In the last few days, I’ve set up 5 Tweet accounts, focusing on My Travel Extras, Cashback Shopper, Freshwebz, Love Your Pets & UK Shopping Spree. I’m going to follow relevant Tweets through each of these accounts and add blog entries from the relevant blogs. How does this help promote a website? Other than bringing your site to the attention of other people, I’m not sure, but it doesn’t take much to add posts, so we’ll see!

I’ve been blogging recently about the complete disappearance of my site from Google SERPS, for most of my targeted keyphrases. As suspected, there has been a Google algorithm change which seems to be favouring big brand ranking on prime category keywords.

Google has confirmed the “change” to the their algorithm which is giving big brands a helping hand in their SEO efforts. The confirmation and explanation coming via a video from Matt Cutts.

Google aren’t promoting the algorithm tweak as an update, but rather just a change to enhance the value of ‘trust’ factors. As he says in the video:

“Inside of Google, at least inside the search ranking team, we don’t really think about brands. We think about words like ‘trust’ ‘authority’ ‘reputation’ ‘PageRank’ ‘high quality.”

And apparently it’s adjustments to these elements in the ranking process that are the basis of the ranking changes we’ve noted over the past few weeks. However Matt’s quick to assert that the changes are only visible on a relatively small number of queries(!!!!). Matt states, “there’s nothing in the algo change to radically impact your current SEO plans and strategies – just more the same fundamentals.”

Not from what I’ve experienced over the last few weeks Matt – the complete decimation of the last years SEO work, content writing & link building! And now I’m told to continue doing these things that seem to have been slapped down as not good enough, whilst the big brands get a helping hand. Google – on the side of the little guy!!!

This has happened before, but never over such a prolonged period of time & now I’m starting to get worried!

Cashback Shopper is not ranking at all for 99% of my search phrases, but is still shown when searching for Cashback Shopper, so it’s still indexed.I have no idea why this sudden disappearance has happened & I’m not sure what to do about it. The site was showing in top 30 positions for dozens of key phrases & now they’re not even in the top 100!

This is only the case in Google, Yahoo rankings are still ok, although they’ve dropped a bit recently. Possibly as a result of the drop out of Google, my traffic has fallen considerably according to Google Analytics & the sites Alexa ranking is falling, down 66,000 places! (

Why have my Google positions vanished? There seems no reason for it, although the site design has been changed to match the new edeals look, does Google therefore think my site is duplicate content? This has never been a problem before though!!!

Maybe it’s a sneaky Google ploy to force me to pay £5 per click through Google Adwords instead – again, I start to think Google has too much control  & there needs to be some decent cmpetition in the world of search. I won’t be holding my breath though!

I’ve just run a ranking report for Cashback Shopper & all my results have completely vanished from Google!

The domain itself is still indexed, so the site hasn’t been dropped completely; I can only assume they are going through another one of their reshuffles /

It’s really annoying as a rankings check a few weeks ago revealed the same thing, only for all the positions to be back when I checked a couple of weeks later.

What is going on with Google? Are these shuffles going to be happening on a more regular basis & if so, how much business do we lose whilst our ranking vanish?

The dominance of Google is not doing us any good when things like this happen – I do wish Yahoo or Microsoft could come up with some other killer application that might swing some searchers back to them instead……a monopoly does no-one any good at all!

I had a bid in an auction for the domain webtraveloffers.com, but the auction ended whilst my system was still going through one of it’s interminable Vista upgrade attempts! I assumed that I would have lost the auction at the last minute, but amazingly, I got it, for the minimum bid price of $69!

Now I have to decide what to do with it lol. As mentioned before, I want to tie it in with My Travel Extras & link between the two sites somehow, offering travel offers from one, followed by holiday extras from the other. I think it could be a big job, but using Datafeedr may help to get it going.

Was half way through writing this blog when my Internet went off!!!! I’ve decided to dump Tiscali (another post about that experience to follow soon) & get Sky+HD  )  & it was obviously switched whilst I was typing….all is back on now & now it’s time to get going…..

It’s been a hectic time, changing my web host, my OS, my ISP, digital TV supplier etc. I’m hoping things have all settled down now & I can find some new motivation to kick on!!

I wrote the other day about my attempts to upgrade my XP installation to Vista. After trying 4 times & having the upgrade fail for an “unknown reason” each time, I decided that using my clean dual boot installation & re-installing the packages I need to use, was the best way forward. Any older software that won’t run under Vista, will still be in my XP installation.

So, I got all my e-mails transferred over to Outlook under Vista & installed Dreamweaver etc. Things seemed ok, apart from a couple of troublesome e-mail accounts that won’t connect to their server, so I thought I’d give Bit Defender Total Security 2009 a go, as I have a 6 month free offer from PC Advisor. What a nightmare that turned out to be!!!!!

After installing this package, Outlook came to a full stop & I kept having to close it down. I’m not sure whether it was the anti-spam that was crashing Outlook, or just the combination of 2 bloated Microsoft products running together, but I removed Bit Defender & installed the FREE Comodo Internet Security package instead.

However, Outlook is still not running properly now and after 3 days of this, I’ve really had enough! If Microsoft thinks I’ll be going through all this again for Windows 7, they’ve got another think coming!!!!

I’m considering setting up a travel site, probably using datafeedr, to complement My Travel Extras. I’ve already purchased travelcheapinfo.com but am also in 2 auctions for clearsea.com & webtraveloffers.com.

Clear Sea sounds more evocative & is the most expensive at the moment, but web travel offers seems more appropriate for what I’m going to be selling????  The auctions only have another day to run, so we’ll see which one comes through!!

Spent 4 hours the other day, trying to upgrade my PC from XP to Vista! I already have a dual boot system & run XP 99% of the time, but as I have a dual core system, with 4Gb RAM (XP can only use 3 of it) and XP is reaching the end of its support cycle, I thought I’d jump into using Vista full time & keep my XP system as the backup instead. So, being good, I backed up my system and set the Vista upgrade going.

All seemed to be going well…..the upgrade path is supposed to leave all my programs & files intact, which is why it takes so long. In fact, I had to leave it going when I went out that evening! Unfortunately, when I came back there was a “read memory” error at 75% and I had to roll back the whole installation – AAAAGGGHHH!

So, I’m once again back on XP & debating whether to bother again. I ran a memory diagnostic which revealed no memory errors, but as I often get this error message when I shut down Internet Explorer, I’m wondering if it’s an error in XP rather than the Vista upgrade.

I really cannot cope with going through a clean installation followed by rew-installing all my software, so I’m back to the inbetween club for now…..if I feel brave, I may go for the Vista upgrade again – who knows, I may get it done just as Windows 7 comes out!!!!!