The Google SEO Shuffle

Clasione, sorry but I don't see your proof?

They could be loads of reasons why these domains have triggered a filter and thus taken them out of the rankings.

I'm seeing more and more people doing suppose SEO tests but in my mind don't prove the theory behind it - these tests just cause confusion amongst webmasters, and in some cases cause panic.

Where is your proof?

I do agree with fryman that a sudden increase in backlinks AND pages can trigger a filter. In December, my pages increased from 4,000 to 6,000 due to a mod-rewrite I did on my website, then my rankings dropped considerably within a week or two of setting up the mod-rewrite, nothing else was changed.

3 months later my rankings are back, not sure for how long but I certainly won't be relying on a search engine again for my traffic.. lessons learnt!

 

I just queried Google for SEO

#1 SEOCHAT: Title = Search Engine Optimization, Google Optimization - SEO Chat

#4 SEOTODAY: Title = SEO Today

#5 SEOCONSULTANTS: Title = SEO Consultants Directory - Search Engine Marketing Companies

#10 SEO-USA: Title = SEO

Not to mention:

SEOGUY.COM: Title = SEO Services, Search Engine Optimization Company. SEO Consultant Expert SEO Company

SEOBOOK.COM: Title = SEO Book.com - SEO eBook, Search Engine Optimization Tips, & Search Engine Marketing News Blog

Again, IMO, these site's meta titles do not fit your model.

 

I agree, over optimization does kill

 

I have thought for sometime that unnatural patterns trip a filter, I have also posted it a few times. It makes sense that Google protects its SERP's from less than normaly growing sites. This would include unnatural spurts in pagination, and an unnatural spurt in backlinks all optimised.

 

is that your site clasione?

 

this may have been done to increase relevancy, ie a search for "stock trading" (w/o the quotes) brings up Ameritrade first which doesnt even have stock trading mentioned on the page. Stock-trading.com does not come up on the first page. Stock-trading.com is a software app.

A name in and of itself does not create relevance for google it appears. If true authority sites are willing to link to you with the keyword name that could change the issue, maybe.

IMHO, Ameritrade is more relevant than stock-trading.com for stock trading.

 

I can't buy the IBLs link hypothesis. If that's teh case, all I need to do to know out a competitor is go out and spam message board with identical anchor text back links to their site. Or sign up for the co-op or any other link exchange program and feed links to their site instead of mine using non-varying anchor text.

From an SE point of view, you have no control over who links to you, you only control who you link to.

 

same happened to me.
After the Feb update, I dont even come up in the top 30 in a search for my domain name, and nowhere to be found in a search for my targeted keywords.

Meanwhile I am #1 in MSN and Yahoo for the identical keywords!

Links pointing to my site rank higher for my domain name, than my site does...

Very unsettling, especially since I make it a point to keep all of my SEO clean.

I have been adding backlinks over the past 6 months, but even now my backlinks are no more than 350, however, many have the same anchor text.

So in my unique situation, I think redundant anchor text may have something to do with it.

 

iShop, you've made a good point, and I've never seen an example of where a sudden increase in BL's has triggered a filter, but I'm sure the wise welsh man might have done so!

It makes more sense about the sudden increase in pages (I'm 99.9% sure that's what happened to me) but like you say links to us we have no control over, so to penalise a site by filtering it out of the results seems unfair.

Carowan, did you get a sudden increase in pages? Or maybe it's over optimisation that has caused your problem - I can sympathise with you because the same happened to me in mid December - Google obviously has increased a filter(s) somewhere which has caused sites to drop out of the rankings.

 

Hmm, I still don't even buy the too many pages theory either.

I honestly believe that if you start getting 1,000s of backlinks with the exact same anchor text, that looks increasingly suspicious and is more likely to get you banned rather than too many pages. If you start putting more pages to your site all at once, is it your fault that google decided to crawl all of those pages? What about sites that launch with a bunch of content already in place? Seems to me that it's quite normal that a new site launch will have a lot of pages initially that are likely to all be crawled by google (providing that the pages are linked well together).

I'd be more interested in knowing how many of the people here at DP are getting filtered out that use the CO-OP and have just one or two ads pointing at the same page as opposed to four-five ads with varying anchor text.

 

and use good metadata as well...

 

IMO one element alone would not trip it, you would need evidence of a rapid attempt to climb the rankings, this would include optimisation of the site, a huge increase in pagination, and a huge increase in backlinks, one element alone would not trigger it.