whitenight - 2:47 am on Jan 8, 2010 (gmt 0)

If you can, please clarify the qualifying factors you see that make that particular SERP different than any other standard ranking shift on post holiday SERPs

I'll try... with the usual caveat -- that I often see things in the "matrix" that others simply don't see. (or won't acknowledge)

Of course, we have to go back to past posts to fully elucidate.

IN Nov and Dec, various SEO "Guru" X,Y,Z were seeing Holiday SERPs and calling them Caffeine IPs, when in fact, there were both datasets on different IPs.
(I hinted at this back then, and to the careful observer, it could be seen)

So now we have the similar situation in reverse:
Caffeine Datasets, Post-Holiday Datasets, and "Normal" datasets.

Some people are seeing Post-Holiday Datasets and calling them Caffeine. But they are neither the "normal" datasets, nor Caffeine.

For my "testing/control" sites, the Caffeine datasets are obvious.
I receive traffic (and quite a lot) for terms that ONLY rank on Caffeine and not on the other 2 datasets.
ie. some extreme cases would be #40+ SERPs on other 2 datasets and #2 SERP on Caffeine dataset.

---------------------

On top of this, we still have the fact that SEO GURUs X,Y,Z have NOT figured out that Caffiene is 2 different things with Gorg.

There's the Infrastructure update
and a Dataset rollout.
(which should be named something else, but i'm tired of getting people to see this...as if Goog Employee #1-#3 doesn't say it, it supposedly isn't "true")

IMO, The Caffeine infrastructure update is a complete mess right now.
(which is probably why they are hesitant to rollout the dataset now)

As several threads indicate and I observe,
If the old infrastructure is called "Big Daddy 1.0"
And Caffeine is "Big Daddy 2.0"
(aka superfast indexing, etc)
Then, again, after trying to roll out Big Daddy 2.0 in mid Dec, it was such a disaster that they reverted back to Florida 3.0!
Which is the nonsensical indexing and updating that's been occcuring for the past month or so.

So again, when asking Gorg Employee #1-#3 about "Caffeine" and it's status, one doesn't even know what the reply is referring to.

And they aren't going to spell out this fact to an SEO, no matter how "friendly" they are.