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And this is why I got out of organic SEO. You have essentially one client, and that is El Goog. A site can see product sales revenue drop 50% overnight after a

And this is why I got out of organic SEO. You have essentially one client, and that is El Goog. A site can see product sales revenue drop 50% overnight after a bad Google dance, and it can take weeks to work out how you've offended it. I only used whitehat techniques mind. Most people bleat "just write good conteeeeent" and have no idea how Google ranking actually works. I guess what was most galling was seeing certain retail sites getting away with blatant spam while your own sites got mysteriously slammed. I don't blame Google though - it's a direct result of having a single player market. So go, duckduck, go :)

whoismua 12y ago
Especially now that Google is a "content provider," sites like Metafilter have to battle Youtube, Google+ etc for ranking. Guess who's winning? Traffic is going away from other sites to Google's own properties and there's isn't a damn thing metafilter et al can do: Google handles ranking, display and ads. Commercial sites now have to deal with a full page of ads before the real results so their fate is sealed another way. In other words, we need 4-5 search engines, not one giant monopoly that seeks to increase ad clicks by underhanded methods each quarter.
- nikatwork 12y ago
  I sifted through a lot of traffic data, and it must be noted that I saw zero evidence of El Goog manually weighting any results. Everything was 100% above board - they might donkey-punch you, but it was algorithmic and not manual. I bet MeFi could be fixed in a few months if they hired a real SEO expert, ie someone who understands the underlying ranking algos and not just the usual voodoo bullcrap. The site is probably just tripping a few red flags, it could be something as stupid as an accidental link loop in their dynamic content. I'll give it to Google, once you find your sin and fix it, your traffic will come back, maybe not 100% but a significant recovery. (Unless you have done something really dumb/blackhat like paid links.)
  - riffraff 12y ago
    a link loop is a red flag? I guess I am misunderstanding, as that would mean I can't have a "artticles like this <link> <link>" block in my blog, which seems very weird.
    - nikatwork 12y ago
      A link loop as in a dynamically generated menu structure that creates an endless loop for the crawler, or accidentally makes large numbers of very similar pages with similar URLs, etc. (Yes this can happen legitimately and by accident on retail/commercial sites).
      - jmpe 12y ago
        ... or one of those plugins that generates fake mails for email-harvesting bots?
        nikatwork 12y ago
        I haven't used one of those myself, but yeah that does sound dangerous - however you could just tell the Googlebot to ignore the link in GA and it should be fine. I've seen people do similar things to create infinitely deep directories to screw with evil crawlers, since the Googlebot should obey your directives.
      - maaarghk 12y ago
        would using rel=canonical protect against this?
  - hueving 12y ago
    > they might donkey-punch you, but it was algorithmic and not manual. This is not always the case. Look at the Rapgenius event. That was triggered by manual intervention. >I bet MeFi could be fixed in a few months if they hired a real SEO expert, ie someone who understands the underlying ranking algos There isn't anyone on the outside that truly understands them because they constantly adjust them to deal with abuse. It is possible that one of these adjustments killed MeFi and it wasn't a recent mistake on MeFi's part.

whoismua 12y ago

Especially now that Google is a "content provider," sites like Metafilter have to battle Youtube, Google+ etc for ranking. Guess who's winning? Traffic is going away from other sites to Google's own properties and there's isn't a damn thing metafilter et al can do: Google handles ranking, display and ads. Commercial sites now have to deal with a full page of ads before the real results so their fate is sealed another way. In other words, we need 4-5 search engines, not one giant monopoly that seeks to increase ad clicks by underhanded methods each quarter.

nikatwork 12y ago
I sifted through a lot of traffic data, and it must be noted that I saw zero evidence of El Goog manually weighting any results. Everything was 100% above board - they might donkey-punch you, but it was algorithmic and not manual. I bet MeFi could be fixed in a few months if they hired a real SEO expert, ie someone who understands the underlying ranking algos and not just the usual voodoo bullcrap. The site is probably just tripping a few red flags, it could be something as stupid as an accidental link loop in their dynamic content. I'll give it to Google, once you find your sin and fix it, your traffic will come back, maybe not 100% but a significant recovery. (Unless you have done something really dumb/blackhat like paid links.)
- riffraff 12y ago
  a link loop is a red flag? I guess I am misunderstanding, as that would mean I can't have a "artticles like this <link> <link>" block in my blog, which seems very weird.
  - nikatwork 12y ago
    A link loop as in a dynamically generated menu structure that creates an endless loop for the crawler, or accidentally makes large numbers of very similar pages with similar URLs, etc. (Yes this can happen legitimately and by accident on retail/commercial sites).
    - jmpe 12y ago
      ... or one of those plugins that generates fake mails for email-harvesting bots?
      - nikatwork 12y ago
        I haven't used one of those myself, but yeah that does sound dangerous - however you could just tell the Googlebot to ignore the link in GA and it should be fine. I've seen people do similar things to create infinitely deep directories to screw with evil crawlers, since the Googlebot should obey your directives.
    - maaarghk 12y ago
      would using rel=canonical protect against this?
- hueving 12y ago
  > they might donkey-punch you, but it was algorithmic and not manual. This is not always the case. Look at the Rapgenius event. That was triggered by manual intervention. >I bet MeFi could be fixed in a few months if they hired a real SEO expert, ie someone who understands the underlying ranking algos There isn't anyone on the outside that truly understands them because they constantly adjust them to deal with abuse. It is possible that one of these adjustments killed MeFi and it wasn't a recent mistake on MeFi's part.