Comments on: Google MayDay Update – A Closer Look At Impact

By: alanbleiweiss

alanbleiweiss — Sun, 13 Jun 2010 15:12:31 +0000

David,

I take it then that you're one of those among us who's been advocating these things all along, as compared to this implying you've at least got half a brain! :-)

By: alanbleiweiss

alanbleiweiss — Sun, 13 Jun 2010 15:11:10 +0000

Adelante,

Sorry for the delayed response - I was up in Seattle for SMX Advanced. The whole point of my article is that I'm not drawing any specific conclusion one way or the other. If you believe the drop was due to the May Day update, then that's your belief. Yet unless you perform a deep analysis there's honestly no way to know what caused the drop.

If you've done a deep analysis, and the changes Google describes appear to then be the culprit, that's another matter. Except for the fact that I mentioned - Google makes hundreds of changes a year, and only tells us about 2, maybe 3. So how can we know?

What I suggest the answer is goes back to the fundamentals of SEO best practices that have held true for years. This is not to be condescending. Believe me - if I were responsible for sites that saw a 30% or greater drop in traffic, I'd be quite upset. And I'd be working my tail off to do that deep analysis.

I wish you the best in that process.

By: alanbleiweiss

alanbleiweiss — Sun, 13 Jun 2010 10:12:31 +0000

David,

I take it then that you're one of those among us who's been advocating these things all along, as compared to this implying you've at least got half a brain! :-)

By: alanbleiweiss

alanbleiweiss — Sun, 13 Jun 2010 10:11:10 +0000

By: Serge Pon

Serge Pon — Fri, 11 Jun 2010 13:45:16 +0000

From one point of view Google gives us more opportunities, but from other point of view due to Google’s monopolisation of the internet it is less and less options for internet users, everybody needs to do what “Google saying” . Every year it is less and less freedom in the internet.

By: Justin Merrill

Justin Merrill — Wed, 09 Jun 2010 15:26:51 +0000

I've always focused more on attainable goals such as long tail searches and page linking and site inter-connectivity linking for crawl purposes. We have a start up company with only a few months of web presence and have seen a significant increase in traffic for the month of May. I agree that this increase could be purely resulted from new backlinks, and content improvement “bearing fruit”, though I look at the whole issue of “Google Mayday” being beneficial to end users and large, content rich websites.

In other words, I am not complaining. =o)

By: David Leonhardt

David Leonhardt — Tue, 08 Jun 2010 12:22:22 +0000

“Which is something you should have been doing (or telling your clients to do), for at least the past three years. Because that’s how long I’ve been advocating those very things. And it’s what anyone with half a brain in our industry says as well.”

Amen.

By: Adelante

Adelante — Tue, 08 Jun 2010 06:16:44 +0000

Alan, your examples aren't persuasive: if something doesn't touch four of middle-sized sites it isn't a proof that other (bigger) sites didn't lose out.

I have worked for some (6) really big sites which had an awful drop of traffic (more than 30%) and lost lots of money in May. Believe me it's not an attempt to shift the blame on Google or something else.

By: Clive Hawkins

Clive Hawkins — Tue, 08 Jun 2010 01:07:18 +0000

From a sample of 4 sites these are some interesting stats but as you state in your initial provisos, there can be lots of other factors going on here and it's a roundabout way to get back to some basic SEO principles! All the same, thanks for sharing the stats.

By: Mark Hansen

Mark Hansen — Mon, 07 Jun 2010 17:27:31 +0000

Agree completely about onsite optimization... but Google has always claimed to want to give the exact results people are looking for, not the optimized result.

When you think of a "search engine", what do you think of? Google thinks it's Altavista.

When you think of the "best search engine", what do you think of? According to every authority who measures statistics, it's Google for sure... But Google thinks its Dogpile.

I fully understand about optimization for this or that, but we have been guided for years into NOT optimizing for search, and doing everything for visitors. What Now?

Mark