Posts by hitchhiker

If my/your data is correct, then it isn't responsible for the general UGC decline (just partly mine). Shame, it was a nice simple solution.

BTW: WMW has homepage featured the 'summary' thread I wrote, so we're getting some great help in the battle to get some real answers from the Plex.

New information now: http://www.webmasterworld.com/google/4523365-6-15.htm (The language filter seems to mimick what we're, as UGC, seeing)

Please tell me to stop if this isn't the right venue for this btw!! :)

btw: StackOverflow seems to have also dropped in 2013, there traffic is significantly down according to Alexa (see the thread above).

Everything I've learnt so far: http://www.webmasterworld.com/google/4583408.htm (The mods were kind enough to let it pass, though it could spark off some useless / un-intended Google-bashing)

Age doesn't indicate where it falls.

Absolutely, I don't think they intended that. Most likely one of the 'symptoms' of age got caught in their expansive spam signal-net (to some degree)

Here's some more of interest:

http://www.webmasterworld.com/google/4582381.htm (blank sites making it into top results)
http://www.webmasterworld.com/google/4577728.htm (brands squeezing out SMEs, intelligent back and forth)
http://www.webmasterworld.com/google/4582387.htm (age correlation?)

However, from everything I've read so far what happened to us back in Nov was a 'bad move'. A fairly clearly 'broken' Google has emerged as they've over-powered some badly tuned signals.

According to every chat they have publically, it will not last! They want SMEs to survive.

We should focus our resources on one thing: Getting them to re-engage in open / efficient dialogue with webmasters.

Well, wow - to be honest I never quite thought of it like that. It doesn't explain the sudden drops that were reported, unless those coincide with the 'ad stuffing' format changes. If it did, pretty sure they wouldn't mention it to us :D

re: Google product forums; that is a terrible and sad place to post! Have you been following the threads on WMW?

@Dani - they're hitting you with that 'india' thing a lot - you might want to point out Stack is 23% india.. They clearly don't realise how important India is in the developing world market.

I'm not going to post in the product forums anymore. Dani - You're way calmer than I would be, the amount of repetition you must have had to go through is mind-boggling.

I have collected enough information to at least form a clear pattern here. The Nov 16/17/18 21.5 update has nothing to do with 'quality'

I can't tell what it hit yet, but it might just simply be 'targeting a new idea of textual relevance'. The way it does that most likely overlooked the unqiue way UGC Q&A communities work.

The whole issue (in your case) was probably compounded by a couple of traditional panda-esque things you needed done. On their own you may have lost a bit, but not as much as you did.

In S.O's case, most likely as engineers they were on that site a lot and modelled the algo around them somewhat - PURE speculation, but it's what I may have done too. S.O is a great site / great format for tech - but nobody deserves to be the only great site.

I don't necessarily think that will help anymore (although I've implemented some of it) Be careful, other senior webmasters are saying it caused significant declines. I'm trying to contact Google directly through a friend. The product forums are a complete mess.

g'luck!

Thanks Dani,

As you wrote in your groups post (didnt want to reply and cause it to be buried) I'm also focused on our actual community, I gave up SEO 6 or 7 years ago. The blocking of those pages was just a sacrifice, more ritualistic than anything else. I don't believe that was the reason we suffered our loss, I don't believe it helps the internet become less 'spammy'. But I won't ignore John's advice, he has more info than us out here.

Re: 5+ filter - Yeah that's a nice idea, I'll increase the level a bit. Our users don't seem to care about their exposure (non-tech audience). Your audience is likely much more aware of the importance of that exposure. I'll allow >1000 (that will limit it to our more frequent folk with higher churn)

Hi HappyGeek, thanks for writting the article and bringing more attention to this issue.

I would point out that a few us there believe this isn't about quality or content or anything we've actually 'missed'. There are always issues, we can always fix them. This feels more like 'colateral' damage.

The suggestions I was given by Mueller, and the others summed up to basically 'de-indexing' a few 'pointless page types' - like user profiles, tags, some various 'here and there stuff' common to forum sites. Since they generate zero traffic, there's no point keeping them in the index if G despises them so much.

This is a multi billion dollar algorithm; I expected them to be able to determine the difference between spam, and pages of little interest. So: Ignore YES, 'punish' really?

The people who benefit most from the minutia of SEO, are the spammers. They don't have to waste time with curation, they love SEO forums, and have plenty of throwaway sites to experiment with.

Hey,

Yeah thanks for jumping in. I've been fighting the cause there for a few days. I should have chimed in when you originally got hit; I guess I was just too focused on my own problems at the time.

You didn't have any support and took the brunt of the 'you are just complaining / it's because you have a cat picture on page 123,653' vibe yourself. It seems clear now that while you and I and others have things we need to change, they don't explain the devastating reductions we've experienced.

I would suggest you speak openly on my original thread also, as in: Now that you took all the advice, read all the 'you must change this' comments, do you really believe the penalisation you experienced seemed appropriate as far as your quality level was concerned. You made great changes, and your site is better for it. You turned it around, but do you believe it made sense for the internet that daniweb was hit so hard? I think a lot of us saw that as a red flag, I personally believe something went wrong with the 21.5 update.

I'm basically trying to get google to 'confirm' they are happy with the index set on 21.5.

Cheers,
Frank.

Hey, I'm the guy who started the thread there. Please do join in; take a moment to skim it first (it's very lengthy, i've 'tried' to do my best to keep it on topic.)

If you want an answer from Google (like so many of us do) this might be the chance you've been looking for.

Cheers,
Frank (hitchhiker)

Btw: Your site is awesome, congrats. Our traffic was 180k, hit down to 130k per day on nov 17th. We're calling it the 'Panda 21.5 Ghost Update' :)