Slipping the SEO Filter – SEO Experiment Update

The laid back atmosphere in Ibiza and the fact that a lot of the time, most of us here have the Ibiza condition of not actually knowing what day it is, is not very conducive to the most scientific of experiments on our site, so we’ll have to leave that to the experts (Neyne ) and make our apologies for the less-than-scientific tweaks / observations & processes in use here..

Anyone who’s been here before (to this blog, not Ibiza) will probably know that we think we possibly ran afoul of the fabled Google -950 filter after some aggressive refocusing of the site a couple of week ago, primarily at the phrase seo services

Unfortunately we’re not so good on patience, and have had G back 3 times to re-cache since then, with a staged retreat on the most aggressive nav anchor changes.

We seem do seem to have re-aligned the site with partial success, and there has been a partial recovery in places, but certain phrases we were quite strong in before have been affected.

..As an example, SEO Packages is down about 80 places from pre change levels.

The only changes made affecting this page were the addition of the word “SEO” into the nav structure that previously just said “packages”.

..We removed the “SEO”s from the navigation and the page slid back into view within 3 days of site recaching.

Comparing to the best figures on the right it still doesnt make pretty reading but is coming back to us fast now,

but we do also seem to have swapped improvements in some areas for drops in other areas…

**all figures given on Google.com unpersonalised search.

..for example.. “business seo services” & “small business seo services” are both up from mid #50’s prior to the changes to hovering around #9-#11 on Google.com at the moment. (+40-ish)

however, just prior to the changes we were at #3-5 for “business seo” and at approx #17 for “small business seo”. Now, they are at #19 & #40-something (-20ish) respectively.

So if we hit a filter we slipped it fairly quickly because we’re now at the grand heights of #759 for “seo services” up from #774 yesterday, suggesting a slow release?

..but more interestingly suggesting that the filter is absolutely phrase dependent, and that variations of the phrase, ie “seo services + malta” remain completely unaffected, because lets just say the the Maltese invasion seems to have gone OK..

try Google search for SEO Services Malta ..despite there being little competition it’s clearly not filtered or “penalised” either.

And then there’s “SEO Packages”, hovering at about #104 currently, but..

“SEO Training Packages” at a steady looking #1? Try Search

So, if these are filters it would look as though they are set to “exact phrase” and ignore variations completely, and it appears “SEO Packages” is possibly experiencing a different filter now holding it at about -70-80?

Nor is “SEO + Malta” hindered, but “SEO” itself..? well this is where it gets quite strange..

Google webmaster tools is reporting that for the month of May we’ve been showing at #15 for “SEO” ??!! ..despite the fact our (daily) scannings havent seen it in the top 1000 anywhere for the past 3 weeks.

And analytics doesnt show these alleged hits either?

…Is this some new trick by Google, hurl your site right off the edge of the known Searchiverse, but show you that you’re just off 1st page in WMT to try and take our minds off it?

..Or maybe they are reporting our new pre-filtered rank for it inside WMT ??

..That’s our preferred take as you can probably imagine, “were it not for that pesky filter…”

Tagged as: filters, Google, SEO, seo experiments, seo theories