Spine - 4:21 am on Oct 6, 2004 (gmt 0)

I can't believe this is intentional, I too hope that things revert.

For some terms I follow, it's not as bad, but still full of 'celebrity-name.domain.biz/celebrity-keyword1-keyword2/celebrity-keyword.html' pages that are auto generated, beating out sites with original content. In some cases rock solid .edu sites that haven't moved in a year and have no revenue scheme are down badly also.

That suggests to me that it's not about punishing affiliates, driving people to buy adwords or anything else planned by human beings with brains.

BUT, another thing I'm seeing: Several terms I follow return SERPs where, for the first 5 pages NONE of the sites listed have the phrase in the title tag, or the snippet showed by google (even though lots of good sites used to show up the old, traditional way). On some other very similar phrases, the results do show the phrase in the title and the snippet like always, so what to make of that?

The idea that sites that have passed inspection by Yahoo and DMOZ editors could be beaten down by cheap spam makes me question whether Google has blown a fuse somewhere, somehow. The weird SERPs with no mention fo the phrase in the title really confuse me though, as it's almost looking like a filter.

Fingers crossed that happy people will be posting here soon saying that they can see stuff coming back where it belongs.
I'm probably not contributing a lot to the thread, but this is weighing heavily on my mind the past 12 days or so.

As others have said, IMHO the SERPs have never been as good as they were before fall 2003, and not just for my sites, but for things I search on a hobby 'joe surfer' level also.

[edited by: Spine at 4:45 am (utc) on Oct. 6, 2004]