Cripes, I’m getting tired of everybody running around screaming like their hair is on fire every time Google does an algorithm update.
In case you’ve somehow missed the uproar over the last couple of days, Google has done another algorithm update that has shaken up the results quite drastically.
There are a few examples of “problem” search terms that seem to be making the rounds.
One is the search phrase “bicycle wheels”. It’s bringing up this site in the top 10 (currently at #5 for me):
Here’s what the site looks like:
A lot of people are saying this site shouldn’t be ranked high because it screams “amateur” and doesn’t create a sense of trust with the visitor.
Sure, it looks like something straight out of 1995 but you know what else? It’s full of helpful content. And the guy who created it was an authority in the field (he passed away in 2008). In fact, here’s his Wikipedia page:
Sheldon Brown (bicycle mechanic)
That seems to me like it’s just the type of site that should be ranking in the top results. And I’m not the only one who feels that way – Mark Thompson posted a bit of a rant to his blog today too – The Hypocrisy of Internet Marketers – Rant!
Another search that’s getting a lot of press is “make money online”. At the moment, for me at least, this is the site that is coming up at position #1:
Here’s what you see when you visit that site:
Yup, no content at all. Just a headline “make” and “No posts” as the content.
Seems like a bad result to return as number one, doesn’t it?
Well, let’s look at it a little closer. Here’s the Archive.org “Wayback Machine” archive of the site:
There aren’t a lot of archive entries, but as you can see they go back as far as 2007. Which means that site has been around at least that long. And picking one from 2008, here’s what was on the site then:
The more recent entries (July 2011) look like they are mainly linking back to older articles, but most of them aren’t indexed in the archive so it’s hard to tell for sure.
One of them worked though, and it’s a long article with good content, and you know what else it has?
Yes, 141 comments which on a quick scan look like they’re actual comments, not a bunch of people looking for backlinks.
The blog also has a lot of backlinks pointing at it. I didn’t go through them in depth, so I don’t know if there are any of particular value, but it looks like there has been a fair bit of promotion done over the years.
You know, after poking around the blog for a few minutes I swear I’ve seen it before, or at least heard of the guy who wrote it – he goes by “Grizzly” on these archived posts. I did a quick search and didn’t find anything, but I have a niggling feeling that this site – or another one by the same person – was reasonably popular at one time (if you know more about the specifics, I’d love to have this question answered so leave a comment!)
There aren’t any recent archive entries, so it’s hard to know when the site got wiped clean, but for all I know it was just a few days ago. In which case Google might not have updated the site’s ranking according to the lack of content yet.
Sure, it might be a glaring hole in Google’s new updated algorithm but it might also be an anomaly. And even if it is a hole, I’d like to see 20 or 30 more examples of blank pages ranking for competitive keywords. One example is hardly proof of anything.
These updates always create a big uproar when they happen. People’s websites drop out of sight in Google, weird things show up in the top results and everybody runs around crying that Google is out to get them.
In fact I saw a post on one forum this morning that went something like this:
Since joining a popular link service a few years ago I’ve been ranking well and now my site is nowhere to be found. Thanks Big G.
Google has always been clear that they don’t like linking “schemes” that are meant to manipulate their results. This shouldn’t come as a surprise, and you sure as heck shouldn’t act like they’re out to get you when it happens.
But here’s the bottom line as far as I’m concerned…
Google doesn’t exist to help us get traffic to our sites. They don’t care one bit about the webmasters of the sites in their results. I don’t believe they even care about their searchers, beyond caring whether they actually use Google or not. The only people they really care about are their advertisers.
They’re a money-making business, and they make their money by selling advertising. Whatever gets them more revenue is what they ultimately care about. They need to maintain reasonably good results to ensure their users don’t jump ship, but beyond that it’s all about the revenue.
And there’s nothing wrong with that. In fact, most of the people complaining about their sites getting hit by these updates are mad because they’re making less money as a result. They can’t very well turn around and criticize Google for wanting the same thing as them – more revenue.
Here’s a question for you – who do you think Google’s customers are?
There are basically three potential answers – website owners, searchers or advertisers. I think it’s pretty clear that the only answer that makes any sense is advertisers. That’s who Google cares about, and even then they really only care if you’re big enough. Plenty of smaller advertisers get the boot, just like website owners.
The next logical question is really the scary one – what is Google selling to their customers? I hate to tell you this, but they’re selling you and your content. They scrape your websites and put your content in their results and they sell advertising based on your personal data, which they collect through all their various “free” services like Gmail and Google Docs.
But that’s a post for another day…
The only way to stay ahead of Google’s changes is to have other sources of traffic to your site. Social media, paid ads, your email list – there are lots of options. When you diversify your traffic sources, suddenly Google becomes a lot less important to you and these updates don’t matter so much.
But as long as Google is your primary source of traffic, you’re never going to get off this ranking roller coaster.
So what do you think about this whole thing? Am I out to lunch and Google is actively trying to screw us all? Is this another tempest in a teapot? Will Indy live to fight another day? (Wait, sorry – wrong post…)
Let me know what you think in the comments.
Google are never going to make everyone happy, they don’t care if they make anyone but their advertisers and their shareholders happy.
The make money site was Grizzly’s and I have the feeling he was locked out hence no updates. That may even explain why there is a blank page.
The algo is never going to be right 100% of the time, there is only one person who is always right and I married her. This is why everyone should be diversified in their sites, their traffic and their income sources.
You don’t need 100 sites, but having 1 MFA with no list is a bad bad idea now more than ever.
They change we find a way to get back to the top or traffic from new places.
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That’s funny – I thought I was married to the one person who is always right
That’s a good point about being locked out – it could very well be that Google shut the site down and it might have happened recently enough to still be in the results.
A lot of people seem to think Google’s results update at the snap of a finger, but even with all their computing power it takes some time to propagate changes.
Ironically (and I think this is why this example has spread so well), this one of Griz’s blogs was shut down for ‘spam’ in 2010.
The irony of course being that a blog hosted by Google, determined by them as spam, where they removed all the content 18 months ago — is also now being determined by Google as one of the best quality results for a very popular and highly competitive search phrase.
It will likely disappear soon because it’s a fairly embarassing bug/anomaly.
Building a great search engine has never been easy
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Thanks for the clarification Martin. It looks like the site is now gone from Google’s results but it’s showing up in Bing and DuckDuckGo. I guess all the people linking to it might have something to do with that.
Maybe that was Google’s intention all along – show a crappy site for a keyword that a lot of SEO people might watch, get everyone linking to it so it rises to the top of the other search engines and then pull it. Now the other guys look like their results are the ones that suck!
John,
There you go again… being spot on! People spend all this time getting mad at G for making changes to search.
If you plan on playing and trying to game the system, or put garbage in the system (the web) why shouldn’t G clean things out.
Too many site owners “think” there is some “magic list” G maintains to destroy their sites and ranking. Who has time for that.
My response these days is pretty simple… Shut up and write to more pages of good content.
And yes… Indy will live to fight another day!
You are exactly on point. Relying on one source of traffic is like relying on one client for income. You are doomed to fail.
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I think you make some excellent points, John. When I first started marketing online, I was under the mistaken impression that marketers were there to help Google create great content and search results and, therefore, that Google owed us something.
Eventually, I came to realize that Google is in business for themselves just like I’m in business for myself. They do what they need/want to do to make the most money they can just as the rest of us do.
These days I just concentrate on creating the type of business I believe will meet the needs of my target market and don’t stress about Google. If they show me some Google love, I’m grateful…but I certainly don’t count on it.
I have to laugh.
It seems history does repeat itself and quite often. There was the same uproar the last time Google changed things, and the time before that, and…well you know. I am sure there are people working in dimly lit caves preparing the next ‘gaming Google system’ to foist on everyone.
I am also sure people will try the ‘easy ways’ and complain when they don’t work well instead of doing it the right way. Go figure….
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Actually you are not right.
This update appears to do the exact opposite of what it is intended to do.
A huge number of local business sites have been destroyed, you know, massage therapists like my wife who lost rank on many keywords.
Now, you get tantra massage (illegal in Nevada), wikipedia article on massage, semi-porn youtube results on massage, and the big national franchises.
Google basically messed up and this hit far more than the 3% that they say it does. If it was really about splogs, a massage business with about 20 articles and a price list with contact info wouldn’t be hammered.
This is about getting more adwords revenue, period. That is certainly what you got right. Now all these businesses who still don’t realize that they really get more business from yelp and yext etc. than google, will panic and go waste a shitload of money on adwords to no avail.
I already know that some congress people are looking into this monopoly practice, and google stock is tanking. My advice: sell short.
Sorry to disagree, but that is my side.
You don’t have to apologize for disagreeing Jon – I’ve got thick skin
I read a bunch of stuff about this yesterday so I’ve forgotten exactly where I saw it but someone suggested that Google might not have realized the number of “legit” sites that use some of the same backlinking tactics as the “spam” sites they’re targeting. Turning on the spam filter might have hit those sites as well as the ones they wanted it to.
While I do think that Google is out to make as much money as possible, I have a hard time believing they would intentionally make the results as bad as they seem to be after this update. If the results get too bad people won’t click the ads, they’ll start using another search engine.
I suspect we’ll see things get dialed back a bit over the next couple of weeks.
John, thanks for the mention,
The thing is people tend to confuse rankings with traffic and think if they rank well they will get traffic. Thats not strictly true, if a person searches for a keyword and your description doesn’t appeal to them they aren’t going to click.
Marketers need to decide whether they want traffic or rankings. I’ve managed to reduce the traffic from google from 35% to 11% while at the same time generating 8 times more traffic to my blog in the past 3 months
Time to choose traffic or rankings? If you want rankings then go and play by googles rules ..it you want traffic play by your rules and don’t complain when you don’t rank
Mark
Mark Thompson recently posted..Monday Tip – Google Doesn’t Care About You
Email, email, email and social media is where it’s at from now on. It’s clear (that you know who) is out to wine and dine big money, and screw the little guy.
There’s a revolt brewing and it’s not them, it’s us. We are packing, we are moving and we’re not coming back.
Hello Aweber, iContact, MailChimp and all the other email marketing providers. Hello Facebook, Twiter and Pinterest.
Sayonara. (to you know who)
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John,
Thought this was interesting.
As I add content to my site(s) I always do a search for site:Domain Key phrase to add links to pages which are “most” relevant for the topic.
After this update… even pages inside my own site are scrambled and dancing… so I’m sure we need to give this some time to “shake out”
Google’s business is under siege. The world is touting Facebook as the new Internet. Google got so involved in expanding their business to include smart phones, maps, satellite pictures, and a thousand other things they neglected their cash cow, search.
When was the last time you used Google search and found what you are looking for? We Internet Marketers have gotten so good that most of us can peg a website to the top of the search engine results in a couple months. Or minutes if you buy the lastest special offer from warriorforum.
Google isn’t catering to their advertisers, they know that if they can maintain their position as THE search engine, the advertisers will be there. If they were catering only to the advertisers, the first page of results would be paid ads. By the same token, if users keep getting the MFA sites that we put up in a few minutes with the latest wordpress plugin, Google will lose their advertisers.