Forum Moderators: open
Some think an update is in the wind - are people expecting big, possibly bad for some, changes?
It's too quiet out there.
As of 10.43 AM EDT:
www, www1, www2, fi, cw & in are the same
zu, sj & ex are the same
ab & dc are the same
va is all on it's own trip.
Question is...how does Google determine that this site is a link to your site when they(google) don't even see the link to your site?
IMO, I think Google have a problem that's why there's little movement in the serp.
Unfortunately, that's not always the case.
Pick a center at which you know a site is missing. Hit refresh. Bingo... it comes back. We are not talking just WWW, but specific centers.
Unfortunately, sometimes it doesn't come back, which of course is even worse.
On the other problem, Amazon must be having a field day. It's quite incredible how many searches they are appearing in now. What a mess. Makes me feel like Google have given up the ghost and decided to become a super-Amazon-affiliate instead.
If it was just Amazon there could be something in it... but it isn't. eBay, PDFs and similar have climbed to the top as well.
It's a general phenomena, not evident for some searches, but absolutely awful for others.
I feel that Google have made more mistakes in the last 4 months than in the rest of their history put together. It's not just these two problems, but a catalog of others before them (remember the country TLD problem for example?).
Maybe they are stretching themselves in too many other directions, and forgetting their core product. Who knows.
Yes, I have.
I recently registered and published a domain that the toolbar immediately reported as PR6 and a backlink search returned 65 results.
I thought I'd hit the jackpot! Perhaps I'd registered a domain that somebody else had before and let expire.
Alas, none of the backlink pages actually contain links to this site. They're all very unrelated, both from the subject of my site and from each other.
Neither the backlinks nor the PR amount to any traffic to this site.
Very strange.
That only tells us that there is some major problem with Google. Perhaps the PR or backlinks database got corrupted.
As an example, I got ia_archiver as one of my backlinks :) and we all know that it's some kind of a bot. This is a first that my site is directly linked from a bot which nowhere can be found anyway.
There are some other backlinks that are just plain weird as if by random chance they got linked to my site. Also cases of disappearing established backlinks, the pages are in the index, same PR and my site link are still there but gone from my backlinks. Backlinks credited to other site?
I wonder where my links are credited to :D
i, personally, have been extremely happy with the serps, from a searcher standpoint, and a webmaster standpoint. i feel like google is getting better all of the time...not the other way around.
We can't possibly keep track 24/7 on exactly what's going on with these datacenters but I believe the results keep changing like a revolving door. That's the only thing I can think of.
Mon thru Wed use to be my best days for sales and traffic. Now I just can't seem to figure anything out anymore.
Well bully for you then. You ought to get out more.
How anyone sensible can argue that a page full of Amazon and PDFs is what the searching public want is beyond me! In these areas at least, they are currently behind AV, FAST and Ink... which frankly I wouldn't have believed possible three months ago.
And no, I'm not happy about it. Google have been great for the search industry for years now, and it's not much fun seeing them start to shoot themselves in the foot.
Whatever is going on there under the covers needs to be sorted.
From my perspective I dont see anything to indicate Google is broken in some way.
However I have noticed that SERPS come back about a fraction of a second slower than before and it seems to be slowing down more as the months go by.
-MrBrad
Well that statement makes no logical sense.
They have a toolbar display, but it shows no data from post April 15th, and you think that is deliberate.
They show backlinks, but show no backlinks post June 15th, and you think that is deliberate.
They have a directory that draws data from a resource that every puny little operator can also put on their site, which was last updated july 12th, but Google shows the data from March (and sometimes before), and you think that is deliberate.
The toolbar and serps now show new directory categories that were included in that July 12th RDF dump (even if they don't show in the directory), but in a case of categories created on the exact same day and sit directly next to each other, one new category shows while the other new category does not!
There is no way around it. Google's crawling capabaility is damaged greatly, and the aspects of their ranking algorithm that rely on crawling are virtually not being used at all. Thinking this is deliberate is not sensible.
Which then leads to what we have: sites with hundreds or usually thousands of (often brand-new, often PR1 or PR0) inbound anchor text links ride to near the top of the serps.
To many overnight so called SEO pros were popping up. Google took care of that as they should of.
The fact the PR and backlinks are not visible, does not affect the searcher in the least bit.
I know they are being counted, for several sites I watch, they are just not being shown. Do I care, NO.. the sites rank well and the SERPS are pretty free of junk.
Again, it seems each industry is presenting different results and problems. I to am very pleased with the results that I am seeing.
To say that Google is broke across the board is wrong. Perhaps for the industries with the problems, there are more issues to deal with so in fact there might be problems in those areas.
I have seen very relevent Amazon listings and PDF listings for searches I've done. I've also done searches where none of those show up.
I researched stuff about my daughters nose bleeds and found excellent literature in the top 3 listings. This how Google used to be and what drew me to them.
I actually stopped watching the datacenters becasue it is pointless.
At least these head in the sand denials are getting more rare. There were more people back in May who simply ignored the obvious. Now, comments like the above are laughable. A megabillion dollar entity is humiliating itself because it is cowering from a bunch of pipsqueak seo's. LOL.
If Google wants to remove pagerank from the toolbar, they will. if they want to not show backlinks, they will. Let's get real here. It's long past the time for "close my eyes because my site ranks well" posts.
Whether the search results are fairly decent in any topic area is irrelavant to the widespread pockets of data failure. Try to focus on something broader than your own sites/niche. If Google crawls one category/topic and then lists good results, but then does not crawl a category/topic right next to it, and thus the results for that niche are poor, this is a fundamental problem that needs to be addressed. Fixating on the topic areas wher errors didn't occur isn't helpful or at all sensible.
My head is not in the sand.
In fact, I was very vocal about my site being gone for several months back during the dominic fiasco.
What did I do, I quite griping about it, worked on my site, got links and moved on.
Low and behold, my site came back stronger than ever and has stuck.
I'm sorry, but the threads were several thousand posts long back then, current ones don't even come close.
I made an observation that the results whether good or bad seemed to depend on your industry and what our searching. I was trying to offer more info to the kitty. I guess some people just don't want to hear it unless it conforms to their current way of thinking that Google is broke.
In fact, I stopped posting for quite a while because of comments such as the one you made.
I guess I'll stick my head back in the sand and not contribute to this forum anymore.
Um, which is what I said.
Which directly applies to the root concept here of not fixating on your own sites.
Google is not a steaming oozebucket of badness, but it's large scale data failures have consequences and "my site is doing fine" posts really don't contribute much, do they?
"my site is doing fine posts really don't contribute much, do they?"
These contribute just as much as the Google is broken posts or my site dropped posts.
It just goes to show that there is great variety in the SERPS and how they are being displayed just as you said.
People who are having problems fixate on their own site and industry and post more often than those who are not having problems.
By having the my site are doing fine post, it goes to show a broad spectrum of what is taking place and sometimes may spark a person who is having problems to actually look outside of their field of vision and see what else is being displayed. In this way, they can actually look and the stable SERP pages and possibly try to see what those pages have that perhaps their don't.
When dominic happened, I waited a while and then tried to experiment with titles and pages. I had some success and failures and it was from reading both good and bad posts that I drew conclusions about what experiment to try.
After all, the title of this thread is Google never seemed so stable not Google is having a large scale data failure.
It was strange that all of a sudden last month, the semi-penalty (or google is broken problem depending what it is) seemed to disappear suddenly and everyone commented on how great the SERPs looked. Things were quiet here and then this thread started. Then Google did something - whether it is turning the knob, or an error, is back to speculation on our parts.
(moderator, delete the rest of this post if you want)
My own theory is that there is someone who was hired by Google but actually works as a double agent for Microsoft. This person is implanting buggy code into the Google software. I think Google is onto this though, as most of us are aware they have been hiring people with top level government security clearance. My second theory is that Google hired some programmers from Microsoft, and now Google is having the same errors that you'd expect from Microsoft products.
Try to focus on something broader than your own sites/niche.
Guess what? That's exactly what I do every time I use Google to search for something else than allinurl:myownsite.com or link:www.myownsite.com.
And I see Good Things. I see fresh sites included in the index between updates. I see results with a date on them. I see dynamic sites using very ugly querystrings with thousands of pages in the index, and ranking well. I see relevant results, and (believe it or not) less spam than two months ago.
Oh, and about the ODP, I seem to remember they had had some technical problems with the RDF dump some months ago, so I wouldn't blame it 100% on Google if the directory is not very up-to-date. The web index is.
Your search experience must have been really horrible, steveb... or is there bad blood between you and Google, by chance?
Either way, I think it's not very nice to say somebody has a "head in the sand" just because they don't have the same opinion as you. Let's try to keep our minds open, everybody.
As for ODP, I'm sure Google will wait until ODP get's their new system in order. It's been weeks changing over and updating the pages. Once that's done and Google updates as well, it could make some major changes.
Eh, now what? I've been accused of being the #1 Google cheerleader here, a secret Google employee, etc.
I love Google, but unlike some here I don't bury my head in my own sites. Google's problems objectively exist... unless again you think that listing newhoo links instead of dmoz links is freaking deliberate.
Google continues to be the best search engine out there -- even after a couple months where they arguably weren't, but to ignore the plainly obvious, objectively provable problems is foolish when discussing webmastering.
The original issue here was stability, and then the stability was disturbed in a way that displayed yet again Google's data problems, and also their apparent attempts to do things that have repurcusions that may or may not be negative in terms of search quality. Discussing the change from stability can be useful.
steveb:
> The original issue here was stability
Is (temporary?) stability an issue?
Is instability an issue?
Please define (in)stability.
What I see is relevant, fresh results, updating and changing at a highest rate than ever.
True, we have not had a regular backlink/PageRank update in a long time now, but who cares, as long as the results are good quality?
We might be moving towards the long-awaited "continuous update" (whatever that means), or we might not. We might get one last dance this month, we might not. So what?
Life's beautiful. The future is bright. Don't look back. Plant yourself firmly on the high ground in the middle of the road [webmasterworld.com] and "focus more on rankings, less on PageRank; more on traffic, less on rankings; more on conversion rate, less on traffic" (courtesy GG --sorry, cannot find back post).
Worry less about PR on the toolbar and more about rankings. And less about rankings for high-profile phrases and more about overall rankings. And less about rankings and more about traffic. And less about traffic and more about conversions. [webmasterworld.com]
Amen.</added>
I can give a few quick tips about things to avoid: Google frowns on hidden text, hidden links, cloaking, and sneaky redirects, among other things. As Google improves our scoring over time, "tricks" that used to give a scoring boost work will now hurt your site's ranking. Hope this makes sense.
Uh - still not fixed after almost 2 yr.
I checked a keyword combination that could be used in competitive business and in a scientific search.
It would make sense for Google to have people look for content on the left and things to buy on the right?
