There appear to be some drastic ranking changes this morning.

For me I hope they don't stick. Things are looking real bad at the moment.

Man,

This is UGLY! From position #2, #3's, etc., to off the board! No changes made to our site. This is some real nasty stuff. Anyone have a clue?

I now believe it is an update in progress where all the filters and algorithm factors have not been applied yet. I highly doubt these results are going to stick (at least I'm hoping).

It appears to be happening across the board to a myriad of sites. Misery loves company. It appears to be time to just let it go, and wherever we turn up......after all, it is the weekend, I've heard.

Things still look bad for me today.

I'm hoping it is just their computers sorting through things, if not, do you think it could be the number of outgoing links or participation in some particular link trading thing?

I signed up for linkpartners.com, but only used it a couple of times. I have traded links on gotop.com more.

My page rank has not been affected, but I am not showing up on searches where I used to show pretty high (up to 6th).

Maybe this will finally get me listed

Chief, have you heard anything? Has Google posted anything or told anyone anything about this nightmare?? My PR has stayed the same, thank goodness but my number one and two keywords are GONE and one cannot even find me on those keywords.

Why would it be that my competition is still showing high keyword ranking and all if this is something that is affecting everyone??

I'd say it has little to do with 'link popularity' myrealtypage.

more temporarry rankings during an update I'd say. give it a few days

Damascus

jeez I looked this up on seochat.com and there were like a million postings. I looked through some and there was a suggestion that the current results are old.

This makes sense for the keywords I generally use, because the current #3 listing is an expired domain and right before all this happened it was around #8.

It can't be an entirely old index because I have pages I have finished in the past couple weeks listed.

GoogleGuy said it would be 3 to 4 days before things settled and today is that 4th day. But I still expect them to be twekaing with these new results for the next several more days.

I did have some sites dissappear that have since then reappeared. Overall, I have had some good things happen and some bad, but I am not nearly as upset as I was initially.

Tim, where do we find out what GoogleGuy says? Where are the latest updated information to be found about this situation?

It is very strange. I am listed in Google but for my most important keywords like "leather chaps" and "leather Vests" which I have been number ONE for months, I am not to be found and the site that was number TWO is now number ONE and I cannot understand how it is that that site did not get screwed over. You can find my site but with more detailed keywords like "ladie's leather chaps", but that still sux because more people search for "leather chaps".

Anyway, I know I am far from the only one that is upset, but how will we know what we need to do to get our main keywords back? Do you think they will tell anyone what their "new" criteria is?? I find it ridiculous that sites like some tripod sites and other inferior sites to mine are listed under my important keywords but I am not. I can understand fluctuation and if I had been knocked down from number one to like number ten even, but to be completely off the chart is ridiculous when I have not changed anything nor done anything wrong in Google's eyes, at least not unless they have changed the rules and not advised anyone.

Thanks for listening to me gripe, but this is ruining my business.

Thanks
Wynter

The results for the keywords I use seem to be really really emphasizing PR. Searching for 'real estate web design' and among the pages that don't belong in the results is the Doctor Dob's page (programming magazine) and there isn't any mention of real estate anywhere, but it has a PR9.

Sounds like an indication that google is not done yet.

LeatherLollipop,
There are some huge threads going on over at WebmasterWorld. about the update GoogleGuy's replies are buried within those (but he does not post a lot and gives very vague answers).

Thank you Tim, I'll check it out. Hey, how do you all check out how many backlinks Google says you have? I've been using mikes marketing "link popularity" tool. Is there a different way of checking this besides just going on google with the link:www.leatherlollipop.com thing?

Thanks for your help!

Wynter,
Here is another nice tool that will track backlinks over time:

http://www.digitalpoint.com/tools/backlinks/

Thank you Tim! I'll check it out.

Google sucks at the moment: the first listings for major keywords go to no-names sites who just happen to have 10 or so listings in the first 2 pages with gateway pages on subdomains....nice ranking

When I use google now I skip lots of pages and often find better results on pages 10 or more

Is anyone still having problems with this?

Some of our rankings have bombed out completely. Still waiting + hoping for recovery. I've fixed all conceivable problems + covered all angles of where the problem could be, no joy.

Is anyone still suffering? There *MUST* be a reason, and there *MUST* be something we can do about it, any news??

We're all losing money + visitors through this, the sooner we crack it the better. Has anyone benefitted from this? What are some people doing differently?

This is what I found out.... Can anyone help to lessen the damage on our sites?

Google has introduced a filter:

"Google recently introduced a new keyword phrase filter during its most recent update. Some phrases were unchanged, but many highly optimized and highly competitive phrases were drastically altered."
http://searchenginejournal.blogspot....33768963966352

The filter is targeting highly competitive (commercial) keywords and phrases.

Any site that is doing well for such phrases loses the ranking benefit of the following:

- text of internal links containing those keywords
- text of reciprocal links containing those keywords
- those keywords in the URL

and possibly (I haven't seen any proof):

- keywords in the title
- keywords in H1 tags
- high density of the keywords on the page
- text of non-reciprocal links containing those keywords

Typically the page most affected is the home page. Often this is due to linking internally to it with keywords, rather than the traditional "home".

PageRank remains unaffected. Rankings for keywords and phrases not affected by the filter remain the same.

The unfiltered results can be seen by adding -mt-tb.cgi to the search query. This was first mentioned at the Register, prior to the recent update:
http://www.theregister.co.uk/content/35/33448.html


Google recently introduced a new keyword phrase filter during its most recent update. Some phrases were unchanged, but many highly optimized and highly competitive phrases were drastically altered. Some webmasters saw their sites drop from top listings to not being in the top 1,000 sites. Unlike other filters, this spam peanalty does not affect a page or sites overall perceived value. The end effect is lowered rankings for various specific searches for that page.

If you have a couple commonly paired words on your website such as "search" and "marketing", the new filter will check to see how the words are placed on your page (and possibly in incoming links). The new algorithm is looking for more naturally existing context to prevent search engine optimized websites from dominating search results. Essentially the goal of this filter is to get webmasters to adjust their content to be written for the users and not search engines. The problem with this logic is that good SEO typically falls in line with good site and page structure.

The filter is selective in that it is only enabled for some terms on certain searches. The filter can be overridden by placing a - character for the terms. If you search for search marketing you will find Commision Junction where my site was once listed. If you search for search-marketing you will see my site. If you search for search marketing info, you will see that the filter in not enabled for that search.

Off the start the filter was set rather corse, but it appears to be shifting more in line with reality. Some of the decent optimized sites are appearing back in the place where spam was just filling the results. Just this morning I saw a clients website pop up for two seperate phrases he was tripped for.

This filter marks the first time in search engine history where webmasters have not been able to reengineer exactly what the search engine did. Currently I do not recommend making any chages while Google is still fine tuning the filter.

by Aaron Wall @ Search Engine Marketing Info