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I still have links recorded that were removed a long time ago, and other new ones that have been waiting for an age to be factored in.
Interestingly, Googlebot has spidered all the offending link pages several times, and the cached versions of the pages show the new links and the absence of old ones.
Should we be worried about the increasing disparity between the very fresh Google results and the very out of date Backlinks/PageRank? Does this impact upon the quality of the SERPs?
jojojo-
I am tending to agree with your comments.
Regards,
Hrenvardo
--
Nakul Goyal
I also notice many site have a PR of 5+ but only show 0-10 backlinks!
Dave
## Perhaps he meant "as recent as they are going to be". It makes sense for google to take this tool away from SEO's. It really serves no other useful purpose. ##
If Google is taking this tool away from us does anybody know of a tool aimed at SEO's that crawls specifically for backward links.
Obviously it won't be as useful because it doesn't mean Google is actually using the link
The recent announcement by Yahoo that they are aquiring Overture,Altavista and AlltheWeb should be very unsettling to any business web watcher. Yahoo has the best business reputation of all the search facilities on the internet.
The success of any technology in America depends on the business community embracing,accepting and utilizing the technology. Business has suffered under Google's dominanace and their recent "updates". The business community insists that search technology be both reliable and current. If Google cannot deliver reliability and currency their reputation may be irreparably damaged.
If Yahoo substitutes their recently acquired search technology for their contract to display Google results this will send a strong and clear message to the business community that Google technology is in some way lacking,which it currently is. This damage to the perception that Google offers high-quality search results may hurt their market position for months or even years to come. After all,it wasn't that long ago that either Inktomi or AltaVista were the virtual kings of web search. The same fate could await Google.
My backlinks changed by one too. Great! This means that the links are slowly mixing into the index.
At least, I hope. If they will slide in one by one, it will take a long time, before we are updated....
I guess this depends on which side of the fence you are viewing from!
When I do search on allintext:domain-etwewtewt -site:domain I get 700+
Using Link:Domain I get 119
Something is not quite right me thinks and going by my DROP in Page Rank, it would appear Google is using the latter :o(
Dave
If I use link:www.domain.com/folder/ I don't get any of those pages listed at all, I just get two other pages that link back to the site.
A reminder that link:www.domain.com/folder returns NO results (no / on the end).
<edit... and now its changed back again>
I think your interpretation will continue to gather momentum so long as Google continues to let things slide without comment.
I thought a bit about this. While it's not the exact no. of backlinks that get counted, as long as itīs around the same percentage that is missing for all sites, this should not matter much to the rankings. For established sites that have been around for a while that is.
For non-established sites, the Gbot is more important. They probably don't have that many backlinks yet, so it's more important to get indexed in the first place. Perhaps it is just another weighting of factors, putting less weight on backlinks and more weight on fresh spidering and on-page factors.
Although i find it annoying to be unable to trace all my backlinks i'm not 100% sure that it gives worse SERPS to the searcher at the end of the day.
/claus
I thought a bit about this. While it's not the exact no. of backlinks that get counted, as long as itīs around the same percentage that is missing for all sites, this should not matter much to the rankings. For established sites that have been around for a while that is.
If that were the case then yes, dead right. Unfortunately, from my delving, most of our competitors have not dropped in the # of backlinks. While we have! In fact, some have gone up as has their page rank.
Dave
Other than a few new ones, ours are up to date and have moved us up in the serps. Where we see a problem is that links that were removed in April are still being shown, and apparently counted, giving unwarranted posistion to some sites.
Altavista got into the pitiful position that they are in when their parent company,DEC,was acquired by Compaq. Compaq wanted DECs server technology. They let AV languish for almost two years with infrequent updates (if they updated at all). AV lost a dominant position because of it. Compaq should have at least maintained the index in order to preserve AVs market value. They probably could have gotten two or three times what they sold it for to Overture.
A bad reputation doesn't take months to develop on the internet. There are LOTS of people complaining about Google and their recent changes. It'll just be a matter of time to see whether another company can take advantage of the Google "stumble" and capitalize on it. Yahoo announced taking over Overture,AV and FAST. It sure sounds like a significant move to me.
google is going through a major change but even so their serps now are better than ever before.
I doubt that in some way. There are still areas where for example excessive guestbook spammers are on top postions.
Google should really solve the problem with the guestbooks soon!
And in my area of keywords i can't see major changes to the predominic time.
And there are still problems with some index sites. One of my domains, normally located on Nr.1 sometimes only appears when clicking the search button a second time. But which user is doing this?
All in all I would say Serps are not that quality as in the predominic time.
greg
Those high PR links that were added on 20th July have as of this morning (5th Aug) pushed our sites to the top of some very competitive SERPs. Sites have been live a few months.
Theres no change showing in the back links.
2 other similar sites which are also linked to from the same high PR pages mentioned have not seen any major changes.
John
Links seem to be being picked up all the time even if the backlinks count hasn't been updated for a while. Building links and content is cooler than ever, and while oldstyle SEO expectations might not be being met, the turnaround on work getting searched and published online is faster than ever. It's all cool from where I'm standing
best,
Jeremy
It is frustrating not seeing any changes in the toolbar.
Perhaps the old saying is true, "Count money not clicks"
Or in our case "Count money not backlinks"
google is going through a major change but even so their serps now are better than ever before.I doubt that in some way. There are still areas where for example excessive guestbook spammers are on top postions.
Google should really solve the problem with the guestbooks soon!
BETTER: A comparitive phrase indicating an advantage over an instance it is compared to.
So are the SERPs better, or are they the same or worse? You point out where Google is failing, after starting with the doubt that the SERPs are beter than before. You haven't:
a) Justified in any way that the SERPs are worse.
b) Given any reason why you doubt the results aren't better.
Look, many people don't Like Google++, and that's cool. But the goal is to get better and better until such time as the SERPs are the best they can possibly be.
All in all I would say Serps are not that quality as in the predominic time.
Mostly, my favourite sites have done really well, and on the whole improved. Notice I said my favourite sites, not my sites. There is a huge difference.
As an example, the PHP home page ranks extremely well. Where it used to rank behind the multitude of tutorials available, it now out ranks most of them, which is really cool and appropriate in my mind!
As for links being months out of date (to bring this post back on topic), I have started a spreadsheet with the Link count for the Major news papers in Australia (for whom link counts obviously increase all the time, or at least change frequently).
In the first week, allinurl: has gone up, but links and PageRank have stayed the same. Also, as PageRank is not increased, it is impossible to say if teh link count has changed, due to the PR 4+ restriction.
So, my conclusion: Inconclusive data. So we'll see in a month to six weeks. That will definitely giove a better picture!
Herenvardö
