Google June 2003 : Update Esmeralda

Confirmed

[Brett_Tabke]

We are seeing significant changes in Serps, back link numbers, fresh dates, and indexes at a couple of data centers.

This might mean a possible update.

WebmasterWorld Google Update Changes:

The problem: Chit chat noise in update threads.

Last month we hand several thousand messages posted about the update. The volume level was intense and people couldn't find the info that was appropriate. Many senior members complained about the "me too" chit chat messages being left.

We are not going to do that this month. If you don't have anything new to add to a thread thing please kick back and read. Additionally, we are going to be proactive in keeping those threads clean. Again, the volume is so high this time of month that informing everyone of any thread tidying is near impossible.

We would appreciate your continued latitude, cooperation (thanks), and patience as we head into this months update.

Thanks.
For the Team,
Brett Tabke

Google Update FAQ:
[webmasterworld.com...]

Messages in this thread do not count towards user message totals.

Understanding Dominic: (the previous update):
[webmasterworld.com...]

[patrol]

today I see different dates for the first time in one search listing. In the morning I saw only 13. Juni 2003 in the listings. Now, in Germany evening I see 14. Juni 2003 and 15. Juni 2003 in the same search. That means Google mixed 3 days in ~ 10 hours. And at the moment some heavy spammers are filtered out. It looks like the freshbots become a new influence for the search listings.

[waynet]

I see that there is 799,000 backlinks on www-fi.google.com and there are new pages in the index. Is this the start of a new update?

[GoogleGuy]

I'm happy to confirm it's a new index. Some extra comments are here:
[webmasterworld.com...]

(that thread may get folded into this thread, but I wanted to make sure that people saw it :)

<added>
Actually, why don't I paste it in here as well, just in case..
</added>

Here's what I said in the other thread:
Bonus points to UK_Web_Guy. :) I think we may have to change this thread name to "New Holiday Logo and Update." ;) I don't recall what name Brett and the mods were leaning toward. Last I heard, it was Esmerelda or something. :)
I've been poking through the new index myself. I found one link from April, but almost all the links I found were newer. The pages are much fresher, of course, and for all the sites I was keeping a list to check on, things looked good. After Brett slaps a name on it, I'll put out a request for feedback.

I did notice the tendency to return subpages rather than index pages for some queries. I'll check around with a few more folks than I did last time to find out if that characteristic will change over time.

Let's see, what else? I guess this index answers many of the questions about deepbot vs. freshbot. It should be pretty clear that freshbot can transform into deepfreshbot if needed. :)

I'll check around throughout the day if there are other tidbits I can help with or questions that I can answer.

[Seattle_SEM]

I wonder if this update will take as long as Dominic to make it to the other data centers?

[GoogleGuy]

Good question, Seattle_SEM. Without making any promises, my hunch is that this index will make it out faster.

[Dayo_UK]

Thanks Googleguy :)

Not seeing DMOZ/Directory category link for my site that did have the DMOZ Category link before DOM (Not backlink - the link under the serp)

I guess we are at an early stage of this dance, so lets wait and see.

[Dayo_UK]

There must be a freshbot that is still acting like a freshbot out there though - I had a site that was picked up by fresh and listed about two weeks ago but has not made it into fi - so was the deepcrawl by freshbot before that? - dont think so as I have a backlink for another site that was only added a week or so ago.

Someone did comment in another thread that fresh pages from a certain IP were only appearing in the new serps as fresh.

[GoogleGuy]

Dayo_UK, I think that there's still a very-fresh crawl of millions of pages each day. So a page can additionally show up because of that very-fresh crawl. That usually bodes well for the next cycle of deep crawling.

[zeus]

GodLikeLotus, dont think about the toolbar the next week or so, it would not show you the right PR in a update.

zeus

[dan_popescu]

I hope this isn't final-one site that was launched in January is gone from the index after being there since Feb.

Also, I see some curious search results. For instance I used to rank 1st for these 2 search phrases. Now I still am 1st for one of them but nowhere to be found for the other. I noticed this at other (not mine) sites also. Like a particular site is not ranked YET for some search terms. Anyone else noticing this?

[webdev]

Whats the results showing on the VA data center these seem very different...

[mauijaws]

Hi all (especially GoogleGuy),

I have a huge problem in the new index on fi. I have 607 pages for my site in the index. However most of the pages (over 80%) do not have a cached version, so they are not ranked for keywords (the serp just shows the url).

This happened as well in the dominic update. Some people said that this might change during Dominic, but it didn't.
The pages were all successfully spidered and ranked for March and April.

Two possible problems:
1. Dynamic pages with 2 parameters.
2. There is a spidertrap for people spidering the pages. Its a linked 1x1 pixel image. Robots.txt forbids following the link for crawlers.

But it doesn't make sense as some pages with the dynamic url and the trap are indexed, most of them are not.

I do not know what to do? There was no downtime.

If somebody has a clue. Please help. GoogleGuy maybe?

[zeus]

dan_popescu, your problem could be that some sites that link to you, which has some of those keywords you are talking about is not yet updated, it is still the beginng.

zeus

[edited by: zeus at 9:25 pm (utc) on June 15, 2003]

[Stefan]

That usually bodes well for the next cycle of deep crawling

Ahem, GG, does that mean we will see an actual deepcrawl again?

My widget preservation page is back, give thanks and praise. I actually have freshtags showing for Jun 15. Amazing.

[GoogleGuy]

markus007, it's nice that the reported number of backlinks are both more accurate and for most folks should be larger than Dominic. The reported number of backlinks for now vs. 2-3 months ago were apples and oranges (that's why I counseled patience when people thought that their number of backlinks had dropped in Dominic), but now vs. Dominic is apples to apples. I'm just putting that out there for the experts who are really hard-core backlink watchers.

If you don't understand any of what I just said, erm, then you don't really need to worry about it. You can just rest easier knowing that our backlink reporting is more accurate now. :)

[Dayo_UK]

Actually re Zues comment

>>>>dan_popescu, your problem could be that some sites that link to you, which has some of those keywords you are talking about is yet updated, it is still the beginng.

Ok comment for previous updates, however do we know that movement is still likely on this new system.

Googleguy was very keen on previous dances to say at the beginning of the dance that movement can still affect the serps during the dancing period.

[bluecorr]

Anyone can guess when the PR will begin to be updated? Alternatively, if we point the toolbar to the -fi, are we likely to get some new values? Speaking of, what's -fi's ip?

[UK_Web_Guy]

GoogleGuy

Are the current serps on -fi, what you would call stable?

I.e can we expect much flux between what we see and what is rolled out to the rest of the datacentres?

Just wondering whether things are still changing on -fi?

[GoogleGuy]

"Ahem, GG, does that mean we will see an actual deepcrawl again?"

If you're asking whether you'll see crawls from the IP range formerly known as deepbot, I would say "probably not." If you're asking whether we'll continue to deeply crawl and index the web, then the answer is "definitely yes."

Hopefully that makes sense. The index that's coming out now was crawled by what people call freshbot. But freshbot can crawl deeply too. It would make more sense for people to rename it deepfreshbot. :)

[edited by: GoogleGuy at 9:30 pm (utc) on June 15, 2003]

[zeus]

Dayo_UK, I still think the update is like in the old days, but just with more freshbot activity in a month, which can change the ranks a bit.

zeus

[AAnnAArchy]

beachboy <<One of my very early observations is that most of the very heavy guestbook spammers are gone (at least in the fields I cover). So hopefully Google finally evaluated an effective and very necessary new filter.>>

Naw, I still see the same guestbook stuff. Although, now I know how to predict an update...first, my big moneymaking site makes a jump to #6, then within 24 hours, the update begins and dumps me. Two updates, er, a Dominic and an Esmeralda, in a row. Luckily, all of my eggs are spread out a bit more these days.

[GoogleGuy]

mauijaws, that sounds like we weren't able to fetch pages from your site--often that's the case if only the url shows. It could be that we just ran out of space or time. I wouldn't worry too much, esp. since we were able to crawl some pages. I would think we'd be able to find most of your pages over time.

[GoogleGuy]

UK_Web_Guy, an index update can still bring some flux with it, so I wouldn't call the results final just yet. I thought about telling the one poster how to check their PageRank at www-fi, but reconsidered, just because there can be changes before the update is complete. It's probably better for most people to wait until the index switchover is complete. Then at least if you're expert enough to do it yourself, you also have enough perspective to bear in mind that things can change some before the index switchover is final. :)

[markus007]

Googleguy, i have the same problem as mauijaws for some pages. My custom logs show googlebot fetching the page, but due to network error, etc etc they don't seem to make it into the index.

A big change i noticed with this update in my field is all the huge link farms are gone. I guess those spam reports helped.

[reneewood]

My site is back, I'm happy to say. Unfortunately I never did regain my backlinks. Not only that, but the backlinks I had prior to Dominic are gone to. Anyone have any explaination for that? As the update progresses is there any chance they will appear? Or are all of the backlinks for this update already there?

[rfgdxm1]

Gotta wonder about this index. On one specific single word SERP I currently have the #1 spot. Only problem is that it is the *wrong site* of mine that is #1 for that. My other site whose home page is optimized for this search word, and was #3 last month, that home page is no longer in the top 100?! Although one barely relevant page on that site did somehow make it to #7. I guess it is still too early in the dance to conclude anything. However, if this holds Google is totally whacked.

[Dolemite]

If you're asking whether you'll see crawls from the IP range formerly known as deepbot, I would say "probably not." If you're asking whether we'll continue to deeply crawl and index the web, then the answer is "definitely yes."

Hopefully that makes sense. The index that's coming out now was crawled by what people call freshbot. But freshbot can crawl deeply too. It would make more sense for people to rename it deepfreshbot. :)

I'm curious if there's a reason behind this, other than to confuse webmasters?

Does this represent an actual change in methodology or just different use of IPs?

[zeus]

reneewood, normaly when a update start the backlinks does not change that much, if you have seen one change, like more links or less I would not expect so see more changes in your back links in this update.

zeus

P.s ups I just seen I become senior, damn I fell old now.

[GoogleGuy]

gpmgroup, that's deliberate so that long urls don't barge all the way across the page if the user resizes their browser window to be pretty small. We've been doing that for a long time.

reneewood, you might want to pore over message #31--you shouldn't compare pre-Dominic backlink counts to post-Dominic backlink counts. The fact that we found and crawled your site means that we certainly did find and process links to your site. My hunch is that your site's backlinks are below the PR threshold where we normally show backlinks. So I wouldn't worry about it if your site is in--I think we found and handled links to your site correctly.