Why Does Google Do it?

With just about every successful website I have had, once I climb the rankings and get in the top 3 or 4 for my keyword, Google kicks me in the #$@ and sends me down in the rankings all in one snap. No warning, no slow decline, just boom!

Then I dig in and I slowly claw my way back up and usually (about 75% of the time) I get back to the ranking I was at if not maybe a position or two higher. Well it happened again................. and I hope I get my ranking back again. Its just a strressful 30 days or so until I get back there.

Just a litttle rant I guess, but does anyone else have this happen to them? I just wonder what the logic behind it is.

I call it the "Google Shake Up"

I think they just want to drive the shady SEOs out of business at the same time raise the price of their adwords.

As far as gambling, they dont like it, but I am sure they are happy to take the money for companies outside the US.

It happens to me too, but only when I stop building links then I climb the rankings once again when I return to link building.

@bauss makes an interesting statement on how to get your rankings back, returning to link building.

There has been so much talk about how backlinks can hurt you, but the sites that rank have great backlinks. I was just researching a site using rank tracker on market Samuri. Some sites have tons of backlinks with different anchor text that rank high, and other have very few high quality backlinks with the same anchor text that rank highly.

What's the age on those websites? To be honest I never liked "link building" as it's not what ranking should be about. Algos get tweaked, re-worked change all the time. I believe that in the long term, say in 10 years, if you keep your focus on high quality content you will get through. Links are part of the equation now, but who knows for later, as content... content is what the readers are looking for and it will always be a factor.

There are a lot of great sites that used to dominate the serps at one time or another. One by one, they were all eventually pushed down the google ladder. I believe that there may be some sort of time frame placed on high ranking sites, even if they are quality sites and haven't broken any of the rules. It may be google's way of encouraging them to use adwords.

I'm experiencing the exact same problem at the moment. Worked really hard this year to push my ranking and managed to get position #3 in google for some great keywords and all of a sudden pow! I'm dropping like a bomb :(

As for what gets you good rankings I personally still think its all about links. Content helps but only has a real effect if you're publishing in a niche where content is likely to be shared a lot. I see loads of high auth sites put up a crappy landing page for certain products I have websites for and they outrank without doing anything. Just because the link from their homepage is so strong.

All valid comments, but don't forget another dominant factor making it harder for gambling affiliates is the algo now really helps brands. By brands I mean operators, who I notice are taking certain keyword positions that once only affiliate sites had.

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What's the age on those websites? To be honest I never liked "link building" as it's not what ranking should be about. Algos get tweaked, re-worked change all the time. I believe that in the long term, say in 10 years, if you keep your focus on high quality content you will get through. Links are part of the equation now, but who knows for later, as content... content is what the readers are looking for and it will always be a factor.

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@xecutable - That is something I was going to put in the thread but was not sure how much relevance it had from an SEO stand point. They are all old sites, 5 years and older with a lot in indexed pages. Is citation flow relevant? Market Samuri has that as one of their indicators but they still have page rank as well as .edu/.gov backlinks.

I always wonder sometimes that some of the fast rank drops to higher ranking sites and pages can be attributed to seo websites that spider the crap out of the sites and suddenly that site will have a bunch of crap links pointing at it (sometimes those links will be 404's because of poor coding on the part of the seo websites).

In addition to that some scumbags will see the high ranking pages and will steal bits of content for their machine generated pages (often these pages will have 404's pointed at the original website due in part to poor coding or on purpose in an attempt to take away a portion of that ranking)

Rick
Universal4

Content is king! I think it is all about links as well but they have to be good links. You can have 100 crappy links and you wont rank as well as having 10 good links. My thoughts anyway. It is just funny, I think. My sites are not that old, so after about 6 months they start top rank well then they take the drop but because they do have good content I think I get the rankings back. It just takes a little extra work. I'll have to basically switch around a lot of the content and tweak the site a little more and then it will be fine. Its just frustrating because you lose that $ for about 60 days!

@Universal4, what do you mean by SEO sites spidering the sites, do you mean the google bot crawling or another search engine?

Or do people in the SEO business build their own crawlers?


I know these are fundamental questions but I am trying to understand the crawling process and the language or spidering.

Yep, there are dozens (ok really likely hundreds) of seo sites that use their own spiders, will pull every page you have, will follow all your links, will database your content, and often will link back to you (many of them do this with 404's due to **** poor coding such as truncating a link to you)(which now shows as a 404 to you in webmaster tools) all in the name of helping one of your competetors since they were the ones that requested an seo report on your site so they could see how you are ranking better than them.

Sometimes these spiders do NOT follow robots text, and even if they do, they are eating up your resources and your bandwith. I have no problem with real spiders for search engines taking a look at my pages so they can index the content in the hopes they will have users that will query their database and visit my sites, but the seo's have no intention of sending you traffic, they just wanna see what you got to create a report for their clients.

Ask yourself this, "How many times have you run seo reports on websites that weren't yours?" You think others haven't done the same thing with your url?

Rick
Universal4

if done with bad intension, that is negative SEO, no? I run my reports through rank tracker in market samuri who claims to be white hat. But they may make their code spiders. So basically when I research other peoples websites to see what their backlinks are, I could be hurtin their serps? That is nuts

Well I think in most cases it is not ever really done with bad intentions, but it is not done with the intentions of helping the other site owners either.

It is what it is.

Rick
Universal4

looks like G did a penguin update on the 4th. that explains what I'm seeing.

Hi, Google do this to drive more users on Google Ad words.

In my opinion that is a myth Thomus, put out by seo's that "have a plan" for you...oh, their "plan" isn't free.

Rick
Universal4

Working as an affiliate has really opened my eyes to a number of things involving the internet, I never realised how complex some things could be. The Link building has been an issue I have really tried to get my head around and have spent hours and hours on. Conclusion us that SEO is more important than I ever thought !!

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Originally Posted by oldfaithful

Working as an affiliate has really opened my eyes to a number of things involving the internet, I never realised how complex some things could be. The Link building has been an issue I have really tried to get my head around and have spent hours and hours on. Conclusion us that SEO is more important than I ever thought !!

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Welcome to the wonderful world of the internet :)