From #6 to #100+ with NO change in rank?

[Val]

I've been reading through many of these posts, but I am brand new, so forgive me if I shouldn't be posting this again. I understand from both this forum and the groups on Google itself that Google is going through changes. Here's our situation. I made our website using Frontpage. I also maintain it with Frontpage. I know no HTML code and thought I had done a good job since we have been consistently (for months) in the top 4-7 on our most popular keyword searches on Google. We have been ranked 5/10 for months, though I've been working on trying to get that higher. As of now, there is only one other site in our category that is ranked 6/10. Everyone else is 5/10 like us, or lower. We are about number 7 or 8 in the popularity listing. So, about four weeks ago, without a change in our popularity listing or our page rank, we dropped from being on page one and #4 or 5 to being on page 10 or 11 and being #100+. This makes absolutely no sense at all since our rank and popularity haven't changed and no one elses appears to have changed much either. Now, there are sites ranked 4/10 on page one and sites on page one that are MUCH lower in the popularity ranking.

And of course, our business has DWINDLED! Is there something more I could or should be doing? What can I do to make our site come up better in the searches when they are finished doing whatever it is they are doing? What changes is Google going through? Is it going to screw us up even more?

Thanks in advance.
Val

[Net Wizard]

Try checking your current ranking at www-fi.google.com (http://www-fi.google.com)

Cheers

<edt>URL typo</edit>

[Advisor]

PageRank is only one small part of google's algorithm.

You need to actually optimize the copy of your pages to rank highly for your very specific and relevant keyword phrases.

Jill

[Val]

It's 5/10. And we're on page 12. (like I've described in my post above). Some sites on page 1 are ranked 4/10. So, now what?

Does this give me different info than going through www.google.com?

[Val]

"optimize the copy of your pages"

What do you mean by "copy"? I've been working on optimizing our pages, especially the home page. Does this explain our drastic drop from page 1 to 12?

[Net Wizard]

The serp at www are currently screwy(your term :) ) , a more reliable ranking can be found at the above URL I have posted, if you are ranking pretty good before and have suddenly dropped to page 10 even at www-fi then something have caused that drop. Perhaps, some backlinks have been removed, etc., etc..

But, do check your ranking first at www-fi before you can suspect something else.

Cheers

[Val]

Net Wizard....
Thanks for the info. I did check us out there using the most popular keyword search, as you suggested and yes, we are on page 12. We were on Page 1 in mid May, then suddenly dropped to page 10. Other than a few minor changes, nothing else had changed about our site, nor any of the other similar sites, that I could see, anyway....

Our back links are pretty stable. I'm about to have a few more added. And our ranking is still 5/10.

As an aside, our adwords ad was on page 1. So, at least we'll get a few hits, even if we pay out the *** for them.

Any other reason you can think of for a drastic drop like that?

[esavvy]

Do you have alot of sites that you exchange links with? Also - do these sites have your important keywords as anchor text of the links? If so - the new Google algorithms may be penalizing your site for this.

----- Only a guess.

[Val]

Hmmm... right now we have about 32 links and some of those are internal from other pages in our site back to our home page. So, I don't think that's excessive at all and actually have a few more links we plan to add. All links are relevant. Regarding the keywords, do you mean the keyword is actually part of the link itself? I think most of the links are just our name, Blue Daisy Greetings, banner or button. There were some who included other things like Blue Daisy Greetings Photo Birth Announcements as the link. Could that be hurting us? Thanks for your input.

[esavvy]

Val - you must of had links coming in from the outside? Did they have any of the keywords in the anchor text? Did you link back to the sites that linked to you? (Link exchange) Possibly that could have hurt you?

[steelcityinternet]

I am definitely seeing this as well - my home page has lost all ranking on my main 'anchor text' keyphrase, but is still number 1 for other key phrases that I do not exchange anchor text links with. I now have internal pages that rank very well for my main key phrase, so I cant complain.

I suspect that Google is clamping down on reciprical linking - although I'm still unsure to what extent.

[Val]

Yes, we also have links from outside. I thought I said that above. Some of the links are just internal. Then, some are off of other sites. Yes, we did exchange links with other similar sites (sites having to do with babies and families). Why would this hurt us? With a total of only 32 links to our site and some of them from our own website, that doesn't seems excessive enough to hurt.... Advice? I thought you were supposed to exchange links and have links back to your site.

What do you mean by "anchor text?" Is that the hyperlink itself? Of course the keywords are in the description and on some sites, are part of the link itself. Is that what you mean?
Thanks.

[steelcityinternet]

Anchor text is the text used in the actual link.

There's nothing wrong with linking to other sites and sites linking to you, but I suspect that Google wishes to filter out the excessive reciprocal linking seen on many sites whose only purpose is to artificially boost page rank.

The idea behind linking is it is a 'vote' for another site because you think it may be of benefit to your visitors. Trouble is, there are way too many sites out there that have hundreds of link pages with thousands of links on each page - each link being reciprocated. If you are involved in a link exchange with one of these sites, you may be getting a penalty for getting involved with 'bad neighbourhoods'.

I have a site that has many incoming links, none of which are reciprocated, and it has been completely unaffected by recent changes. On the other hand, my web design site, which featured a links page that featured a handful of reciprocal links has suffered greatly, but only for the keyphrase that these other sites used to link to me. I can see no other cause for a penalty on my site and it's certainly taught me a lesson about who I link to. I've now removed those links and hope to see things restored on the next update.

[Val]

Thanks again for the helpful information. We have only 12 links on our link pages. I imagine that most of those sites also link back to us. If I go to our Backward links at Google, it lists 32. Of those 32, 14 are from outside sources. The others are links back to the homepage from our own site. Could any that be hurting us? I'd have to go check out all the 14 sites that link to us to see if they have excessive links pages.

I posted on the free help and critique pages here also. If you get time, would you mind taking a look at our site and telling me if anything stands out??

www.bluedaisygreetings.com

Thanks so much again for your input.

[google_me]

What if your anhor text has keywords in it merely from the fact that its the name of your site. For example, if your URL is www.bestwidgets.com and you use something like:

Best Widgets (link) - We offer an extensive line of the best widgets in the world.

Do you mean that google is penalizing for having "Best Widgets" linked in your anchor text as shown above??? That doesn't seem to be an adequate means to control excessive reciprocal linking...I have seen my own backlinks cut in half and I assume its because Google dropped about half of those sites because they had determined them to be participating in excessive link exchange programs or link farms.

The bottomg line is none of us really know whats REALLY going on...we'll all know when the extended "dance" is over when positions and backlinks become more consistent.

[Webmaster T]

Originally posted by google_me
The bottomg line is none of us really know whats REALLY going on...we'll all know when the extended "dance" is over when positions and backlinks become more consistent.Number one PR is one of a hundred different algos G uses. It is primarily a ranking algo however I consistently beat higher PR sites. You mentioned tinkering with your page that did well. This is often a bad idea. Don't fix what ain't broken! If you want to be found for more terms then use new content and link to it from the page that places well if they are relevent to each other. This not only protects what is doing well it also passes PR between internal pages. It sounds to me like you have hurt your KW density for the other terms by targeting too many phrases to a single page.

Though it is presently in vogue to treat reciprical linking as part of the optimization process it is misguided. Properly optimized sites don't need link campaigns to place well! They only need enough to get G interested in indexing the site and adding it to the main index. Reciprical linking is an activity that should be done for users not SE optimization. In fact it looks very much like the new G algos are not penalizing these links they just aren't counting and weighting them as heavily.

[steelcityinternet]

Google_me:

No I dont mean that at all - I'm merely speculating that if a site is involved in a link exchange with 'bad neighbourhoods' that they may be penalised for this particular link exchange (as expected)
But rather than penalise the whole site on all keyphrases, Google may be penalising only on the page being linked to (normally the home page) and for the keyphrase in the anchor text used in the link.

[Val]

Webmaster T:

Let me ask you something. In Mid-May when we had this sudden drop from page one to page ten there had not been any major changes to our site in at least a few months and only minor changes to the pages inside. The homepage is the one where we get the most hits and we had targeted one keyword "photo birth announcements" because that's where we get the most business. And that's where we had been on page one. Then, overnight we dropped to page ten. It was AFTER that drop (a few weeks after) that I made some changes to the text on the homepage (to make it read better) and added a couple new links. This was last weekend. So, I know that had nothing to do with the decrease in May. The other thing that's odd is that most of the sites that were with us on page one are still there or only dropped to page two. Only a couple new sites made it to page one.

SO, knowing this...that there were no real changes made to the homepage in the two to three months prior to the drop from page one to page ten for our main keyword during the May dance, can you offer suggestions on what to do to get back up there?
Thanks.

[Webmaster T]

Originally posted by Val
So, I know that had nothing to do with the decrease in May. The other thing that's odd is that most of the sites that were with us on page one are still there or only dropped to page two. Only a couple new sites made it to page one. Well the G index in May was actually the index as of April or earlier. See the Google Dance threads for more details. Also checking the cached page would give a clearer indication of which version is being used in the results. In fact I would definitely start with that to be sure you know exactly what the rankings are based on. You find that by going to the SERPs and clicking the Cached link for your listing.

[Val]

Webmaster T,
The current cached page was from June 14th. This was after I had made a few changes...I had added a link to a page with a lot of new content. And I had to add 2003 and Inc. at the bottom. Those were the only changes. The one before that was essentially the same page that had been up for MONTHS. Literally. The last significant changes to the home page were made last October. And that was to change an image on the home page.

So, what can I check or do now?

[google_me]

Have your backlinks decreased?

[Val]

google me,
Backlinks. That's a tough question because it seems to change each time I look at it. Over the past few days I have seen 32, 21, 22, and 30. So, I have NO idea what is accurate. I'm not sure why this is happening either since our links to our site are not actually changing.

[google_me]

Since you are seeing a fluctuation in your backlinks that may cause fluctuations in your rankings...I am seeing that with my pages as well...but not for sure.

[stevew]

Originally posted by steelcityinternet
I am definitely seeing this as well - my home page has lost all ranking on my main 'anchor text' keyphrase, but is still number 1 for other key phrases that I do not exchange anchor text links with. I now have internal pages that rank very well for my main key phrase, so I cant complain.

I suspect that Google is clamping down on reciprical linking - although I'm still unsure to what extent.

I wholeheartedly applaud Google in doing whatever it likes to "link farm" pages. In fact, simply ignoring them (and removing the benefit to the target sites) is, IMO, a very clever way of making the exercise utterly pointless without penalising sites that may otherwise be useful/high-quality.

I have never gone overboard with reciprocal linking, and have a mix of incoming links : many reciprocated. In some instances, following general advice (not to mention Optilink's), I have encouraged people to use keywords in their anchor text.

Generally, our pages seem to have done fairly well in the current upheaval (though, of course, we never know what's next...)

However, there have been a few unexplained movements that I could, perhaps, put down to keywords being used in incoming links.

My question is this : Does this mean that a links using "www.domain.com" in the link text is better that using "blue widgets" (or whatever)

[Val]

I'm not certain that our current drop from page one to ten has much to do with our links (except maybe we need a few more relevant links). The links we have haven't really changed in months. Some are internal, some are external. Regarding link exchanging, we haven't really exchanged links with anyone who is linking for the sake of ranking. We're quite careful about who we link with. AND most of the sites linking to us have remained high in the search engine listing. SO, if they weren't affected, I can't imagine they would "punish" us for linking with them. But, I'm not sure......

[google_me]

Val:

I think most of us are at a loss when trying to explain the current bouncing around some sites are experiencing. It could be that google is using an old database, your backlinks could be decreasing due to sites you are linking with being penalized or downgraded, or google could be using some type of new algo whereby your site does not do well in.

I am experiencing the same thing and I think we will have to wait it out.

By the way, which search term (s) are you concerned with? Do you use the google dance tool at http://www.google-dance.com/?

[g1smd]

I have a site that is #1 and #2 in the SERPs, but which drops suddenly, for a few days, every few weeks, to #60 or #64 and to #3 or #4 respecively. I can't explain it. The site contents did not change in that time. This has been happening for several months, and the temporary drop must have happened about 5 times now, each for about 2 or 3 days, then position restored to #1 and #2 for another week or two before another temporary drop occurs.

Just before the dance started this happened again on www for 2 days, but all is now well again.

[scirceo]

Coupla questions sparked by this thread:

1) What the heck is www-fi.google.com? I went there and did a search and got the same results are regular google.

2) How do I check the number of backlinks for a site at google?

Sorry for the newbie questions -- but I learn, Mr. Fawlty, I learn!

--Steve :confused:

[scirceo]

Of course, soon's I post, I figger out about the backlinks. Why's it work like that?

Still wondering about fi-google, though.

--Steve

[g1smd]

There are 9 Google datacentres. When you access www.google.com you are served results from one of those datacentres. If you request data again, then you might get something from another datacentre.

At the moment the June update is in progress, and some datacentres have old data from mid-April with fresh results for last week sprinkled in, while other datacentres have completely different, altogether newer, data coming from the June update,

The 9 datacentres are: www-fi.google.com, www-in.google.com, www-va.google.com,
www-ab.google.com, www-dc.google.com, www-cw.google.com,
www-ex.google.com, www-sj.google.com, and www-zu.google.com.

[scirceo]

Thanks, g1.

I was reading an article (http://www.metamend.com/google-dance.html) on the subject, and it appears that, according to the article, www-fi was discovered in May 2003. That must be why it was suggested that we try the www-fi search to see how we rank there, since it's the latest one.

That makes sense to me, so I hope it's correct thinking. Otherwise, I just may have to drink another 32-oz Dr. Pepper to get the juices flowing :)

--Steve

[g1smd]

Umm, the update started on -sj last month I think. Each month it has been a different one to start the update.

Anyone who proclaims to know that amount of detail about Google must either be an employee (so wouldn't actually be able to talk about it outside of the Googleplex), or is making it all up.


Best go get that drink ready!

[scirceo]

Originally posted by g1smd
Best go get that drink ready!
Ach, well, I needed it anyway....

--Steve