Google's Penguin - Consequences for Domainers

[GiftedDomains]

Google just flushed many keyword domains down the toilett. At least here in Germany its a disaster, From those websites who really lost a lot of positions or simply vanished, were nearly all keyword domains. Nearly no brands were punished.

Consequence: prices for keyword domain names will go down and domainers will have a hard time. Google is simply giving up his bonus for keyword domains.

Google already indirectly warned us last year,
(check out 2:23)

[ame="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rAWFv43qubI"]How important is it to have keywords in a domain name? - YouTube[/ame]

and now its happening slowly but surely.

---------- Post added at 05:47 AM ---------- Previous post was at 05:38 AM ----------




[ame="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0St9B1kmJ2g"]Hitler's Reaction to the recent Google Penguin update (04-24-2012) - YouTube[/ame]

 

[GiftedDomains]

Agree. Please don't get personal.
Happens to me sometimes too. And i write things i shouldn't write. Or become aggressive for no reason. And later i regret.

 

[DU]

Hey fonzie, your an idiot with a big mouth. I agree you probably were a member that got banned, previously.But ya your a goof, if you think namepros is a toilet why dont you find another forum to act immature in. The fonz was cool,your not

His contribution to this thread includes explaining the difference between typical domainer "Search Engine Manipulation" and real business need "Search Engine Optimization". It talks about the conflict of Google. It explains why the changes are made.
Your contribution is a post that adds name calling. Which do you think is more valuable to NP?

It looks like that there is not much changing and this update is sticking, not much bouncing around, rather than argueing with each other lets find out what this all means. It does look like that sites even small ammounts of bulk (spammy) links are being hit, as well as ones with the same anchor text or only keyword anchor texts in the links. The low content bad content issue should have been hit by the update panda 2.0 around the 19th so if you got hit then it was a panda issue, if you got hit around the 24th then spam links and too many keyword anchor texts and maybe some other things seem to be what got you in trouble. So just dump those projects and move on ,or try to fix them if possible?

But most (not all) self-professed SEO Professionals don't want to fix or change or understand what the marketplace really needs. Those that actually understand SEO don't potentially destroy their clients rankings. Most (not all, maybe I should say some) SEO experts here at NP are peddling link wheeling, keyword stuffing, traffic arbitrage and craptastic mini-sites with no real content which is exactly the type of site that SHOULD get de-indexed.

Look around this place with all the "Quality 500 hundreds from College Graduates for $5". How many well researched, non-source, articles can really be written in an hour? Not much of salary. Offers for quality backlinks offered everywhere.

And we wonder why your sites are losing position?

Some of this work is done with NO / ZERO consideration for the users of the internet. Do you think, as an example, that someone searching for "Stage 4 Cancer Cure Rates" really wants to his search to return sites on Stage4CancerInfoMinisite.biz that contains such gems of information like (example):

"Cancer is bad. When it gets to stage 4 it means that the cancer has progresed beyond stage 3 which is another of the 4 stages. After stage 4 you can be cured or be dead. Not everyone dead."

Domainers do not consider in the slightest what or why people are looking for things or what might happen when people find their sites. Medical misinformation is a problem - and a liability - people need to think about these things but they don't because it's $1 a click, baby.

No need for the personal attacks.

That is true. We shouldn't get personal

Anyway:

It seems to me that the Fonz will make a great argument for a position and end with something along the lines of "and you're ugly". I'm interested to know why people think Fonz might be wrong or need some correction but all we get is "it's mean to call me ugly, especially when you're smelly".

Way to focus on the points. Says to me that you don't have anything.

But wait:

Well on a positive note, got a mini site performing good and with CTR @ 11.11% and CPC 0.50

That just proves Fonzies point. You're just not willing to see past your clicks.

 

[ecalc]

Consequence: prices for keyword domain names will go down and domainers will have a hard time.

Disagree. Search engines and their tweaks have little effect on true domainers aka type-in traffic operators whose names are parked and already invisible to search. Type-in names have the added bonus of strong inherent meaning/resonance/sales bait. Non-type-in keyword speculators and mini-site operators are more dependent on search engines and their property values carry associated risk. A flight to quality could raise the $ premium on type-in names.

 

[GiftedDomains]

Disagree. Search engines and their tweaks have little effect on true domainers aka type-in traffic operators whose names are parked and already invisible to search. Type-in names have the added bonus of strong inherent meaning/resonance/sales bait. Non-type-in keyword speculators and mini-site operators are more dependent on search engines and their property values carry associated risk. A flight to quality could raise the $ premium on type-in names.

Agree. But how high is the percentage of domainers making enough money from parked names? Thats only for premium .com or cctld domains and probably 1% (or even 0.01%) of Domainers make enough money from parking.

So for most of us, we are dependent on Google.

Plus income from parking is decreasing since years.
How many people do you think will type in domains in their browser the next years?

Even Type-in gurus are beginning to make websites, because they know what is going to happen in the future

 

[novatheory]

His contribution to this thread includes explaining the difference between typical domainer "Search Engine Manipulation" and real business need "Search Engine Optimization". It talks about the conflict of Google. It explains why the changes are made.
Your contribution is a post that adds name calling. Which do you think is more valuable to NP?


But most (not all) self-professed SEO Professionals don't want to fix or change or understand what the marketplace really needs. Those that actually understand SEO don't potentially destroy their clients rankings. Most (not all, maybe I should say some) SEO experts here at NP are peddling link wheeling, keyword stuffing, traffic arbitrage and craptastic mini-sites with no real content which is exactly the type of site that SHOULD get de-indexed.

Look around this place with all the "Quality 500 hundreds from College Graduates for $5". How many well researched, non-source, articles can really be written in an hour? Not much of salary. Offers for quality backlinks offered everywhere.

And we wonder why your sites are losing position?

Some of this work is done with NO / ZERO consideration for the users of the internet. Do you think, as an example, that someone searching for "Stage 4 Cancer Cure Rates" really wants to his search to return sites on Stage4CancerInfoMinisite.biz that contains such gems of information like (example):

"Cancer is bad. When it gets to stage 4 it means that the cancer has progresed beyond stage 3 which is another of the 4 stages. After stage 4 you can be cured or be dead. Not everyone dead."

Domainers do not consider in the slightest what or why people are looking for things or what might happen when people find their sites. Medical misinformation is a problem - and a liability - people need to think about these things but they don't because it's $1 a click, baby.


That is true. We shouldn't get personal

Anyway:

It seems to me that the Fonz will make a great argument for a position and end with something along the lines of "and you're ugly". I'm interested to know why people think Fonz might be wrong or need some correction but all we get is "it's mean to call me ugly, especially when you're smelly".

Way to focus on the points. Says to me that you don't have anything.

But wait:

That just proves Fonzies point. You're just not willing to see past your clicks.

The problem is not Fonzie's POV. I joined NP to learn more, find other information, do other things. As I know other people has join for this and other reasons. We can have a nice conversation where everyone explains their POV and discuss the differences. I see beyond my clicks, I see beyond what the Internet could be. And I can have a different POV than others here but I am not gonna use offensive terms or posting in a manner that I think is good to start controversy. Imagine if we all post saying brutal stuff to others and calling people names, or been racist. Where NP will be? Will it still exists?

Do a quick search pretty much all of Fonzie's post are in a tone saying NP is garbage, a trash can, and it's members.

One thing is to say I think you wrong because A, B, C. Another is thing is to say you freggin douchbag lame fail noob I am cool and B. This are 2 different things and the second one does not add any value to the community.

 

[lennco]

Even though the topic of this thread has gotten away from the original subject there is a valuable lesson that has been made here.

And that is to stay on Point.
You can make the best point for your argument in you post but once you lace it with Hate and name calling you not only direct attention away from your point but you then create a whole knew discussion as we are now having.
In today's society with everything going on people have little tolerance for hate and any type of bullying.

A master debater doesn't need to reach that low

 

[ecalc]

Agree. But how high is the percentage of domainers making enough money from parked names? Thats only for premium .com or cctld domains and probably 1% (or even 0.01%) of Domainers make enough money from parking.


So for most of us, we are dependent on Google.

Plus income from parking is decreasing since years.
How many people do you think will type in domains in their browser the next years?

Even Type-in gurus are beginning to make websites, because they know what is going to happen in the future

Type-in parking has a grim future, but for now, type-in names run independent of search engines and these names may benefit in the aftermarket from a washout of mediocre keyword names and mini sites. People type-in names for a reason - they are meaningful. For that reason alone these names will retain value longer than others as the DNS eventually winds down.

 

[eyedomainous]

To be clear, Google's 'relationship' with the user, and its 'goal', is to rank content to drive a business model based on 'traffic and clicks'.

"User relevance", in ranking results, especially 'keyword domain' results, is so subjective its akin to re-arranging deck chairs on the titanic.

Traditional search is sinking in the oceans of FaceBook and Twitter. "Relevance" is now about what the old search engine can deliver to the bottom line, and in the lifelines it can extend to their new mega-search ship, YouTube.

Like a Penguin, this algo update gets fat by eating the little fish, and looking good while doing it.

Goog is punishing keyword stuffing mini-sites, but it just invested $100 million plus in, click-traffic-ad-driven, keyword stuffing 'channel' mini-sites at YouTube.

Mini-site channels like the VlogBrothers, where the current vid has one (14 word) sentence of searchable text and 14 keyword tags. If this was a mini-site on the open web it would not rank well, but type in 'vlog' on Goog and it auto-fills VlogBrothers.

In Feb., ADWEEK reported most Goog-Tube channels were not getting the traffic expected. A few months later we have an algo update that targets (keyword mini-site) ad click competition.

Penguin smells a little fishy to me, and I'm not an adsense traffic domainer.

Domainers and sham developers (often coming from the SEO camp) have competing interests with G. Their goal is to "rank content". Google is trying to serve the needs of both their users/searchers and the businesses who pay for clicks.

....

As far as domainers go, so few even begin to understand what 'users want', mostly because the domainer business model isn't about building a relationship with that user. It's about "traffic and clicks".

 

[MeanerDomainer]

The reason this is so puzzling to 'domainers' is because essentially none of you are involved in relevant, front side eCommerce.

You're involved with splogs, sham development, "minisites", affiliate networking, Wordpress.

How you know if you fall into this category: If your main concern is "traffic and clicks" rather than "clients and relationships"...

OUCH! The truth hurts.

However, regarding 'front side eCommerce', domainers are, by definition, differerent from those involved in true 'front side eCommerce'.
'Domainers' are the ones hoping to sell domains to those involved in 'front side eCommerce'.

I agree that not being in 'front side eCommerce' is no excuse to put up content that is not valuable to users and all such sites deserve to get dropped.

 

[Theo Goodman]

Yea I agree with fonzies point just not -how- he said it. Thanks eyedomainous I had never thought of that but noticed the fishy relationship between pinguins and fish right away.

 

[MeanerDomainer]

Yea I agree with fonzies point just not -how- he said it. Thanks eyedomainous I had never thought of that but noticed the fishy relationship between pinguins and fish right away.

Just to be objective, all he said at first was:



"The reason this is so puzzling to 'domainers' is because essentially none of you are involved in relevant, front side eCommerce.
You're involved with splogs, sham development, "minisites", affiliate networking, Wordpress.

How you know if you fall into this category: If your main concern is "traffic and clicks" rather than "clients and relationships"... "



Then he got personally attacked and things escallated from there.

 

[alien51]

It's called guerilla marketing. If you want to stand out from the rest of the boring opinions, you need some shock and awe so people will take notice- and you will go viral from there. Howard Stern did the same thing... on radio.

On the topic of domains, the so-called "splogs, sham development, "minisites", affiliate networking, Wordpress" is a natural consequence of "domaining". After all, what to do with 800 domains in your portfolio? This is exactly why "domainers" invented splog factories like Epik. You need to have those 800 domains earning money, while waiting for a buyer. Again, trying to "game" the algos would have been a "natural" motivation, especially if the word "domaining" doesn't equate to building "client-engaging content".

But then again, Namepros is "basically" a site for domainers. So what do you expect? You don't barge into the Adult Domains section, and start preaching about morality, without starting a flame. Although your idea is correct, it is simply the wrong place because you have the wrong audience.

Unless of course, your mission is to convert Domainers, into a Matt-Cutts-disciple all-righteous website developers who make meaningful contributions to the improvement of humanity.

 

[phowell23]

2 of my "affiliate Wordpress websites" that are keyword domains shot up the rankings this month for the main keyword. One is ranked #3 and one is ranked #1. The #3 overall site is a 1 year old site that was sitting on the 2nd-3rd page for the past 12 months. It went to #9 overall about 2 weeks ago and then a week ago it went up to #3 overall. The other site is a 1 month old site. Both sites are Clickbank affiliate marketing sites with no Google Adsense ads.

Don't let anyone tell you keyword domains no longer work. About 5-6 large original articles with good content (700-800 words minimum), and a few good backlinks do wonders now.

 

[Sparhawke]

Right, as for my original post in here saying that everyone panicked in 2001 and dumped them I still stand by that, companies had them and then counted the pennies and dropped them like a handful of hot soup. And then domainers got hold of them.

What do you think will happen when one of these less than wonderful websites sitting on a half decent name starts making no money at all?

Do you think the owner will suddenly see the error of his ways and make it into something wonderful or will he get rid of it either by sale or by ignore till time runs out?

Either way, the name game is going to get shaken one way or the other and the pieces and rules are going to change.

Those that may never have gotten a sniff at decent domains (by that i mean end users) may have half a chance and then they could do something with them

Right now a domain gets to the top of Google almost by default simply because it has an exact match, regardless of how useless the information is or whether it is needed.

Soon Google will feed the penguins to the whales and it will all change again, the only thing we can do is try to figure out what the whales will actually need

Like it or not, the deck is going to get shuffled and this time who knows who might hold what and what they may do with it? It may be that .com is sunk and .biz rises from the ashes.

Hehe, once again you've fallen foul of one of my classic pranks. Bazinga!

 

[enlytend]

I can only speculate about SEO and how Google really operates, but keyword domains will always benefit if people create links to the domain containing the keyword string.

Not any more - having exact-match anchor text in all your backlinks has become a huge red flag.

As for the name-calling: Some people like to stir the pot, if you've been here for any length of time you know who they are. YOU can always choose not to take the bait. Just stick to the topic and ignore the personal s*** and it will go away.* Not having to wade through post after post of "am not" "are too" makes for a much more constructive discussion, and makes reading the thread much easier for the rest of us!

(ducking back out the door before I get pelted with flying debris !)

*(Responding reinforces the behavior. Behavior which is not reinforced extinguishes.)

 

[firefly]

Anyone who tells you they know how it is working is simply talking out their ass. It's all theory at the moment. legitimate sites had been hammered along with the less than legitimate sites. Sites that offer noting are sitting at number one in some cases. The only people that actually have a clue are the bent engineers at Google, and even then, until they released it, they didn't know how it would react.

People that say this is dead or that is dead, or this won't work anymore are just guessing.

I track all my sites everyday and I am not panicked - I'll wait until the dust settles. I've had one site drop 70 spots one day, just to come up 83 spots the next. If you can tell me why you should probably be working for Google.

Not any more - having exact-match anchor text in all your backlinks has become a huge red flag.

Diversify your anchor texts and do other things to avoid leaving to much of a footprint.

 

[Ben42]

I think if its true this will hurt the Google monsters bottom line. These sites have been meticulously optimized for adsense click thrus and were a part of googles success. In essence they had hundreds of thousands of employees creating millions of sites for the soul purpose of making them money. If profits drop so then does the stock price and they'll change it back.

To sandbag adsense sites built on keyword domains is a poor move by google IMO. They serve their purpose and drive traffic to their advertisers. I don't think it'll last once advertisers see a drop in traffic.

 

[enlytend]

There are a lot of people crunching data and making correlations. I posted a link to one good post in my thread on this in Industry News (too lazy to look for it).

If you WERE hit, first thing you should do is look at your logs and figure out when your traffic dropped because there were two different things that happened. If it was the 19th, that was Panda - that's the ongoing quality content revisions. If it happened around the 24th, that was Penguin, which targeted violations of the Quality Guidelines. Two different things.

All of my sites have survived every iteration of Panda. One was taken out by Penguin - I suspect because it has a directory on the site which is listed in a lot of "free link directory" lists. Even though I've been manually approving links all along to avoid spam and I deleted the link submission code long ago because I was tired of wading through all the crap (only way to get listed now is to email me.) I suspect the inbound links and presence of the directory got it flagged as a "link scheme." Site is in a very spam-prone vertical.

There is a feedback form to report if you think you were unfairly targeted by Penguin - https://no_url_shorteners/di4RpizN . But I suggest not submitting it until you've carefully reviewed the Quality Guidelines as they relate to your site.

 

[Peter]

Why is this change such a surprise to people?

For years Google have been releasing articles and videos advising that content is King. They have made it abundantly clear that they don’t with to promote sites they do not believe are beneficial to an end user.

A domain with keywords can still be beneficial but mainly if your site is comparable to a site that has no keyword in the domain but the sites have similar scores.

I am not personally a fan of Google and do not like a lot of their business practices however I do fully agree with this update. A parking page or a mini site will rarely be of interest to an end user who uses a search engine therefore why should a search engine point people in that direction?

Most people rely on parked pages and mini sites to earn revenue from click through on ads. If that ad was more what the end user was looking for wouldn’t it actually be more beneficial for Google to actually have the sort of sites that are in the ads at the top of the results?

If you truly want to keep your domain names and are not interested in reselling them then I strongly suggest you carry out some proper development and put a good informational page on the domain. Seriously, do not expect Google or any other search engine to continue to direct traffic your way. If they believe you are relevant they will still do it, if they do not they will drop you like a rock in an ocean at any time.

 

[eyedomainous]

@Peter
Not surprised, just dismayed at how bad Goog is at presenting relevant, representative, results. Changing the algo hundreds of times a year presents an unstable flux market experience for users, advertisers and websites.

Also, Content Is King is a myth... as 90% of website content is invisible to Google, and other search engines, as its in data bases, behind java-script, in flash and so forth.

Search bots only scan the surface of the (html) web, a therein lies the problem... data base rich sites serving hundreds or thousands of clients lose rank because they have a 'mini-site' log-in page.

I have a keyword, 500 client, data-base "mini-site", with thousands of 'pages', that just lost its page 1 top ranking (now page 3) to a non-keyword site with 15 pages of html text, and no clients. He's a longtime industry wannabe. Point is, Goog can only see the html "content".

On the other hand, some of my (lessor) (html only) sites have recently moved-up. One to the top spot. Fortunately, I don't rely much on Goog traffic, and don't use ad-sense, so rank is more a status symbol... but seeing such results reminds me of just how bad Goog search results are.

 

[GiftedDomains]

Changing the algo hundreds of times a year presents an unstable flux market experience for users, advertisers and websites.

Google MUST change his algo several times a year, because people always find ways to trick the algo and show up on first pages without having the relevant and appropriate content. I don't think there will ever be an Algo which can not be tricked sooner or later.
I am pretty sure, soon some people will find ways to trick the new "penguined" google and show up on first page with crap content.
It is a cat-and-mouse game.

 

[JB Lions]

@Peter
Not surprised, just dismayed at how bad Goog is at presenting relevant, representative, results. Changing the algo hundreds of times a year presents an unstable flux market experience for users, advertisers and websites.

Also, Content Is King is a myth... as 90% of website content is invisible to Google, and other search engines, as its in data bases, behind java-script, in flash and so forth.

Search bots only scan the surface of the (html) web, a therein lies the problem... data base rich sites serving hundreds or thousands of clients lose rank because they have a 'mini-site' log-in page.

I have a keyword, 500 client, data-base "mini-site", with thousands of 'pages', that just lost its page 1 top ranking (now page 3) to a non-keyword site with 15 pages of html text, and no clients. He's a longtime industry wannabe. Point is, Goog can only see the html "content".

On the other hand, some of my (lessor) (html only) sites have recently moved-up. One to the top spot. Fortunately, I don't rely much on Goog traffic, and don't use ad-sense, so rank is more a status symbol... but seeing such results reminds me of just how bad Goog search results are.

Confused on some of the stuff you just posted.

"90% of website content is invisible to Google"

Where are you getting that stat from? My sites would be the exact opposite. Also, Google can see some of that, from Matt Cutts - "Googlebot keeps getting smarter. Now has the ability to execute AJAX/JavaScript to index some dynamic comments.”

And when you say clients, I guess you're really meaning merchants with affiliate programs, right? And I don't understand why Google wouldn't be able to read your site, unless you're using all javascript? I have affiliate sites, using things like PopShops but I use PHP and Google can see all of that.

For this: "Also, Content Is King is a myth" In the end, quality sites/quality content are going to fare better and usually ride out the algo changes.

As far as domains. A good domain is a good domain. An algo has nothing on that.

 

[Ben42]

I don't know if it's going to make their searches worse, it'll probably be even better and googles already the best. Still, I think their profits will be down. I wonder how guys like Mr. Coupons.info have been faring.

 

[SK1990]

I wonder how guys like Mr. Coupons.info have been faring.

Lol I checked yesterday. He's not on the front page. That website really is a sham.

 

[JB Lions]

I don't know if it's going to make their searches worse, it'll probably be even better and googles already the best. Still, I think their profits will be down. I wonder how guys like Mr. Coupons.info have been faring.

Taking a quick look at the site, it's a shit site, no real coupons on it. There are lots of other real coupon sites out there, so that one really has no chance.