AVWeb
03-13-2004, 01:11 PM
Greetings, all:
I followed the Florida update, back in November, with meticulous focus, and performed several experiments that proved, despite some popular opinion, that certain circumstances invoked a key-term specific filter that dropped a domain from the search results.
I've watched the corrective process, and have more or less been pleased with the adjustments that Google has made over the past few months regarding this particular issue.
HOWEVER, I recently did a small, demographically relevant optimization job. No significant PR was needed, and it should have been ( was ) nearly effortless to claim the top spots for the key terms.
In fact, it was. As soon as the changes to the homepage were picked up, the site landed a top five spot on google, about as I expected. The results were stable over a week.
I then added a single link from another website with the key terms in the link anchor text. As soon as the link page was updated, the site was wiped off of the Google SERPS for that key term.
I confirmed that there was not another problem as follows:
key term: tile installation City = Top 5 before link
key term: stone installation City = Top 10 before link
after link:
key term: tile installation City = Dropped from SERPS
key term: stone installation City = Top 10
Competition for either key term set is not an issue in this case.
All of this has happened even before the rest of the site has been re-indexed by google ( live index ).
Luckily, I also figured out a few methods to beat the filters in these types of situations by leveraging information on other domains.
Has anyone else still encounted such problems, particularly with regional SERPS?
I followed the Florida update, back in November, with meticulous focus, and performed several experiments that proved, despite some popular opinion, that certain circumstances invoked a key-term specific filter that dropped a domain from the search results.
I've watched the corrective process, and have more or less been pleased with the adjustments that Google has made over the past few months regarding this particular issue.
HOWEVER, I recently did a small, demographically relevant optimization job. No significant PR was needed, and it should have been ( was ) nearly effortless to claim the top spots for the key terms.
In fact, it was. As soon as the changes to the homepage were picked up, the site landed a top five spot on google, about as I expected. The results were stable over a week.
I then added a single link from another website with the key terms in the link anchor text. As soon as the link page was updated, the site was wiped off of the Google SERPS for that key term.
I confirmed that there was not another problem as follows:
key term: tile installation City = Top 5 before link
key term: stone installation City = Top 10 before link
after link:
key term: tile installation City = Dropped from SERPS
key term: stone installation City = Top 10
Competition for either key term set is not an issue in this case.
All of this has happened even before the rest of the site has been re-indexed by google ( live index ).
Luckily, I also figured out a few methods to beat the filters in these types of situations by leveraging information on other domains.
Has anyone else still encounted such problems, particularly with regional SERPS?