Why did HA's Google Rankings (SERP) drop and how to bring it back?

[Winston]

Looks like Google's recent algorithm update has benefitted the largest corporations and brand names, while lowering everyone's else's ranking down. So most people aren't happy about it. Surprise surprise. What else is new? Isn't this how things have been for thousands of years? Bigger companies get more benefit and help from every change that's made. Gee how predictable. Why doesn't anything ever change? Why is everything so predictable? Why doesn't God step in and spice things up?

https://www.searchenginejournal.com/goo ... er/368962/

Google May 2020 Core Update Officially Over – Time for a Do-Over?

The response to Google's May 2020 Core Update has been largely negative, as large brands rank in Positions 1 and 2 for a wide range of keywords.

Of course, the changes that Google's algorithms make are an industry secret. So what's the point of telling you about them?

https://blog.searchmetrics.com/us/googl ... -may-2020/

May 2020 Core Update – What has Google changed?

As per usual, Google has not revealed precise information about what has changed in the search algorithm or which industries or topics are a special focus of the Google Update. It also remains unclear whether there is a connection to the Coronavirus Pandemic and the changing search behaviour of Google users.

[Winston]

If anyone is interested in auditing their site.

The Ultimate SEO Audit Checklist
https://www.searchenginejournal.com/the ... st/196993/

Free SEO Site Audit Tools
https://www.searchenginejournal.com/fre ... ls/284841/

Free broken link checker to find broken links on your website.
https://www.brokenlinkcheck.com

More info about structured data and schema markup which Google seems to rank higher for if you use.
https://neilpatel.com/blog/get-started-using-schema/
https://ogp.me/

[Winston]

Just installed this mod in the forum:

https://www.phpbb.com/customise/db/exte ... o_metadata

Now each forum thread has good structured data and metadata. For example, here's the source code for this thread:

view-source:viewtopic.php?f=34&t=42494

Code: Select all

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Looks much better now huh? lol. Hope that brings our rankings back up.

Btw, you can view the source code of any thread by pushing Control U when you are in any thread or webpage.

[Winston]

Just installed a sitemap mod in the forum. Check out our sitemap below. Wow there's 37,000 URL's indexed in it from the forum. Huge. lol. Some of the URL's contain subsequent pages of longer threads. I've submitted it to Google Webmaster Tools already.

sitemap.xml

If you're on a mobile though, I'm not sure you should click the link above, since 37,000 URL's might crash your phone's browser. lol.

[Winston]

Might improve things a tiny bit and buy you a few more months. However, as was said before https://culturewhiz.org/forum/topic/ode-internet-forums Google is delisting internet forums in of favor of articles from well built, authoritative sites like Culture Whiz. Forums are known to have poor quality content. If you think about it, forums are mainly slow-speed chat room chatter. Google is looking for structured data [https://html.com/semantic-markup] that covers a concept completely.

Authoritative my ass @StanfordGuy. Plaigarizing site is more like it. See here:

viewtopic.php?f=16&t=42563

Also, your domain score from 0 to 100 is only 2. That's close to zero. Definitely not authoritative. You are BSing again. The only reason your site ranks well is because you are using modern software with good HTML5, structured data and metadata. Not because of anything you did. You have very little content and can't even write your own articles. Geez. You aren't as smart as I thought.

I also found that other shitty sites like this one below with 20 reasons to date foreign women are ranking well in Google, but not because of any good content.

https://www.wherewomenchaseyou.com/20-r ... ign-women/

As you can see, the article was hastily written and full of overgenerlizations and oversimplifications. It sounds like an advertising spiel for a dating site. Not even written well. It looks like it was written under an hour. And the 20 reasons were rushed through. Much of it sounded generic and bland, just empty words about stuff everyone already knows and is common sense. And the site is littered with ads from Anastasia Date too, and looks like it was made just to run ads from them. Definitely not good content or authoritative at all. Yet it ranks on first page of Google. How? Obviously because they are using the latest software and SEO mods too, like you are. That must be the only reason. Same with this one too:

https://www.internationallovescout.com/ ... eign-women

I also noticed that authoritative sites like AFA aren't ranking well in Google now either for words like "foreign women" or "international dating" like it used to before. Yet AFA has no offensive or taboo content on their site, nothing political or conspiratorial either. Their content is very tactful and non-offensive. So why would their ranking go down too? Obviously because they aren't using the latest software like you are. They are probably using some outdated software. That's the only logical explanation.

So you were wrong PAG. It's not about the content at all. It's about using the latest software. At least in these cases above, and in your case too.

[Winston]

Check this out. It seems the only reason PAG's CultureWhiz.org site ranks so well in Google is because it's NEW, not just because it was created on new software. New content seems to rank better than old content, regardless of quality. even if the old content sucks. Google seems to assume the fallacy that "new is always better, even if it isn't." I guess Google isn't as smart as we thought if it can't tell shitty sites with bad content from good quality intelligent content.

https://neilpatel.com/blog/updating-old ... t-ranking/

https://moz.com/blog/google-fresh-factor-new

[Cornfed]

Check this out. It seems the only reason PAG's CultureWhiz.org site ranks so well in Google is because it's NEW, not just because it was created on new software. New content seems to rank better than old content, regardless of quality. even if the old content sucks. Google seems to assume the fallacy that "new is always better, even if it isn't." I guess Google isn't as smart as we thought if it can't tell shitty sites with bad content from good quality intelligent content.

https://neilpatel.com/blog/updating-old ... t-ranking/

https://moz.com/blog/google-fresh-factor-new

This seems like a very weird way of ranking sites. You'd think the opposite would be the case, although maybe it is good news for those starting new Internet businesses. @fschmidt, do you have any knowledge of this?

[Winston]

Why does Google hate this site?

https://www.forbes.com/sites/ajagrawal/ ... b115112d25

http://www.theoffbeatstory.com/google-hates-website/

https://backlinko.com/google-trustrank

https://www.tmsatoday.org/index.php?opt ... o-about-it

https://vto.net.au/8-reasons-why-google ... r-website/

https://www.seomechanic.com/why-is-my-w ... h-results/

[Falcon]

PM sent. I can help using a combination of white, gray, and black-hat SEO.

[Cornfed]

PM sent. I can help using a combination of white, gray, and black-hat SEO.

I didn't think that SEO actually worked that more except by outright criminal means. It would be great if you could point us in the direction on the right tactics in some password-protected area of the forum.

[Winston]

Several issues with me and Google:

1. Google dislikes right wing sites and sites with taboo content and so has devalued them. Adsense has blocked my site too. Thats why i need to work on other domain names.

2. My home page and introduction and main pages are created with outdated software and not even mobile friendly. They need to be migrated to wordpress. Not being mobile friendly lowers my ranking.

3. Bluehost servers are slower than others. I tested this with pingdom and others have too. The slower speed penalizes me in google too. I had much better ranking when i was with godaddy servers.

4. Google does not rank forums good anymore. It prefers well written blog posts with modern software and platform. And big tech such as twitter, linkedin, instagram, etc. Those sites always come up first in google. Bastards.

So all forums in general are devalued in google now. Not just mine.

5. Google likes to list new articles now. Not older ones even if they are good and well established. That's why the hits u see on google are all newer articles. I noticed my new articles on blogger rank good on google just because they are new. Most of my older articles are old so they dont rank well. If they are migrated to new platforms like wordpress that may revitalize them and get them marked as new.

6. Google prefers big corporate sites and big tech sites now, and always rank them first, even if they suck or don't have relevant content to your search, they still come up first. That sucks and is too obviously biased and monopolized.

Look at PAGs website www.culturewhiz.org. it has little content and fake bullshit. But ranks well in google on the first page. Why? I dont know. Maybe cause its new and uses new software and has good structured data and HTML tailored for SEO. Or he knows some black hat SEO strategies. Who knows.

Any suggestions?

Btw i bought the domain name foreignwomen.org. any idea what i should do with it? Create a forum or wiki site about foreign women? Or just a blog? Or dating site? If it was a forum would u guys post there!

What u think @Yohan and @yick and @hypermak and @gsjackson?

[Yohan]

What I can see so far:

The domain mane
foreignwomen.org
is not online.

Therefore google search and also YahooJapan search suggest if you enter something about 'foreign women' or similar to go to
foreignwomen.com
which is operating and is a different website obviously.

Why not to create an additional page and put foreignwomen.org online and let it redirect to happierabroad.com?
Activate this domain.

-----------

ORG usually is obviously always searched first, maybe a reason that this culturewhiz.org gives slightly quicker results, however in google
as far as I can see from Japan

happierabroad 145.000 results in 0.41 sec
culturewhiz 31.800 results in 0.34 sec

and results also from good site, like
https://www.amazon.co.jp/-/en/Winston-W ... B003ZUY51W

I can assure you that your entire website 'happierabroad.com' works here correctly from Japan and it is very fast, no errors (formatting etc.) noticed.

The name of your website 'happierabroad' seems to be fine, no search suggests any other site except yours.
Quite different if you search for something like foreignwomen or similar...

After foreignwomen.org is online, you also should crosslink from happierabroad.com to foreignwomen.org, might help search machines to find you.

[Yohan]

About culturewhiz, sockpuppets like pitbull

viewtopic.php?t=39794

made links from happierabroad (your forum) to culturewhiz - you should delete them!

And this is what goggle will create as a search result:

goggle search result /page 2

My Observations from dating in Russia/Ukraine/Philippines ...www.happierabroad.com › forum › viewtopic
Apr 17, 2019 — Post your FREE profile on Happier Abroad Personals and start receiving messages ... http://culturewhiz.org/forum/topic/what ... manosphere.

Or this ridiculous thread....
viewtopic.php?t=39747

[Winston]

What I can see so far:

The domain mane
foreignwomen.org
is not online.

Therefore google search and also YahooJapan search suggest if you enter something about 'foreign women' or similar to go to
foreignwomen.com
which is operating and is a different website obviously.

Why not to create an additional page and put foreignwomen.org online and let it redirect to happierabroad.com?
Activate this domain.

-----------

ORG usually is obviously always searched first, maybe a reason that this culturewhiz.org gives slightly quicker results, however in google
as far as I can see from Japan

happierabroad 145.000 results in 0.41 sec
culturewhiz 31.800 results in 0.34 sec

and results also from good site, like
https://www.amazon.co.jp/-/en/Winston-W ... B003ZUY51W

I can assure you that your entire website 'happierabroad.com' works here correctly from Japan and it is very fast, no errors (formatting etc.) noticed.

The name of your website 'happierabroad' seems to be fine, no search suggests any other site except yours.
Quite different if you search for something like foreignwomen or similar...

After foreignwomen.org is online, you also should crosslink from happierabroad.com to foreignwomen.org, might help search machines to find you.

I think you misunderstood my question Yohan. Nothing is up on foreignwomen.org yet. I just bought the domain name and own it. I don't know what to do with it yet. That's why I'm asking for ideas.

I didn't know my ebook was on a Japanese version of Amazon with different reviews. Why don't they just combine all the reviews into one?

I'm not talking about searching in Google for "happier abroad". I mean searching for any topic besides my domain name. For instance, my site used to come up on the first page for "foreign women" and some of our best threads here used to come up first on Google. For example "the myth of confidence" would bring up the forum thread here as the first search result in Google. Now it's nowhere in Google. But Yahoo and Bing still lists it as the first hit. See what I mean? You can't find my site on Google unless you type "happier abroad". On PAG's Culture Whiz site, you can find it by searches for things like "making friends in Russia" which brings it up on the first page. How can that be? PAG's site is not corporate and is not big tech and has BS content. So why is it ranked so well in Google?

[Winston]

About culturewhiz, sockpuppets like pitbull

viewtopic.php?t=39794

made links from happierabroad (your forum) to culturewhiz - you should delete them!

And this is what goggle will create as a search result:

goggle search result /page 2

My Observations from dating in Russia/Ukraine/Philippines ...www.happierabroad.com › forum › viewtopic
Apr 17, 2019 — Post your FREE profile on Happier Abroad Personals and start receiving messages ... http://culturewhiz.org/forum/topic/what ... manosphere.

Or this ridiculous thread....
viewtopic.php?t=39747

Links from the forum should not count. They are all tagged as "nofollow" so they don't pass along link juice. I don't think that's the reason. What do you mean exactly?