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Changes in Google backlinks

Backlinks different on www-ex and www-sj data centers

         

WebRankInfo

8:44 pm on Sep 21, 2003 (gmt 0)

10+ Year Member



Is this really a Google Dance?
I'm seeing differences in backlinks and even PageRank for some sites. For the moment, two data centers give the new results: www-ex and www-sj.

Yahoo's backlinks are down from 857,000 to 806,000

Hope you're going to get a PR10 :-)

Macro

9:00 pm on Sep 21, 2003 (gmt 0)

WebmasterWorld Senior Member 10+ Year Member



Backlinks have been coming and going, coming and going and making me quite exasperated.

I just wish they would sort it out.

But yes, one new site I have now has a PR and other sites' PRs seem to be changing :-)

Marcia

9:06 pm on Sep 21, 2003 (gmt 0)

WebmasterWorld Senior Member 10+ Year Member



No, it's not a dance like we used to have. But backlinks are definitely now updated on -ex and -sj even with some that have been added in the past month or so.

They're not showing the latest versions of a couple of pages from changes made a couple of weeks ago but that's OK, I'll more than settle for the backlinks counting.

WebRankInfo

9:20 pm on Sep 21, 2003 (gmt 0)

10+ Year Member



I know this is not a Google Dance like we were used to notice (with big changes in the SERP).
But I think that the only characteristic of the Google Dances that never changed is the backlinks and PR update.

Maybe in the near future, Google will be able to compute new PR every day?

johnnydequino

9:56 pm on Sep 21, 2003 (gmt 0)

10+ Year Member



Any change in PR on these backlink changing sites?

Marcia

10:10 pm on Sep 21, 2003 (gmt 0)

WebmasterWorld Senior Member 10+ Year Member



It'll need to be looked into further, but from what I've checked so far it looks like something's happening that's beyond just updating the backlink count.

netguy

10:19 pm on Sep 21, 2003 (gmt 0)

WebmasterWorld Senior Member 10+ Year Member



WebRankInfo, while many say the Google dance is dead, I still like to think of it as the Google 'shuffle,' and still track its movement. ;)

23 days since the start of the last backlinks/PR update, and so far I see 4 newer sites (3-4 months old) going from PR3 to PR4, and some internal pages going from PR0 to PR3. I haven't seen any PR changes in the bigger (older) sites.

Now, with all the algo changes recently, if we just knew what value Google places on PageRank these days....

Marcia

10:22 pm on Sep 21, 2003 (gmt 0)

WebmasterWorld Senior Member 10+ Year Member



>>if we just knew what value Google places on PageRank these days....

And what they're including and not including, at this point in time.

Gus_R

10:23 pm on Sep 21, 2003 (gmt 0)

10+ Year Member



Yes, backlinks and toolbar updated.
Last time I saw was August 29.

johnnydequino

10:26 pm on Sep 21, 2003 (gmt 0)

10+ Year Member



How can I get to see the PR on www-sj? Thanks all.

jd

netguy

10:54 pm on Sep 21, 2003 (gmt 0)

WebmasterWorld Senior Member 10+ Year Member



johnnydequino, to see your new PageRank, add the following line
to your "hosts" file (no extension) for www-ex:

216.239.33.100 toolbarqueries.google.com

Depending on your M$ system, the hosts file will be in:
c:\windows\system32\drivers\etc\hosts OR
c:\winnt\system32\drivers\etc\hosts

steveb

11:12 pm on Sep 21, 2003 (gmt 0)

WebmasterWorld Senior Member 10+ Year Member



Ugh, and just when you thought it was safe to go back into the water.... the return of the newhoo.com backlinks.

The return of scary-bad incompetent crawling.

teeceo

12:03 am on Sep 22, 2003 (gmt 0)

10+ Year Member



Has there been a change in the slerps 2?

teeceo.

nippi

12:45 am on Sep 22, 2003 (gmt 0)

WebmasterWorld Senior Member 10+ Year Member



I have several sites whose backlinks have not been updated on google since June.

They ahve been on inkotmi and altavista, but not google.

It is not a PR issue, I have added links from other sites I manage with PR6.

Just seems to me to be a mssive delay in counting backlinks for pr4 sites

netguy

1:10 am on Sep 22, 2003 (gmt 0)

WebmasterWorld Senior Member 10+ Year Member



steveb, I haven't seen any particular changes in crawling... It is still doing rolling updates on the SERPS, so there isn't the dramatic changes (and excitement) during the updates anymore.

But despite Google's recent algo changes and flaky behavior, the best ranking still involves good on-page optimization, quality backlinks and plenty of PageRank.

And every month (except March 2003) Google still gives us an early indicator - despite a few hiccups on some sites - of the updated backlinks and adjusted PageRank.

Its like having the old Google Dance every month... But without the ulcers.

;)

Marcia

1:33 am on Sep 22, 2003 (gmt 0)

WebmasterWorld Senior Member 10+ Year Member



Anchor text, anchor text, anchor text. But I'm seeing a definite change in the backlinks actually being counted and what appears to be a difference in the weight.

Different situations with a few different sites, but they're telling almost the same thing.

keyplyr

1:45 am on Sep 22, 2003 (gmt 0)

WebmasterWorld Senior Member 10+ Year Member Top Contributors Of The Month



New pages have been added and most all my pages gained 1 PR point.

I am not one who subscribes to the "rolling update" theory. I have never agreed with this from the first day I saw it posted here and everyone jumped on the bandwagon about it. Except for those 2 months early this year, I continue to see distinct updates and dances each and every month, however I do see major trend changes with the crawls.

nippi

1:53 am on Sep 22, 2003 (gmt 0)

WebmasterWorld Senior Member 10+ Year Member



This is my dilemma. A competitor site has incoming links from 20 other so sites. I have arranged to have links from these site as well, these links going up, 2-3 months ago. I have checked these pages, the links to my site are there.

When I check google backlinks for my site, none of these new links have been counted, but they are still recorded as back links to my competitior's site, so of course their SER is much higher.

Waiting for them to count.

netguy

2:32 am on Sep 22, 2003 (gmt 0)

WebmasterWorld Senior Member 10+ Year Member



>>I am not one who subscribes to the "rolling update" theory.

keyplyr, I have 2 categories of sites:

1) Older sites (1 to 8 years) that are stable as a rock in the positions I'm quite happy with. In the conventional 'dance' days, these sites would bounce all over the place during the 3-5 day dance period. For the past several months, they have remained stable throughout every month (except a few that got caught in the PDF, DOC .Gov debacle).

2) Newer sites (typically 1 to 6 months online), these sites bounce in and out, and up and down in the SERPS like a yo-yo. After a couple months, they tend to become more stable, but there is still considerable movement every few days throughout the month, and I have not seen anything dramatically changing (out of the norm) during the Google update period.

So, whether it is a "rolling update," more frequent update, or a 'busier' update - It is quite different than the usual, drastic changes I typically saw (with the dance) in prior months and years on the several dozens sites that I manage.

keyplyr, what I would agree with you on, is your contention that Google is updating every month (I thought I was the only one still tracking it). While I personally haven't seen any out-of-the-ordinary SERPS changes, the backlinks and PageRank certainly are, and these are certainly essential incredients to SEO success.

Arnett

3:18 am on Sep 22, 2003 (gmt 0)

10+ Year Member



No, it's not a dance like we used to have. But backlinks are definitely now updated on -ex and -sj even with some that have been added in the past month or so.

I thought that it felt a little "dance-like" this week. Does anybody know for sure whether this is part of a regular backlink update,an aberration or a test?

netguy

3:25 am on Sep 22, 2003 (gmt 0)

WebmasterWorld Senior Member 10+ Year Member



>>Does anybody know for sure...

Where has GoogleGuy been lately?

steveb

3:27 am on Sep 22, 2003 (gmt 0)

WebmasterWorld Senior Member 10+ Year Member



"But without the ulcers."

I'm afraid you seem to be paying attention to the wrong things. First of all, anchor text via volume of links, pagerank irrelevant, is all that matters for competitive terms.

Second, the "ulcers" come from Google's failures to process data properly. On page optimization, etc etc etc, all that stuff is easy to do and takes care of itself when Google functions properly. Unfortunately their crawl of the Internet is once again shockingly poor. They can't figure out the differnce between newhoo and dmoz; they can't update their directory without embarrassing themselves; they can't break away from a near total reliance on anchor text.

They keep trying new things, and they fail utterly. First their old deepcrawl failed. Then they lose pages. Then they add and highly rank a bazillion Amazon pages. While they seemed to right themselves last month (though not to the point they could update the directory), now we have regressed again to a situation that is silly in its failure.
=========================

"Where has GoogleGuy been lately?"

Hopefully out hunting for the old deepbot circa January.

nippi

3:38 am on Sep 22, 2003 (gmt 0)

WebmasterWorld Senior Member 10+ Year Member



And now for my enxt question...

Age of site.... regardless of incoming links etc, is age a factor in website ranking? Will and older site with similar setup as a newer site thus always rank better?

dudmembership

3:56 am on Sep 22, 2003 (gmt 0)

10+ Year Member



Age of site.... regardless of incoming links etc, is age a factor in website ranking? Will and older site with similar setup as a newer site thus always rank better?

Not at all AFAIK. The age only SEEMS to have an effect, because older sites are more likely to have more backlinks.

annej

4:01 am on Sep 22, 2003 (gmt 0)

WebmasterWorld Senior Member 10+ Year Member




teeceo, I'm seeing some changes in serps.

nippi

4:06 am on Sep 22, 2003 (gmt 0)

WebmasterWorld Senior Member 10+ Year Member



Same set up means same number of backlinks.

Is your "not at all" answer based on anything. I WAN'T to believe you but also need to know whether you are stating abolutte fact,firmly held opinion based on some tests, or just logical reason without actual testing of results.

teeceo

4:12 am on Sep 22, 2003 (gmt 0)

10+ Year Member



"annej" witch server are your seeing the different slerp's on?

teeceo.

dudmembership

4:30 am on Sep 22, 2003 (gmt 0)

10+ Year Member



Is your "not at all" answer based on anything. I WAN'T to believe you but also need to know whether you are stating abolutte fact,firmly held opinion based on some tests, or just logical reason without actual testing of results.
 

Personal experience.. After launching a site 12 months ago, it took 3 months to get a PR6 and another three or so to get that to a PR7. Competing against other sites that have been around a lot longer hasn't proved to be very difficult and as far as I can see, there is no reason to say that simply existing longer helps. I've launched pages and had them gain no.1 spots for reasonably competitive phrases within weeks.

I've also seen many other posts on this matter and the conclusion has always been that the 'age' of the site is irrelevant. There are very few 'absolute facts' in this game, but let me put it this way: having a young site hasn't stopped me ranking well and I 'firmly believe' that age is completely ignored in the algo.

teeceo

4:58 am on Sep 22, 2003 (gmt 0)

10+ Year Member



I see the updated "backlinks" but, has anyone seen updated pr on there(or other) sites?

teeceo.

keyplyr

6:28 am on Sep 22, 2003 (gmt 0)

WebmasterWorld Senior Member 10+ Year Member Top Contributors Of The Month




keyplyr, what I would agree with you on, is your contention that Google is updating every month (I thought I was the only one still tracking it). While I personally haven't seen any out-of-the-ordinary SERPS changes, the backlinks and PageRank certainly are, and these are certainly essential incredients to SEO success - netguy

Yes, and I agree that things have drastically toned down from past updates. My "old site" has gained stable SERPs, and rarely changes. I guess the point I disagree with is all the rhetoric here about no more monthly updates, that it has taken on a continual, rolling update schedule. It has not. The monthly updates continue, just not as radical.

As always, Googlebot deep crawled my site a couple days ago, then vanished. It has been my experience that this is always the case prior to an update.

Right now I see the order of my backlinks "dancing" around on several of the Google servers, my PR changed (up) on 80 of my 200 pages and new pages were added today. Gee, this sounds like a monthly update.

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