First of all, please understand that I have a basic knowledge of
search engine placement, and second, I have been working to get
www.jewelrycrossings.com higher in the Google rankings for several
months, at about 20 hours per month. I have numerous top ranked
reciprocal links, have paid for Overture, google adwords, etc. and
have entered the site in numerous search engines and directories. I
watched the site climb from the high 500's to 396, to 267, to 53, to
37 in Google under the keyword phrase "silver jewelry."

Now the question. Where did my site go? Under the keyword phrase
"silver jewelry" and other key phrases the main url
www.jewelrycrossings.com has disappeared completely! We were #11 under
"gold jewelry" on saturday, and nowhere in the top 500 on Sunday. We
were 37 under "silver jewelry" one day and off the charts completely
the next. The problem is with www.jewelrycrossings.com, but not with
pages such as www.jewelrycrossings.com/thai_home.html for instance. In
several placements that have /xxx.html rankings, those are still there
and unaffected. But any placement with the main url
www.jewelrycrossings.com has completely disappeared.

I have studied search engines for over two years, this isn't just
"fluctuations of the engine". Something happened to make the url
disappear. I am putting this as a $10 question, but if someone can
provide a definitive answer I will give more.

I have checked with my ISP and nothing has changed there.

Thanks,

David Rose
d2m interactive

---

Clarification of Question by roseyman-ga on 25 Nov 2003 14:55 PST

I will give $20 to the person who can explain the parameters behind
the Google algorithm change. Reciprocal links, keyword phrases, what
the hell happened? All I know is not only is my site
jewelrycrossings.com knocked down to 652 from 37 as of today with the
keyword phrase "silver jewelry" behind such gems as "Cheap Bali
Indonesia Furniture,Handicraft,Sterling Silver Jewelry" number 7,
"Unique Christmas decorations, ornaments & Anniversary gifts" number
17, "[PDF] (1) Visiting Merchant May Schedule" number 131, etc. BUT
another of my sites, www.watchparts.org, which was #1 for months under
"watch parts" is now off the map, replaced by such wonders as "Price
Watch ® - Street Price Search Engine, #1", "Star Watch UK, #7 a star
watching site", "666 - THE MARK OF THE BEAST?, #15, no idea what that
is", "Rumor Watch: Terrorist Attack on US, #19, come on, these are in
the top twenty and have nothing to do with "watch parts" !!!

Thanks, DR

Highly likely it is to do with the Google Dance, which happened over
the weekend, and still not completely over with. In a few days
everything might be back to normal.

Read about it at WebMasterWorld:
http://www.webmasterworld.com/forum3/

With the greatest regard for my esteemed colleague robertskelton-ga,
there may be a bit more going on than just the Google dance.

According to the highly-respected newsletter from highrankings.com,
there have been some big changes made at Google.  In an 11/19 article
titled Google Going Whacko!, the newsletter's author writes:

"...I'd better comment on the recent algorithm changes at Google. 
I've had numerous frantic emails from subscribers wondering why their
previously highly-ranked homepages had suddenly dropped off the face
of Google.  The short answer is that I really don't know!...Apparently
in an attempt to stop the spammers, Google made some big changes in
how they decide what's relevant.  Unfortunately, it appears that in
some cases they goofed big-time!"

The newsletter is not yet posted on the www.highrankings.com website,
but I imagine it will be in the next day or so.  FYI, the only advice
offered is to be patient, as Google fine-tunes its latest round of
changes.

Good luck.

pafalafa-ga

Hi there,

I believe that your high rankings in the past were helped by
reciprocal links, links that only exist to inflate search engine
rankings. Now that Google gives such links less importance, your
rankings have fallen to where they should fairly be.

Google updated their index last weekend and introduced a new
algorithm. Although only Google Engineers will ever know exactly what
has changed, the Google forum at WebMasterWorld is agreeing on two
changes that are affecting the previously high rankings of many
websites:

1) The link text of internal links is no longer beneficial.
2) Reciprocal links have lost their power. 

For a long time now Google has penalized sites that actively promote
reciprocal linking, which is against Google's Webmaster Guidelines:

"Don't participate in link schemes designed to increase your site's
ranking or PageRank"
://www.google.com/webmasters/guidelines.html

Up until now I suspect they penalized sites due to a combination of
certain keywords appearing on their site, like "reciprocal", "boost
ranking" or "exchange links", and the sites linking to each other.

Recent changes make it seem that Google have just stopped factoring in
reciprocal links, no matter why or how they were created. So even if I
link to my mate's weblog and he links to mine, the links will not
improve Google ranking.

Here's what they are saying at WebMasterWorld:

"Well from what I can see of our sites, the ones which were involved
in link exchanges (All be it with relavent sites) have not done at all
well on this update. They have definately been penalised. "
http://www.webmasterworld.com/forum3/18347-42-15.htm

"I'll second that, it seems to be the only certain thing so far. I've
spent all morning dumping 80% of all reciprical links. "
http://www.webmasterworld.com/forum3/18347-43-15.htm

Many links pointing to your site are reciprocal, even the one to your
web design company. You have a page asking for reciprocal links and
another one listing them. There is even this page which is presumably
only there for search engine purposes:
http://www.jewelrycrossings.com/MCJC.html

Because the reciprocal links are all pointing to your home page, it is
that page which is no longer ranking as well as it was before.


The above is purely speculation, and I don't feel like a "but we've
done nothing wrong" argument, so I am posting it as a comment.

robertskelton-ga
Google Answers Researcher

So what is reality? Is it reciprocal links are bad now? First they
tell us to get good reciprocal links, and I have spent countless hours
getting them over the last two years for all of my accounts, and now
they are going to penalize me for my hard work at their guidence??!!

Or is  it too many keywords/phrases on the same page? 

It seems like the topic is dying down and I still don't know the
facts! Do you two know any more? I would like to pay you for your time
involved, can I split the $20 between you?
I would like to continue getting updates on this. Is there anywhere
else I can get news? The few forums you mentioned seemed to have
stopped talking about it. My client doesn't get it, and I would like
to find some kind of answer for them and some kind of solution to move
forward with. I would appreciate any more help! I will pay!!

Thanks,

DR

Thanks for your offer to split the fee, but I must confess, my
knowledge on this topic is quite limited.  Robertskelton-ga, on the
other hand, it one of the leading authorities in the known universe
(and beyond), and you could not do better than to seek his advice and
counsel.

I will leave it to the two of you to strike up whatever sort of
arrangement makes the most sense.

pafalafa-ga

Robert Skelton, HELP!   Pafalafa, you deserve more, thanks so much for your time.

DR

Hi again,

There have been some big changes in the Google algorithm, and it will
be a while before all the opinions boil down to concrete assumptions.

New Information
---------------

Yesterday's Search Engine Journal has an article that describes what may
have happened, in part, to your site:

"Google recently introduced a new keyword phrase filter during its
most recent update. Some phrases were unchanged, but many highly
optimized and highly competitive phrases were drastically altered.
Some webmasters saw their sites drop from top listings to not being in
the top 1,000 sites. Unlike other filters, this spam peanalty does not
affect a page or sites overall perceived value. The end effect is
lowered rankings for various specific searches for that page."
http://searchenginejournal.blogspot.com/2003_11_01_searchenginejournal_archive.html#106933768963966352

I say in part because the writer goes onto to say that searching for
your keyword phrase with hyphens-between-the-keywords should show the
non-filtered results. It proved correct for someone asking about their
real estate related rankings, but does not in your case.

My guess is that:

a) Google complied a list of the most abused keywords. This list would
obviously include gambling-related terms, and possibly highly
competitive keywords such as real estate and jewelry.

b) Google has rigorously investigated (not by hand, but by using
software) sites that rank well for these keywords

c) Google has removed any ranking benefit that has been achieved from
reciprocal links and/or keywords in internal links

I say "removed ranking benefit" rather than penalized. Google will
never penalize a site for the words they choose to place on the page.
And webmasters lack the power to prevent other sites from linking to
them.

Google has in the past penalized sites for running reciprocal link
schemes. Having reciprocal links that were arranged on a one-by-one
basis have been very beneficial to commercial sites. If your site
sells something, unless your product is very amazing or unusual, the
only links you will get are either from a shopping directory (or
Yahoo/DMOZ) or from reciprocal links.

However, Google has always said in their guidelines to not do anything
purely for the purpose of achieving higher ranking. Google looks at
links as "votes" for a page. Arranging reciprocal links is ultimately
akin to rigging an election.

Like many webmasters my income hinges on a solitary high ranking on
Google. I am fortunate that my ranking is based on legitimate links
and well-placed keywords. Based on the influx of questions like yours,
a lot of webmasters have seen dramatic drops in ranking of their
commercial sites. I wish I had a remedy for them.

I guess their is a tiny possibility that Google reverts to their
previous index, but that would be a first.



Regarding your desire to split the fee between pafalafa-ga and
myself... The easiest way is to cancel this question, and create two
new questions for $10 each. For the subject write "for pafalafa-ga
only" or "for robertskelton-ga only", which means we will see it, and
no-one else can answer it.