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My sister's a quilter and Google mugged her

cringely.com

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Re: My sister's a quilter and Google mugged her

#71

Post by taf2 »

drhayes9 wrote: post #47
VMG wrote: post #40

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Did she not actually update the content for the last 5 years (including Copyright notice) so it doesn't appear to be a dead site. That's a function of inaction however. Moral: don't base your income on something as volatile as your Google ranking

That's a pretty unrealistic moral in the face of the reality of how the consumer web works. I mean, I get the whole "don't depend on another company for your revenue" (e.g. apps in the Apple app store), but you're saying "don't count on Google sending traffic to your site". Plus, her ranking didn't change -- her site vanished out of the index. EDIT: Unless you mean "don't depend entirely on organic traffic"? I can so…

I wonder if they tried to resubmit their site to the index?

Re: My sister's a quilter and Google mugged her

#72

Post by trevin »

Spent a few minutes looking at the site. Looks to me like it was hit by Google's Penguin 2.0 update [1] that targeted sites that had low quality links pointing in to their domain (in particular inner pages).

Probably not the sisters fault, but the site has done a lot of reciprocal linking in the past which Google really frowns upon nowadays. There's prominent page on her site featuring some of those links: http://www.portraitquilts.com/info/links

She also has some links from pages that are selling or exchange links to spam/escort sites:

http://www.iwr.com/gifts/crafts.html http://www.livebusinessradio.com/trade/recip.cgi

Again, probably not her fault. Google is doing their job but with so much misinformation about SEO and link building out there it is easy for people to accidentally get themselves in trouble.

If anybody is curious, I used ahrefs to pull in the backlinks to the site: https://ahrefs.com/site-explorer/refdomains/subdomains/www.p...

There are some other examples of link spam in there. Penguin would be my guess after a quick check.

[1]http://searchenginewatch.com/article/2279845/Googles-Penguin...

Re: My sister's a quilter and Google mugged her

#73

Post by mkhaytman »

Mr. Cringely might start helping his sister by removing the completely unrelated link to his sister's site from his own, or at least mark it "nofollow".

It's really interesting reading the rantings of the grossly misinformed, especially when they are able to dismiss the entire industry of search engine optimization as "bullshit". I bet if the tone of his article was different, he would have dozens of SEOs willing to diagnose the problem and giving tips on how to fix the issues. Oh well, maybe he should get in tighter with Eric Schmidt, so he can personally take a look at the writer's wife's photo pillow website.

The entitlement is so rich.

Re: My sister's a quilter and Google mugged her

#74

Post by fyrabanks »

maaaats wrote: post #57
BlakePetersen wrote: post #38

Dude, that site is riddled with out-dated and now black-hat seo tricks. It was just asking to be blacklisted. Get that cheater off my SERPs, I wanna go with the honest portrait quilt providers.

any examples?

If I recall correctly, the latest change Google made to PageRank penalizes her for using meta tags the way she does.

edit: Also just realized she doesn't have a robots.txt.

edit2: Gauthier's comment (December 11, 2013 at 7:24 am) on that article sums up the problems pretty well.

Re: My sister's a quilter and Google mugged her

#75

Post by mkhaytman »

drhayes9 wrote: post #61
mkhaytman wrote: post #59

Earlier quoted context omitted.

How did you infer the site was deindexed? They said specifically by typing the URL of the site, it would show up.

From the site: "...but if you look for photo quilts or any similar search term, Portrait Quilts — which for years was always the top result — no longer appears." I'm being a little imprecise, but her site was deindexed for a bunch of search terms that she used to rank highly for.

based on how misinformed the author was in general on the subject, I think its more likely the site dropped off the first few pages of results. Since it still came up when you search for the domain, it can't be deindexed.

Re: My sister's a quilter and Google mugged her

#76

Post by eropple »

mkhaytman wrote: post #53
sergiotapia wrote: post #34

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You're talking out of your ass and it's really infuriating to hear people disregard real, tangible problems you are facing. Google makes software, and no software is perfect. I've been bitten by shitty google services before. My most recent sting was Google Webmaster Tools not showing any Googlebot crawls to me website. My website is very niche and literally 1 of 4 competitors in the same arena. 5 month. 5 MONTHS. an…

I'd contend you're the one talking out of their ass. Relying on another company for all your business isn't a sound business strategy. The person in the article put all their eggs in one basket and this is the result.

This is trivializing to the point of absurdity. When it comes to doing business on the Internet in the English-speaking world, Google is the basket. It's the only basket. I wish it weren't, but it is.

And so, yes, pretty much everyone is reliant on them to be good stewards of the power they possess. (Whether they are or not is orthogonal to that the quilter in question has a pretty good reason to feel like they aren't.)

Re: My sister's a quilter and Google mugged her

#77

Post by sergiotapia »

300bps wrote: post #55
sergiotapia wrote: post #34

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You're talking out of your ass and it's really infuriating to hear people disregard real, tangible problems you are facing. Google makes software, and no software is perfect. I've been bitten by shitty google services before. My most recent sting was Google Webmaster Tools not showing any Googlebot crawls to me website. My website is very niche and literally 1 of 4 competitors in the same arena. 5 month. 5 MONTHS. an…

Hello friend. You seem angry so I'm going to attempt to tread lightly as I throw some friendly suggestions out. 1. Do you have a verified valid robots.txt that Google can read? 2. Does your verified valid robots.txt point to a verified valid sitemap or sitemap index? 3. Did your submit your verified valid sitemap or sitemap index to Google Webmaster Tools? Based on the responses to this, I or someone else might be ab…

I'm not angry, just trying to drive a point home using colorful language.

1. Yes, I have that. 2. Yes, I also have that.

3. Here's an actual screenshot of my google webmaster tools for my website:

http://i.imgur.com/9Nwgts1.png

Remember: We're now closing in on 6 months with Google just not crawling my site whereas other search engines crawl near daily.

Re: My sister's a quilter and Google mugged her

#78

Post by MichaelGG »

drhayes9 wrote: post #47
VMG wrote: post #40

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Did she not actually update the content for the last 5 years (including Copyright notice) so it doesn't appear to be a dead site. That's a function of inaction however. Moral: don't base your income on something as volatile as your Google ranking

That's a pretty unrealistic moral in the face of the reality of how the consumer web works. I mean, I get the whole "don't depend on another company for your revenue" (e.g. apps in the Apple app store), but you're saying "don't count on Google sending traffic to your site". Plus, her ranking didn't change -- her site vanished out of the index. EDIT: Unless you mean "don't depend entirely on organic traffic"? I can so…

What's wrong with Google's search results? If I search for any of these terms, I get plenty of relevant results.

The article is just idiotic in its accusations. Google wants to provide the best search experience for customers. If it makes a mistake, it hurts Google, so I'd imagine they sorta try to keep their results as good as possible. Complaining that you moved in indexes seems sorta pointless. Google's algorithms, at the moment, think other sites are a better match. Maybe she unknowingly engaged in some blacklistable offense.

It's like complaining that some hotel concierge stopped referring people to your restaurant.

Re: My sister's a quilter and Google mugged her

#79

Post by drhayes9 »

mkhaytman wrote: post #75
drhayes9 wrote: post #61

Earlier quoted context omitted.

From the site: "...but if you look for photo quilts or any similar search term, Portrait Quilts — which for years was always the top result — no longer appears." I'm being a little imprecise, but her site was deindexed for a bunch of search terms that she used to rank highly for.

based on how misinformed the author was in general on the subject, I think its more likely the site dropped off the first few pages of results. Since it still came up when you search for the domain, it can't be deindexed.

Again, apologies for the imprecision. But you'd agree that it has been delisted for search terms it used to do well for?

Additionally, far less than <1% of the people who use Google get past the second page of results. Getting your ranking penalized by twenty spots is a death sentence.

Re: My sister's a quilter and Google mugged her

#80

Post by MichaelGG »

zallarak wrote: post #7

I see a lot of these articles; someone feeling cheated because Google takes them off some or all search results. Google did not "mug" anyone - it is the reason for your traffic to begin with. The fact that you even ever had discoverability among a billion or so websites is a beautiful thing. Additionally, have some perspective, the search is a free tool that is very tough to get right. This might sound harsh, but I b…

Free has nothing to do with it. Even if you paid Google to be included in the index, Google's results indicate Google's current opinion.

There's no useful, natural, way to order search results. They are an opinion. If Google wanted to, they could randomize results every day or query just to see what people prefer. No one is owed any particular result. Users are literally asking Google what Google feels is a good answer to a query.

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