Expedia penalised?



Obviously expedia's ad spend is not where google expects it to be. It would be interesting to see if there has been any changes to their ad spend.

Edit: Looks like their ad campaigns are way up in 2013. Perhaps google thinks they can squeeze them for another 25%?
 
luke6966 said:
If you are as big as Expedia, do different rules apply to you?
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Well of course. Big companies receive personalized help from Matt Cutts himself. Remeber PinkBerry, JCPenney, etc...

Google's SQ team takes advantage of these situations to show the peasants (that's us) that YES, you can clean up your shit and recover... :bootyshake:

Google: "See how nice and forgiving we are, sheeple? Expedia cleaned up to abide by our guidelines and now they've recovered their traffic. Now go back to work, punks, and clean up your act before we dickslap you next."

Pesants: "Okay... I guess... I will go disavow now... Sorry Matt... I didn't mean to :("
 
Smeems said:
Truly hope the guy that wrote that post is raped by a thousand dickwolves.
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I like stories like these because it shows that despite what Matt Cutts wants people to believe, Google's algorithm is so bad that it was unable to (or unwilling to, which is equally as bad) figure out that one of the biggest brands on Google is manipulating Google's algorithm for higher rankings.


On top of that it helps show that Google's policies are setup in a way that is most damaging to small businesses.

If you are a black hat and get penalized... who cares you can easily setup a new site and be back in business in a week.
If you are a big brand and get penalized... don't worry, Google will make the penalty temporary for some good PR and then give you your rankings back.
If you are a small business and get penalized... you're screwed because you can't just move to a new site, and since Google does not have any support to speak of, you're just sort of fucked.

So in the end the SERPs are full of big brands (who would generally be at the top anyways), and blackhat sites. The sites that are absent are the small business owners who are either afraid to do SEO or who have been penalized and can't do anything about it. And those small businesses are the exact sites Google would want to see at the top for many search terms.
 
cardine said:
On top of that it helps show that Google's policies are setup in a way that is most damaging to small businesses.
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Google to small businesses: Are you familiar with AdWords? Check out our new video - it's googly!
 
I'd be curious to know how much of Expedia's traffic is direct vs organic & paid search. I always use expedia, and I just go direct to the site whenever I'm going to use it. I'm sure a lot of people just type it in as well.

I'm not seeing them with any paid ads for the searches I checked. Yet all the other sites, Travelocity, TripAdvisor, and the major airlines all have paid search showing. INTERDASTING!

A search for "tickets to New York" "tickets to Los Angeles" etc., has Expedia in the 1 & 2 spot every time. A lot of the keywords that it appears to have lost rankings for are ones like "hotels" & "flights". When was the last time you googled "Hotels", when you were trying to find a hotel somewhere. I'll guess never.
 
cardine said:
I like stories like these because it shows that despite what Matt Cutts wants people to believe, Google's algorithm is so bad that it was unable to (or unwilling to, which is equally as bad) figure out that one of the biggest brands on Google is manipulating Google's algorithm for higher rankings.
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Doesn't take a blog post to show that though.
 
1. Wait until they get penalized
2. Wait for rankings to drop
3. Wait for profits to dip
4. Wait for stock to fall
5. Buy Stock
6. Wait for Google to give them back their rankings
7. Profit
 
Who here relies 100% on Google traffic for their income? I'm asking a genuine question and not being sarcastic. I know a certain amount of you don't for fact from past conversations but I'm interested in the percentage of time/effort collectively spent fretting about Google vs time making monies from real / other sources by way of effective marketing.

If you like, this is a IM v SEO topic really.
 
microphone head said:
Who here relies 100% on Google traffic for their income? I'm asking a genuine question and not being sarcastic. I know a certain amount of you don't for fact from past conversations but I'm interested in the percentage of time/effort collectively spent fretting about Google vs time making monies from real / other sources by way of effective marketing.

If you like, this is a IM v SEO topic really.
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I'd say 70% of our income is from SEO ATM. We've tried traditional marketing and advertising via local radio, TV and Press and also via national press (guardian.co.uk, thetimes.co.uk). We've also tried some PPC... but the Cost Per Acquisition (CPA) using these channels (£45.00) is far greater than that of our SEO campaigns (£15.00).

We also work with some affiliates, which currently accounts for 25% of our business and the other 5% i'd say is from referrals and word of mouth.

Losing sites due to manual reviews and algo updates is inevitable so we've built that into our overall business plan and we haven't been out of the top3 for our target KWs since 2010. We're not brand conscious at all so we have a new domain ranking every 3months or so... and that's worked well for us till now!
 
cardine said:
The sites that are absent are the small business owners who are either afraid to do SEO or who have been penalized and can't do anything about it. And those small businesses are the exact sites Google would want to see at the top for many search terms.
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Small businesses should stop whining. SEO and marketing is a huge industry that is perfected in years of work and has it's techniques and secrets, those who don't rank they simply suck at it.

As with any other case, when you don't get results then it means you fucking suck at that specific thing. It's not the algorithm update, it's not Matt Cutts, it's you because you suck at business and can't obtain the results for your business.

So, man the fuck up and see how you can get the desired results.

May the fittest win.

(obviously, nothing personal)
 
AlwaysAbove said:
Small businesses should stop whining. SEO and marketing is a huge industry that is perfected in years of work and has it's techniques and secrets, those who don't rank they simply suck at it.

As with any other case, when you don't get results then it means you fucking suck at that specific thing. It's not the algorithm update, it's not Matt Cutts, it's you because you suck at business and can't obtain the results for your business.

So, man the fuck up and see how you can get the desired results.

May the fittest win.

(obviously, nothing personal)
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Neil-deGrasse-Tyson-we-got-a-badass-over-here-animated.gif
 
“You will never know how strong you really are until being strong is the only option you have"

"I realized why I was lost. It was not because I did not have a map, it was because I did not have a destination"
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What a pussy

nicolas-cage-laughing.gif
 
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