Thursday, August 24, 2006

Panoramic Earth Meets the Google Dance 2006

Between July 7th and July 8th 2006 Panoramic Earth encountered the Google Dance, which resulted in over 50% traffic loss as Google re-arranged the web and updated itself. This is not a new phenomenon by any means. Often the large webmaster forums have their busiest times as panicked SEOs watch in helpless horror as months of careful grooming dissolves before their eyes (See Webmasterworld forum). Sites that were highly ranked vanish for unknown reasons into the internet ether, sometimes never to be seen again.

Unfortunately, Google is the major search engine around so placement here can make or break a site. Google does this to keep us on our toes. The aim is to ensure that the most relevant sites come back for search terms entered. Certainly if this removes various sites that are themselves simply returns of meta search results then so much the better. The algorithms are tweaked to try to remove abuses of the system. Unfortunately, sometimes honest hard work can get caught out as well. Sometimes all that remains is for the irate webmaster to begin again or wait until the next algorithm update and subsequent dance.

In the meantime it is back to the drawing board trying to figure out now where it is safe to submit the site to, will we be penalised for being listed in specific other directories or search engines? Directories and search engines come and go on the internet. They are born and die faster than you can say 'hey here's a new directory', which makes the task of site submission ever ongoing. For that reason we are always grateful when other sites like our content enough to link back to PanoramicEarth.com on their own. It is always good to know you are appreciated, so a big thank-you to all of you.

Our own woes continued for about a month, whereupon suddenly all was resorted, we had been forgiven whatever offence we had caused and were placed once again in our former positions. Happily, our position and traffic are now back to normal and seem to be stable. This is a bit of a relief to say the least, so now we can breath again until the next Big One…

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