Google Quality Algorithm Update
-
I'm curious what correlations or impacting variables SEO professionals have found that have increased or decreased ranking with the most recent algorithm change. It appears that many innocent sites have fallen victim, especially larger sites. It also appears that Google is maintaining that specific sites were not targeted... Meaning there must be proven characteristics.
-
So is the solution for stem queries to attack offsite with increased relevant, promoted content? Or is it also 'fattening' relevant content on page?
-
This is the general advice that I continue to see that doesn't have any definition whatsoever... 1. What is keyword stuffing as defined by this algorithm change and compared to actual search results that have been promoted or demoted? 2. How can Google possibly define quality without investigating and rooting out specific domains... Which they insist they are not doing? 3. Define useful and not useful in a quantitative manner that Google can measure? 4. Navigation issues impacted sites before the change? Are you saying navigation issues (404s?) have MORE of an impact since?
-
Douglas,
Actually, I was reading up a few articles on the same topic and I came across these. They may help you better understand what the update was like.
How innocent websites were targeted:
http://www.searchenginejournal.com/the-farmer-update-harmed-codependent-site-owners/28248/
Search Engine Land's view:
http://searchengineland.com/google-trying-to-minimize-collateral-damage-from-farmer-update-66495
It seems that websites with large amount of user content which were not very tightly moderated fell prey to this update. As with all algorithms, this update has its share of problems.
One is still to understand why ehow wasnt penalized whereas websites like business.com were.
One thing is for sure:
Do not stuff keywords into your content for SEO
dont put up low quality content
post only original content sueful to real users
#solve all faceted navigation issues (which is largely a problem of large ecommerce websites)
-
We've seen a significant decrease in google.com traffic for stem query terms like [botox] and [invisalign]. We have an active community with tens of thousands of cosmetic treatment reviews, photos and Q&A, so we're not a shallow scraper site.
I don't think we've been specifically punished. Instead, it looks like Google simply reset the difficulty of competing for commercial stem query terms back to what it was in 2008. I looked at google traffic by keyword between the end of February 2009 and the last few days, and it seemed clear that our overall traffic has increased significantly but most of that traffic has been for long tail searches. Traffic for stem query terms are generally flat or down.
In January and early February, we were ranking on page 1 for many of those commercial stem query terms for the first time, but it looks like those days are over.
Got a burning SEO question?
Subscribe to Moz Pro to gain full access to Q&A, answer questions, and ask your own.
Browse Questions
Explore more categories
-
Moz Tools
Chat with the community about the Moz tools.
-
SEO Tactics
Discuss the SEO process with fellow marketers
-
Community
Discuss industry events, jobs, and news!
-
Digital Marketing
Chat about tactics outside of SEO
-
Research & Trends
Dive into research and trends in the search industry.
-
Support
Connect on product support and feature requests.
Related Questions
-
Google Bot Noindex
If a site has the tag, can it still be flagged for duplicate content?
Technical SEO | | MayflyInternet0 -
Google Enterprise Search Questions
Hi Everybody, A client has asked me to take a look at Google Enterprise Search for them. It has been a few years since I last fooled around with implementing a Google search box on a website, and that was the free version which included off-site results in the results. This appears to be the main page describing the paid product: http://www.google.com/enterprise/search/ I have three questions: The search testing function on the above page doesn't seem to be working. I'm typing in a URL and search term, as prompted, and the page is simply refreshing. It never provides me an example set of results. Is it working for you? This client has a moderately large e-commerce site (about 200 products). Have you implemented Google enterprise search on such a site and are you happy with its performance? The goal here is to let users search for a topic and be returned both product and informational pages. How well does this tool do this? Am I going to need to know any special types of coding (beyond html/css) to implement this? If so, what are they? If you have experience with this product, I would surely appreciate your feedback. Thank you!
Technical SEO | | MiriamEllis0 -
Google authorship what am i doing wrong
Hi, i am using google authorship on my site but when i use the testing tool it is not working. before the upgrade we had it working fine but now it does not seem to work. we have our google plus account pointing to the site and the writer we are trying to add is not coming up on the tool here is the code we are putting on the page Google+ and the page in question is here http://www.in2town.co.uk/emmerdale/emmerdale-laurel-is-determined-to-take-action when i check the tool i get the following Authorship Testing ResultAuthorship is not working for this webpage.andAuthorship rel=author MarkupCannot verify that rel=author markup has established authorship for this webpage.the tool i am using to check is http://www.google.com/webmasters/tools/richsnippetsany help to solve this problem would be great. i am using joomla
Technical SEO | | ClaireH-1848860 -
Google is ranking the wrong page
We are trying to figure out why google is ranking the wrong page for the key word motorcycle tires. We have a few ideas but are not sure yet. If you do a search for Motorcycle Tires you will see site on page 2 or top of 3; however, the page will be going to our dirt bike tires page (http://www.rockymountainatvmc.com/t/44/86/176/742/Dirt-Bike-Tires-All) not our Motorcycle page (http://www.rockymountainatvmc.com/t/49/-/181/750/Motorcycle-Tires-All) any thoughts? We think we know why but want others opinions too.
Technical SEO | | DoRM0 -
Google Not liking Magento Sites?
Hello, I'm new to the community and I wonder if anyone can help us shed a light on this SEO issue we are having. We have 3 magento websites that is being affected. Whats happening is that those site were ranked for a specific keyword for few months, but all of a sudden, it just drop like crazy. It went from top 10 to about 150 in a bout a weeks period. Some site, it's not even ranked or stopped ranking and visible on the search engine. Is google not liking MAgento for some reason?? Any help or suggestions will be appreciated! thanks
Technical SEO | | solution.advisor0 -
Google.com
Hi We are managing a .com site for a client working on getting the site ranking. The site is hosted in the US. The content is rich, deep and unique. The site is in a competitive market but had begun ranking top 50 for a selection of keywords and we could see many more in the top 100. The site is now going backwards and only has a few keywords ranking top 50 and all the others have disappeared from the rankings all together. Any thought as to what could cause this. The site is managed from the Uk but as mentioned is hosted in the US. No penguin issues as all content unique, rich, relevant and fresh. SEO is also managed from the UK. Thoughts
Technical SEO | | SEOwins0 -
Google Places Question......
Hi Guys. I am working with a photographer they do not have a studio they shoot on location. However I noticed many photographers within their industry have their home address listed in their google places, and they too shoot on location. My client doesn't want their home address listed so I wondered what options there would be? Do you think renting mail forwarding address would suffice?
Technical SEO | | RankStealer0 -
Does Google care how you write internal links?
I am changing ecommerce platforms. For my internal linking on the old site there was a lot of old links written like this: http://www.domain.com/page-name But now i am writing links mostly like this: /page-name Will that make a difference to search engines? Is one easier than the other for them to interpret?
Technical SEO | | Hyrule0