New Google Update 24th April

[VSC]

Google at it again:

http://googlewebmastercentral.blogspot.co.uk/2012/04/another-step-to-reward-high-quality.html

Noticed some of my sites have completely disappeared from top 10 pages when they'd been solidily established on page 1 for years - good white hat sites as well.

Not very impressed so far!

Here are some comments:
http://jlforums.com/search-engine-optimization/major-google-update-(april-24th)/

Anyone seen changes?

[ Obviously that should have been 24th April, not 34th! ]

 

[murph]

Yep big changes, some solid sites hit!! Why does G seem like Russian roulette these days :-/

 

[boxfish]

I've had some crap sites hit, tbh surprised it took so long.

I'd be interested to see the quality of the solid sites and see whether they have been hit or just readjusted for local which seems to be happening a lot at the moment.

 

[PoshTiger]

US ranks for some have my sites have dropped a little...

All UK ranks seem fine.

 

[mally]

A quick check of my sites confirms drops also

 

[chippyb]

I was just about to post a question and ask if anyone had noticed any changes in ranking, my sites have been hit hard, for one site i had 10 top tens in google and they all dropped 70 odd places,
My first ranking for my hotel site got hit also from 1st to 7th, it was solid for months, but laterooms was touched at all, seems to favour the big guys this, but I can safely say I wont be earning any money today

 

[dashu1]

LOLOL!!!!!

You remember that arrogant twonk that used to post on here who has the paydayloans.org.uk site - well that article by Google that highlights a specific site that will be hit by the algo change - IT'S ONE OF HIS SITES!!

Yes, google have singled him out specifically and walloped him!

In the first group of 2 photos, one is an SEO spam site, the other is a post on a website spamming links for payday loans.

It doesn't show up in Google anymore, but you can find it in Bing - it's near the bottom of the home page here:

http://profitmonarchs.com/

One of the cloaked links goes to here:

http://www.nowaitloans.co.uk/

Which is an identical site to: paydayloans.org.uk

The nowaitloans site is registered to Scott Green, don't know if that's his genuine details.

LOLOL I take my hat off to him, to be actually singled out and made an example of by Google like that.

What a guy!

LOLOLOLOL!!!!

 

[retired_member36]

One of my sites has dropped from page 6 to around page 26.

I always thought google want to deliver quality relevant content to its users??? But lately they are doing the opposite and favouring a lot of shite sites. (Thats not just sour grapes)! For example, search BABY NAMES.

I used to run a decent baby name site that was on the first page for ages, i cant see it anywhere now. However 2nd page there is "baby-names dot co dot uk" It doesnt even contain any information relating to baby names. Its simply an amazon aff store, not exactly delivering the users what they are looking! Also alot of the other sites in the first few pages are discussions, Blogs, and inner pages from a site whos home page is shown on the home page.

Lee

 

[scottsmith]

I own Babynames.co.uk, thought I was doing a good job with it Lee or was your post targeted at another site??

Scott

 

[retired_member36]

Wasnt on about your site there Scott mate, sorry for the confusion. Your site is quality and deserves its place at the top

 

[scottsmith]

No Problem Lee

Scott

 

[JMOT]

Wasnt on about your site there Scott mate, sorry for the confusion. Your site is quality and deserves its place at the top

Yes, babynames.co.uk is a very good site but that doesnt matter of Google decides it doesnt like the SEO then bye bye.

Fact.

Google doesnt give a flying shite.

 

[dashu1]

People on the thread linked to in the first post are reporting some very odd results and giving examples.

I'm afraid it's getting to the point where no-one is safe from the updates, one minute you're fine, then suddenly you're gone.

It's down to a whim of what Google decide they like or don't like anymore as Jmot said.

 

[JMOT]

Then to cap it all off if you say fuck it, I'm gonna start PPC and put stuff into your account that isnt absolutely perfect from a compliance view point in finance, legal and other niches that are semi or fully regulated they suspend your adwords account. LOL

Damned for SEO
Damned for PPC

Fun fun fun.

 

[JMOT]

Googles RPC fell last quarter meaning earnings from PPC for Google dropped.

Solution?

Spanner SEO and force the world into PPC to drive back up network RPC's.

Genius huh!?

 

[boxfish]

Then to cap it all off if you say fuck it, I'm gonna start PPC and put stuff into your account that isnt absolutely perfect from a compliance view point in finance, legal and other niches that are semi or fully regulated they suspend your adwords account. LOL

Damned for SEO
Damned for PPC

Fun fun fun.

I've been reading about and listening to Gary Vaynerchuk recently. He does a lot of motivational stuff which I don't particularly like but he also does a lot with social media and videos.

If you do a bit of research and see what he did with Wine Library, his family business, he made a video each day of wine reviews and talked to people on social sites about wine, who then found their way back to his website and watched his videos.

Each video has between 200-300 comments, some have over 1000 and he makes a new one every day.

He doesn't ever plug his product, just talks about it.

He also says he is not interested in SEO at all, just social media.

Although I don't agree with everything he says I certainly think he has a great business plan that doesn't rely on Google, just whatever is the latest social platform.

 

[JMOT]

Exactly. Dont rely on Google. If you do make sure you are paying it via PPC lol at least you have some security lol

I've been laying plans for this for a while.

 

[ratboy]

Its a scary time for everyone on the internet, more so if you have an internet business reliant on Google for all its traffic, organic or not.

I welcome the changes, but still Google has a lot of work to do. There are still so many crap sites in good places when solid sites sit below because, hey they don;t have enough inbound links, even through Google apparently doesn't pay much attention to them - Matt Cutts says so, it must be true.

So what does the future hold for us? Move to PPC? Yup thats probably the only way to provide consistent and safe traffic to your site. And thats what Google wants - it thinks well you make money, pay for the traffic. If you rely on our free traffic we will make your life stressful and move you around.

Social and this new Author Rank thing is all very well. I went to the ionsearch conference in Leeds last wednesday, and thats the BIG thing in search. However, as much as the white hat lot were talking about how good it is (the wine guy above for example) others were talking about creating 20 million fake Google+ accounts and running a similar scam to the bulk backlink thing we have seen. The goalposts move again. How many author +'s do you need to rank your pay day loan article now? Ridiculous.

I've got a personal problem. Why should I invest my time creating a new site with great content when you are at the mercy of Google moving the goalposts every 6 months.

Take this gardening site here: http://www.mytinyplot.co.uk/
Great content, updated regularly, high rank - but have a look into it, and it's (I won't mention out loud) is a bit naughty in its revenue model. Sites generally only appear like this to make money - Google doesn't like that - so what happens? They ban then? Lower rankings? That content is what gives Google it's users. If they ban it, over time less people use Google.

I don't know. Worrying and exciting.

 

[Blossom]

Google doesn't have a personal vendetta, although there are always mistakes in shifting rankings. Search algorithms have been changing and evolving since day 1 - they are trying to improve search results, not deliberately mess you around. If they make a big mistake in how a change or process is rolled out they tend to quietly revert it. If not, you're unlucky or you happen to be doing something they don't like at the moment (such as putting homepage and/or site-wide affiliate links on your website).

Google got to where they are by being the best. If you compare their results to Bing, Yahoo, Blekko, DuckDuckGo and all the others, you can see why. They are not going to jeopardise that over short-term monetary gain.

You can pick out all the examples you like, but what percentage is that of the entire web? Even hundreds of thousands of sites is a tiny sample. It's a bloody big job, it's not like they can go through every website individually.

Buying Google +1s is a waste of time. They only influence the rankings of those who +1 it themselves (and their contacts). The fake +1s you're buying are automated accounts, not people, so they don't have friends to recommend links to.

 

[ratboy]

Nice view Jenni