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Oh No!!! Was Active Rain dropped from the search engines???????????????????????????

By Timothy Schwartz

Real Estate Broker/Owner with Century 21 Mack Morris Iris Lurie

February 27, 2007 04:26 AM

Was Active rain dropped in the search engines???????????????????????

Last week when I searched "houses in Colts Neck" on Google my other blog (not ActiveRain) came up on the first page as the fourth web site listed. I am happy to be be on the first page of Google.

That same day web site number 5 on the first page my company site came up http://www.showcaserealty.com

That same day last week my agent page came up on the first page position number 7 http://www.ThinkofTim.com

On the second page position # 14 was my active rain site and my localism posts came up on the second page as well.

When I searched today, there were no active rain sites or localism sites on the first 10 pages. How could I lose such placement in one week? I have been diligently posting Market Reports and information including pictures about Colts Neck, NJ and houses for sale in Colts Neck.

My other sites are still on page 1 of google, only active rain was effected.

Can anyone speculate as to what may have happened? I have since added a new site in my Active Rain profile and put it in the last name field....http:www.monmouthmls.com

Thanks in advance for any advice or wisdom that is collectively in this community.

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Jon Washburn

Seattle, WA

Timothy,

Search engines are kinda like a living organism, their dynamics are constantly changing. ActiveRain's search rankings as a whole are increasing extremely fast every month! I can't say exactly why your ranking on that one search term deceased so much, but I would bet that 100 new search terms that lead to your ActiveRain blog filled it's place.

The beauty of blogging is that your search results are not limited to a few keyword stuffed phrases, but allow for an infinite combination of keywords based on your natural language as typed in your blog postings.

It is worth noting that ActiveRain.com has received over 150k click throughs from search engines this month, and yet no search term (other than derivatives of ActiveRain) got more than 200 clicks. It is a phenomenon known as the long tail

Feb 27, 2007 04:56 AM

Tim Maitski

Atlanta Communities Real Estate Brokerage - Atlanta, GA

Truth, Excellence and a Good Deal

Sometimes new pages get indexed and ranked high very quickly. Then they slowly fade away. I've even seen days when my home page disappears for some good terms and then comes back the way it was. I've given up trying to figure out the reasons. I just accept that I'll never know for sure. Just keep putting stuff up and eventually some of it will stick to your advantage. But it does drive home a big point. Don't rely on search engine traffic to bring you all of your business. It can be gone in a flash.

Feb 27, 2007 05:06 AM

Matt Heaton

Timu Corp - CEO, ActiveRain - Co-founder - Bothell, WA

I wouldn't worry too much. Google has been in the midst of some significant updates for about 5 days now. Things are moving around quite a bit. Throughout this period our traffic from Google has been increasing. ActiveRain.com is up about 40% if traffic this month and Localism.com about 100%.

Feb 27, 2007 05:07 AM

Timothy Schwartz

Century 21 Mack Morris Iris Lurie - Marlboro Twp, NJ

Thanks for all the responses.

Jonathan: Thanks for the education

FEEDPOT: I will have to see what's cooking there. Thanks.

Feb 27, 2007 05:33 AM

Gena Riede

Riede Real Estate, Lic. 01310792 - Sacramento, CA

Real Estate Broker - Sacramento CA Real Estate (916) 417-2699

Timothy, although I am very interested in reading about this I need to remove it from Listing by Address. I hope you understand.

Feb 27, 2007 07:16 AM

Jim Crawford

Long & Foster - Fredericksburg, VA

Jim Crawford Broker Associate Fredericksburg VA

Business as usual at Google! Google can sometimes rotate pages on almost a shift basis. This is not unusual for Google to rotate in 8 hour intervals. Other times a site position can be static for months or even years. Also when Google is analyzing sites as in a Google dance, your site will move from the mid to last page of results. If it has 10 pages of results, a site or page does not disappear it is simply buried deeper.

Also, a trend that I am seeing lately is that secondary pages are being removed, and primary url is the only page found. It will show internal pages as being indexed, but for the most part it does not seem to display those secondary pages unless there is a suitable page rank. Most of this behavior seems to have started when Google pushed their site-maps. By using site-maps, Google is actually able to determine relevancy of the pages. As always with Google their formulas are not public knowledge, just speculation.

Feb 27, 2007 08:49 AM

Timothy Schwartz

Century 21 Mack Morris Iris Lurie - Marlboro Twp, NJ

Gena, no problem. I understand and thanks for being polite about it. I did feel it was an important issue and it should be in all groups since we are all potentially affected.

Jim: As far as url's go, don't the search engines only index one per site?

Matt: What updates is Google making?

Feb 27, 2007 12:51 PM

Joan Whitebook

BHG The Masiello Group - Nashua, NH

Consumer Focused Real Estate Services

Hmm I wonder with the advent of blogging, if the search engines will find a way to not give so much importance to blogging. It seems every time someone thinks of a way to get pages to come up higher in the search engines -- things change -- and they we will have to evolve to the new solution. For now, it looks like blogging is still a good vehicle for getting notice on the search engines.

Feb 27, 2007 01:29 PM

Timothy Schwartz

Century 21 Mack Morris Iris Lurie - Marlboro Twp, NJ

Joan, it was good for me too until something changed this week..The good news is I am getting action on my web sites and I am still on the first page of google.

Feb 27, 2007 02:49 PM

Jim Crawford

Long & Foster - Fredericksburg, VA

Jim Crawford Broker Associate Fredericksburg VA

Timothy"As far as url's go, don't the search engines only index one per site?" No. They can index relevant pages,a nd can go quite deep. Google makes updates all the time. The bigger ones are called "Google Dance!"

Feb 27, 2007 03:40 PM

David Abernathy

Waterfront Properties & Club Communities - Jupiter, FL

Palm Beach County Real Estate

It is always interesting to read perceptions of how Google works...

We have also seen many post on Google come and quickly disappear. My .02 is for you to do some testing with various techniques to see what you can get to stay and what dissapears.

Dave

Mar 04, 2007 09:51 AM

Nick M.

Certified Residential Appraiser- West Palm Beach Real Estate - West Palm Beach, FL

Realtor-Appraiser in West Palm-South Florida Real Estate Appraiser

I noticed last week that for one or two specific terms, i shot to the top, then disappeared (along with the page that was just beneath me) and now i'm top again. Also, another page that has been up for 3 years, and hasn't been updated was at the top, dropped and now on top again. oohhh those goooglers.. i'll get them by just contiually posting and posting and posting..

Mar 05, 2007 11:56 PM

John Occhi

AZ Veteran Notary Services - Marana, AZ

Mobile Notary Public/Certified Loan Signing Agent

Tim,

you scared the dicens out of me, so I checke Google for HemetCA Real Estate - the most popular term in town and my personal website showed up as #5 - before this the highest I had been able to achieve, as of about a week ago, was #25 and my blog is in the #9 place - I thought it was awesome

Mar 06, 2007 04:38 PM

Timothy Schwartz

Century 21 Mack Morris Iris Lurie - Marlboro Twp, NJ

John, sorry for the false alarm, thanks for all your search engine tips. My rain blog is not coming up anymore but my google blog http://www.coltsneckopinion.com is number 3 and my personal site http://www.ThinkOFTim.com is number 5 on google. Yippieeeeee.

Mar 07, 2007 12:41 AM

Timothy Schwartz

Century 21 Mack Morris Iris Lurie - Marlboro Twp, NJ

Benjamin, thanks for stopping by. Keep on blogging, some og this stuff will make it the engines, right?

Mar 07, 2007 03:16 AM

Nick M.

Certified Residential Appraiser- West Palm Beach Real Estate - West Palm Beach, FL

Realtor-Appraiser in West Palm-South Florida Real Estate Appraiser

same here.. shot to the top, hung back then back up top again.. yoo hooo life is goood.

PS. Tim, i came here cause when i saw your comment in the email, i had to give you a spammer award for putting 3 links in a comment! then i noticed its your blog..

ohhh.. too quick on the draw!! :)

Mar 07, 2007 08:32 AM

Timothy Schwartz

Century 21 Mack Morris Iris Lurie - Marlboro Twp, NJ

Nick, I guess any award is better then no award at all. You are right, never be too quick to judge.

Mar 07, 2007 08:39 AM

Robert McArtor

RE/MAX Components - Fallston Maryland - Bel Air, MD

Top Listing Agent for Baltimore and Harford County

Google is certainly going through a change. I was ranked #1 with my auction site http://www.harfordadvantage.com/ for over a year and now #3. I am still working on my REALTOR site http://www.MarylandsHomeTeam.com/ and my Moms site.....OK, I'll stop there. I don't need any awards!!

Mar 07, 2007 11:48 AM

Timothy Schwartz

Century 21 Mack Morris Iris Lurie - Marlboro Twp, NJ

Robert, first pae on google is great, whether you are no.1 or no. 10. Front page is front page.

Mar 07, 2007 12:29 PM

Rob Parker

London web Marketing - Toronto, ON

Google has for al ong time listed pages that it first finds and then they drop off and re-appear later, in the old days it was know as freshbot. You should also remember they are hundreds of Datacenters, these are not always in sync with each other and you may not always hit the same datacenter. Hence you can see different results at differnet times throughout the day or week.

Mar 09, 2007 07:20 AM