So What's Up With Those Crappy Search Results?
-
I used to rank for some keywords now I've been outranked by crappy websites.
But what amazes me most is that among the top 10 results for a particular keyphrase, 3 of these results point to websites that are no longer online! Worst than that, these websites have to backlinks!
So how come 404 pages / non-existing websites rank higher than I do?
Is Google loosing it or are they trying to create so much confusion in the hope that website owners will turn to Adwords?
-
I've been noticing this too. Seems like a lot of the results are old too. When I'm searching for things where I need "fresher" results I always have to add "2013" to the search to get posts and articles that are actually current. When searching frequently for web development and WordPress related information, it's important that it's not from several years ago because it's no longer relevant. The code has changed, the plugins have changed, etc. I'm not interested in some article or blog post from 2006 that covers WordPress 2.7.
And just a general decline in good results is very noticeable to me. I'm sure they do their best to make that algorithm as good as possible, but it seems to me like they're missing something. Personally I think they should give more weight to the owner of the site by checking WHOIS and have almost like a quality score for domain owners. If you have a good track record for building quality sites you would get more weight that way.
The new up and coming sites really have to work to get up there in rank, we all know that, but it's not a good thing. Somebody could release an amazing site tomorrow and we won't see it in the search results for how long? A year, two years? Obviously depends on a lot of factors. I think there's beginning to be a giant opportunity for someone to build a rival to Google and Bing etc. by thinking outside the box on the whole concept of "search" in general.
Got a burning SEO question?
Subscribe to Moz Pro to gain full access to Q&A, answer questions, and ask your own.
Browse Questions
Explore more categories
-
Moz Tools
Chat with the community about the Moz tools.
-
SEO Tactics
Discuss the SEO process with fellow marketers
-
Community
Discuss industry events, jobs, and news!
-
Digital Marketing
Chat about tactics outside of SEO
-
Research & Trends
Dive into research and trends in the search industry.
-
Support
Connect on product support and feature requests.
Related Questions
-
What to do about one site dominating search results? (multiple pages ranking)?
Anybody have thoughts on dealing with search results where the same site gets listed multiple times? "weebly vs wix" is one example (same site #1-3, repetitive articles, not crazy high authority), but I see this now and then. I know Google likes variety, so it's weird for me to see results like this dominating search results. Thoughts? What gets these sites to take over the top rankings for a specific term? Any way to rise up in this situation, outside of the usual? Any tips on duplicating this kind of success?
Competitive Research | | davidwaring0 -
Competitors SERP's
One of our competitors is routinely achieving excellent SERP for brand related keywords within only a couple of months of adding the respective brand to their website. Full details are explained in the attached image to avoid the competitor being notified of this post via Google Alerts. Can anyone identify how they are achieving this and point me in the right direction? The other thing is that I was also achieving good SERPs for these and other brand related keywords but I seem to have dropped off the face of google for them, where my competitor has not and who continues to achieve the seemingly impossible. Thanks TOfVHD8
Competitive Research | | UnderMe0 -
Any 'quick wins'!?
Dear all, My domain authority (www.landedhouses.co.uk) is about half that of my competitors (groupaccommodation and thebigdomain - both.com). Other than blogging/social media and trying to drum up back-links, is there much more I can do? Many thanks!
Competitive Research | | Edmund1230 -
What's the best way to discover my business and search competitors?
I am trying to figure out who the real competitors are for the domain that I have been recently handed. Other than the client's references, which I don't think are the real competition (they are his benchmarks), how do I go about discovering the true competition? What the simplest, most effective way to go about discovering my business and search competitors? Given that this is a web portal, aren't both of the latter the same?
Competitive Research | | amit20760 -
Static Html Pages V/s Wordpress - For open content pages?
Hi there. I am worried a bit about static html pages or wordpress as an instance to write down open page content for our website. We are a product based website - primarily Saas based product. But with time we have seen that if we write more content people will be able to find us better,. Earlier our blog resided on blog.example.com now we are moving it to example.com/blog/ Issues - I really want to know that I need to generate lots of fresh content so I am using wordpress as the blog medium and content generation medium too. Basically the wordpress instance will be a content generated pages. I can also have static html page based content but then our content writers will always have to take the help of develoeprs to publish it to our sites. Whats the best way to go about this keeping SEO really crucial in mind? Thanks for your time and help!
Competitive Research | | shanky10 -
The starter crawl is going on 2 days and no results
Does the starter crawl work in the first 30 days? Mine has been going 2 days and still no results, has finished yet??
Competitive Research | | WalterW0 -
Google locations question for organic search...
If you set your Google location to "Dallas, TX" and you do a search for "web design dallas", my client shows up #4. If you change your google location to anywhere else in the US, he is #1. How can I be #1 in Dallas and the US? (My client is not really in Dallas but I didn't want to give away the city, their site, etc)
Competitive Research | | trollo0