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We've had some major changes recently, both in the algo and in the bots.
I would like to make some observations on the behavior of the fresh side of fresh/deep bot, and find out what others have noticed.
I have seen two sets of freshdates (may have missed one) since the datacenters all started showing equal backlinks post-Esmerelda. Here is what I have noticed:
1 - It seems to me that the freshboost still exists.
2 - PR level of the page does not effect who is visited and who gets dates - two pages that have less pr than us (and <5), that we normally rank higher than, seem to be getting fresh dates and the boost, with no changes whatsoever in their content.
3 - We had an 'index page problem' that seemed to disappear last Wednesday/Thursday. However, when the freshdates appeared the problem seemed to return - we lost our index page and dropped a few positions.
4 - We are getting visited by a bot that behaves like Freshy, but aren't getting freshdates ourselves. We used to get them every time they came out.
5 - Some hidden text spammers (members of a bigger spam circle) are getting freshed.
Sites not budged position for 3 or 4 weeks now. Still #1.
[edited by: g1smd at 11:36 pm (utc) on July 1, 2003]
I see sites on page one of the keywords I'm looking at that NEVER have freshbot dates. Plus, this site isn't that important to me, so I'm willing to experiment if someone knows how to ban freshbot.
I have not touched the original ISP site for months, maybe 18, maybe 2 years. And am now going to have to update it (to be honest, as it ranked nowhere before, I just didn't bother).
I have to say this. I do not believe Google's results are as good as they were before. When someone mentioned Google's Adsense here the other day / thread, I searched for this on Google and the top two returns were the discussion threads that just mentioned it (practically, no more) on webmasterworld. Which, I have to say is not good given the limited number of relevant pages in their database, the proprietory nature of the search term, and the importance (PR) of Google over here. If there were more web sites chatting about Google's Adsense, I am pretty sure Google's page would have gotten burried. Forgetting the quips about "That shows Google is not giving itself a boost", etc. It says rank for the surfer who simply wants to find what they are searching for.
I also still think data is missing and playing catch up from earlier in the year. I say this I have some sites I created at the beginning of the year (Jan to March) that are slowly recovering lost ground.
I wish GoogleGuy would confirm or deny the last part, about data still playing catch up.
Well, that would certainly be evidence that all isn't even with the freshdates. Serps that get freshdates, no changing in content whatsoever yet positions flip-flop? That sounds like inconsistency.
No real danger to Google, as the results are still relavent and useful, however strange behavior for sure.
I see sites on page one of the keywords I'm looking at that NEVER have freshbot dates. Plus, this site isn't that important to me, so I'm willing to experiment if someone knows how to ban freshbot.
Search the site for robots txt files and how to use them, then put in Googlebot's ip range.
I have to say this. I do not believe Google's results are as good as they were before.
A bit off topic, but I don't think that they've finished everything yet. Too much spam in the serps that I watch, and the 'reverting-to-non-index-page-with-freshtags' phenomenon has to go too.
It seems to negate some of the assumed benefits of a continuous update if indexing behavior in relation to new sites/pages is much the same as before.
Since the "FreshBot" and "FreshDeepBot" use the same IP range, this will take the site out of the index completely.
I had mentioned that, buuut...
Fwiw, it seems that this morning some changes are happening and the serps that I watch and they are morphning to 'pre-freshdate' status.
Don't know about you guys but this little fresh-'serp recover' sequence has behaved just like it did pre-Google-shakeup. Makes me think that we've got a bit to go yet before Google has it 'all ahead forward' with the 'new system' their setting up.
Still not too much freshDeep-Bot activity in our logs... (to 02/07)
which appears to come from the same freshbot range - 64.68.82.xx
Does his info go into the same pot as fresh/deepbot, or just used for th eadwords/adsense program.
Hopefully these pages will stick.
Kudos to Google if this is part of the future
Of note is that the tags appeared without my index page going missing - although according to some we may be in the three day period where we 'index page losers' actually have index pages...
The displayed date has also been newer, being "yesterday" rather than "2 days ago" as it used to be.
No fresh tags today.
The site, online at the beginning of May, and indexed on 2003-06-16 was freshed every single day from 2003-07-07 to 2003-07-19, but hasn't been freshed in the last two days.
So, now no fresh dates for 2 days after getting them every day from 7th to 19th.
The inurl: command has always listed every page of the site along with a number of pages that link to the site. As of today it only lists the pages from the site itself. The link: command has only every shown one page, and today shows none.
