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Is The Penguin Scratching Under Its Feathers?

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Google keeps putting out posts and guidelines and talk about “quality” (however that is defined – quality in this case is subjective and how one ever create a logarithm that can precisely define it is beyond me), but I know quality, at least to me, when I see it.

I also know junk when I see it. And from continuing to use Google for search, I can see that for me, and I’m sure for an awful lot of other humans, the machines at Google are producing low quality, junky search results in many instances.

The sad part right now is that there are so many so-called “experts” who are claiming they know the answer to getting your site ranked again if it tanked with Google’s latest update called “Penguin.” If you want, you can read a bunch of different opinions, and what is funny, you’ll often find the exact opposite opinions as to why or what caused your site to drop, or what you should be doing to help revive the rankings.

Almost everyone that has an interest in SEO knows that when Penguin hit, the search results for the term:

[viagra]

were totally bizarre, as were some other competitive search terms. The corporate website for Viagra, viagra.com, appeared to have been penalized! This has since been fixed, but this evening, I did a search on the term, and again see totally irrelevant results on Page 1. Page 1, #10 is a link to this page: http://pinto.scripts.mit.edu/Research/Monster16GPU

It’s a page about a 16-GPU Monster computer and there is no mention of viagra anywhere on it, including in the HTML source code.

This is junk. This is not quality. Mat Cutts might be a really nice guy, but he also comes across as this guy that is kind of like Forrest Gump, but with a side that he’s out “to get over SEO’d” sites – which is fine – and he’s also admitted that Google makes mistakes – which is great.

But come on! There is a huge mistake that is still going on with the Penguin! It’s getting close to offering up an apology and instead of smugly suggesting they’ve caught bad SEO practices, they need to fix their mistakes which are so glaringly obvious. They have ruined some great sites that I used to find in search results – sites that I never bookmarked, assuming I’d find them again when I searched on Google.  And they seem pretty smug about it, and confident – I wonder if any of the spam team search engineers have done a search on commonly searched on words and phrases?

Something, or some things, in this latest update has introduced some pretty big fleas under the Penguin’s feathers. Now the question is, are the engineers just scratching the Penguin’s feathers to relieve the itch, or are they going to get rid of the fleas that have been introduced?

With such crappy results for so many searches, one wonders why Google did not revert back to its algorithm pre Penguin. Most companies, upon seeing such a lousy result, would do so. But perhaps Google as a corporate entity has now grown so smug about itself, it has forgotten what made it a great search engine in the first place. While it tries to rule the world with all it’s “services” and get everyone hooked in, perhaps they think they are now “King” and so crappy doesn’t matter anymore.

In all seriousness, and I never thought I’d see the day when I would say this, but Bing provides far better and more relevant results for many searches than Google does. So does http://duckduckgo.com which also guarantees privacy.

Here’s another interesting thing I’m seeing – after the Penguin update, on those sites I have Analytics installed on, those who found those sites via Bing or Yahoo have a much lower bounce rate than those who arrived via a Google search.

What does that tell you? Bing and Yahoo are providing results that are actually more relevant to the searcher’s intent than Google is.

Quit scratching, Google. Penguins are cute, but I’m sure a penguin with fleas is not a sorry sight, and it’s time to take this Penguin to the veterinarian.

 

It’s A Penguin – Google’s Latest Update

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Are “Panda” updates over this latest one Google has released being named “Penguin?” I mean, the next update, will it be a Panda 2.9, or a Penguin 1.1? A penguin it might be, and sometimes penguins can be cute, but they are slow, clumsy, and they can’t fly. Penguins can swim, but the Google Penguin update has sunk a lot of people and websites.

If it weren’t for that, and the fact that this is not 1998, and it’s not Altavista we’re using in 1998, some of the search engine results are kind of “cute” but clumsy in a Penguin sort of way. In that regard, it’s an appropriate name.

Websites that have zero content ranking #1 for some search queries. Websites that have absolutely zero relevance ranking for some search queries. It’s cute.. and clumsy. And it sure doesn’t fly with a lot of webmasters out there. I’ve even read reports along the lines of, “I abandoned a website two years ago after not ranking it after some effort, it looks terrible, and now suddenly it’s on the first page of Google.”

It makes you wonder if the engineers at Google do any indepth studies themselves after such an update; why are they not seeing what others are seeing and can obviously see that there is a problem here?  But, Google has offered an olive branch – two of them in fact. The first one is to let them know if you were hit by this update in a negative way that you should not have been. The other thing you can also do is snitch on someone that Google didn’t apparently catch.

Obviously Google staff know that this algo update might not have really done it’s job in a graceful and completely meaningful way. But give them credit: for the first time ever, they have provided a form where you can let them know if you’ve been unfairly victimized by The Penguin.

And if you’re in a snitching mood, you can snitch to the Penguin here.

The majority of our web properties and our clients’ sites have sailed through this fine. There has been some slight movement – in some cases a couple of spots upward, in others a couple of spots downward (more due to Google giving more credit in their alogrithm to other sites than anything else, most likely), but one site in particular which I’ve discussed before just makes no sense at all. There are only two things I can think of, and if either of them are what has affected the site to this degree, something is definitely wrong and absolutely Negative SEO is now possible if Google does not fix it.

1. Two and half years ago, about 40 articles were submitted to EzineArticles. Those articles contained links to different pages as well as the front page of the site.  Shortly after, Google came out with an update that devalued Article Directories – and the site did drop a couple of spots at that time.

2. About six weeks ago, somehow Google discovered the server name and the IP address of the server the site resides on. It is shared hosting, and I have no clue how Google ever started to index http://xxx.xx.xxx.xxx/somedirectory/ and end up with a copy of my site – and then do the same with the server name – thereby not only triplicating content, but also showing in my GWMT account, an exponential increase in backlinks to the site in one week. But this confuses me as this site (and one of our properties did) did not receive any “unnatural back link building detection” messages.

The result? For a major search term for which the site used to rank on Page 1, about #7 on Google.COM and on Page 2 of Google.CA, you now have to go all the way to Page 55 (that’s Page – not the 55th result) of the Google SERP’s. That’s insane. This is a website that has existed for over 10 years, has always done well, has tons of great quality content, and I receive daily emails from visitors congratulating me on the quality of the website.

It has lots of links from other fly fishing, fishing, outdoor related, etc. types of websites that were put there by other webmasters who found the site and liked it, and linked to it.

For searches on individual fly patterns, that I published long before other people ever did, the site ranks nowhere. It makes no sense to me. And I’ll tell you what – this site is not well monetized, it’s not something I make a ton of cash off of, (yes, there is an E-bay store, yes, there are some other Amazon affiliate links to products, where appropriate, and yes, there is some Adsense but it’s certainly not a “money” site for me – none of these things are “in your face”).

It’s not about the money, it’s more of a “pride” thing. But not only that, it’s pretty obvious to me that genuine, quality sites can be taken out – whether it’s a Panda or a Penguin – and sometimes it doesn’t make sense.

So what do you think? Will you be filling out either of the forms Google has provided that I linked to above?

 

 

Has Google Jumped The Shark?

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This morning, April 25, 2012, many of us woke to some really strange and poor search results in Google. Yesterday, I wrote about some experiences that I was seeing throughout the day here and here, but overnight it just got worse.

At least one of my sites which I know has good quality content (my visitors tell me so, not a search engine bot) seems to have taken a major dive in search engine results at Google. I’m still seeing some pretty weird results – and even seeing Ezine articles now ranking again for some search queries. Another property which seems to have gained is Squidoo.

But Google has really messed up on some things. And it is has affected webmasters around the world. Domains that have no content whatsoever are ranking for the #1 spot for some search queries. Google has also ranked sites for search queries that have no relevance whatsoever.

It’s quite bizarre obviously the quality of search in Google has decreased considerably. Having a bit of a headache today, I searched for

headache remedies

and up comes a very spammy website; the type that Google claims it is trying to eliminate: tons of ads above the fold and the content, and ads all around the content.

Thus far in my observations, Google’s “success” in dealing with ranking for EMD’s (exact match domains) is spotty. I’ve seen very good sites get demoted, brands that are not ranking at all, and poorly crafted sites with an EMD promoted.

It just doesn’t make sense. Surely Google staff realize just how poor of a job this latest update, which reminds me of Altavista results over a decade ago, is.

What are your thoughts?  Are you considering switching to DuckDuckGo (DDG) or Bing? I have to admit I am seeing results I like much better on those two engines, and I like the fact that DDG has a much better privacy policy than Google does. Would that also be something that is important to you?

Dear @mattcutts

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Thank you for your personal reply on Twitter today. I appreciated it. Now, lets get down to business – I can’t “tweet” the details, as there is not enough room or space.

Try it yourself.. search [fly fishing] on google.com or google.CA.  If you were a dude, wanting to learn more about fly fishing, what sort of results would you want to appear?

Results about Cabela’s fly fishing rods?

Results about Orvis fly fishing equipment?

 

A United Kingdom fly fishing form? perhaps… Although it’s across the Atlantic.

Bass Pro Shops fly fishing gear and rods?

If I type in [fly fishing], I am interested in stuff about fly fishing. If I wanted to know about [fly fishing rods] or [fly fishing gear], that is what I would have typed in.

if I go to Google.CA, I get websites advertising their fly fishing instructional services… and I’m probably too far away to take advantage of that.

No matter where you are, if you are interested in learning more about fly fishing, and you “google” it.. are you going to learn more by going to these places:

http://www.google.com/url?q=http://www.orvis.com/store/shop.aspx?dir_id=758&shop_id=1446&sa=U&ei=df-WT7jrJcbmggej2_3cDQ&ved=0CC8QFjAD&usg=AFQjCNHNO-MYyKM8St3EN88Ly9gMspyHLw

http://www.google.com/url?q=http://www.basspro.com/Category-Fly-Fishing/_/N-1z11d7a&sa=U&ei=df-WT7jrJcbmggej2_3cDQ&ved=0CFIQFjAP&usg=AFQjCNGOMYpfdHRzSzcbhbvXn4AO1pGzTg

Or this place:

ttp://about-flyfishing.com?

Or any one ot the other amazing places like midcurrent.com?  Yes, I own about-flyfishing.com – but seriously dude.. why does an Orvis or Bass Pro Shops page for fly fishing rods rank higher than midcurrent.com for that search term?

Why does a fly fishing forum in the UK rank higher than popular and frequented form in north America, on  Google.COM and .CA?

Why does about-flyfishing.com suddenly not rank in .CA… but does on page 4 of .com… when it simply changed to an American hosting company?

Maybe all those Google PhD guys are thinking too much?

 

 

 

 

 

 

Google, Wake Up!!

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So Matt Cutts tweeted about a new Google product today, Google Drive. I have no clue what Google Drive is, and right now, I don’t really care. As much as there have been some neat, cool, and awesome products out of Google.. someone has to tell them, “Wake up guys! You were the best at search… and in your attempts to be good at everything else, you’re now becoming average at everything.”

When you first arrived on the scene, you were a search engine. And it took a wee bit of time for people to switch from Altavista, Hotbot or whatever other search engine they were using, but through really good quality results, you managed to do that. It was great!

But in the past few years, in your attempts to be everything to everybody, your quality in everything has just gone way down hill.

Heck, earlier in the year when you did a Panda update, someone searching the term:

fly fishing

saw the “The Flying Fish Restaurant” as one of the search results. Ummmm.. can you say Altavista, 1999?

That kind of search result lasted for a good month, and then there was another update.  Now you get search results that you’d expect if you searched

fly fishing rods

- many of the general information sites about fly fishing in general have been relegated to Page 4. That does not make sense. If I search for ‘fly fishing’ on Google.ca, why am I getting some part time fly fishing instructor’s website, located in Shelburne, Ontario as one of my top five results? It makes no sense. You ask for “quality” yet you are providing results that are brand oriented, promotional and non-informational.

And that is just one example – I could go on with many other search queries, where Google has obviously dropped the ball.

Look, stop trying to compete with Facebook and all the other stuff. Get back to what you did really good at when you first began. Your “Google +1″ thing, along with your Google attempts at providing “Social” are crappy. They slow down my browser, are just totally unintuitive to most people (including me, and I’m pretty good at figuring things out rapidly), and just a pain in the neck. Google, you were a search engine, and a damn good one at that.

Today, everything you put out is average at best in your attempts to be everything to everyone. You are no longer amazing at what you do.

Someone has to tell you.