How do we fight back against the Google Monster?

[FDJA]

Originally Posted by airtravelcenter

I said nothing that relates to whining. I answered the question.

The answer is that a bazillion webmasters ARE the monster. Accept our responsibility to direct traffic across the Internet. We are the experts in our fields of endeavor. No algorithm can ever match the experience and expertise we hold. Be judicious in directing visitors to other websites. Apply your expertise and experience. Whether paid or gratuitous, direct your visitors (you know your audience better than any other) to what you know will be of better service to them. Extend and enhance their visit to your site.

Within your site and beyond your site, use your experience and expertise to provide the very best products services facility information and references to the people who comprise your audience and your clientele.

You're right. Many a webmaster do try to get out there and steer traffic one way or the other. Sometimes intentionally, other times not so intentionally. Sometimes for self profit or fun, sometimes for hire. Sometimes it's entire teams of webmaster clone interns knocking out cookie cutter pages for big Page Rank sites to spam the universe with.

What-chu doing this weekend? I need help painting flowers on my VW Mini-Bus.

Actually, I believe the devil is alive and well on the Internet and taking the form of Amazon, EBay, Wilkpedia and a few others... Tell you what, after we paint the flowers on the mini-bus, we can grab a soap-box and drive to corporate headquarters for the major players who claim to have everything under the sun at their website. If the morality sermon doesn't work we'll cruise to WalMart, do a little shopping in sporting goods and go back and try again. Joking of course! < Got to place that there for when Google hands over info to the White House (if they can outbid the Chinese).

[PhilC]

Originally Posted by rcjordan

Florida and BD were/are cakewalks compared to AV's Black Monday.

hehe... I could never remember which day of the week it was - thanks for the reminder

Whether or not that comparison holds up depends on whether or not a site was hit. Black Monday was devastating, but so was Florida, and so is BD for those who were hit. AV totally dumped sites, whereas Forida and BD didn't, but the devastation for those who were hit is pretty much the same.

[rcjordan]

I don't remember it being a Monday, it may have been that it picked up the name from other bloodbaths in history. I do recall that it took a day or two to come to the realization that this wasn't just in one's own niche but that AV had been pretty indiscriminate in doling out the black dots.

http://forums.searchenginewatch.com/...ad.php?p=19393

[hiero]

FDJA, does it matter what data center Google is using to return the serps? Since the update a lot of my serps have varied, some of them greatly depending on which data center was returning the results. With some data centers I am positioned well and with others my results are horrible?

[FDJA]

Originally Posted by hiero

FDJA, does it matter what data center Google is using to return the serps? Since the update a lot of my serps have varied, some of them greatly depending on which data center was returning the results. With some data centers I am positioned well and with others my results are horrible?

I'm flattered you asked me, but honestly I don't know. I read that somewhere else and it sounds extremely logical. Even though it's unconfirmed from Google, I would say it's the best explanantion I've heard.

[hiero]

It almost seems with the minor research that I've done that Google wants to vary their serps, so they are changing data centers more frequently throughout the day. This way it shows different results almost all the time and gives the appearance that the serps are fresh. It also makes it really hard to maintain a top position on more sought after terms. Less sought after terms seem to hold their results in the serps more.

[PhilC]

Originally Posted by rcjordan

I don't remember it being a Monday, it may have been that it picked up the name from other bloodbaths in history. I do recall that it took a day or two to come to the realization that this wasn't just in one's own niche but that AV had been pretty indiscriminate in doling out the black dots.

Whatever day it was, I remember it well - one of my sites was hit, and never recovered - not that it mattered for much longer after that.

Ah - the good old days

[shor]

Originally Posted by PhilC

Whatever day it was, I remember it well - one of my sites was hit, and never recovered - not that it mattered for much longer after that.

Ah - the good old days

The announcement and relaunch was October 25, 1999. $US8 million on the launch day Back then I was still in the 'bubble', oblivious to what was to follow in the next 12 months. Good times.

[Wilksy]

Nice post Danny! Ah the good old days...

[I, Brian]

Originally Posted by dannysullivan

I can remember the Google Florida Update of November 2003, and how a wide range of site owners found themselves no longer able to depend on "dependable" Google. They should have never, ever been depending on it so much to begin with. But they did, and they got hammered.

One of my big non-commercial reference sites just went AWOL. Dozens of universities link to it, even a handful of government sites link to it. It died for ranking for it's own name and now it's disappearing entirely.

No, it won't make me personally poorer if Google never crawls it again - but I really can't see Google users benefiting either.

[dannysullivan]

For me, the toughest part about not designing a website that google hopefully favors, is that I would be ignoring at least 56% of my traffic potential right now. Months or years down the road, who knows we may have to make websites that works well with a different search engine.

Yep, more and more people are waking up to this fact, which used to be a big issue for some pre-98/99. I can remember (there he goes again) when Webposition rolled out the page analyzer tool to help those who wanted to build to target Infoseek, AltaVista, etc. I can't say I miss the days where it was easy to tell what someone was doing because the URLs would all end in initials of the search engines a page was targeted at (page-is.html, page-av.htlm, page-ex.html).

I always got a kick when a page clearly targeted by someone at Excite would rank well for AltaVista and so on. To me, it underscored how these tools trying to get you to do the "perfect" page often wouldn't deliver -- plus the differences recommended often were so slight as not to matter.

Still, I can see that coming back. In fact, the SES San Jose agenda just went up, and the beginning of the second day is a session called "Can You Please Them All?" Session descriptions haven't yet posted, but we're going to revisit the issue. People are again wanting that top ranking across the board without losing out on whereever they are at. I think building three different sites and robot.txt banning out all the untargeted search engines is a massive pain for most people and instead tend to recommend the be happy with ranking with one of them approach. But that's not for everyone, I know.

[vilipa]

I am new to the subject and do not understand a lot of what is being said here. Nevertheless, I am trying to understand that Google is concerned about quality and is also smart to filter out bad boys. This shoud have resulted in much smarter, better maching, better targeted hits to the same question (search string) on Google than on other search engines or sites. I haven't noticed this as a user.

[FDJA]

Originally Posted by vilipa

I am new to the subject and do not understand a lot of what is being said here. Nevertheless, I am trying to understand that Google is concerned about quality and is also smart to filter out bad boys. This shoud have resulted in much smarter, better maching, better targeted hits to the same question (search string) on Google than on other search engines or sites. I haven't noticed this as a user.

Vilipa... Welcome and your statement says a lot... It really does.

We'll just have to wait and see. It tokk MSN over 6 mo's to make their new search engine work, (and they have Microsoft Muscle)... It may take Google as long or longer. New software and new equipment = T-R-O-U-B-LE

I still think they should have hung that "Out of Order" sign up on the home page of Google

[pleeker]

Originally Posted by FDJA

t tokk MSN over 6 mo's to make their new search engine work, (and they have Microsoft Muscle)

Microsoft still hasn't figured out how to make their search engine work, but that's probably best discussed elsewhere in the forum....