Comments on: Google Filters – An Update on the Recovery Process!

By: affiliate marketing girl

affiliate marketing girl — Tue, 12 Aug 2008 13:42:00 +0000

I think Google is definately altering a lot at the minute, did you run your pages through to see if your keyword density is at a good level?

By: Kirsty

Kirsty — Mon, 11 Aug 2008 03:09:24 +0000

Thanks for the comments and thoughts everyone!

@ Chromate – yeah I did try the old “do nothing” technique for a few weeks. However, now that the issue is around 3 months old I think I need to take action. The stuff that I’m doing is really “obvious” type things. Even if they aren’t causing me problems now they might later. A good reason to try and sort them out!

@ Mobilica. The index page has always ranked really rather well since the first set of issues was sorted out (duplicate URL’s).

By: mobillica

mobillica — Sun, 10 Aug 2008 09:50:48 +0000

Hi Kirsty interesting stuff…I was just wondering how the duplicate content pages affected your index page?

Did you see an increased ranking due to your fixing of the problems on the subpages?

By: Chromate

Chromate — Sat, 09 Aug 2008 13:51:44 +0000

Here’s an idea — sit back and do absolutely nothing! Sounds pretty stupid, I know. But Google seems to be in a state of flux right now. Reacting too quickly to these things can just send you round in circles. If I notice some significant ranking changes, then I try (really hard!) not to touch anything for a couple of weeks to let it settle. Quite often things sort themselves out without me doing anything. Simply sitting back and observing will also give you an indication of how much Google is still shuffling things around. If you react too quickly and start making major changes, then it’s really difficult to make any sense of what’s going on. It’s very difficult to leave things alone when you’re losing sales though, I know! Also, I seem to remember Matt Cutts saying that some old filters were going to be lifted (can’t remember how long ago this was though). So it could have something to do with that.

By: Elaine

Elaine — Fri, 08 Aug 2008 07:32:00 +0000

Don’t know what to tell you Kirsty as I’ve had this problem for quite a while with some of my pages – won’t go into specifics – BUT I can tell you I’ve agonized for hours and hours, tried everything and still can’t get the correct page to rank for the correct term – it’s ludicrous. I’ve spent far too much time (I also find it fascinating) to the detriment of other area’s.
BUT the one thing that has worked really well is, what I like to call ‘waffling’ when writing a description – picked up tons and tons of long tail phrases, which is reflected in my sales, which have done rather nicely, especially this week – if you want further details PM me.

By: Dan

Dan — Fri, 08 Aug 2008 07:05:03 +0000

Another great post Kirsty. There are definately a few sets of very different data kicking around Google at the moment. From what I can see there has been some significant changes recently and that data is still filtering through.

By: Tim

Tim — Fri, 08 Aug 2008 04:47:52 +0000

Interesting results. I had never seen that kind of duplicate content penalty for blurbs before. Certainly plenty of news sites do pretty much the same thing but you never know. Perhaps affiliate sites are ranked by a different part of the algorithm. I had never really heard of “over-optimization” either except in the case of blatant keyword stuffing but perhaps you used the keywords a wee bit too much. I suppose it’s a fine line to tread. We’ve certainly been having good results with some of our client sites in certain markets that have terrible on page content but good page titles. Yet, others in more competitive markets have been taking some hits but we think it’s got more to do with hidden text in the CSS that, even though it isn’t hiding keywords, is still getting penalized with the old display: none CSS property. As a general policy, we’re trying to steer away from using it in our designs. It’s a shame too because it’s a great technique. Anyway, I’m enjoying your experiment.