruning ( yes, :) ) and then it lead me to a video from what I thought was in either India or Pakistan. But it had an English title so I click on it. Same again just now when I searched for some...

Interesting, for me there was another site (parenting blog) in the top 7 now. So it seems they might have tweaked back the algo slightly, but not fully. As 6/7 results are still Google Books, before it was 7/7.

And what is that policy exactly? To promote Google Books? To promote 90s designed PBN sites? Pinterest?

I am not much for conspiracy theories, but the general search results are crap. It looks like 2 seconds-built websites from the 90s with no EAT trust whatsoever. And I bet half of them are from India. So yeah it's not overly stupid to try and jump to those conclusions right now.

I understand. Just thought it also was so weird because of the strange search results that came up. I mean the first 7 results are Google Books... Have you sent this over to JM or someone else over at G?

Lol what is up with that search term (how to babysit a toddler when your wife is at work)? Is it some weird term for something that I don't know about? When I searched for it on Google the 7 first results are Google Books, lol. The crap

It doesn't have to do with this. There is rhyme or reason to what is happening. Google just a couple of times per year presses a big randomiser button and then call it a core update. And then John Mueller says don't do this, don't do that. But truth is that the people who seems to be doing...

I don't care how 'thin' they are, because of most of them are very valuable and useful. Much better than the majority of SEO experts. Thin, long, whatever really.

Did he actually respond in a gloating way indicating that your site didn't deserve to be on the first page? Did you ask him more about the new sites that took the first page? And if they like you say are fishy no content PBN sites?

Exactly. The ones who seemed to have gained in the last updates are shitty websites, full of keyword stuffing, horrible UX, etc - most likely down to effective PBNs. And the other winners are authority sites, Pinterest, YouTube, Google Books, Google Play, etc

Continuing to lose keywords. Regained a couple of top 3 ones, but lost many more elsewhere. It has settled down for sure, but I am continuing to see fairly big drops in the past week. This is really unbelievable. I am hoping we will see a big update come from Google to fix this at some point...

For manual penalties, they would be found in Google Search Console. For algorithmic penalties, or filters they can't be found in GSC. And it's a guessing game to figure out if you got one or not. If you obviously bought links, etc then it might be the case.