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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Should we be worried about the increasing disparity between the very fresh Google results and the very out of date Backlinks/PageRank?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?
> I know that Google reverted to an old set of backlinks quite some time ago, but these still appear to be in place. I had assumed that this was an emergency measure after a failed crawl. By my reckoning the current backlinks are at least three months old. I may be wrong on that, but it certainly seems that way.
Yes, I'm still seeing 3-month-old backlinks on a couple of low-TBPR-sites.
> 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.
Same.
> 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.
Same.
> Should we be worried about the increasing disparity between the very fresh Google results and the very out of date Backlinks/PageRank?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?
I let Google worry about the quality of their SERPs in order to avoid having any more health problems. However, even with these outdated/missing backlinks, both sites are doing well - top 3 for any related sufficiently-focused search. I have occasionally wondered if perhaps it is only the display of the backlinks that is outdated, not the backlinks themselves. I dunno - hard to figure out how the sites are doing so well with their best backlinks missing, but then again, they're not in ultra-competitive "areas."
Other weirdnesses I've noted are that the Google directory backlink is present, but the ODP backlink is not; the sites have been listed in both for years.
Mostly just wanted to let you know you're not alone... I'm just going to site tight and watch for it to straighten itself out some time soon. I believe we're about due for another update, assuming that there *will* be another monthly update.
Jim
Beware too, that link://www.domain.com/folder and link://www.domain.com/folder/ will give different results.
Some sites added to dmoz in early June are showing their correct Google Directory category link, even though the Google directory category doesn't exist yet.
Can anybody relate to that?
My site is doing well in the SERPS again and the toolbar shows PR5. My conclusion is that the algo is using this backlink.
I'm not exactly sure what 'If-Modified-Since' is. The site that used to link to me has Last-Modified:·Thu,·19·Jun·2003·11:09:39·GMT in the headers. The link was removed at least a month before this though, probably 2-3 months ago.
Can anybody relate to that?
I can--site added to DMOZ in April still a no-show in the Google directory and still no category listing in the normal SERPs.
-took 2 months to get into DMOZ
-now pushing 4 months since appearing in DMOZ and still nothing in the G directory
-it feels like Google's crediting me for my DMOZ association although it doesn't show in the backlinks yet.
Anyone know how to do this?
Remember that we don't show all links, so we can often process newer links without them necessarily showing up for a link: search. I think almost all links should be pretty recent now.
Would they show up for allinanchor searches? I have some new links with new anchor text where the linking page is up to date in the cache, yet the links don't show up in either link: or allinanchor:
The simplest thing to do is to go through your logs and look at Googlebot fetches of the same page on your site over period of several days. If you see a 200 response when the page has changed betweeen fetches, and a 304 response when it has not changed and is being requested by the exact same googlebot, then your headers are set up properly.
You can play with your browser settings to achieve the same thing, but it can be tricky/confusing if your ISP caches pages or if you are behind any kind of proxy. In these cases, you're at their mercy to have things set up correctly.
I'm sure there are test tools available to force GET and CGET requests, but I don't use any, and so can't recommend.
Jim
It's the page that links to me that I want to test, I don't have the logs for this.
I'm also seeing other problems with the data not being current. Sometimes the cache, snippet and title revert to old snapshots. Sometimes it's just the title that's old.
Also when I do link: for a page, pages from the same site are displayed but don't have any snippet or cache (it's been like this for over a month but the pages are spidered frequently). When I do allinurl: for my site I see snippet and very recent cache.
Until GG said that almost all links were current I was happily being patient waiting for things to return to normal. Now I'm depressed.
NEW sites (over the last couple of months) are definitely NOT showing backlinks.
Old pages with "noindex" tags are also not being removed from the index despite being in place for over 2 months.
Manual removal via the Remove URL tool appears to be the only way to remove some pages.
Looks like the continuing update at Google is still ongoing.
;-)
EW
GoogleGuy, it seems that the reports from the front line don't match up with what you are saying. Is it possible that the backlinks aren't actually as up to date as you think they are? Or are we seeing older information than is actually being used?
Granpops
I think almost all links should be pretty recent now.
That's not my perception.
Current experience with a large number of client sites is that backlinks are NOT up to date, neither are old/non existant links being removed.
That's my perception as well. I've been working really hard at acquiring top quality backlinks for three sites, two established, one new. And, we're getting some traffic from the new links (Whoopie!)
But zero results in terms of Google. (Fresh date, old cache.)
My information is based on a www.widgets.com site search and:- Find web pages that link to "www.widgets.com"
These are definitely out of date and have been for the last 2-3 months as are the:- Find web pages that contain the term "www.widgets.com"
Whilst it appears some people believe inbound links are being counted, this can, IMHO, only be guesswork as there is nothing to subtantiate this theory (unless someone has any proof)
Some client sites show a mixture of results for both the above with one or 2 new pages, mixed with pages that either haven`t existed for a couple of months or have been updated for some considerbale time. (even though they show fresh tags)
Under the:- Find web pages that link to "www.widgets.com" results, even the cache does not show any "links to" yet they are giving this incorrect result.
Am I missing something here or does the above not make sense?
Slightly confused but definitely no paranoid.
:-)
Regards
EW
If there are a large number of results for:- Find web pages that contain the term "www.widgets.com" and the pages listed in these results contain the url "www.widgets.com" (not just the text www.widgets.com) and link to www.widgets.com why do they not all appear also in the:- Find web pages that link to "www.widgets.com"?
Or there again am I not fully understanding these results
:-)
EW
Jim
