After having been on top of search results for years now, all of a sudden things changed a few months ago.
For a large site we have been optimising with good content, that was unique and liked by visitors, we saw a huge drop after the update that appearantly preferes new sites, with generic domain names.
Sites with almost no content outrank old sites just because of the domain name. We had good hopes things would settel after a few weeks, updates always shake things up.
But nothing happend, nothing other than Google giving small companies another blow: the new google merchant popped up.
Finding these changes rather disturbing i wrote Matt and he answered with his standard text, make your site better, more content:
Matt states:
You may see changes in ranking for certain phrases, but I’d encourage you to consider your site’s traffic and conversions as a whole rather than focusing on a small number of trophy phrases.
Those so called trophy phrases dear Matt are the keywords that bring traffic and customers to the site!
If a site with mirrors doesnt rank on that keyword any more (top 3) then sales will drop!
Not very happy with the standard answer i wrote Matt an answer:
Hi Matt,
Thanks for your answer.
I made the following observations:
- generic domains prefered even if they have almost no content and links
- google merchant
- ads on top of results
- productsearch pages prefered
- i have 146.000 links stated on the search query (and there are a lot more)
- dropped on all search queries
I worked almost 10 years on my site to get it at the top for years now.
All is smashed during the update app. 2 months ago.
Fresh pages with literally almost no content on a generic domain is more important to Google than a domain with content, years old and working its ass off.
Thanks for killing small companies.
Whats the lesson to be learned
If you are selling products on the internet, you need Google. But your ranking is, due to all the updates, even with old domains that had authority, an unstable factor to depend on.
Had some pictures in image search that brought some good traffic?
Well, Google changed that too. Image search is now a portal where your large pictures (against copyright laws, but whats new) will be shown, a click on a thumb is no longer leading to your site! SEJ Studies show 65 to 80% less visitors.
Therefor if you want to succeed on the internet, you will have to sell your products in Google merchant or buy ads that will be clicked on by to many 0.1 second visitors (not to speak of frauds).
1 and 1 makes 2
Google is turning into a portal to shop and will do every thing to make shop owners to sell their products through ads or in its merchant center. All with one goal -> making big bucks.
Even lawsuits on brakeing privacy laws, book copying and its dominant search position (pushing competitors back in search results) cant stop the company that gained a top position spreading its motto 'dont do evil'.
