DAE Think Google is Going Crazy w/ Rakings Lately

I think Google is straight up going nuts. I have hundreds and hundreds of money pages on the net and since the first Panda update I have watched them go up and down and up and down with no rhyme or reason. I have continued building links and am hoping for the best for them but fear thee majority may never come back.

Right now, for one of my most competitive keywords that has 70,000 searches a month, ( I used to own the G 1 Spot and bank fat cash ) there are 10 sites with nothing but spun articles that hardly make sense and the sites have mostly crap Xrumer links showing. NO PR, no good backlinks, and SHIT content all on the first page for a keyword that banks 5 g's a month.

WTF is all I can think of. I am planning on sitting back and watching this shit storm by G and hopefully I wont lose all my money and hopefully I can find more ways to make money.

I think everyone in the SEO game is in the same boat right now. I heard it put best right after the first Panda update - "The party is over..."

Right now I am planning on trying to survive.

What does everyone else think?

martinact420 said:

Right now, for one of my most competitive keywords that has 70,000 searches a month, ( I used to own the G 1 Spot and bank fat cash ) there are 10 sites with nothing but spun articles that hardly make sense and the sites have mostly crap Xrumer links showing. NO PR, no good backlinks, and SHIT content all on the first page for a keyword that banks 5 g's a month.

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It does all seem to be pretty random. Some of my sites went way up, some went way down. I am considering just stealing articles from all my competition and using a basic crappy spinner and posting the articles on my site. It might make my site look a bit trashy on human visitors, but if Google loves it, then I love Google. Worth a test I guess, can always remove the crap articles if they hurt me.

I think there are two mindsets or routes to take at this point:
--> "Darn Google... They are looking for more dang quality and that is gosh darn what I'm going to start giving them"
-->"F*** Google and Slap the S*** out of Matt Cutts Grandfather!!!!.... (a few days pass).... Time to rebuild... take a look at what survived the google change... rank your sites back up in google and keep on keeping on!"

I know for a fact that Google's new method of ranking content is not perfect. And I hate hearing this crap about quality content because Google is just a freaking program. They cannot determine "quality" in the way that we think of it at least. They've tweaked their method of ranking sites, some got slapped, others survived, and life goes on.

But I think that Google really messed up with this update. Go take a look at the top 10 for some decent keywords right now.

Hmm... Looks like google likes spammy ass squidoo, aged domains with one h1 tag and 1000 words of spun content on website with nothing else on it, etc... Google keeps saying that they want quality, but somehow the flat out spam survives even the worst of it. What message does that send to the seo community?

Kickflip said:

It does all seem to be pretty random. Some of my sites went way up, some went way down. I am considering just stealing articles from all my competition and using a basic crappy spinner and posting the articles on my site. It might make my site look a bit trashy on human visitors, but if Google loves it, then I love Google. Worth a test I guess, can always remove the crap articles if they hurt me.

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I've wondered the same thing. I'm not for bashing some guy's site down maliciously, but in the effort of testing in SEO I think that it is justifiable.

My theory is that its all going social... Have a read of the following excerpt from my social post yesterday

Over the last few years the use of social networking has changed rapidly, and now everyone and their pet seems to have at least account somewhere on the social net. Major brands now find Facebook so appealing that they even base multi-million dollar TV Advertising Campaigns around people "Liking" their page on the social network.

However what I consider key (and often overlooked) is that Social is based around human intelligence and interaction. For many years Google and other search engines have tried countless mathematical algorithms to determine the best results to a search query. The number of websites which have links to your website, the types of website that has links to your website, how many blogs meantion your website... All of which could be artifically manipulated.

Now if you picked someone of the street and asked them how they cooked a curry they'd tell ya, no mathematics involved and without being influenced. Its the same on Social networks, I'll ask what films are good to watch, which is the best garage to use... And my friends will answer me. It fixes the problem of artifical manipulation.

Now all Google needs to do is work out just how to link the two together, in the meantime we can be prepared, and also get shed loads of free traffic. Generally a social network will allow us to link to our website from a page on an authority site and also make other users aware of that page or account.

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Crap articles will hurt you, if you got good content and google don't like why do you think adding crap content will help?

For all the sites that are going down, there is equal movement in the positive direction, so something is working. But I agree that there seems to be more movement than usual. Eventually, when the dust settles, it will be more clear what google is currently weighted heavily on, and people will abuse it and life will be good, until the next big change.

efwebs said:

For all the sites that are going down, there is equal movement in the positive direction, so something is working. But I agree that there seems to be more movement than usual. Eventually, when the dust settles, it will be more clear what google is currently weighted heavily on, and people will abuse it and life will be good, until the next big change.

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Not necessarily true. Sites may not actually be moving forward, but rather just staying neutral. What this means is that Google may not be rewarding ANYONE, and they may just be punishing other sites. So your site doesn't get ranked any higher by Googles algorithm, its just that my site is now ranked lower.

This means you wont find anything to exploit or abuse. You will only know what NOT to do.

Kickflip said:

Not necessarily true. Sites may not actually be moving forward, but rather just staying neutral. What this means is that Google may not be rewarding ANYONE, and they may just be punishing other sites. So your site doesn't get ranked any higher by Googles algorithm, its just that my site is now ranked lower.

This means you wont find anything to exploit or abuse. You will only know what NOT to do.

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I think that you've hit the nail on the head with Google's reactionary approach to things lately.

I have been monitoring and analyzing the top 10 sites in Google and here is what I have seen personally:
-H1 tag doesn't necessarily even have to be on the page or have the keyword in it. My understanding is that some very relevant pages don't know about this basic SEO. At the moment, I am testing sites with irrelevant H1 tags versus exact and somewhat relevant H1 tags. We'll see how that goes.
-I have noticed some flat out spam still ranking, so there is still clearly a way to rank on page one. A lot of these sites are just text and no html with a ton of profile links pointing to the page.

Some of my sites that were slapped in Feb and March recovered in April. It took a lot of consistent backlinking and they only recovered to around middle of page one (previously #1).

This unclear change with Google really pisses me off, but my mindset is just to keep testing. I know for damn sure that I'm going to run on the treadmill longer than Google will.

Longover said:

Some of my sites that were slapped in Feb and March recovered in April. It took a lot of consistent backlinking and they only recovered to around middle of page one (previously #1).

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Same with me, although I was able to get my most important #1 site back to #1.

But then Panda 2 hit in mid-May, and the stuff not only went back to where they'd fallen to in Feb/March....it's fallen even worse. My big #1 site is moving around in the 35-52 range, and has been for well over a week. All I'd done there was add more relevant content --- so I removed it last night; it was 100% handspun, but maybe G didn't like it for some reason?

And that's what the worst thing is about what's happened. There's apparently no way to know much of anything anymore. It's all guesswork. I know G doesn't owe us answers, or a living lol, but it pisses me off

I think social bookmarking/social spamming play a huge role nowadays. Your competitors (who only use spun content) might have this advantage over yours. I'm also in the same boat with you and I really hate it when thin pages with spammy backlinks conquering my keywords as well. I think we need a bit social love to back to the top, not sure though

reallife said:

Same with me, although I was able to get my most important #1 site back to #1.

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Oh how jealous of you I am!

reallife said:

But then Panda 2 hit in mid-May

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You're wrong. Panda 2 hit in the first quarter of April.

reallife said:

, and the stuff not only went back to where they'd fallen to in Feb/March

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That was Panda 1. Maybe you're confusing Panda 2.0 with Panda 2.1? Both are two completely different changes.

martin,

You sound like a traditional whitehat like me. I might be wrong. But anyhow, the only reason why I joined this forum was because so many scrapers were ranking above my own quality content with over 40,000 real on-topic backlinks (and then almost 10x more which aren't quality).

I know Googlers from several 'teams' personally, and I know they don't have any intention of putting quality in the doghouse, but that's exactly what they've done with Panda.

To be completely clear, I've found that a lot of the posters I've seen on this site ARE NOT like the people who are stealing my content and killing my site and business.

What panda changed (prob for the next 2 yrs+)
1) Google wants social sites and rewards accordingly
2) A lot of old crap backlinks (profiles/blogs) are gaining rank in some type of grandfathering
3) 1000 backlinks can beat 90k (I've done it inside 2 weeks) if the 1k are high content level
4) Don't spin anything less than 150% in AMR (I try for 200%) and should be readable by humans

Google indexs and caches ALL of my spun content now

Yahoo still loves crap links though

It also appears that if you want to rank high for a keyword, google wants you to use their advertising. By putting heavy social interacting sites high in rank , 1st page, and bumping money making sites from page one, they are making us use adwords to show up on page 1. Its all about income and dividends for google. But I also think it might push the internet user who is looking for specific products or services and not an interact blog to search on other engines. What do you think?

efwebs said:

For all the sites that are going down, there is equal movement in the positive direction, so something is working. But I agree that there seems to be more movement than usual. Eventually, when the dust settles, it will be more clear what google is currently weighted heavily on, and people will abuse it and life will be good, until the next big change.

Click to expand...

You hit the nail right on the head. For every site that goes from #1 to #2 - or worse, there's another site - or sites that take those spots. I think taking a look at the differences between your site, that had that #1 spot, and the site that has now replaced yours is something we should all be spending a bit more time on.

How is their navigation?
What's their content like?
What is the backlink profile like... spam blog comments? Forum profiles? High PR homepage links?
And more!!

What are they doing that you're not doing. What have they been doing that you haven't been doing (in the past).

netdealer said:

You hit the nail right on the head. For every site that goes from #1 to #2 - or worse, there's another site - or sites that take those spots. I think taking a look at the differences between your site, that had that #1 spot, and the site that has now replaced yours is something we should all be spending a bit more time on.

How is their navigation?
What's their content like?
What is the backlink profile like... spam blog comments? Forum profiles? High PR homepage links?
And more!!

What are they doing that you're not doing. What have they been doing that you haven't been doing (in the past).

Click to expand...

Yeah, I agree that you gotta learn from getting beat in the rankings. There's somthing they did that pleased google's systems, and your job's to find out what and use it to get back on top.

The problem with Google is that the actual users (people searching for information) rarely even hear about the updates. They simply assume Google is the best search engine.

Even if Google makes a crappy update that sends junk and spam to the top page, the users are still going to assume this is the best information for their search (Google doesn't make mistakes, right?)

Can you imagine trying to boycott Google? It would never work. The only people that might follow this are the webmasters, which make up less than a quarter of a percent of people browsing on the internet. The rest of them are just sitting there fat, dumb, and happy. The business is so big and so many people are convinced that it is the best search engine.

Google can do whatever it wants to. The stupid users will follow along with it and business will be booming as usual. They're basically a company that doesn't get punished for mistakes.

So to answer your question....Yes, Google might be going nuts, but no one is going to force them to do something about it. It's all messed up. :bsflag: :bsflag: :bsflag:

martinact420 said:

I think Google is straight up going nuts. I have hundreds and hundreds of money pages on the net and since the first Panda update I have watched them go up and down and up and down with no rhyme or reason. I have continued building links and am hoping for the best for them but fear thee majority may never come back.

Right now, for one of my most competitive keywords that has 70,000 searches a month, ( I used to own the G 1 Spot and bank fat cash ) there are 10 sites with nothing but spun articles that hardly make sense and the sites have mostly crap Xrumer links showing. NO PR, no good backlinks, and SHIT content all on the first page for a keyword that banks 5 g's a month.

WTF is all I can think of. I am planning on sitting back and watching this shit storm by G and hopefully I wont lose all my money and hopefully I can find more ways to make money.

I think everyone in the SEO game is in the same boat right now. I heard it put best right after the first Panda update - "The party is over..."

Right now I am planning on trying to survive.

What does everyone else think?

Click to expand...

Exactly, spun spammed bullshit sitting in the 1st 9 positions while my site has dropped into the hundreds. Used to be on page 1. All unique content. I dont get it either.

I have only one question too you all what works now?

Apparently I DO NOT KNOW how to reply to stuff in multiquotes here but...

I regained a number one page that was lost in Feb back to number 3 and have it bouncing mid page after 3 months of being buried past 100 but steady linking.

Overall it looks like some pages are recovering after the huge Feb/March Panda but definitely not moving fast.

I did rank a brand new site in March with no backlinks, starting banking cash, was visited by Google 6 times over the course of one afternoon, and subsequently a week later the site has disappeared completely and I had 15-20 pages ranking in the 1,2 and 3 spots. NO BS. I thought i had the magic back but really after careful thought and consideration, I just think G is plain f-ed up right now.

Whomever said they thought I was a whitehatter, ahh hell no, I started this game with re-bills a few years back so that should explain a bit about my morals.

As far as what to do for ranking right now? I have been hitting my good stuff with killer in-content/context anchor links from good sites and I have saw crazy deep G dances which also leads be to believe G is f-ed up but also I think the G dance became a bigger and more complex, most likely longer lasting part of IM. Moreover, I can't seem to do anything right now but I do agree with the social bookmarks maybe becoming heavy hitters.

I am glad that people here are talking and explaining things back and forth because if we all continue to work together we can conquer G and bank fat money.

One last thing, I really think that if your site is banking with G search results for free and G finds out you a one man band, that they take your stuff off cause they want all the money to stay corporate and in their pockets, but thats just my little conspiracy theory, dont even ask me about the federalis

Thanks all. Hit me up, keep this thread running, whatever, someone please show me how to multiquote, maybe I'll have to look it up

Peace!