Check Your Google Rankings Because Google Have Rolled out Another Algorithm Update.
Oh no, I hear you mutter (or cry in anguish perhaps!).
Here we go again – another mess up of the rankings perhaps?
Another round of dumping of our webpages?
Have you checked your site’s visitor stats today??
Here’s the facts from the horses mouth about this search engine update which was rolled out yesterday – 24th April 2012:
http://googlewebmastercentral.blogspot.com/2012/04/another-step-to-reward-high-quality.html
I popped on over to Jon Leger’s forum to check out what he’s seeing.
For the query: make money online (110,000 global monthly Google searches), there’s this site ranking top 10…
http://makemoneyforbeginners.blogspot.com/
Huh? There’s no content on it!!
Actually, here’s my own search results for when I did the “make money online” search in Google…
Can you see my blog in 10th position for a post that I shared with you about a week ago?
LOL! Google loves me!
Obviously the results are biased in favour of “me”, hence what I’m seeing there. But you can see my mug, which is thanks to my recent work with Google Plus.
What else is showing up in Google search that should not be there?
Search for “new shoes” and this site comes up at or around number 2 in Google US…
Look at the image below and you see what this site is about…
Click the image to make it larger
Something to do with “the four ‘P’s’ of marketing”. What’s this got to do with new shoes?
Anyway, I could rattle on and on about the current state of search results in Google. And all the while, really good sites are being thrust down the rankings whilst we get shoddy nonsense in return.
Makes you wonder will Google ever get it right?
And it makes you also wonder what hope have we got for ranking our own webpages high in search when we’re seeing these irrelevant (plainly pointless) search results.
Briefly onto other matters.
I’ve finally managed to get a video “in the bag”. I’ve filmed a short review type of thing for Backlinks Genie which, if you are remotely interested, you can see on my Backlinks Genie Review page.
The video is far from perfection but right now that does not overly concern me. Just the fact that I managed to get a video uploaded on YouTube is quite a feat in itself.
I’ll be creating many more videos from now onwards (I bet you can’t wait!!) – success begets success, right? LOL!
And finally, I got together with the guys at AdSenseFlippers.com last night and we did a poddie podcast which was quite a laugh. I’ll let you know when that will be live on their website when its live on their website, which should be sometime early next week I think.
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I got hammered by that update. Either I got super smoked, or this update just so happened to occur right when I got a massive penalty for unnatural links LOL
Hopefully they turn it around…I’m pretty bummed.
Joseph,
I really don’t know what the hell Google is doing with knocking down good sites in favor of this crap. It is very frustrating when you build a site that really addresses a problems and see it tanked in favor of crap. Everytime I see this I just want to throw my hands up in the air in disgust.
You have to know their algorithm is jacked when a site is PR 3 and consists of the word “make” for one of the most competitive keyword phrases out there.
On the plus side, at least, I haven’t yet noticed any effect from this specific update.
LOL, that blogspot is ranking #1 in the U.S. WTF?? This will be interesting to watch. A lot of crap sites are ranking high and quality sites has took a dive. As usual, typical for Goog.
Can’t wait to listen to that podcast, it ought to be pretty good. lol
that blogspot used to be Grizzly’s make money blog. maybe that will tell you something?
Jim, you’ve already been hammered and hammered. I thought you of all people would now be high and dry when it comes to Goog algo updates
You see – that’s the thing – if you get hammered often enough, there comes a time when you can rest easy because there’s nothing left 
Steve, hope you had a fine time in Panama and feel nicely refreshed!
As Brandy noted in her comment (and a good find on her part I must add) that blogspot site which is ranking high for “make money online” used to be Grizzlies site, which I guess is why its still running high. However, you still have to ask “so what?”. Even if it were Angelina Jolie’s site, the fact that it has no content should be plenty enough reason to reduce its ranking dramatically. Obviously Goog have a whole lot of work still to do Steve.
By the look of things Steve, I think we’d all be wise to grab a few blogspot blogs and dump any old crap on them (or maybe just a couple of AdSense blocks with no other content) and then chuck rubbishy backlinks at those sort of properties and watch whilst Goog “merrily” go ahead and rank us for the most competitive keywords. We’ve got about as much chance of that happening as we have for ranking top quality websites which offer a great visitor experience.
Perplexing!
Casey – the pod was fun to do – I just hope it did not drag on for too long because as you know I have a habit of chatting too much when it comes to the IM game
I think Google’s idea of quality is different to everyone else’s. I know they are making a large effort to reduce highly SEO’d sites, but why? Why, when very many highly SEO’d sites are top notch when it comes to offering a quality visitor experience. Seems to me that what they are now truly saying is “we don’t want to offer a quality experience to the site visitor, we’ve been lying all along since we’ve found a better way to make more money than to worry about who finds what in our search database“.
Brandy, well spotted! I think this is one of the sites where he was forced out of the game since the blogspot management dumped all his content, if memory serves me correctly?
Well, to be honest I just have a knack for getting penalised for stupid newbie backlinking mistakes! Those sites are actually back now and rank top 3!
They made up 90% of my income at this time too.
Truth is, no previous algo update has hurt me. Deindexing BMR hurt a bit, but nothing unrecoverable. This update? Killed my two best sites. One went from 120 uniques a day to 3. Ouch
Oh well, once I clear up my project overload, I will continue with that authority site model that doesn’t rely on backlinks so much
120 uniques each day down to 3. OMG, that’s a killer blow if ever there were one! And what’s worse – over 90% of your income from these two sites – so how much have you lost in terms of income – about 5 bucks a month? LOL!
Yes, I’d be interested to learn how you are coming along with the authority site model Jim. I’ve got mine up to around 55 pages of content and its just starting to see some traffic via search. No sales as of yet though.
LOL I never said it was lots of traffic :p but at least it was traffic. As for the money… ya 5 sounds about right hahaha!
No really though, its a bitch for a new guy to have to start over every few months right.
Its a bitch for an old guy (me) to have to start over every few months also, Jim
I’m thinking about trying my hand at the zebra stripes party games niche. What do you reckon – money to be made there or what?
I’ve finally got my hands on Spencer Haw’s Long Tail Pro software and will be spending the next few days playing around with that and will follow up with a video review on it too. So if keyword research is still an issue for you Jim (or anyone who is reading this) then do watch out for that.
These updates seem to be coming more and more frequently! I seem to have escaped so far, but who knows what’s coming in the next one?!
Yeah Gerry, I think the current one has hit a lot of folks. Apparently and according to Google, its only affected 3% of search queries, but I’m hearing from quite a number of folks who have seen their rankings tank.
Hi Joseph
All my income earning sites dropped to below page 50. Like everyone else this is very frustrating considering all the effort that goes into making a quality website! Upon looking at the sites in the top ten for one of my main keywords I only recognize 2 from the original 10 that were there a few days ago. These 8 other new sites are not of the same quality as the previous sites they replaced.
As I look at this whole SEO/IM gig as a pure hobby, and glad I still do, I could not imagine wasting hours upon hours building sites and ranking sites on “the big if” only to either get slapped or deindexed… or perhaps your Adsense account banned for no apparent reason– and treat it like a legitimate business.
While folks on the Warrior forum are starting to talk about transitioning to Authority sites with a ton of unique/long-tail content with very little link building (if any) I can already see some folks building out some very nice sites with a couple hundred pages of high quality content (spending hours of their time and money) only to make a few dollars a month. Or worse yet, another algo comes down the pike and their new authority site suffers a big gap in the SERPs. A very real possibility!
Don’t mean to sound negative here as this is just an observation of what has/is happening with Goolge. For me, I will probably take a brake from the IM arena and spend that time on one of my brick & morter(sp?) businesses that provides profits, legitimate challenges and equity.
Just my thoughts on this Google nonsense.
Dave in Waikiki
Hi Dave, ouch! As you say, its just as well it is a hobby for you or else you’d be up the proverbial creek with no paddle – I’ve been there and its no fun at all!
What can I say other than to commiserate with you and with the thousands and thousands of others who have spent time and invested money in ranking your webpages in Google, only to see your ranking disappear over night on another Google whim. And the point you make about what you are now seeing in top ten for the stuff you were previously ranking for – well, that just rubs salt into the wound and makes you wonder are Google employing thoroughly and highly educated people, or are they employing folks with little to no education – in fact, are they employing folks with no more capabilities than a monkey in a tree would have when it comes to creating search engine algorithm updates…
One thing I’ve mentioned previously a few times. On a number of my sites that previously had lots and lots of Google rankings, only to have those rankings TOTALLY obliterated, I’m seeing more and more traffic coming from Yahoo and Bing. Not to the same levels as they were when ranking in Google, but still – enough to put something of a smile on my face because it means that I’m still seeing some income. This makes you wonder, if you are still intent on working the game of SEO, does it make sense to pay more attention to Yahoo and Bing?
One of my sites gets around 100 to 150 uniques from Bing and Yahoo combined each and every day, and considering I’ve barely touched the site in a year, that’s not to be sniffed at! Plus, it still sees quite a bit of traffic from Google Images, which although that traffic probably rarely converts to putting cash in my pocket, its still of interest to note all the same. The question there being – is there a way to firstly – get a whole lot of traffic via Goog Images (that traffic tends to be “safe” regardless of Goog algo updates), and secondly – how to convert that traffic to cash flow?
Or, the other question may be – is it now more wise to focus on ranking Google owned properties and thereby funneling folks back to our own websites that way? Google Plus springs to mind here, just for example. Or how about YouTube…
I’ll leave this open because everyone will have a different point of view.
I wish you well with your bricks and mortar business Dave!
Joseph
This is more of the same. Nothing new.
Every time Google makes one of this updates, the results are messed. It takes a few days at least for them to clean the top 10.
We’ll see how it goes.
My established site promoting my main business has shifted up to now holding both positions 1 and 2 for our main keyword, up from #6 before the update. I also have a number of new niche sites that I have worked on concurrently in the last 3 weeks, they’ve been dancing around the SERPs during that time anyway and I’m only now starting to crank up my SEO strategy, so I’m watching with great anticipation.
To my mind if you’re careful and follow a multi layered approach to backlinking, generate lots of high quality valuable content, and most importantly care about the quality of your work, everything will come out in the wash.
If people love your content/product/site – they don’t use google anyway.
My dad recently had a health scare and when he went online in a panic all he found were terrified people with horror stories, there weren’t many people saying “I was worried to death about it but you know what it all turned out fine in the end” because they’re inherently less likely to post because their issue’s gone – I see more than a passing similarity with some forum threads I’ve read today.
I think that there are a lot of products and services out there that offer quick and easy solutions to SEO, but in my opinion these tools simply shave off some of the legwork of good SEO, simply speeding up the process of building a robust and thought through strategy, rather than replacing it.
There never will be a ‘push a button and get to #1 solution’, and the rhetoric that’s used to imply any different does no good for the industry. You just have to ride the waves.
Hi Joseph
Hope you remember me.
My site thrown to second page. Earlier it was ranking in top three. I had sent you an email. I kindly request you to have a look and let me know your expert advice.
Thank you in advance
Cristina, each time there’s a major “roll-out” so many innocent parties get caught up in it and very often they never gain any rankings again. I’m not saying that Google as a company HAVE to tell us as SEO folks anything about what they are doing or intending on doing. But the fact remains that every time they algo change and implement there are a whole raft of really good websites which are serving a purpose that get dumped never to see the light of day ever again. Can’t build a solid business on this because you are always going to be relying on the whims of Google.
Thanks for the recent Tweets in Twitter Cristina – no doubt this is helping to contribute to my new highs in terms of Twitter visitors to my blog!
Hey Matt, sounds like things are going very nicely for you – that’s great!
Quoting you…
Yeah, well, with regards to this blog which I’ve never really SEO’d at all until the last week or so, I now get more daily Twitter visitors than I do visitors from Google search. Who would ever have thought it – I’m “supposed” to be an SEO sorta guy
Good to see my Twitter efforts are now paying off. But here the question has to be asked – when the Goog representatives say time and again “create good content and folks will link to your site and then you’ll be found in Google”… I know for a fact that I get rather a lot of links to my site every month, but it definitely does not dictate the fact that folks will find you in the rankings.
Can’t agree with you more – there never will be a push button strategy and solution to getting #1 rankings – at least not long term #1 rankings. Mind you, I really don’t blame folks for trying
Thanks for your comment Matt!
Hi Pon, yes of course I remember you – I remember countless emails sent back and forth over a year ago
Sorry to hear about the demise of your sites rankings in Goog. I’ll get back to you on that soon via email.
Regards
Joseph
Joseph,
I was only talking about the empty sites that are now on the top 10. In a few days those sites will disappear.
I wasn’t talking about the guys who have lost their rankings after the update. I know that most of them won’t get them back.
Thanks for clarifying Cristina. Will be interesting to see if the money making blogspot site (previously run by Grizzly) holds its rankings. I’d not be overly surprised if it did.
Hi
Ive seen tons of blogspot.com sites now in the top ten for many competative terms.
Who owns blogspot.com ? I wonder hum….
Steve – blogspot – me too!!