Let's do a poll - who are having problem with google and what's wrong

vanished sites, burried results, dispeared PRs, let google hear this...

[dididudu]

Hi guys, I have a thought, let's put together a "little" list of problems that some of our webmaster are experiencing so far. However, before you put down anything, please read the rules of this forum and the standard format of this thread. I don't want to start a thread for people to simply yelling at google, buy more to put down their problem they are experiencing so far. Mind you, according to GG, this update is far from over, so, your problem may just be solved over the next few days (weeks), but I think these information are still valuable to the new webmasters, or even google themself. :)

Simply put down the following information in ur reply:

1) what's the problem, (no url posting), use simple words, like site vanished, PR dropped to a white bar/grey bar.

2) when did this happen. Please stick to the recent event, if you had problem since the last update, please do not post it here.

3) how long have your sites been online (from what I know, people who have sites online within the last 40 days are not in the same boat with people who have sites that over months old)?

4) what was the original PR before you had this problem.

5) I hope you all do have legit material (no spam), however, our guesses so far is that the new google algo may be strickier than before, so, put down what do you think that could caused a penalty on your site. (such as, it could be duplicated contents, hidden links). Remember, in simple words, no need to say why u had them. (To make you feel better, hey, if google never detected it before this update, then ur site is perfect legit up to now, nothing to be ashamed of)

6) You comments: what do you think is happening, and what do u want to say to google... (again, please do not use harsh tones. neither googleguy nor google owes us anything, they are here to help us to gain fortunes, they have their own reasons of making changes, we can't blame them for everything we see now).

So, guys, please share your thoughts, and moderators/admins, please keep this thread clean for useful information sharing. Thank you all!

-DiDu

[creative craig]

hmmm from nowhere back to number 3 where I used to be last update, bit strange.. but hey I'm back :)

[klickman]

Creative Craig,

I notice the exact same thing. I was totally missing from sj yesterday. Now my #2 and #3 keywords which I was #1 on are back on sj today. Still waiting for main keyword to show up (I hope). Don't know what happend but thank you Google!

My #2 keyword yesterday I as at page #44 SERP #476.

[reneewood]

UGH. I was #2 on sj when this all began. Then I disappeared for a week. Then I came back at #5. Last night I discovered I was gone again. Luckily I've still got my ranking on www. I'm hoping this doesn't roll.

[c1bernaught]

It seems I have 3 sites, all new in the index as of March 2003, that look lime they were missed by deepbot. Although a review of my logs shows deepbot hitting every page of all three sites. None of the pages, where I was ranked top 5 in serps, are anywhere to be found in the index.

All three sites contain no hidden text and are not cross linked.

None of these site are in the same vertical.

I am very confused by this entire dance, if it is a dance.

[steve128]

creative craig
You will be back, because it is old data

I have a domain I let go in January expired capput, ranked well sales poor, I moved on, fell off the serps end of Jan/early Feb

Now it is back, page one for many keywords, a surfer will get a "page not found", unless they click on the cache, hey I may even make a sale

Bad for the surfer though, I would imagine there are now plenty more 404's out their

[drmkensington]

So happy I'm not the only one waking to a suprise every morning on my google positions. bouncing like a yoho in and out of keyword placings.

dm

[markis00]

I really hope this google problem is fixed soon. I plan to make a new website soon and with this kind of instability it is really hard to say whether or not it is a good idea to start any web ventures at the moment.

Quite frankly, what in the hell is wrong with Google?

[steve128]

markis00
Get on make the site, this is a glitch a major one imho, but all will be well within 30 days

[c1bernaught]

I think I miscommunicated in my last post. I meant to say that none of three sites that I spoke about have any pages in the top 500 listings.

A search for the domain finds the index page, with decent PR, but again, I can't find it in the top 500 listings. This is odd because each of these three sites had many pages achieving top 10 listings for the keywords in each market I was targeting. I can't find any pages, anywhere.

Now, my logs show deepbot being very busy on each of these sites. I gather from this that the pages are out there in some server. Not sure why they haven't been assigned a weight or added to the new index.

I know GG has said to wait and I have done so. However, as many have posted, there is something quite wrong with this index. It is bad for both the seeker of information and the builder of that information.

"It is an ill wind indeed"

[crobb305]

Many many people read this forum. I wonder how long it will be before some member of the media catches wind of this index and formulates a story that will portray Google in a negative light. Google really needs to get this index fixed (as GG said would happen once it got to the other datacenters). It's been a month since we first saw it on -sj, and now it is bordering on ridiculous that it is still lagging behind. Of course any media story should be factually-sound, but I am sure one could find many examples of search irrelevancy stemming from problems discussed in these threads.

Ok so it wouldn't make for such a good news story. No search engine is perfect, but I sure do wish Google would hurry up with it! I think they are changing the way they do their updating and it may be painful in the beginning. Fingers crossed that things will improve! ;)

C

[cayleyv]

Seems like the www index is back to where it was before the update. i am on the West coast in CA - can anyone confirm that www has (temporarily?) reverted to pre dance results?

[olwen]

I can't understand the change that has happened with my homesite. It used to rank #1 for arealname.

Now www.arealname.co.uk ranks number 1, and redirects to another site. PR4, 11 backlinks, arealname nowhere on the page. Google's cache shows the same.

[myisp.xxx...] and [myisp.xxx...] are PR5, many more backlinks appear number 2 when you search for arealname?

[steveb]

Lovely, now for my most important word I've completely dropped out of whatever datacenter is being fed to Yahoo right now.

[taos47]

I personally see this as insulting, as many friends are out of the current index (for no appearant reason that can be found), but a obvious reported spammer is #1 for keywords.

How many times do you have to report someone?

[deanril]

Now on WWW we are looking at atleast 5 week old data, Im pissed...........

[cindysunc]

Yes looks old, rankings look like rankings from a previous month. Really doesn't look good. Don't understand why Google would let this go live. Where is the last crawl? When can be expect it? Where are all the pages that were their last month and now are gone? Backlinks, pages, new data missing. Is there some sort of time frame that we can expect this to come back. Was the crawl lost somehow?

[Stefan]

Now on WWW we are looking at atleast 5 week old data

Mine is somewhat older than 5 weeks, closer to 9, but the regular/old update schedule would sometimes result in delays of 8 weeks getting pages indexed, depending on when they went up, deepcrawled etc. 5 weeks isn't bad... don't be too concerned over it.

As others have said, the start of the next deepcrawl is the next important Google event to happen. Best to keep getting the new pages up and try to be patient.

[ncsuk]

Backlink problem as far as I can tell.

Previous = 130
Now = 3

Thats a drop of 96.1%

Was #3 for main keyword, now number 17 and a PR drop of 1 from 5 => 4.

Added about 12 new pages as well which are in the index.

Seems mainly to be a backlink problem...

[hamster77]

And now... to add insult to the injury of pages gone missing and/or dropped like a stone in the SERPS, some of our clients' sites that were previously unaffected by all of this have now lost their PR - down from 5/6 to 0 or greyed out. The newer sites that are affected are greyed out, the older ones are down to 0. This has happened in the last few hours. All the sites that are affected are now showing no backlinks at all. I thought Google was supposed to be added the backlinks in, but now they seem to be taking them out! Our own site and a few others are staying the same at the moment, but who knows what's going to happen to them in the next few hours...

I was staying fairly calm about this (if a bit whingey) and thinking it would come right, but it's getting worse and worse. I know there are a lot of people in the same boat and we are hoping it's just a blip, but we don't seem to be getting much reassurance from Google (what problem?) and it's very difficult when a client phones up to ask why she can't find her site on Google to have to say there's nothing I can do about it and I have no idea what's happened.

And I know Google isn't supposed to owe any of us anything, but Google makes the rules, we try to play by the rules - not easy to do if Google changes them and then doesn't tell us what they are, or messes up and won't admit it.

[chiyo]

crobb wrote">>Many many people read this forum. I wonder how long it will be before some member of the media catches wind of this index and formulates a story that will portray Google in a negative light.

No matter how much we like WebmasterWorld it is hardly a respected source. 99.9% of posts and posters are anonymous. We dont know who they are, which makes it easier for people to express opinions hiding behind the anonymity of a nick.

And how newsworthy, apart from to the trade press, is the opinions of webmasters - or indeed the opinions of KFC's coleslaw provider who may say that KFC is not only choosing their coleslaw providers or products improperly, let alone potato salad, chicken or soda pop properly? Now if USERS started complaining or leaving Google and KFC in numbers that WOULD be news.

The webmaster experience with Google is totally different from the user experience, thought im not syaing it is not important. Just less important than we would like to think.

[edited by: chiyo at 10:06 pm (utc) on May 20, 2003]

[deanril]

It will all be better in the end grasshopper!

Master why you call me grasshopper, "cause you ugly like insect"

I dont care if its better, this just sucks. I really feel its broken and they are trying to fix it. And feeding all a huge line of bull.

[deanril]

Mine is somewhat older than 5 weeks, closer to 9, but the regular/old update schedule would sometimes result in delays of 8 weeks getting pages indexed, depending on when they went up, deepcrawled etc. 5 weeks isn't bad... don't be too concerned over it.

As others have said, the start of the next deepcrawl is the next important Google event to happen. Best to keep getting the new pages up and try to be patient.

After Further evaluation my RANKING is 9 weeks old, but the title and snippet is 5 weeks old.

[Stefan]

It's all very frustrating, for sure, deanril, but the value of WW is that people can come together, compare notes, learn from all the different forums, and in the Google News forum, try to figure out what the hec is going on and deal with it. We have to stay focussed.

Please don't see this as patronizing... just trying to help.

[deanril]

I agree with on one point and that is there is nothing we can do, IF google is broken.

However if google is not broken and they are just playing games over there, then something like i said "This Sucks" however un-contructive it sounds, can and may be useful, and quite possibly be the needle that breaks the camel's back.

Google peeps read here, you know.

[littlecloud]

I am not getting 9 week old serps on www., I am seeing the same new -sj results on www. as I have been seeing all day.

[Stefan]

All true, deanril, but I doubt if Google is playing games... I think they're trying to make money.

From what I see, many problems stem from the fact that the new index/whatever is based on a very old crawl. The links page stuff... I don't know.

They've gone about this change very clumsily. We probably have to wait until a deepcrawl and new index before it's sorted out. Maybe the April crawl will suddenly appear but I doubt it. In the meantime, we can try to figure out what changed, work on the sites, and that's about it. I'm not hanging myself 'cause they lost some of the site... it's all there in other SE's.

Google isn't down for the count by any stretch, they've been clever so far and probably will continue to be; if this shakes the pedestal a bit, so it goes.

[deanril]

Timing is everything at times, many have prospered with timing.

Yahoo bought Inkomi, for google to play around like this at this point in time, is not wise.

You can type in searches and get non relevant sites. Do that twice, and somebodys home page just changed to all the web ect.

In all logic, google will lose Yahoo, why would they want to lose more? Wrong time to play, i say.

[Jakpot]

good points

[UK_Web_Guy]

Whether this is a problem or not, GoogleGuy please take a look at this thread.

It seems that regional filters don't seem to be working quite as well on the new indexes

[webmasterworld.com...]

UK hosted index pages are not appearing on UK searches.

[needinfo]

It seems that regional filters don't seem to be working quite as well on the new indexes

UK_Web_Guy

It's interesting you should say that because i've noticed something on the new results which seem to suggest that Google are possibly having problems with a sort of sub regional filter (if there is such a thing). Our industry's keyword phrases mainly include various uk regions and what i've noticed is that on the top page relevant pages are being returned with semi relevant pages.

For example a search for "london widgets" is returning widget sites specific to london on the first page but also sites for widgets in birmingham or portsmouth on the first page.

I've checked all pages returned on the first page and they're ALL uniquely relevant to their respective uk location.. for example the portsmouth page does not mention london at all and so on...

It's almost as if Google is only reading the widgets part of the search term.