Google update... going after EMD's

[murph]

wait a week, sites will regain at least some of their rankings very soon.

google are not targetting or specifically punishing wordpress sites, absolute nonsense.

then some of my strategies for the longer term: write title tags in proper english, write really good content, sell real products, get real links, rely less on adsense. none of its easy to do but its getting the only way to make money.

What makes you say some rankings will definitely come back within a week?

 

[chippyb]

I heard it was like panda and was only going to get refreshed it like, maybe every month to 3 months, wasnt a on going update

 

[murph]

I heard it was like panda and was only going to get refreshed it like, maybe every month to 3 months, wasnt a on going update

I read somewhere monthly. To be honest, it should be at least monthly!

 

[lethal0r]

What makes you say some rankings will definitely come back within a week?

i've seen it several times in the past where my own sites have gone for a few days, then returned to normality for a long period.

also, the late september update has made a lot of peoples sites disappear COMPLETELY. why would an EMD update, which matt cutts says is quite moderate, or a minor penguin/panada/whatever update totally wipe out a lot of sites? in my eyes, it wouldn't do this. it would just drop them down a few positions.

my guess as to what happens is that google runs all the millions of sites on the net through however many new filters they have, stores the new ranking data somewhere, then when every site is done they make all the changes live. imagine how long it would take to analyse millions of sites in as much depth as google does.

I don't want to appear arrogant and say this is what will happen, its merely the past experiences of a moderately successful internet marketer (me!).

 

[wonder_lander]

I think for now I will just continue to add new content so that Google see's that the site is getting fresh content and hasn't been abandoned as a result of it falling out of the serps.

 

[cc976a]

Think most people were caught by the Panda update rather than the EMD update - just as many affiliaters / domainers work with EMDs the line between the two became blurred.

I've been working through mine stripping the additional content Google originally wanted and just leave in what visitors would find more useful.

Am getting a bit fed up with foreign TLDs still ranking high. These weren't there before and making a mockery of the SERPs on Google.co.uk

Another frustration is sites actually selling the goods or services gone and replaced by Blogs just talking about the keyword, or just mentioning it within their text - but as the blog is popular with a lot of social signals, it's ranking high - but useless.

Also (whilst I rant ) why are sites still ranking that are being raised back in the SERPs by dodgy back-links? Is this the game I've got to play now?

 

[boxfish]

Anyone got a recovery strategy?

My EMD's have been mullered so I must do something to bring my earnings back. If that's kill the site and start again then I will but I need to know it's not in vain!

My sites tend to be wordpress, different themes, most use easy content unit and we tend to then do a post where we will write about a particular product and link direct to the merchant, typically amazon with a "Buy Now" option.

Do I need to appear to be more like a merchant to please Google? Swap out clear amazon links for disguised internal links that are no follow?

I think for now I will just continue to add new content so that Google see's that the site is getting fresh content and hasn't been abandoned as a result of it falling out of the serps.

You need to look at what value you are adding with your websites.

Your suggestions of cloaking links and appearing like a merchant are just ways of prolonging the pain by trying to trick the search engine.

Google have recently said they are going after being a knowledge engine, if they can provide a measurement, price comparison, interest rate or a definitive answer then they will. What you need to provide in order to get traffic (in that particular niche) is reviews, opinions, videos etc, something that isn't a finite nugget of information.

A perfect example of this in action is the WhatIsMyIP search. As they were only providing a definitive number they got upstaged.

Although your website was on an EMD I don't think that is the sole reason for it being targeted, and even if it was, building a similar site on a non-EMD hasn't really got any long term potential any more, it's a method that used to work and now doesn't. Affiliate sales should be and addition to a website that compliments it, not a sole reason for it's existence.

 

[wonder_lander]

You need to look at what value you are adding with your websites.

Your suggestions of cloaking links and appearing like a merchant are just ways of prolonging the pain by trying to trick the search engine.

Google have recently said they are going after being a knowledge engine, if they can provide a measurement, price comparison, interest rate or a definitive answer then they will. What you need to provide in order to get traffic (in that particular niche) is reviews, opinions, videos etc, something that isn't a finite nugget of information.

A perfect example of this in action is the WhatIsMyIP search. As they were only providing a definitive number they got upstaged.

Although your website was on an EMD I don't think that is the sole reason for it being targeted, and even if it was, building a similar site on a non-EMD hasn't really got any long term potential any more, it's a method that used to work and now doesn't. Affiliate sales should be and addition to a website that compliments it, not a sole reason for it's existence.

Cheers for the post. So your thoughts are the sites are dead, kill them and make them better?

Our sites where mainly product names so although you could go direct to the merchants we pitched our selves as a dedicated shopping mall bringing all of the products from the various merchants under 1 shopping experience.

This sounds like it would have been ideal for a person looking for "blue widgets" to see the 10 different type available from 10 different merchants all on one website. I guess you and Google disagree so it's time to start thinking outside the box a little and looking for how we can salvage some web income.

 

[boxfish]

This sounds like it would have been ideal for a person looking for "blue widgets" to see the 10 different type available from 10 different merchants all on one website. I guess you and Google disagree so it's time to start thinking outside the box a little and looking for how we can salvage some web income.

It's not that I disagree, but are you actually adding real value?

MoneySavingExpert.com does stuff like this for financial products and they do it well. The main reason they do it well is because they find the best deal whether it is through an affiliate link or not and they highlight the pros and cons of each deal/supplier etc.

My guess is you only display products from merchants you are registered with, all the links are affiliated and you don't actually know if it the the best price available or not.

They both use (in essence) the same model, but one adds value, one doesn't.

 

[thecat]

It's not that I disagree, but are you actually adding real value?

MoneySavingExpert.com does stuff like this for financial products and they do it well. The main reason they do it well is because they find the best deal whether it is through an affiliate link or not and they highlight the pros and cons of each deal/supplier etc.

My guess is you only display products from merchants you are registered with, all the links are affiliated and you don't actually know if it the the best price available or not.

They both use (in essence) the same model, but one adds value, one doesn't.

But how does Google know if you are providing the best price and know what you're talking about?

It doesn't.

 

[wonder_lander]

But how does Google know if you are providing the best price and know what you're talking about?

It doesn't.

Quite, the bottom line is that they don't unless they manually review each site.

Are they looking for people to do re-inclusion requests to see who actually think that their site is useful?

 

[wonder_lander]

Google know if you are providing the best price based on inbound traffic, the traffic you are generating for other sites, bounce rate, exit rate, unique visits, etc, all by using that tool called "Google Analytics" (assuming both or even one of these sites uses this tool).

This is also assuming that Google doesn't have access to analytic data from any other kind of analytic tool(s) available online that is (or seems to be) a "competitor" of Google analytics.

But how does a new site get traction to start with?

 

[boxfish]

But how does a new site get traction to start with?

Provide something of use and promote it?

Unless you are willing to contact 'people' and say something along the lines of 'I think your readers/followers/visitors/fans/subscribers/customers would find this useful' and be confident that some will actually be interested then you've got a long, uphill struggle with a site that probably won't stand the test of time.

 

[Blossom]

Google know if you are providing the best price based on inbound traffic, the traffic you are generating for other sites, bounce rate, exit rate, unique visits, etc, all by using that tool called "Google Analytics" (assuming both or even one of these sites uses this tool).

All the above has to be consistently frequent too.

This is also assuming that Google doesn't have access to analytic data from any other kind of analytic tool(s) available online that is (or seems to be) a "competitor" of Google analytics.

Or, you know, links to your site.

 

[Blossom]

Also long term, using organic rankings as a business plan is no longer a plan. The game has changed.http://www.100kblueprint.com/2012/08/seo-is-theft-seo-is-dead/

If you don't work with authority sites, that has always been a risk. SEO has always been in flux; that's the very nature of it. You either adapt or die.

 

[lethal0r]

Am getting a bit fed up with foreign TLDs still ranking high. These weren't there before and making a mockery of the SERPs on Google.co.uk

+1! I noticed this too. .com.au's for some of my own finance terms, what a load of shi*e big g!

 

[Blossom]

Best adapt then.

“Google will make SEO increasingly difficult, by making it un-measurable, by crowding out search results with larger paid ads and ad other formats, and rolling out algorithms that actually punish SEO.”

I could write a whole essay on that quote. The short version:

SEO will always be measurable for as long as search rankings exist. If they actually mean 'unguessable', then yes of course - the whole point is to make it as unguessable as possible.

Larger paid ads - inevitable for any popular website. I think Google's ads are far less intrusive than Facebook's now, especially on mobile. If you read The Google Story, there's a great section on how Google actually became successful because they based their model on usefulness of results rather than cramming everything full of ads the way AOL et al did, and developed a pretty innovative ad system.

"algorithms that punish SEO" - that's a trickier one. Generally speaking, it's more the abuse of SEO that's being punished. If you have a crappy thin site, especially one that aims to mislead people, then you shouldn't be in the results anyway. But Google needs people to optimise to some degree in order to display the most useful and relevant results. It's a balance.

I might be being naive here, but I would like to think that Google does what it does primarily to ensure it delivers the most useful results for searchers. I'm not saying they are perfect or they get it right all the time, because that's obviously not true. The only way they can survive is by being the best at what they do. And they are. A lot of people appear to live under the assumption that Google owes them something and they deserve particular rankings. A lot of people are also unwilling to be patient. And a lot of people think that if they've achieved a particular ranking, they can move on to something else and tick it off as 'job done'.

 

[Blossom]

But what if you interpreted the word wrong, and it was in fact meant to be as it is written - completely "un-measurable" and random in its nature?

Taking it directly, you can 'measure' your SEO by your search engine position (regardless of whether it's organic or paid, because of Quality Score factors).

It would benefit no one being completely random. Everything has been geared towards things going the other way - personalised Google account results, personalised local results, personalised Google+ results. If anything the idea is to make search specific to the person using it, rather than assuming that all things are of equal value/importance to all people. That gives a better experience, and is one of the reasons why I believe Google's focus is on user experience before money.

Instead of reading it as "larger paid ads", how about reading it as the first 1 page (maybe eventually pages 2 and 3) consist of solely adwords? Is that such a hard thing to envisage? An impossibility? Sounds entirely plausible to me.

Especially if users find that the most relevant results returned always tend to be the ones with the cream coloured background, enforcing a habit of clicking those ads rather than the organic results anyway?

In time, this would give Google (artificial) "statistical proof" that organic results simply do not provide the relevancy to the users search queries, paving the way for the whole of page 1 (2 and 3) to display only adwords?

Not that you can answer these questions, but it does seem a plausible game plan from Google, as it would benefit their coffers.

I find it difficult to believe it would actually happen, but it's quite interesting to consider as a possible theory, because like you say, there's a chance it could happen.

I think Google would find themselves opening a can of worms, especially in regards to fair trading practices within the EU. It would also be interesting to see how many people would voluntarily stop using Google in protest if it did happen - that would make a nice poll.

Of course, it would be a blessing in disguise for the long term - if you're relying on loyal, returning traffic and other things like social media and real-world advertising, and spending less time worrying about SEO, then your site will be all the better for it. It's just marketing it in the first place that would be very difficult. It would make a great double-bluff by Google if they did do it, because the web would be much better off spam-wise for it. Obviously there are huge drawbacks too! :S

 

[Ashton]

Was chilling at bottom of page 1 - Didn't get hit too hard. Did nothing and was waiting for dust to settle. Boom, page 7 .

It's an interesting game we play!

 

[addz123]

I'm turning white hat and diversifying both traffic and my income.

I think blackhat/greyhat SEO is officially dead and so is any form of short term SEO or any businesses 100% reliant on SEO.