Google search engine rankings seem to be undertaking an update or change over the past week as some sites and publishers are noticing a trend in rankings skyrocketing. On the other hand, some publishers are experiencing dramatic drops.
Personally, I have witnessed some sites gain rather high Google rankings which have been the target of major link bait, news coverage or organic link initiatives.
I’ve also seen some questionable sites popping up at the top of the rankings, as have some of the publishers in a Webmaster World thread which was highlighted by Tamar Weinberg of Search Engine Roundtable.
One of my two site (that are both in the same industry) lost major placement in the Google SERP’s today, hundreds of terms went from page 1 to page 6 and worse. But the other site is still ranking fine, unaffected.
Over the last few months I began noticing a few meaningless adsense sites creep into the first two pages of the organic SERPS. It really suprises me because you really have to know the industry to get anywhere. It’s an industry that is only known well by guys that do actual physical labor(strenuous at that) at one time or another in their life.
Another publisher says that the changes are because of paid links:
There’s absolutely no way these sites got there on natural linking popularity. Again, I probably went off topic, but changes are indeed afoot. Scary! Money talks…paid for links.
Have you noticed a dramatic change in the Google SERP’s for your niche or keyterms?
Loren,
I appreciate these tid-bits of information. I think it would be helpful if your contributors, for whom you have quoted, would be allowed to give specific examples. This would help all to better understand the nature of the issue. Simply pontificating on whether paid search is affecting natural search rankings makes this site seem tabloid-ish and, in my opinion, does a disservice to your audience.
Since the examples are published on Webmaster World and do not give or expose the sites which are appearing, the most I will do in this case is link to the original discussion.
I am not going to expose multiple sites which are using paid links or organic links to rank highly. If you notice some changes in the SERPs of your target keyterms or your niche market, try doing a backlinks check or some long term competitive intelligence to find out what they’re doing.
Hi Loren
We ran SERPs on most of our websites earlier today and there were no noticeable changes in Google.co.uk or Google.com results. Touch wood.
But then again we’d never buy links :)
I noticed an interesting spike across a number of sites about 3 weeks ago, but then they calmed steady over the past 2 weeks. Not noticed anything this week, but it’s really hard to make quick guesses on traffic and ranking habits, as a Google re-index can really shake-up the SERPs for a few days.
There is essentially no real difference between a site getting better rankings due to the effects of paid links – than a site getting any one of the three spots ABOVE the organic SERPs due to bidding for those places on Adwords.
Also, the large companies who do generally get those page one listings for competitive keywords use a variety of expensive PR tactics to get backlinks.
Paid links are the only option available to most small businesses. If not for that, they would not get hardly ANY rankings.
I disagree that “paid links are the only option available to most small businesses.” I only discovered SEO in the last month, but I already have over 200 backlinks. One is a PR5. I plan to do some guest blogging and guest copy writing to facilitate more PR5 backlinks.
Colorado Mortgage Broker – I agree to you too. There are never ‘only’ this option or that unless the long hand of Google makes a rule and sticks to it. They seem to be coming down hard on paid links, reviewed site blogs and even some text-link-broker sites. I know as I have sites represented in alll of these and have used Smorty, PayPerPost, SEo people, in the past even some link building schemes. I’ve tested it all out for some 65 websites in total in all different fields. ‘Dallas Baby – giving examples to sites only gives the human editors at Google and other Search engines the reason to attack your sites rankings and pagerank. I have seen it happen to many many people already. I put a post likening Google to the New Nazi Germany of Search Engines. It’s complete with turning others in, disappearing sites and more.
Hope it all turns out OK for everyone, but from what I’ve seen Google is stomping on webmasters, SEO people and anyone even reviewing websites more and more.
Nothing has changed google is all over the place and while some guys suffer others are delighted. I did a search “buy links’ today and for the first time EVER I notice there are no paid results. maybe they are getting serious.
I totally agree, I have recently seen a lot of crap ranking even at 1st positions on Many completive terms, but good thing is that they don’t stay long. I wonder what Google is upto
I see nothing atypical for this time of year. Google unleashed its usual fall assault on various Web promotion schemes and the search results are bouncing up and down like tennis balls.
It should all calm down in a few weeks after the holidays as things always do.
Late to this post, but yes, I’ve noticed that there is a lot of ‘pre Christmas’ changes with things settling back in the New Year. Wonder why this is? Some have said it’s because Google wants to get more PPC revenue at the busiest times but I’ve seen sites which have no relevance to that period drop to page 5, so I guess it’s an all general PR/back link update thing?
If we only knew, we’d all be rich!! :)
This just Google having a tinker for sure ;) Things always settle down a few weeks after a change like this when for sure they make certain balance passes and adjustments. Google Algo not static!!