Google, once the finest search engine of all time, has recently taken a turn for the worse. Since June 4th Google has been steadily getting worse in the results it serves up to its visitors. Not only do these results affect those searching for something they want, they also affect your traffic as many quality and relevant websites are no longer ranking high and/or are not even indexed within Google period.
Google has not stepped forth to let anyone know exactly what is going on with the SERPS. It has been mentioned in several locations such as seochat.com, webmaster.com, and seroundtable.com that maybe it was a human mistake at Google. When a leak like this comes out you can’t dismiss it. Following is a quote from an article at http://www.searchnewz.com/topstory/news/sn-2-20080609GoogleSERPsDancingJune2008Update.html
“According to Webmasters World Google SERPs (Search Engine Result Pages) are returning fewer results for specific queries, pointing to possible Google SERPs update. The speculations for such changes are that, it may be due to the quality control practices employed by Google, or it can also be a human-error.”
I highly suggest reading the rest of the article as it also tells of some of the other problems that Google showed after June 4th.
Many other posters can be found talking about Google on many forums, here is one remark from http://forums.seroundtable.com/showthread.php?t=3169
“I have had this happen to me on one site in particular which ranked well for long tail keywords then one day it was 5 pages back and still has not fully recovered its a strange feeling when that happens its almost as if google is saying we dont like you because you smell.
You could understand it if you were doing something wrong but if you are not it can be mystifying.”
Another poster at seroundtable.com had this to say (here is the thread http://forums.seroundtable.com/showthread.php?t=3131 ):
“I am not a professional web designer, but I write a site called Local Wally’s Guide to San Diego at www(dot)localwally.com. It’s been up since 1996 and I’ve always been in the top 3 listings when you google “san diego tourist guide”. Lately I’ve noticed if you google “san diego tourist guide” I no longer exist – but if you google “san diego tourist” or “san diego guide” I am back on top. So I went back in to add my url, and in a couple of days I’m back in business. But in about a week and a half, I fall off again and need to resubmit.
Any idea why this is happening? For years I have had top ranking, no issues, but this started about 2 months ago and it’s getting irritating!
Thanks for anyone’s help!
Gary
Local Wally”
If you notice the date of this post is 7-19-08 and he said it hit him about 2 months ago which, would put us back to around the time the June 4th event occurred. Coincidence? I would have to lean towards a firm NO.
If a person was to take the time to really search through all the forums you would see a great amount of these same types of posts. Remember this is only a small amount of the webmasters that are having google problem as not every webmaster goes to a forum to post their findings. This is not just happening in the USA either, it has been affecting Google the world over. And if you dig into these posts you will see most lead back to the time around June 4th.
The behavior of this “June 4th problem” seems so erratic that no one can guess what site will be hit next. The sites that have been affected so far have been completely random where as it may hit one site in a niche industry and leave all others alone. Many forums are also commenting on what they are now calling the Google YO YO effect where rankings go up and down, up and down, on a daily basis and these sites that got caught in this loop can’t do anything to make their ranks stabilize anywhere, whether high or low.
There was also a cache problem that occurred with Google at the same time as can seen if you read the article I linked to first at the top of this document. With all these numerous problems that occurred at the same time it is hard for any individual to comprehend what could have happened at Google. I would guess that the leak about a human mistake is probably the closest to the truth where something within the Google system may have broken and realistically something breaking down in a system the size of Google would be like trying to find the proverbial needle in a haystack, which would be why it has not been fixed as of yet.
I can’t condemn Google if they did make a mistake or allowed something of this size to break because I understand the depth of their situation. However I do condemn them for not stepping forward to allow webmaster the world over to understand what is happening to their lively hood on the internet. But with many businesses dwindling away at the fault of Google they are probably afraid to come forward and be at the middle of a lynching mob.
Understand that this is the theory of one SEO specialist, and I can not solidly prove this last information to be solid fact, but after almost 2 months of research into what happened this does seem to be highly likely. If you the reader have any spare time start doing some searches on the topics I have mentioned and see if it takes you down the same road I have followed. I bet when all is said and done you will meet me at the end of the road…..
We at Blackwood Productions understand what you are going through if your site has been affected with the “June 4th” bug. Until there is a better understanding on how to combat this or Google finally finds the fix we will do what we do best, white hat seo. Even if your site was hit by Google you still have Yahoo, MSN, and cuil. Rest assured that Google if broken will fix the problem because it is making the average web surfer suffer their crude results as well. And we will do our best to inform you of any updates to this Google dilemma.
