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Nope, it is not an application name. The keyword is broad and generic, but by no means is an application name.

I used to rank in the first places with content (a blog post) and now there are no articles ranking in the first 15 places, just web apps and social sites.

Let´s say that the keyword is more a "category", very popular in the last year or so.

Thanks.

Hello,

On my quest to recover from Goolge´s updates I found out that the serps show apps and software downloads ranking better than content (articles or similar) for one of my most popular keywords.

When the ads above the fold update hit my site (I can only assume that because of the date) I lost about 50% of my traffic). This keyword dopped from the first or second position to a steady fifth or sixth page position.

Today, I was trying to research which sites outranked me and to my surprise no result in the first 15 position was an article, just apps and software downloads.

It is not that is wrong. Let´s say that we are talking about an area similar to instagram software (although it doesn´t rank in this keyword).

I´m not asking about my site. I simply want to know if the web apps (social sites) and mobile apps are taking over the content in serps.

Is it that now you can´t go for a high place in the rankings (for certain keywords) if you are not a social site or an app?

Thanks!

Hi,

This is puzzling me. I've been in the second/third position for a week or so for my best keyword. That is for Google US unpersonalized, which is the one that brings more traffic, as far as I understand.

It can't get MUCH better. Well, I can be first, but second and third position is really awesome in my case (highly competitive keyword according to SEOMOZ PRO).

Then, why on earth my traffic for that keyword was 8 times better a year ago??

I mean, a year ago I received an average of 800 visits per day and now I can barely reach 90 visits per day being in the second / third place. Visits can't increase from 90 to 800 just for increasing one spot.

I've never seen in my stats such drop in my rankings. I thought that due to google updates my site was sent below the 20th position or something. But my I was shocked today when I saw that I still have the second/third position

Am I crazy or this looks wrong? The page title and description that shows in google hasn't changed, so people looking for that keyword are seeing the same as one year ago. It is not a seasonal or time sensitive keyword.

My best guess is that people are now always logged in and results are personalized. Don't know much about personalized results but I don't think you can optimize much for those. If that's the case, then how on earth can we optimize a page if everybody is using personalized results?

Is there a way to improve your rankings in those cases?

Thanks,

Enrique

Yes, I have it all. Not sure about incoming spammy links. I did almost everything to my site (datafeeds, lots of ads, duplicate content, etc.) but never engaged in spammy links.

I will try to find some other way to show ads and see what happens.

Thanks!

Thanks David, and yes, I've been hit by panda and I know my site's weakness (most of it!). But it is difficult to make changes when your site was built 10 years ago with a different web in mind. I'm rebuilding it again (a whole new site with THIS CURRENT web in mind).

But I was not speaking about Panda specifically, I meant the "Ads above the fold" issue.

In January 19 my site was hit very hard by that update. Very hard. That was why I thought about a penalty.

You may think I'm dumb or something. I could fix it by just removing the ads an that's it.

But as I mentioned in my first post, a webmaster I work closely with had the same problem and removing the ads didn't help him a bit.

So, that's why I was wondering if it was a manual penalty, and requesting reinclusion was a solution to confirm it.

Thanks!

Enrique

HI!

My site has been losing traffic slowly for about 18 months. But it was in January 19 that was hit big time.

My site has a lot of ads, including two 300x250 above the fold ads that were very lucrative for me.

After January 19, I decided to remove only one ad of those two, but no change was reflected in the traffic.

It is obvious that I needed to remove the other ad, but I didn't do it for two reasons.

1. I still earn money from that ad and removing it would result in serious problems.

2. A webmaster friend of mine that was hit too by this penalty, removed the ads and tried all sort of stuff to regain the lost traffic with NO LUCK in several months. He has unique and excellent content. So, after seeing his experience I didn't want to touch my biggest source of income and leave it as it is.

My site has other problems that concerns Panda and maybe Penguin, and since yesterday I've been starting to fix them.

Is it a good idea to request a reinclusion to check if I was manually penalized, without being previously notified by GWMT of any problem in my site?

Thanks in advance,

Enrique

Hi to all!

I've just finished 301 redirecting some pages and "noindex - follow" some other.

I have to add a lot of canonicals yet, but this is a start.

Now how I check the results? Should I wait a week or so to see if something improves?

How long does it takes for Google to remove the pages I've just redirected and noindexed?

My site is crawled every day (as all sites I guess).

Thanks!

Yes, thanks Anthony. I will post back as soon (soon..?) as I find something.

Enrique

Yes, thanks, I will check that. I was planning to add nofollow to the amazon pages, I will also check the anchors, but since they are all natural, any change I make will look artificial.

Enrique

Yes, I know that's the thing to do, but you must agree with me that it's something unnatural.

I have thousands of incoming links, and only exchanged or asked for less than 20 of those. The rest are natural. If I spend time analyzing links it would be something absolutely artificial.

The same goes with quality pages. Let's say that I have four or five pages that are the most referenced in my industry (just and example, of course). Visitors that read those pages get really good, top class information. But I have an Amazon datafeed in my site.

Suddenly, the information of those top quality pages are hidden from search results in Google because my site has an Amazon datafeed?

I know it's a simplistic example, but it can be translated as:

"A good article isn't good anymore just because of a site penalty"

It seems that Google is saying something like "Hey, you can't read this amazing article because it is from a site has lots of junk. So suck it up and read this article of a lesser quality but from from a pristine site!"

It is not about my site anymore, but about trying to understand the concept of it all. And of course it is an extreme example, but I think it is relevant.

Thanks! So it is clear that Google doesn´t care about single, good quality, pages with good quality links.

A good quality page needs a quality site to back it up.

Is that the criteria?

It sounds reasonable to me, but very difficult to repair.

Just for the records, my site isn´t trash or low quality, but it is an old site and has some quirks from old times: lots of directory entries with little content and datafeeds that used to work very well some years ago.

Hi!

I still don´t get this web site penalization applied by Google due to duplicate content.

My site has many of pages that were among the first positions for top keywords (A Photoshop web site).

Those pages were linked by sites like LifeHacker, BoingBoing, Microsiervos, SmashingMagazine, John Nack, and many other  well known blogs.

After mid February 2012 everything went down the drain. I lost half of my traffic and my well ranked pages are now almost nowhere to be found.

I have plenty of ads in some pages of my site, and duplicate content (amazon product description only) in other pages of my site.

So, the good quality pages my site has, are no longer considered as good quality just because I have some duplicate content or ad filled pages?

I´m not complaining. I´m trying to understand this.

Google needs to serve good information to their visitors. But since they found some trash in my site, they decide to remove both the trash and the good information from the search engine?

That doesn´t sound logical to me. Why don´t they just remove the trash and leave the good content?

Of course, I understand that information is added everyday and some may come up with something better than mine, but dropping 40  or more places in the ranking sounds more like a penalty to me.

Again, I´m not complaining (although it sounds like I am!), just want to understand the reasons behind this.

Thanks,

Enrique

Thanks Egol! I guess I will do that.

Enrique

Thanks!

That sounds bad indeed. I need those pages in my site, so should I block them from bots, or add a nofollow or something?

Enrique

Hi,

One section of my site is a selection of Art and Design books. I have about 200 individual posts, each with a book image and a description retrieved from Amazon (using their API).

Due to several reasons not worth mentioning I decided to use the Amazon description. I don't mind if those pages rank well or not, but I need them as additional content for my visitors as they browse my site. The value relies in the selection of books.

My question is if the duplicate content taken from Amazon harms only each book page or the whole site.

The rest of the site has unique content.

Thanks!

Enrique

Ok, sounds a lot of work but it's a logical answer, thanks alsvik.

And what about when images have links below them? Wouldn't that be keyword stuffing or something?

I'm not looking to over optimize my page, I simply want to do it the right way.

And, no, it is not a shop, it is a graphic design site.

Thanks!

EDIT: Why whenever I post something here, a lot of css code appears below my post forcing me to go and edit it each time?

Let's say I have a post where I show 25 different wood textures. I start the post with a small paragraph and then I show several images of wood textures linked to an internal or external page.

Since I don't use a text link, then I have to rely on alt tags.

It would be very difficult to assign a different alt tag to so many similar images, and I guess there would be a risk of keyword stuffing (walnut wood, oak wood, etc).

On the other side, if I assign the same tag to all images, then that clearly is keyword stuffing (alt=wood textures).

This is just an example, but it applies to most of my posts.

What do you think I should do with the alt tags?

Thanks!