Hello,

Our site was indexed by google  before we officially launched it.  For
a couple of weeks things were great...we were on the first page of
about 7 of our primary key words.  Then this Oct  we dropped
completely off the charts except for some deep listing (18 pages
deep).  We have just completed a site redesign and changed much of the
text on each of the pages.  What kind of effect can I expect this to
have on my listings in google?  Will the listings that I do have
(regardless how deep they are) not work anymore now that the text has
changed.  The domain will not change.

Any insight or advice would greatly be appreciated...as we are new to
this.

Thanks

EA

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Request for Question Clarification by bobby_d-ga on 16 Oct 2002 05:07 PDT

A link to your site will help us examine how these changes could
affect your "google friendliness" (if the site is appropriate).

Thanks,

bobby_D-ga

Google has made some controversial changes in their PageRank system
recently (see links below) which are undoubtedly the cause of your
decline in ranking.

As bobby_d indicated, a precise answer as to the effect your redesign
will have would require that you tell us what site you're referring
to.  However, since Google does not publish details of their PageRank
system, at best we could give a guess even if you did say what site
you have.  Your page's rank depends primarily on the number, nature,
and source of links pointing to your site.  Since a redesign will not
affect these variables, you should not expect your ranking to change
dramatically as a result.  Your ranking on other search engines may
rise which would lead more people to see and possibly link to your
site, which will affect your Google rank.

As to whether your rank still work, that depends.  If only the text
and not the location (URL) of your pages has changed, everything will
continue to work as before.  If your URLs have changed, then you will
need to wait for Google to re-index your site (happens every few
months or so).  If you do change URLs, you might consider having the
old URLs redirect to the most closely-related page on your new site so
accumulated search engine links do not point to nonexistent pages
(gives a bad first impression).

I do not get access to any proprietary information as a result of
being a Researcher, so I can't give you any sort of "official"
response, but it has been my experience that trying to improve your
search rankings directly is a waste of time.  Instead, try to improve
your user experience, since ultimately it is the users you are trying
to please.  Additionally, having happy users scattering the web with
"go see these guys - they do a good job" is the best way to get a
better ranking, at least with Google.

Hope this helps!

If you need clarification, don't hesitate to ask - I check about once
a day.

-Haversian

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Request for Answer Clarification by jeckyll-ga on 17 Oct 2002 03:46 PDT

Haversian:

Thanks very much.  (someone either deleted your links...or you forgot
to include them)

The only thing that does not add up with your assesment is that the
first 5-8 spots for the keywords my surfers would use to find my site
are currently being held by the same guy...in spam fashion.  Its a
single page...very little text and then links that all point to this
main site...with differnet URL.  They use a variety of url's on these
"phony" sites...and I highly doubt that anyone would be linking to
these single spam style pages as they are absoluty nothing other than
a portal to the "sponsor site".  On a few of them...they even go as
far as to take the key word and type it over and over again (probably
100 times) at the very end of the page.  I thought that tactic became
obsolete years ago?!?!?

I'm sorry, but there's not a chance that people are linking to these
sites...so it leads me to believe that they've found a way to trick
Google...where as I have a real site with real information, yet I drop
off the monitor?  That is the only reason I am working on improving my
listing.  The site is very good...the resopnse and comments we
recieved while enjoying our "prime" Google ranking was fabulous.  It's
just left me scratching my head...that's all.

Lastly...maybe you know the answer to this:  All these "spam
sites"...they seem to use a "robots" tag in there source code.  I know
this topic for an entirely different question but do yuo think that
holds any merit with Googlebot?

Respectfully

ea

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Clarification of Answer by haversian-ga on 17 Oct 2002 16:41 PDT

Whoops!  I wrote the "see links below" bit and then after some
consideration decided not to do links but seem to have missed the part
about removing the comment where I said I would.

There's a blurb on Slashdot (
http://slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=02/10/05/1348200&mode=nested&tid=95
) and at the Register (
http://www.theregister.co.uk/content/6/27500.html ) about tweaking
PageRank.  Also look at the Wired article referred to in both:
http://www.wired.com/news/culture/0,1284,55597,00.html.  It's not that
great an article which is why I decided against mentioning it, but if
you're curious, take a look.


I suspect the 100 repetitions aren't helping this guy's Google ranking
(and are probably hurting it).  As I understand PageRank, this guy
could buy up 100 domains and setup pages that link to a bunch of good
sites.  IF he's careful, he can setup links between these 100 pages to
boost their rankings.  Then he can go to a variety of public boards
and post links to his 100 sites there.  Though each of these links are
relatively worthless, they add up, particularly when multiplied by 100
sites.  Then he can link from those to these spam pages you're
referring to.  I can't say whether he's actually done this without you
telling me what specific pages you're complaining about, but you can
see where the incoming links are coming from by searching in Google
for link:the-site-you-are-curious-about.  If all the spam pages have
links from the same places, you can try contacting Google and letting
them know about their system being abused.  The contacts page is at
://www.google.com/contact/search.html but the email address you
are most likely interested in is search-quality@google.com or possibly
comments@google.com.

Could you tell me what you mean by a robots tag?  There's something
called a robots.txt file but it shouldn't be linked to from the site. 
I dimly recall a time in HTML 2.x or so where there were robot
directives in meta tags or something  - is that what you're seeing?