Never backlink to the Google directory!!

Yeh, whatever you do, don't do it. I though I was so smart and placed a link to the google directory. It has my site listed and has a nice PR 7 ranking so I thought that if I link back to it, it will help me boost my ranking as well - well within a day my ranking fell 50 positions on google! Never try to cheat google!

 

Why is that cheating G? There can be valid reasons for linking to the G directory or to dmoz. Maybe you want to offer related resouces to your users. Do you really think that is the cause of the drop in SERP placing or could it be something else?

 

I agree with exam. Cause and effect is a very trick thing to determine when it comes to the search engines and Google in particular. I don't think placing a link to Google's directory had any effect on your SERP placement. And here are the reasons why:

1. There is no way that Google is ever going to react to a minor change like that on the same day. Was you page re-cached that day? Even if your page happened to be crawled and reindex within 24 hours of putting up the link there is no way that Google is going to re-rank every page in your SERP within 24 hours and based on the addition of a single link.

2. Google encourages links. The major thrust of their relevance measurement is based on links. Why would they devalue, or punish, a link to their own site?

3. If this happened within the last couple of days then you site has simply been caught in a Google update or adjustment of some kind. I have a site that placed in the top ten for 4 or 5 different search terms. In the last two or three days every paged dropped approximately 20 to 40 places in the SERPs. And I didn't do anything new or different.

To think that a single action like adding a link to a page can cuase the page to drop, or improve, 50 places in the SERPs in 24 hours is completely naive. To announce it to a forum like this as the truth is irresponsible.

 

compar has great points here. I totally agree with his opinions. I don't think linking back to google directory would be any kind of punishment for google serps.

 

I agree I'm fed up of wasting my time on stupid, unhelpful posts.

It's interesting though to hear of so many people who have had big drops in rankings over the last 48 hours, if I remember right didn't something happen this time last year on Google?

 

One of my sites doubled its indexed pages and another doesn't show up on google at all it will settle down, just a temporary thing.

 

LMAO!!

That is why we have so many ridiculous Google myths and people are scared of stupid things like naming a page "links.htm"

 

it was in November last year..

 

Ahh right Schlottke, I can remember a similar thing happening last year, luckily I my site wasn't affected.. now it's my turn lol

Fryman, did you know that if you use to many words you get penalised by Google for taking up all of their database space?

 

Google recently did something with their algorithm that caused many sites rankings to bounce around.

 

just a reminder to the more experienced out there.....when you see a big change (for the negative) in your results, you're desperate to find a reason. Until you've been around for a while, you may not appreciate how hard cause and effect is to show......and how Google moves in mysterious ways....

 

...and that the change may have nothing to do with anything about your site -- it may have to do with changes other webmasters have made or changes Google has made to how it ranks sites.

 

Sorry if my topic is not accurate, I guess it was just a big coincidence. I did not do anything else to my site, just added the link. Anyways this just shows how unreliable search engines are and that it is not a good idea to depend on search engines for your business. I think google should warn people in advance of any major changes they do like this and also maybe document the changes so people know how to fix their sites!

 

Don't worry about it -- compar just gets cranky sometimes

No it doesn't. It just demonstrates that the 'net is dynamic rather than static, rather like life: It evolves -- evolve along with it or get left behind.

Do you have a suggestion for another better way for people to find your website?

Yeah, like that's going to happen Google isn't in business to show you how to be #1 in the SERPs; they're in business to try to get the most relevant returns for searches into the top spots.

 

When did speaking the truth become equated with being "cranky"?

 

Well, since you ask, there's "honesty" and then there's "brutal honesty". Honesty is telling the truth. Brutal honesty is telling the truth in a way which you know is likely to hurt someone's feelings and you just don't give a damn whether or not you do.

Which type is this? Or, let me put it this way: could it have been phrased in a different way which would have still conveyed the message that you think Googles76 is wrong without also conveying the message that you think he's an idiot and irresponsible for even taking a guess at what he thought might be going on?

 

I think not, if you read my other post a while back about my site changing position daily you would know that something is going on. I've seen my site change position as much as 10 spots in a single day....so naturally adding such a link to my site could probably yield such a result of dropping 50 places....At least it would seem that way, but since this happened at the end of the month (when google updates its index) than it was probably just a coincidence....but not necessarily an impossibility

 

1: Happens all the time and not just to you. Is certainly not something special.

2: See 1.

3: Nonsense. Updates continuously. Do you really think they update an entire gazillion terabyte database on the last day(s) of every month? Your daily bouncing show daily index updates and (sometimes) daily algo tweaks.

 

Directly fromg Google.com webmaster section "Google's index is updated approximately once a month after our robots have crawled more than 8 billion web pages."

The daily changes are from minor changes, the main google spider "googlebot" crawls all web-sites some time at the end of the month which does take 3-5 days.

 

Also directly from Google.com:

How many companies nowadays tell you the truth, especially when we're talking about cutting-edge technology and intellectual property. They only tell you want they want you to know.