Page rank.......

[Nikolai]

So I read that Google has made a new search algoritm/page rank, which would affect hits. Civfanatics was hit #2. WPC came on page 6! After a torrent hit or two... On page 20, and a lot of obscure hits and torrents later, I still haven't found Apolyton...

Time to do something radical?

[Nikolai]

Finally! On page 39, I found this thread from poly. It's not the main forum or anything though, just a thread. And a lot of WPC and CFC threads before. And seriously, no one goes to page 39 if they are searching for anything.

The same article I mentioed in the OP said Google is still tweaking the formula, so perhaps some praying is in order Robert.

[Zoetstofzoetje]

if that's the case how come 564 people visited the site through a google search today?

[MikeH]

What did they search for?

I'm not finding Poly until page 4/5 on most searches.

[Martin Gühmann]

What where you searching for? Civilization gives us on page number 2. Well could still be still better. But on the other side if you want to i,prove this than you have to post.

-Martin

[Nikolai]

if that's the case how come 564 people visited the site through a google search today?

The change is only for the english Google site for the moment, per aps they searched from a nationaltheatret Google.

[Nikolai]

What did they search for?

I'm not finding Poly until page 4/5 on most searches.

I searched for "civilization 5", without the quotation marks.

[Zoetstofzoetje]

when i look for civilization 5 forum, it's on the top of page 2 on my spanish google, just after civfanatics and wpc.

however, a local would search for "civilization 5 foro" instead, in which case poly is #2 and #3. #1 is a poly spin-off.

[Martin Gühmann]

I searched for "civilization 5", without the quotation marks.

And which google did you use?

-Martin

[Nikolai]

The English version, google.com. Not my local one. The page rank formula change has only been rolled out here, according to the news I read.

[Martin Gühmann]

The English version, google.com. Not my local one. The page rank formula change has only been rolled out here, according to the news I read.

If I search the English google.com version for Civilization 5, than I find an Apolyton thread on page 4. Well, Civilization 5 in the Works! isn't such an interesting title, but mostly I found it on page 5 or even on page 7.

By the way can you link the news you read?

-Martin

[Nikolai]

Sure. You'll need google translate or something though. It's in Norwegian.

http://www.digi.no/867567/google-endring-begraver-mange-nettsteder

[Aeson]

Page rank is a relic that no longer matters much, if at all. Kinda like Poly

[Nikolai]

Searching for "civilization", poly is on page 2 now. It's getting better. And Aeson, page rank is important for getting new posters, which is crucial if this site is to survive(which I find unlikely that it will).

[Aeson]

Page rank is a number from 0 to 10 that Google assigns each page on a site. It's basically just how many links (and from what PR pages) your site has pointing at it. It currently has little to nothing to do with where a site will rank in the search engine results (which are of course very important). Links have gone from always good, to sometimes good, often useless, sometimes toxic, as search engines have gotten much better at determining the context of links. In fact, many of the things that will quickly increase your page rank (like the bots that spam forums for links, or buying links) are more likely to be actively harming their sites' rankings in the search engines than helping.

Apolyton's rankings may be being harmed by test.apolyton.net, which is all duplicate content and is probably viewed by Google as a poorly implemented link farm. That entire subdomain should be "noindex" and probably "nofollow".