Old Google Database

Flip Flopping from new to old

[XtendScott]

OK, I am just going to vent a little bit. I know we are all at the mercy of G and can't do anything about it. I have a sit I have worked on for a few months and some of the pages are doing well not great yet, but only when G is looking at the updated database.

I thought they were rotating between algo's, which they might be but they could use the updated database. Sometimes I get a Fresh Date on my index page with the current updates, but then a few hours or a day later it is back to the old stuff. Then maybe the next day or two the new shows up. This seem to be going on for about two weeks now.

Also I am not seeing links I have picked up about 2 months ago, one being Dmoz. Unfortunately clients busy time is approching its end, and they were expecting faster results, which at the beginning I told them I could not guarrentee when results could happen.

OK, done venting and not looking for a poor me, but courious if anyone else is see this also.

Scott

[Marcia]

Scott, it doesn't read like venting to me - whining a little, maybe. ;)

It's doubtful others aren't experiencing the same thing, it is switching back and forth. That's nothing brand new to happen, in my case there's little difference in position for most everything, though there is a PR change reflected which is staying stable. No complaints there.

But with one site I work with there were some things done and changes made that had nothing to do with me - in fact I found most of it by accident - and on the newer results that site got hit BIG TIME.

Out of about 2,700,000 pages returned it's been stable at #3 for well over a year with a couple of minor fluctuations up or down by two places occasionally. It's still turning up with that ranking most of the time, but with the same date, here and there a search is turning up the other results and the site is buried - with many, many links originally down to 33, which is nothing to what's really out there.

It has really nothing to do with the pages/part of the site I maintain, which is a small portion, and has maintained the same stable rankings at all other search engines. It sure looks like a penalty, and it would be easy to assume it has something to do with their linking, which I've had nothing to do with. It got hit at only Yahoo over a month ago which was when I really went out hunting to find out what was wrong, but Google was fine. No more on the newer results.

It's a bit disconcerting, because sending an email with a link to show what's happening does no good - it may not be what comes up for them.

Despite the mystery between the two and the annoyance factor, it's interesting to compare results - there's an entirely different mix turning up - showing sites on the new that were not there before, some that moved down and others that came way up from before - and analyzing what the differences are due to.

[Powdork]

Here are some interesting things happening to one of my sites.
Four days ago (give or take) i posted that there must be a new datacenter because on regular Google i was showing up at #3 but on the dance tool I was only showing up at #1 or #2 for all 10 datacenters (plus -kr). Additionally, the dance tool said I was at #1 on -ex, but when i entered the search, and then changed the address bar to -ex, I was at #3. Later i figured out that the dance tool automatically searches using the 'ie?' parameter when searching, wheras it is not used in regular searches. At that point there was some filter that was knocking my site from #1 to #3 on -ex. At this time -ex is showing my site at #3 manually and with the dance tool. My site has a fresh tag of the 26th on five datacenters. My site has no fresh tag on five datacenters, all of which show the fresh tags (26th) for the other sites in the serp. My site is #1 without the fresh tags, #2 with the fresh tags. Why does my site sometimes have the fresh tags, sometimes not, when all the other sites have the tags all the time. It's not a matter of not being crawled. After all, it was crawled and sometimes the tags for the 26th do show up, but other times not. Why does whatever is causing the lack of a tag also cause me to be at #1 and vice versa.

[ogletree]

I had the same problem [webmasterworld.com] but it fixed itself pretty quick and has not done it again.

[netnerd]

For a certain search term - the top ten i see remains constant, but numbers 11-20 change nearly every time i search!

Is it just swithing between results on VERY different datacentres?

[Marcia]

I'm kind of hoping that some people will speak up with their findings. It looks like a big change and I believe I'm seeing a penalty. I can off-hand probably identify a couple of the reasons, I'd love to hear what others think if anyone's experiencing the same thing.

[netnerd]

Marcia

I had #1 out of between 2 and 5,000,000 for certain terms on 4 sites last month. (3 of these sites were #1 for a year).

I have made no changes to them except for maybe updating a date , etc, (no significangt changes i mean) and they have all dropped.

I cant think what is wrong except for the fact that google is now promoting sites who buy lots of backlinks much more.

[Marcia]

netnerd, how far down did they drop?

[netnerd]

Marcia

It varies - some went to #11-20 , some as far as 11-30 , depending on when i check.

Whats your experience on this?

[The Contractor]

I have seen many rooted and established sites drop from from top ten in serps to 30ish. Only one concerns me quite a bit and have not been able to figure it out....

[benc007]

Contractor,

I am seeing similar results, and I am not sure why this is happening.

[Sally Stitts]

Since this is making me nuts too, I decided to graph this stuff in Excel, to get a better picture of just what is going on. I can sticky the Excel file to anyone interested.
Here are the abbreviated, summarized results for one of my sites.
While searching for the 2-word combo "keyword1 keyword2" on www-ex :

7-26-03 #7
7-30-03 #13
8-03-03 #7
8-07-03 #13
8-13-03 #6
8-20-03 #13
8-26-03 #4
8-30-03 #13
9-04-03 #6
9-20-03 #12
The other data centers' results are pretty much similar, with slight date differences.

It appears that other webmasters are getting similar results, hence this thread.
Could this be intentional data juggling to reduce the moaning of webmasters who have trouble getting into the top 10? Does this prevent Google from being sued for issuing rock-solid results which happen to exclude a particular site? By frequently presenting different data, Google may be attempting to show how "dynamic" and "current" their data is, and that no one site in particular enjoys unequivocal Google blessing.

What they appear to be doing is flipping a switch between old lousy data and new lousy data.

One thing is certain from this study - the data being presented is FAR FROM optimized. Too bad we are not aware of the "arbitrary" component in the algorhythm, such as, "looks good - it's been awhile - change it".

[XtendScott]

Ok, maybe my previous post had a little whine in it. But today the new pages are being displayed, will see for what I get later or tomarrow. I can't complain for not getting first page yet, because I am on page 2 with two links pointed to the site that are counting for google. Still waiting patiently for new links to appear. I have heard discussions that Google really doesn't hurry getting fresh data from DMOZ.org and will do it in their own sweet time.

I guess they have preoccupied with their removal of millions of links to be able to add a few for the site I am working on. Cheers to everyone, maybe a few drinks will help.

Scott

[steveb]

In terms of rooted sites dropping, the dmoz main page shows about 1/2 the number of backlinks now as the last update. Correspondingly established site listed in dmoz should have lost some PR, if not a whole point, but part of one. While Yahoo went to PR10, I think a major change this time was a redistribution of PR to a lot of junk link doorway mirror type sites/pages. A lot of pages that were white bars or PR1 are now PR1 or PR2.

This means that established sites that rely on quality more than quantity will have dipped a bit this update.

[ogletree]

I have a site that just went from #28 and #29 to #1 and #2. It has been there solid on all centers for over a week now. Some things seem stable.

[netnerd]

When did it move?