Re: MAJOR Changes in Google SERPs Today
[QUOTE=rawTOP;89577]Here’s the post mortem list of winners and losers from the update…
http://searchengineland.com/who-lost-in-googles-farmer-algorithm-change-66173
I’m not seeing any porn sites mentioned - perhaps porn-related queries weren’t taken into consideration.[/QUOTE]
Why did Google let eHow.com stay? I hate that site, always totally pointless yet it appears almost on every search I do for information.
Re: MAJOR Changes in Google SERPs Today
they were mainly going after content farms and scraper sites. but there was a lot of collateral damage though. plenty of sites that were neither got deindexed or heavily penalized.
Re: MAJOR Changes in Google SERPs Today
Interesting that Technorati.com is on the losers list. That site is owned by Google.
[QUOTE=rawTOP;89577]Here’s the post mortem list of winners and losers from the update…
http://searchengineland.com/who-lost-in-googles-farmer-algorithm-change-66173
I’m not seeing any porn sites mentioned - perhaps porn-related queries weren’t taken into consideration.[/QUOTE]
Re: MAJOR Changes in Google SERPs Today
Gotta say this killed us.
Lost approximately a third of our traffic. What’s so ironic is that when we first read the news about the upcoming algorithm shift
we were excited, as our editorial content is all original, from a paid staff of writers. Instead we’re now buried six pages deep in search results. Really sucks.
I’m hoping maybe things are still sifting out though, and not completely settled. Though it appears all blog-like formats were demoted, given that there are no blogs showing up at all on the first set of pages for results. Don’t understand the logic of this, but then that’s Google.
Regardless, it sucks.
Re: MAJOR Changes in Google SERPs Today
What terms are you talking about where blogs have been demoted? Google organic on my blogs are up (very) slightly since the Farmer update went into effect…
Rand Fiskin did a post about winners and losers and what factors seem to have been driving issues in the update.
Re: MAJOR Changes in Google SERPs Today
This is something my coder noted by simply clicking through search results for terms like “naked men” or “nude men” – he noted that the first four or five pages of results did not inculde any sites that were formatted as blogs (as he’d seen before).
Re: MAJOR Changes in Google SERPs Today
And good for you rawTOP! Glad to hear someone benefited from the shift.
Re: MAJOR Changes in Google SERPs Today
David,
I looked at your Nightcharm site. Others may jump in on this in case they feel that I’m wrong, but the title of your site is all about gay porn, but you have quite a few articles on the homepage that have nothing to do with porn really like Larry Craig, reducing discrimination, etc. Out of 11 posts on your homepage, seven of them are not porn related.
Maybe Google made an adjustment because it “feels” that your title doesn’t really match your content.
Re: MAJOR Changes in Google SERPs Today
I think Google is still fiddling around.
After being stable for 1-2 weeks it’s now messed up again. Some odd non-relevant sites have come up on Page 1 for keywords that I watch. I’d say they are not done yet or reverted / took off a filter again. I do wish they stopped fiddling around, it’s affecting a lot of people. And even if you haven’t lost out, it still effect you - well at least does to me - worrying and stressing about what will be next.
Re: MAJOR Changes in Google SERPs Today
Could be Michael.
As I’ve come to say, repeatedly, related to Google: “Who knows?”
Nightcharm has never been an easy adult site to categorize. And that’s been so, ever since we launched 12 years ago. I’ve been proud of the fact that we’ve freely mixed porn with art, religion and politics – creating an interesting place for gay men to come and explore. It definitely helped establish the site’s unique ‘brand.’ Though it could be that now, with this Google shift, we’ll suffer for not having an easily categorized site. We’ll see.
Re: MAJOR Changes in Google SERPs Today
[QUOTE=David K.;89711]Gotta say this killed us.
Lost approximately a third of our traffic. What’s so ironic is that when we first read the news about the upcoming algorithm shift
we were excited, as our editorial content is all original, from a paid staff of writers. [/QUOTE]
I’ve just done a quick check of the possible causes on your sig sites (don’t know if they are the ones you are referring to, but interesting to see anyway). I’m just trying to prove some theory, so I hope you don’t mind.
nightcharm.com - Almost all the content is also appearing on http://2men.e-singles.biz/ is that related to nightcharm? Some of the content is dated prior to nightcharm too.
But, a lot of the content on nightcharm is very short, and there is a theory that too many links out of a post with short text will not be valued. When you look at what Google states will benefit webmasters, they seem to be saying pages and posts with considerable text will be given more attention. Also, a lot of the posts have quotes in them. So if the post is 200 words of quoted text, with 50 original words, they’ll probably think it’s a “here, look at this” post with nothing added to it.
luriddigs.com - This should be fine. From what I see the only results showing for the copy are on FB. Looks like Google is seeing this one as original. Have you seen any changes in the US traffic for this?
queerpop.com - No copy, just images.
From what I understand, Google are looking at the copy and counting the words, counting the links out, and counting the images. So a post with one image and ten words, or a post with five images and one hundred words, will not be valued highly. Neither will a post with one hundred words and three links out from the copy. In addition, they’re checking to see if it’s published anywhere else, when, and how much has been changed/added.
This is what I’m implementing on my blogs:
Every post has one image (collage) and/or one video
Copy is approx 150 - 300 words minimum
Two links out only, one from the image (I might change this and have a lightbox) and one text link
I haven’t been tracking most of mine until very recently, but on the one or two I have been, with using original content, I am seeing a rise in US traffic.
For anyone who isn’t sure about the duplicate aspect of the change, do a search on some of your copy in quotation marks. It’s interesting to see the results, especially for sponsors.
For example, EnglishLads deals well with duplicate content, with their own pages turning up first place. But BlakeMason doesn’t even show first page for their content, they’re beaten consistently by affiliate bloggers and tube sites. On one excerpt I just ran, their affiliate page content shows up before their paysite, then their blog shows up, but in only four pages of results their actual paysite page is nowhere to be seen!
When this rolls out globally, some businesses are going to have a real problem if they don’t focus on their written content. If BlakeMason relies on affiliate sales, and their affiliates are using the duplicate content too, they are likely to see a dramatic slump in traffic and sales, IMO.
Re: MAJOR Changes in Google SERPs Today
Well, from my point of view Bjorn, that’s good news (the ‘fiddling about’). I was hoping that might be the case, as I’ve lived through this before when they’ve tweaked something and then gone back and forth with it before settling into the new ‘groove.’ (Though, admittedly, in the past, we’ve always fared well with those changes). I’m keeping my fingers crossed this time – again.
Re: MAJOR Changes in Google SERPs Today
[QUOTE=gaydemon;89717]I think Google is still fiddling around.
After being stable for 1-2 weeks it’s now messed up again. Some odd non-relevant sites have come up on Page 1 for keywords that I watch. I’d say they are not done yet or reverted / took off a filter again.[/QUOTE]
I agree, there’s probably going to be some handbag dancing around this change. But it also makes me wonder what they plan to do with blogs, now that they have a dedicated blog search. They could be removing blogs from the general search and expecting people to be using the specific blog search function for finding them.
That could affect us in search volume, but it should make up for it in targeted traffic and resulting sales. But I also think a wise move would be to go toward the entertainment factor rather than the “this is porn, and it’s good, buy some” method.
Re: MAJOR Changes in Google SERPs Today
Interesting feedback conran. Thanks.
We’ve no control whatsoever with sites that hijack our posts, as http://2men.e-singles.biz/ is doing. In the past we’ve written to those sites, and asked them to stop, but it’s impossible. Do you have some other recommended way of dealing with that kind of theft?
Content on Nightcharm is mixed, regarding length. Too, keep in mind we’ve seven years worth of writing on the site (at least as it’s set in WordPress). We used to post long, sprawling pieces, but cut back on that when we realized people weren’t really reading them. So now it is a mix of short pieces and long essays. The posts with quotes in them is something we just started playing around with, but have since cut back on. After your comments though I may go in a remove those posts (we only started that policy a couple of months ago).
Luriddigs.com has dropped in traffic as well, after the Google shift. Which is irritating, given the parameters you are highlighting in your comments.
Queerpop.com isn’t really ‘live’ yet, we’re still in beta with that site, just tooling around with ideas. So I don’t follow numbers there.
Thank you for your lengthy feedback though. I’m going to send this over to our tech guys and have them lay down some new parameters for Nightcharm writing team.
Cheers,
David K.
Re: MAJOR Changes in Google SERPs Today
David,
I have lost all of my “big dick” traffic, but my foreskin and jock traffic is fine. So one blog got killed, but two others are completely fine. So it seems a bit random.
However, I think I discovered an issue on the big dick blog, I’m just waiting to see if the traffic is going to bounce back.
Re: MAJOR Changes in Google SERPs Today
David K I’ve promoted your site Nightcharm on my site forever!
Re: MAJOR Changes in Google SERPs Today
[QUOTE=David K.;89723]
Thank you for your lengthy feedback though. I’m going to send this over to our tech guys and have them lay down some new parameters for Nightcharm writing team.
Cheers,
David K.[/QUOTE]
You’re welcome.
It should be said though that these are only my opinions. Google is (as ever) pretty secretive. But from what they say about “research, in-depth reports, thoughtful analysis”, sites with sponsor reviews, performer bio’s, industry pieces and full on feature write-up’s will do a lot better. That’s why I think we’ll see affiliates having to move away from short pieces with six images to 150-300 word posts with a video embed or image collage; proper scene reviews in other words.
Sponsors, I think, will be forced into implementing a “three copy” rule for their content updates. One sent out, one posted to their paysite, and then the site updated with a new description three days later. That will remove the duplicate content problem after about a month I believe (as their crawling frequency increases).
As for existing content being duplicated elsewhere, the only thing I can suggest is rewriting. If it’s done on a daily basis, the crawling rate should also increase leaving your copycat out of the loop. But while you’re rewriting it, I would change titles (leave link) and increase word count too. I would start by checking which posts appear elsewhere by performing the quotation search on each, so you only have to rewrite the ones that have actually been stolen.
Also, for those who haven’t done it, find a way to add a voting system somewhere to gather audience feedback and opinion. Words like “was this useful?” and “what do you think?” are expected to be flagged by Google and seen as a mark of true audience participation and INTENTION to offer valuable information.
I’m considering renaming the “Comments” heading to “What’s your opinion?” or something similar too. Basically, a question mark and different ways to ask for opinion is a sign that you are engaging rather than ordering or going with the flow. Reduce exclamation marks, increase question marks, reword, rewrite and restructure.
I’m still working on all the ideas I have formulated in response to this update, but I should have a complete report soon. It might be useful for bloggers and sponsors.
Re: MAJOR Changes in Google SERPs Today
The stats for Friskyfans since this announcement have been unimpressive — and the keyword rankings in the SERPS seem to be just as spammy.
I’m with you — as with any other “update” we just need some time to ride it out and as long as we follow the basic SEO guidelines, things shake out okay.
Steve
PS: I’m reminded on how Uncle Ernie in Tommy was always “fiddling about…fiddling about…”
Re: MAJOR Changes in Google SERPs Today
goog killed a lot of sites with this update and yes the results just seen just as crappy or worse.
Re: MAJOR Changes in Google SERPs Today
[QUOTE=David K.;89723]Interesting feedback conran. Thanks.
We’ve no control whatsoever with sites that hijack our posts, as http://2men.e-singles.biz/ is doing. In the past we’ve written to those sites, and asked them to stop, but it’s impossible. Do you have some other recommended way of dealing with that kind of theft?
[/QUOTE]
Personally I always deal with content theft, first by asking nicely then with the help of a lawyer. I’ve had 100% success rate in removing everything that belongs to GayDemon. It helps having a trademark. (By the way the easiest way to find stolen content is to use www.copyscape.com)
BUT… you should not really have to worry about your content being used elsewhere. Google normally can tell the difference between original source and copy theft location. In some way it could even be beneficial as it could be seen as you’re an authority on subject since other copy your article… however that would work only if there is a link back to you.
In terms of Nightcharm’s losses, you need to just have a think… Have you changed anything recently? Did you maybe change your Page Titles? Changed design, or location of text? Changed the URLs to blog posts? If nothing has changed for a long time… then it’s unlikely there is anything you can do. I’ve seen several sites being hit for absolutely no reason, some still suffering others have recovered.
For example, my own site www.bestmaleblogs.com got hit in January and totally disappeared off the search index. If you did a search for the site name you could find it, it was indexed fine. But it never showed up for any keywords. I had not changed anything on the site for over a year… nothing had changed at all. So I waited and then 2 weeks ago it came back again, stronger than before. I’m not saying the same would happen to you, but what I’ve seen over the last year and more recently is that lots of sites seem to get stuck in a Google twilight-zone, for no reason at all. I believe now that it’s simply random, Google gets is now so big and complex that it simply gets it wrong now and then. No matter what you do it will not change anything.
In my view Nightcharm should score well in Google, it’s a very old site, uses only original content, have lots of good incoming links and authority. I would sit tight and wait. Whatever you do, DO NOT take any knee-jerk decisions and make major changes… all you will end up doing is possibly triggering a filter on Google and make matters worse. Never ever do changes to your site while Google is in a flux.
PS
I just did a search now for “naked men” and NightCharm is on page 1, position 7.