The July and August 2012 Crash of Elsmar

NikkiQSM

Quite Involved in Discussions
Re: Notice to All Visitors - Significant Drop in Google Search Rankings - August 2012

Wow! After playing a little bit with various search terms, it almost seems as if Google has blacklisted Elsmar Cove on some typical terms someone might search for.
ISO 13485 - one hit 1st hundred
ISO 16949 - one hit 1st hundred
AS9100 - one hit 1st hundred

I did the same thing. Unless you write down almost word for word the title of a post in the Cove, it will not pop up referencing Elsmar....

:mad:
 

Jim Wynne

Leader
Admin
Re: Notice to All Visitors - Significant Drop in Google Search Rankings - August 2012

Wow! After playing a little bit with various search terms, it almost seems as if Google has blacklisted Elsmar Cove on some typical terms someone might search for.
ISO 13485 - one hit 1st hundred
ISO 16949 - one hit 1st hundred
AS9100 - one hit 1st hundred

Search for ISO 13485 procedure: Elsmar is the first hit
Search for TS 16949 implementation: Elsmar is 7th hit on first page
Search for AS9100 transition: Elsmar is 9th hit on first page
 

BradM

Leader
Admin
Re: Notice to All Visitors - Significant Drop in Google Search Rankings - August 2012

Wow! After playing a little bit with various search terms, it almost seems as if Google has blacklisted Elsmar Cove on some typical terms someone might search for.
ISO 13485 - one hit 1st hundred
ISO 16949 - one hit 1st hundred
AS9100 - one hit 1st hundred

I did the same thing. Unless you write down almost word for word the title of a post in the Cove, it will not pop up referencing Elsmar....

:mad:

I agree. When Marc first started notifying us of the issue, I took a question format of about 10 of the most active threads. I even took some specific verbiage regarding the Medical Device forums. They did not appear on the first two Googel pages. And yes, those were very current/specific threads.

I even put in several versions of "should I calibrate a ruler/ tape measure/ etc.". It was like page 3 when it surfaced.

Search for ISO 13485 procedure: Elsmar is the first hit
Search for TS 16949 implementation: Elsmar is 7th hit on first page
Search for AS9100 transition: Elsmar is 9th hit on first page

And this may play into the article I read about Google changing the related words for a search. While Elsmar is still one of the tops (to your evidence), people may not build such specific search queries. ...

The difference between your results and what Wes found is... one word. That's kind of scary to me.
 

Wes Bucey

Prophet of Profit
Re: Notice to All Visitors - Significant Drop in Google Search Rankings - August 2012

Search for ISO 13485 procedure: Elsmar is the first hit
Search for TS 16949 implementation: Elsmar is 7th hit on first page
Search for AS9100 transition: Elsmar is 9th hit on first page
Sure - probem is, most newbies aren't sophisticated enough to be that precise in parsing a search term. When we look at so many folks over the years who still think that "Help" is a good title for an initial post/thread (I certainly changed enough of those in the years I was a moderator), we can pretty much guess they are not thinking precisely enough to frame a search term that will pop up an Elsmar thread in the first ten (default Google search result.)

Googling "Elsmar" now brings up a whole host of things I don't recall seeing in previous years/months - "Elsmar Home Health Care" runs a whole string after the first few for Elsmar Cove.

"Elsmar +quality" got 12 hits on Google compared to 25,000+ on Bing. that certainly smacks of blacklisting to me.
 

Marc

Fully vaccinated are you?
Leader
Re: Notice to All Visitors - Significant Drop in Google Search Rankings - August 2012

I apologise if I have freaked some of you folks out. Let's just say I have always tried to make sure everyone knows what is happening here which is why I posted. I have been up a lot of hours for a couple of weeks now trying to figure out what is going on and what to do. In short, I'm a bit panicked, frustrated and tired.

As you can see from posts 4 & 5 in this thread, which I copied from a thread in the moderator's forum, I have been trying to figure out how to deal with some of the possible issues. But, I'm not a professional so I have been doing a lot of guessing and reading. I may have been doing more harm than good.

I have just contacted a professional SEO person who was recommended by an advertiser here. He has contacted me and is looking into the problems. Obviously there are no guarantees, but it's like server administration - I know pretty much, but I'm far from being a professional so it's time I get a professional involved. I'm trying to do everything I can to keep things going here.

I've been going back and forth with emails and telephone calls since early this morning so I'm going to take a break for a few hours.

As I said earlier, I plan to do what ever I can to keep things going. Hopefully 3 months from now we'll be looking back on this as a bad patch in the road.
 

Wes Bucey

Prophet of Profit
Re: Notice to All Visitors - Significant Drop in Google Search Rankings - August 2012

Note that the + modifier in Google searches doesn't work the way it used to.
So, according to (https:/ / developers .google. om/shopping-search/v1/reference-request-parameters), Boolean search symbol of "+" is replaced by including the terms in parentheses. - OBSOLETE BROKEN 404 LINK(s) UNLINKED

Thus, old style "Elsmar +quality" is replaced by "(Elsmar quality)" [ignore the " marks] as a search term.

Thanks for that little bit of intelligence -without this thread topic, I would have blithely continued trying to use Boolean search terms.

How many of the rest of you knew this? How many newbies out there know this? I sure don't recall Google ever making a noise about this change and I have probably used Google Search at least 5 times a day for the past ten years.
 
Last edited by a moderator:

Marc

Fully vaccinated are you?
Leader
Re: Notice to All Visitors - Significant Drop in Google Search Rankings - August 2012

They changed that not too long ago to focus people on getting search results from Google+ if I understand it correctly.
 
B

Barbara B

Re: Notice to All Visitors - Significant Drop in Google Search Rankings - August 2012

Marc, please don't take Elsmar offline! For me it's the most valuable quality forum besides my favorite German one! :bigwave:

I couldn't believe that Google was changing that much in the search engine structure, but I noticed a drop in the number of postings in the Cove, too, in the last days. Google's attitude to change everything they found relevant without notifying those who are affected really annoys me :mad:, so I changed my default search engine from google to Bing this morning (explanation of bing search parameters: see Operator Precedence in the bing-library).

Wes mentioned that the search operators changed in Google and this vital piece of information for me, too! Thanks to the Cove :applause: - this makes my websearches far more efficient (even if I'll avoid Google searches at all and use Bing instead from now on)!

There's not much I can do to change Google's behaviour, but maybe if enough webmasters, Google-analytics- and Google-search-engine-users step away from Google they will start to think about the "we can change everything without notifying anybody"-thing.

Until this happens I'll keep my fingers crossed that the SEO-professional will find a solution for the Cove to increase the number of visitors, maybe even on a higher level than before the Penguin-incident :cfingers:
 
Re: Notice to All Visitors - Significant Drop in Google Search Rankings - August 2012

As I said earlier, I plan to do what ever I can to keep things going. Hopefully 3 months from now we'll be looking back on this as a bad patch in the road.
Yes, I hope so too. I am confident that the sharp minds assembled here will be able to turn the tide. :applause:

Thanks for that little bit of intelligence -without this thread topic, I would have blithely continued trying to use Boolean search terms.
So would I, as I had no idea in spite of having read a fair bit about google searches in general and Penguin in particular: I have put a few google "hacks" together for my own purposes earlier, and had noticed that they somehow did not provide results as as good as they used to. This is almost certainly the reason, as they are based on Boolean search terms.

/Claes
 

Jim Wynne

Leader
Admin
Re: Notice to All Visitors - Significant Drop in Google Search Rankings - August 2012

Sure - probem is, most newbies aren't sophisticated enough to be that precise in parsing a search term. When we look at so many folks over the years who still think that "Help" is a good title for an initial post/thread (I certainly changed enough of those in the years I was a moderator), we can pretty much guess they are not thinking precisely enough to frame a search term that will pop up an Elsmar thread in the first ten (default Google search result.)

Googling "Elsmar" now brings up a whole host of things I don't recall seeing in previous years/months - "Elsmar Home Health Care" runs a whole string after the first few for Elsmar Cove.

"Elsmar +quality" got 12 hits on Google compared to 25,000+ on Bing. that certainly smacks of blacklisting to me.

No doubt there are lots of visits missed because of very general search terms that don't work now that did work in the past. That's the problem Marc is facing. Even using the terms I did doesn't yield the number of hits that it would have a few months ago. I think this emphasizes the point you make--that there are lots of visitors who get here using very general terms, and not so many who are more specific.
 
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