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Went Hot: January 25, 2008 - 8:45 am
Posted By: UtahSEOpro 109 days ago
Topic Type: News Story (Jump to http://searchengineland.com)
Category: Google SEO
20 Comments
Went Hot: January 25, 2008 - 8:45 am
Posted By: UtahSEOpro 109 days ago
Topic Type: News Story (Jump to http://searchengineland.com)
Category: Google SEO
20 Comments
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Comments
Old news but the key thing to take away is that SEOs are reporting datacenters are no longer displaying the "pre-position six penalty" results anymore. Also, Matt Cutts denied knowing about any such penalty.
We have thousands of webmasters each with numerous websites ranking for thousands upon thousands of keywords...
I can't be the only one that believe all of these "Penalties" are simply concidence.
See also: http://sphinn.com/story/24626
Isn't six kind of an oddly coincidental number? Doesn't it seem more likely that Google is somehow reserving the top 5 positions for sites that meet some criteria or whatnot? At least, for most people working on UI and other design issues, I'd be more willing to believe a decision based on 5 than on 6.
@Brooks, yep. See:
http://sphinn.com/story/24626#c28292
When Barry asked me about "position 6" in late December, I said that I didn't know of anything that would cause that. But about a week or so after that, my attention was brought to something that could exhibit that behavior. We're in the process of changing the behavior; I think the change is live at some datacenters already and will be live at most data centers in the next few weeks.
In general if you think a site might have a penalty (perhaps from past behavior) and you think the site is clean presently, you can do a reconsideration request in our webmaster console to ask Google to take another look at the site.
That should teach the doubters that these type of penalties really do exist. There's too many people blowing them off as conspiracy theories when there's ample reason to assume something is triggering them. Interesting to see G admitting to this behaviour (read:a mistake) in their algos too. Wonder how much money it cost those webmasters in the months the 'behaviour' was present....
Nope, that should teach the theorists calling every finding "penalty" that a symtom w/o proven causes can be just a software glitch. Most doubters never stated that there's no Web page downranked to #6 without any sign of a sin that violates Google's 12 commandments, they doubted that this phenomenon is actually a penalty.
Crosslinking related position #6 stories:
http://sphinn.com/story/24687 (SEL coverage)
http://sphinn.com/story/24626 (Aaron Wall gets rid of his #6 positioning)
http://sphinn.com/story/25142 (#6 exists, but perhaps there's no penalty)
http://sphinn.com/story/25695 (It's a software glitch, Google rolls out the bug fix)
"That should teach the doubters that these type of penalties really do exist."
Like Sebastian said, what Matt said suggests the position 6 "penalty" was more of a bug than a penalty.
"Interesting to see G admitting to this behaviour (read:a mistake) in their algos too."
I'm not shocked. Googler's been pretty quick in admitting and correcting mistakes anytime a criticism was valid. I do appreciate Matt taking the time to confirm and follow up on the issue.
Sebastian, Halfdeck, splitting hairs now.
From a practical standpoint, what's the difference between a bug that pushes you back to #6 and an unexplainable penalty that does the same?
Can you fix a Google bug on your side? No. Can you correct an unexplainable penalty on your side (ie. where you absolutely don't know what you may have done wrong)? No.
May both affect your site adversely, and in a very similar fashion? Yes.
If it's a penalty and you feel it's undeserved, you make a fuss on forums and Matt Cutts comes to the rescue. If it's a bug, you make a fuss on forums and Matt Cutts comes to the rescue.
I can't really see any important difference.
"I can't really see any important difference."
That's like saying there's no difference between two people fucking and two people making love because from where you're sitting they look like they're doing the same damn thing.
A penalty is something Google put in place intentionally. A bug, on the other hand, is unintentional.
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I'm with Halfdeck...let's watch some porno!
Sza, I'm not splitting hairs. From a practical standpoint, there's a huge difference between bugs that get fixed eventually, and intentional actions like penalties and filters that affect particular optimization techniques in the long haul.
"A penalty is something Google put in place intentionally. A bug, on the other hand, is unintentional."
Hey, thank you for making this clear for me :-)
I wasn't questioning strict definitions. You were criticizing people for using the word "penalty" instead of "bug". From the point of view of those affected, it makes no difference.
If it's a bug, it will (or will not) be corrected. If it's a penalty they don't have a clue about, it will (or will not) be lifted.
The effect is the same. If someone can't sleep at night because the couple next door is at it all night long and the walls are thin, it really doesn't matter for him if they are fucking or making love.
But then you could come along and lecture him that it wasn't "fucking" that kept him from falling asleep but "making love" and, will he please use the correct terminology next time.
Sebastian, I think if it is a bug that affects the workings of the search engine, it should be apparent across the board. If it is a selective "bug" that manifests itself in well-definable ranking shifts for specific sites, it seems more like a filter gone awry (or the unintended interaction of several filters)
We may call it a "bug" (and Google would probably prefer us to call it an innocent just-forget-about-it bug, otherwise it's a hint at a part of their algorithm).Still it looks like a penalty bug.
Sure it wasn't targeting the sites it affected in this case, so those sites will get their positions back. But it was targeting/filtering/demoting something.
*** what's the difference between a bug that pushes you back to #6 and... ***
In a system this complex there are bound to be many such errors in the data processing.
Who would ever be able to detect a bug that flips listings 10 and 11, or pushes listings 100 to 150 down by 5 places?
"You were criticizing people for using the word "penalty" instead of "bug". From the point of view of those affected, it makes no difference."
Well, yeah I agree it makes no difference from that perspective, but it makes a difference in my case where a client was affected by the glitch. He probably emailed me about 30 times asking approval for 100 different de-optimization tricks that might lift the penalty.
In the end, not touching the site and waiting had the same effect as spending hours rewriting TITLE tags, lowering keyword density, de-optimizing navigation anchor text, so on and so forth. If he believed it was a penalty he would still keep going. The only way I could make the guy stop fixating on it was to confirm it was a glitch and that there's nothing really wrong with his site.
From that viewpoint, it makes a huge difference.
Sure it makes a difference from that viewpoint Halfdeck, but at what stage could you say with absolute certainty to your client that it was a mistake by Google and not a 'penalty'? Only after Google confirmed it of course. The -950 is confirmed by Matt Cutts as well and yet there's still people walking around saying it doesn't exist. That's just dumb.
Note that the point in my initial comment was not to say that this is a penalty but rather to highlight that it's annoying that some people are ALWAYS saying drops are NOT penalties. Sure, it's equally annoying to have someone post in WMW or GG that their site dropped a few places and ask how to get the 'penalty' lifted, but there's too many SEO automatically dismissing every single one of these posts just because they don't believe in a -950/-30/-5 penalty/filter/Google f**king up theory. I really don't care what people call them, but I think there's ample evidence around of quality sites dropping roughly these amount of spots in the serps and analyzing that can only be a good thing for everyone. If it hadn't been analyzed and brought up, who is to say how long MC and Google wouldn't have figured it out/noticed it in this case?
Apologies for the rant, but it pisses me off when people automatically assume Google must be right and the webmaster wrong when the webmaster comes looking for help. The term 'brown nose' comes to mind and sadly it's only too common. It sucks to be a newbie and post in SEO forums and get chewed out for something that does end up being a google glitch. Not to mention the fact that some webmasters probably lost a good chunk of money to this glitch.
Disclosure; I was not affected by this at all and I certainly don't consider myself a newbie :)
My site was in top 10 and some with in top 20 and 30 with good keywords and keyword phrases. But from last 10-15 days my site suddenly disappeare from existing rankings and not it is in between 400-500. Domain is 4 years old and in this has totally ethical seo work. Please tell me what is the problem and solution for this site.