montrsmu
Joined: Jul 07, 2007
# Posts: 31
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Posted: 2007-Jul-08 00:04
I have learned much over the years from this forum. I put my site on the web in 1996 and ever since Google appeared on the scene it has been conveniently listed in the top 10 and often in the top 3 for my chosen keyword phrase which I have included in quotes in my profile under company. Usually if it dropped out of the top 10, to say 11 or 12, it would percolate up to the top 3 which I attributed, rightly or wrongly, to seasonal traffic, since it was a consistent pattern. Once before about 4 years ago, the site plummeted to 165 or so on the list but returned soon to the top. This time I think it’s permanent. Starting last year some time, it disappeared many pages down into the listings. Algorithm changes over the years have brought different sites up and down. There have always been many midi sites, and now there seem to be lots of internet radio. The site that seems different from all others and has remained like a rock at number one or close to it is the site with “new” in its name. The top four or five on the list have been in and around the top 20 for years. Sorry to be so long winded, but any thoughts or suggestions as to why my site has plummeted after so many years of being in the top few, and more to the point, what I might do to remedy it, would be greatly appreciated.
thanks...
PS I am on a Mac.
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Mark Wolk
Joined: Sep 19, 1999
# Posts: 660
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Posted: 2007-Jul-08 00:17
Three ideas:
1) As your site gets older, it gains in trust. But, at the same time, other sites keep working on their inbound links and may have accumulated so many of them, that your site becomes insignificant in Google's eyes. Try to get several valuable inbound links.
2) As your site gets older, others may be copying its content. Try to search for specific phrases from several pages of your site (between quotes) and see what comes up. Let Google know if others are copying your content.
3) Not sure what the Mac has to do with it, but if you have built your site using some kind of WYSIWIG editor, it would be time to re-built it hand-coding using proper HTML.
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g1smd
Staff
Joined: Jul 28, 2002
# Posts: 10465
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Posted: 2007-Jul-08 00:26
Use Copyscape and look for problems, and fix them.
Make sure you have no internal duplicate content issues within the site too.
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montrsmu
Joined: Jul 07, 2007
# Posts: 31
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Posted: 2007-Jul-09 07:01
Thank you Mark and g1smd for your replies.
My note about mac was so no one would suggest tools that were pc only. I know at one time there was much talk about a google toolbar for example that showed page rank and various other things, but was not available for mac.
I did not use a wysiwyg. I hand did the html. It was a while ago, and it could easily be redone, but is that enough to drop the ranking that far? and why all of a sudden just last year? Several of the sites that are still up on the list have html older than mine I think.
In order to get quality links, I used to try to look for inbound links to other sites in the listings for possible contacts, but those don't seem to be as readily accessible as before. I also notice when I check my inbound links very few of them actually show up. I can see how the link thing could cause a problem, but it's hard to believe that the drop would be so drastic, so fast.
At any rate I'll work on it.
As far as content copying, I had an issue several years ago with someone who basically ripped off the entire design of my site and changed the content slightly to fit his cd, but I decided that as long as I was ranked number 2 and he wasn't showing up on the listings I wouldn't worry about it, and a couple of years later the site was down and gone. I found nothing of significance (only three mentions) using Copyscape other than one site that used several of the questions from my quiz verbatim without giving any credit. I suppose I might contact them about a link, but, again, I don't see that as an issue as they're not on the listings either.
My site is not suddenly filled with duplicate content either as far as I can see.
I just seems weird...
Any further suggestions? BTW thanks again for your time and responses. I will begin acting upon them further.
If it makes any difference for trouble shooting, I do still rank number one on my second choice of keywords, but alas it is a much less frequent search.
John
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SportsGuy
Staff
Joined: Aug 30, 2002
# Posts: 3603
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Posted: 2007-Jul-09 14:29
Hey John - welcome to SEF as a poster. 
The duplicate content issue mentioned above isn't soemthing you'd see on a page, per se.
Try this:
Type in the following and watch what happens:
www.domain.com
domain.com
If both versions of the domain resolve to the website - both the www and non-www version of the domain show the actual website - then you have duplicate content issues.
if this is the case, then there could be an easy fix for this one item in the form of an .htaccess file with the correct coding in it. This will require us knowing if the site is on a Linux server or a Windows server. Linux will play nice with the .htaccess file, Windows, not so much - but there are other ways to crack that nut. 
So, what type of server is the site hosted on?
If Linux, I can post the code and walk you through the steps of setting up this file - if it's even needed.
Try the test I mentioned above, then report back on what you see pelase.
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montrsmu
Joined: Jul 07, 2007
# Posts: 31
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Posted: 2007-Jul-09 20:38
Hi SportsGuy, thanks for your reply.
As you can see from the url in my profile, my site is hosted on pair and I don't have my own registered domain name. When I enter the url with or without the www it resolves to www3 dot etc. and shows my page.
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montrsmu
Joined: Jul 07, 2007
# Posts: 31
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Posted: 2007-Jul-10 02:42
More info:Don't know if there's any significance to this, but I did a check with link: followed by the url of the top ten on the list. They say that in order from 1 to 10 on the lists the sites show 167;4;0;23;15;4;5;45;5;and0 incoming links. The same search using my url shows 90 links.
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montrsmu
Joined: Jul 07, 2007
# Posts: 31
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Posted: 2007-Jul-25 22:08
OK. I've looked at all the suggestions and here are my results.
As far as I can see there is no duplicate content. I used complete links, not relative links on the site, and when I am unable to find any indication of non www pages. When I do the “site:” search and add –inurl:www it turns up no documents. I do notice that my site comes up as www3. is this significant? If I've missed something here, please let me know.
As far as links go, I can understand a site or two leapfrogging mine, but a drop from 5th place to 45 th is not explained by that. I still seem to have as many decent links as the sites that remain in the top 10. More than some.
No evidence of anyone copying the content to any noticeable extent. Checked with material from several pages. Used Copyscape as well.
What else should I look at to explain a drop from 5 to 45?
When I search ‘site: ‘ it shows 35 pages which is pretty much my entire site. When I “add the left out results” it adds one page. Could this be a clue to something? Maybe someone who understands this better than I could take a look when you have time. Thanks.
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mj1256
Staff
Joined: Jun 05, 2006
# Posts: 980
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Posted: 2007-Jul-25 23:39
have you tried updating the site, adding new content, something to make the spiders think you have a lot of activity on the site. sometimes sites just get stale and the search engines know when that happens.
just an idea
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g1smd
Staff
Joined: Jul 28, 2002
# Posts: 10465
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Posted: 2007-Jul-26 00:51
If your site shows up as www3. then you DO have a problem.
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montrsmu
Joined: Jul 07, 2007
# Posts: 31
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Posted: 2007-Jul-26 02:30
If your site shows up as www3. then you DO have a problem. >>
Thanks, g1smd. Can you explain a little more please. It appears regularly in the search engine results. It has been showing up in the url bar when I go to the web site as www3.pair.com/"mysite" for many years now, maybe always, without seeming to be a problem. So long ago that I think my listings in dmoz and Looksmart and Yahoo were submitted that way.
But if you say it's a problem, I believe it, and would like to know what you suggest to fix it.
thanks for your assistance.
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beth_lk
Staff
Joined: Jun 23, 2004
# Posts: 1308
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Posted: 2007-Jul-26 05:41
Mon are you aware that your site does not have a DOC? Not sure if this is a part of your problem , but I did want to point this out....
DOC being -
<!DOCTYPE HTML PUBLIC "-//W3C//DTD HTML 4.01 Transitional//EN"
[ Message was edited by: beth_lk 07/26/2007 10:10 am ]
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mteasdal
Joined: Eons Ago
# Posts: 376
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Posted: 2007-Jul-27 06:36
In google you have pages showing up under www and www3.
site:www.YOURDOMAIN.com
Results 1 - 10 of about 717
site:www3.YOURDOMAIN.com
Results 1 - 10 of about 325
I don't know what www3 is but you don't want it as far as I know. Stick with www.yourdomain.com for all your pages. When I have had 2 web server with the same content they both go to www. I think it was done for load balancing at the time. I put a 1.txt on both servers so I could to tell them apart. Before changing this you want to look at how many link to www pages and how many link to www3 pages. The more links should help you stick with what version.
To fix this go to Topic: "301s again" Opened by: Morch. This will show you have to use .htaccess. YOur site is case sensitive so I think it is not windows based so this .htaccess should work.
Funny thing I found
This page works
www.Yourdomain.com/robots.txt
This page does not work
www3.Yourdomain.com/robots.txt
This is what I would do but you may want to research this some more before such a bold move.
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montrsmu
Joined: Jul 07, 2007
# Posts: 31
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Posted: 2007-Jul-29 06:56
Thanks for taking a look mteasdal. Yeah, I'm pretty sure it's unix. I wonder if I should ask them about www3. Anyone here happen to know what it is.
I do remember eons ago when I registered with the above mentioned engines (which were free at the time), that they insisted the www3 be listed as the accurate url. It's interesting that it would be a problem now. I'll try to find out what it is and fix it.
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mteasdal
Joined: Eons Ago
# Posts: 376
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Posted: 2007-Jul-29 18:15
Maybe that is not the issue!
I just did some more testing and found you are not showing duplicate content for www and www3. I thought you were but after running the test below on a few url paths I found different content on both domains.
Unique Content found
site:http://www.YourDomain.com inurl:mosaic
Unique Content found
site:http://www3.YourDomain.com inurl:mosaic
Just like when I found robots.txt on only one of the paths.
I do not recommend fixing this because the url you have had for 10 years has lots of value. No dup content no need to fix this. I don't understand how your server is working to say much more about this.
------------
My experience is this that Google loves new content. I have a Real Estate directory with thousands of names. Over time the traffic slows. I then took out all the data and updated the data and my traffic would increase. I only changed the data no site changes. I also have a web page teaching how to write html 10 years old now and it can not be found unless I type lots of words from that page in the search. Maybe old content that is not updated gets pushed aside over time due to so much content out there being stale. I would look into this area next.
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WOW
Go to this link and click "page views" tab and then "max" tab to see what I am talking about.
[link]
Your traffic went off the map Jan 06 and has now corrected its self. I would look at what happened to the site or what changed during this time. It looks like your traffic has just gone back to normal.
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mteasdal
Joined: Eons Ago
# Posts: 376
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Posted: 2007-Jul-29 18:22
Over time you have had some fun with this www thing. lol
http://web.archive.org/web/*/www.YOURDOMAIN.com
www77.
www8.
www10.
www37.
www75.
www100.
This is too old school for me to understand. *SMILE*
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mteasdal
Joined: Eons Ago
# Posts: 376
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Posted: 2007-Jul-29 18:30
Many of your www# went away in 2004 and you went to YourDomain.com and www.YourDomain.com. You traffic then spiked in 2005 and I still can't figure this one out.
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mteasdal
Joined: Eons Ago
# Posts: 376
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Posted: 2007-Jul-29 18:49
Oh ye I forgot this search
site:YOURDOMAIN.com
Results 1 - 10 of about 232,000 from
You have got listings under
site:www77.YOURDOMAIN.com
I can type in a radom number and find pages. Today everyone wants only one way www.YOURDOMAIN.com anything else can cause problems.
I loved the blast from the past reading your site back in 1997 when you where a "Web Presence Provider".
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montrsmu
Joined: Jul 07, 2007
# Posts: 31
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Posted: 2007-Jul-29 18:58
Hang on a minute mteasdal, you are looking at the wrong thing I think. As I explained earlier, my site is not a "domain" site. The searches you're doing are for my host "pair." I, alas, am not them, but just a lowly website owner. See my profile for the actual site. You will find that the numbers for my site are much lower I am not the hosting site, and have never been a web provider. BTW, I very much appreciate your efforts and suggestions.
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mteasdal
Joined: Eons Ago
# Posts: 376
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Posted: 2007-Jul-29 19:11
ok back on track...
After looking at your site I have found you have many lyrics on there. Some people (SEO) have found money in having mastive sites with lyrics only. They do everything they can to rank for song words. They make their money with adsence google ads. After adsence came into the picture people look for all sorts of ways to make money. I just think adsence has created a market for people to compete with your key words.
It is hard to compete with them when they control the root of their site. You don't have control over your server when they do. Their whole site is about music and google likes that. Your domain has every topic under the sun. The thing you have going for you is links to your site.
http://www.urltrends.com/viewtrend.php?url=http%3A%2F%2Fwww3.YOURDOMAIN.com%2Fmontrsmu
[ Message was edited by: mteasdal 07/29/2007 11:24 am ]
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