5 ms·

I think this only the beginning of the bad news due to this algo change. There are many legitimate businesses that have been seriously impacted by traffic drop

I think this only the beginning of the bad news due to this algo change. There are many legitimate businesses that have been seriously impacted by traffic drops and we'll probably see many more layoffs and budget cuts.

YooLi 16y ago
Out of curiosity, can you name some of the legitimate businesses that were affected? I thought the algo only targeted content farms and sites that regurgitated other peoples content.
- WillyF 16y ago
  Mine is one. Google traffic is down 30%, and that significantly affects my revenue. http://www.onedayonejob.com/ http://www.onedayonejob.com/
  - InfinityX0 16y ago
    You need to increase the # of links you have from the homepage - I would suggest getting to the 100 internal link point by finding more ways to tag your jobs you have under "See All 1206 Entry Level Employers", which I imagine is driving most of your search traffic. Divide that by category types and link from the sidebar - this will pass linkjuice more efficiently and improve your traffic.
    - WillyF 16y ago
      That's a really good suggestion. I mostly use the tag pages to flow linkjuice throughout the site, and it seems to work pretty well. I'll think more about how I can improve my site architecture. But I was doing pretty well until Thursday. The really interesting thing is that http://www.onedayoneinternship.com/ http://www.onedayoneinternship.com/ has seen no change in traffic. Its architecture is nearly identical, and much of the content is shared across both sites (because I built the sites for humans, not search engines). There's a decent chance that this is causing the problem, but I can't understand why ODOJ would get hit instead of ODOI. Even content that isn't partially duplicated on ODOI is getting hit, so it's either a domain level filter/penalty based on duplicate content, or it's not the issue. Right now I'm thinking a lot about how to fix whatever Google doesn't like, but it's really hard when you can't be sure. I can't really afford to do significant testing (and you can't actually run a good experiment with a real site). For now I'm going to keep investigating, and work on building links. That's always a good time investment.
      - T-hawk 16y ago
        > but I can't understand why ODOJ would get hit instead of ODOI. Wild guess: "job" is a highly competitive keyword subject to lots of scammy black hats ("work from home for $$$!!!"), while "internship" is much more clear of the scum?
- mrjasonroy 16y ago
  One property my company holds, http://www.dentalcompare.com http://www.dentalcompare.com has been affected. It's a classic product comparison site (with a lot of problems) but there is not "farming" of content. Every company provides their products and every article is original or at most, a small abstract.
- tristanperry 16y ago
  http://www.webmasterworld.com/google/4261944.htm http://www.webmasterworld.com/google/4261944.htm http://www.webmasterworld.com/google/4273051.htm http://www.webmasterworld.com/google/4273051.htm http://www.webmasterworld.com/google/4274857.htm http://www.webmasterworld.com/google/4274857.htm http://www.webmasterworld.com/google/4272916.htm http://www.webmasterworld.com/google/4272916.htm /\ For non-URLed discussion of dozens or possibly hundreds of legit sites which were hit. Today's Wired article gives some more specific examples: http://www.wired.com/epicenter/2011/03/google-spam-side-effects/ http://www.wired.com/epicenter/2011/03/google-spam-side-effe...
- justinchen 16y ago
  You can take a glance at this thread: http://www.google.com/support/forum/p/Webmasters/thread?tid=76830633df82fd8e&hl=en http://www.google.com/support/forum/p/Webmasters/thread?tid=...
dminor 16y ago
I think this is only the beginning of good news due to this algo change. There are many legitimate businesses that have been positively impacted by traffic gains and we'll probably see more hiring and raises.
- acangiano 16y ago
  Absolutely. SEO really is a zero-sum game.
  - patio11 16y ago
    That isn't true. For any particular search, yes, if one site goes down another site will necessarily go up. However, in aggregate, SEO creates value. Think of StackOverflow, for example: the primary mechanism for success isn't taking traffic from ExpertsExchange -- that is just a much-remarked side effect. The primary mechanism for success is successfully incentivizing the creation and distribution of answers for a broad universe of expert questions to which no responsive answers have ever appeared in the SERPS before. Similarly, an algorithmic change in Google which cleans up the long tail can help businesses in a variety of fashions. I mean, I'm not actually seeing major changes yet, but if my rankings for five thousand variations of "how do I make X bingo cards" over the universe of ten Xs which content farms deem valuable to target, that gives me additional resources to develop value-producing things elsewhere (like, e.g., subsidizing the development of AR, or ramping up my publication efforts from my current speed of ~250 to year to a higher number on progressively more obscure topics which real teachers really do want to teach lessons on tomorrow). Similarly, improving the value of the SERPs for any field of endeavor or user community results in an increase in the aggregate number of searches as user behavior changes. That is a change that lifts all boats.
    - po 16y ago
      …except for the boats it sinks. Namely, the long tail that they cleaned up. I'm not sure I understand when you say "SEO creates value" if you mean the so-called good/relevant SEO or the low quality/sketchy SEO. I assume you mean the former. SEO can mean "help make my site easy for google to honestly evaluate and judge the quality of my content" or it can mean "game google into thinking my content is what people want to see even though they probably don't". I can see how having a better index creates value but I'm not sure how SEO contributes to a better index. It seems like google changed the rules, some companies are doing worse, some are better (zero sum) but hopefully the index is better and people can find what they want (unlocking value). Is that what you're getting at?

YooLi 16y ago

Out of curiosity, can you name some of the legitimate businesses that were affected? I thought the algo only targeted content farms and sites that regurgitated other peoples content.

WillyF 16y ago
Mine is one. Google traffic is down 30%, and that significantly affects my revenue. http://www.onedayonejob.com/ http://www.onedayonejob.com/
- InfinityX0 16y ago
  You need to increase the # of links you have from the homepage - I would suggest getting to the 100 internal link point by finding more ways to tag your jobs you have under "See All 1206 Entry Level Employers", which I imagine is driving most of your search traffic. Divide that by category types and link from the sidebar - this will pass linkjuice more efficiently and improve your traffic.
  - WillyF 16y ago
    That's a really good suggestion. I mostly use the tag pages to flow linkjuice throughout the site, and it seems to work pretty well. I'll think more about how I can improve my site architecture. But I was doing pretty well until Thursday. The really interesting thing is that http://www.onedayoneinternship.com/ http://www.onedayoneinternship.com/ has seen no change in traffic. Its architecture is nearly identical, and much of the content is shared across both sites (because I built the sites for humans, not search engines). There's a decent chance that this is causing the problem, but I can't understand why ODOJ would get hit instead of ODOI. Even content that isn't partially duplicated on ODOI is getting hit, so it's either a domain level filter/penalty based on duplicate content, or it's not the issue. Right now I'm thinking a lot about how to fix whatever Google doesn't like, but it's really hard when you can't be sure. I can't really afford to do significant testing (and you can't actually run a good experiment with a real site). For now I'm going to keep investigating, and work on building links. That's always a good time investment.
    - T-hawk 16y ago
      > but I can't understand why ODOJ would get hit instead of ODOI. Wild guess: "job" is a highly competitive keyword subject to lots of scammy black hats ("work from home for $$$!!!"), while "internship" is much more clear of the scum?
mrjasonroy 16y ago
One property my company holds, http://www.dentalcompare.com http://www.dentalcompare.com has been affected. It's a classic product comparison site (with a lot of problems) but there is not "farming" of content. Every company provides their products and every article is original or at most, a small abstract.
tristanperry 16y ago
http://www.webmasterworld.com/google/4261944.htm http://www.webmasterworld.com/google/4261944.htm http://www.webmasterworld.com/google/4273051.htm http://www.webmasterworld.com/google/4273051.htm http://www.webmasterworld.com/google/4274857.htm http://www.webmasterworld.com/google/4274857.htm http://www.webmasterworld.com/google/4272916.htm http://www.webmasterworld.com/google/4272916.htm /\ For non-URLed discussion of dozens or possibly hundreds of legit sites which were hit. Today's Wired article gives some more specific examples: http://www.wired.com/epicenter/2011/03/google-spam-side-effects/ http://www.wired.com/epicenter/2011/03/google-spam-side-effe...
justinchen 16y ago
You can take a glance at this thread: http://www.google.com/support/forum/p/Webmasters/thread?tid=76830633df82fd8e&hl=en http://www.google.com/support/forum/p/Webmasters/thread?tid=...

dminor 16y ago

I think this is only the beginning of good news due to this algo change. There are many legitimate businesses that have been positively impacted by traffic gains and we'll probably see more hiring and raises.

acangiano 16y ago
Absolutely. SEO really is a zero-sum game.
- patio11 16y ago
  That isn't true. For any particular search, yes, if one site goes down another site will necessarily go up. However, in aggregate, SEO creates value. Think of StackOverflow, for example: the primary mechanism for success isn't taking traffic from ExpertsExchange -- that is just a much-remarked side effect. The primary mechanism for success is successfully incentivizing the creation and distribution of answers for a broad universe of expert questions to which no responsive answers have ever appeared in the SERPS before. Similarly, an algorithmic change in Google which cleans up the long tail can help businesses in a variety of fashions. I mean, I'm not actually seeing major changes yet, but if my rankings for five thousand variations of "how do I make X bingo cards" over the universe of ten Xs which content farms deem valuable to target, that gives me additional resources to develop value-producing things elsewhere (like, e.g., subsidizing the development of AR, or ramping up my publication efforts from my current speed of ~250 to year to a higher number on progressively more obscure topics which real teachers really do want to teach lessons on tomorrow). Similarly, improving the value of the SERPs for any field of endeavor or user community results in an increase in the aggregate number of searches as user behavior changes. That is a change that lifts all boats.
  - po 16y ago
    …except for the boats it sinks. Namely, the long tail that they cleaned up. I'm not sure I understand when you say "SEO creates value" if you mean the so-called good/relevant SEO or the low quality/sketchy SEO. I assume you mean the former. SEO can mean "help make my site easy for google to honestly evaluate and judge the quality of my content" or it can mean "game google into thinking my content is what people want to see even though they probably don't". I can see how having a better index creates value but I'm not sure how SEO contributes to a better index. It seems like google changed the rules, some companies are doing worse, some are better (zero sum) but hopefully the index is better and people can find what they want (unlocking value). Is that what you're getting at?