Update Florida - Nov 2003 Google Update

Looks like an Old Fashioned Dance Baby!

[synergy]

www-in is showing some major shifting in all the serps I follow.. anyone else seeing this? These results were showing yesterday as well, but synced with the others late in the afternoon.

The results look really good.. hopefully this will reflect across all the datacenters soon. Seems like the spammier sites I compete against have moved down while the good honest pages have moved up.

[superscript]

The blatant spammer I referred to earlier was both text and link hiding - and he's gone. But it could be a coincidence. Despite my pale headgear my site is missing from one datacentre - but we've all got to be patient.

As for 'There is no spam' this statment leaves me baffled.

It's like saying that all top athletes are cheats; and there's no distinction between a cheat who takes drugs, and a 'cheat' who works, thinks and trains hard.

[edited by: superscript at 5:03 pm (utc) on Nov. 15, 2003]

[martinibuster]

applied symantics

Or Kaltix?...

[Chndru]

>i wonder if applied symantics has a part in this new logic.
Interesting, Chicago. I was wondering the same nonetheless.

[GoogleGuy]

Chicago, we've jousted a lot about AdWords and other stuff in the past, so I respect your opinion. :)

superscript, I happen to agree with you. I think that there's such a thing as spam, and it lies outside our quality guidelines. Other people on this forum disagree or have their own opinion.

[soapystar]

but how common is this theme..ever since dominic..or the first of the new style updates..i forget which one...anyway in recent times the updates have always started with sites being dropped...later when you guys start chatting you find those sites all come within a certain time spread in which they ammassed most of their links..in other words..each update has meant google has to drop a certain time frame of data..leaving old and new data..if your site is affected by the lost data then you fall like a stone..googleguy never says anything other than everything looks fine to him..then within 2 weeks the index looks basically how it should with your sites back where they were..its happened everytime..this is soooooooo deja vu!

[edited by: soapystar at 5:04 pm (utc) on Nov. 15, 2003]

[Miop]

Speaking of Adwords, it looks like Google might make some money out of this - the first thing I did when I saw the index change was update my adwords to include all the words I was near the top of the index - my keyword I put up to 60p/click. My competitors appear to have done the same and I'm now 8th or so in the adwords listing!

[martinibuster]

I've seen white hat index pages that have been solidly in the top 3 positions for particular searchterms since Google began. They've been that relevant for that long. Today they are not in the top 100 and probably not in the results at all.

Ditto. I'm looking at the serps, and they don't look too bad, but definitely worse on certain searches.

Eeeww.

[Nick_W]

>> Other people on this forum disagree or have their own opinion

When I said 'there is no spam' - I mean that. There are poor algos sure, but spam? - In who's opinion?

If it's G's opinion, cool. You guys do a pretty good job, it could certainly be beeter though. I just mean that if a webmaster is doing somthing you don't agree with, it's not up to you to do anything about it.

It's G's job.

Nick

[subway]

I think that if we've learnt anything from updates, it's to let the dust settle. From a totally unbiased point of view - Google results are currently running at 30-40% relevancy (my own calculation) - that to me says that other factors are yet to happen.

... I hope :o ...

[edited by: subway at 5:08 pm (utc) on Nov. 15, 2003]

[Yidaki]

It's hard to follow what you all report here. Would you mind to tell me WHERE you see changes? On www, www2, www3, or on any specific datacenter(s)? The only difference i see so far is between www-in and the rest of Google's servers ...

[Brett_Tabke]

> Other people on this forum disagree

Like a famous quote from a noted search engine founder in 1998 at the San Jose search engine conference? Who said to the best of my recolection:

"I think we are spam proof". (ala, Mr Brin)

[subway]

WHERE you see changes?

google.com

[nutsandbolts]

Skipfactor: Nope, ye olde Google dropping index pages bug is back. Gone, vanished, poof, so much for Xmas

Yep. Merry Christmas :(

[steve40]

Hi all,
just 2 cents worth , I am not smart or clever enough to get top listing on my keywords but generally on first or second page of serps.
I respect those who are above my results through more content or better whitehat seo knowledge than me and hope they are not to badly affected but i do get upset like many others to see a sites (50,000 + auto generated crap ) with nothing but affiliate or adsense link that is not relevent to the original user search query, if this update cleans house on blackhat techniques even if mine go down a couple more so be it.
I do not believe it is my role to report spammers to google , like all large companies it is google's responsibillity to do quality controll and looks like they started some in this update,
for those sites who have also suffered i am sure if feedback is sent to google they will investigate and change the algo to reflect any issues with genuine sites
steve

[LogicMan]

My advice to all is do not panic. Do not jump from buildings (or at least anything higher than 1st floor - American not European).

I have a page that has been ranked #1 & #2 ever since I've been watching and it is gone completely. It can not be found even under very detailed key word searches. However, this happend once before (April or May) and then it reappeared and has stayed #1 since.

Well, I have to go to the office (10th floor) and bring my offic computer home (2 floors), so if this is not resolved by Monday I'm not tempted.

[ogletree]

Ok so link exchanges, link purchases, lists o links altogether are devalued.

[textex]

What is wrong with normal link exchanges?

[thepast]

The most disapointing part about this update is that I was excited to watch college football today and now I am glued to this forum. Bad timing Google!

[GoogleGuy]

LogicMan, it does seem like we're crossing into the "sky is falling" stage of the update. :)

I'm happy for anyone to define spam anyway they want, or even to claim that it doesn't exist. I think Google has some pretty clear examples of what we consider spam in our quality guidelines, and people who think that there is no such thing as spam should still be aware of our quality guidelines. ;)

[Yidaki]

>WHERE you see changes?
>google.com

cool. :)

[soapystar]

there is NO DOUBT..the update has incomplete data and filters yet to be added...do not despair!

[edited by: soapystar at 5:22 pm (utc) on Nov. 15, 2003]

[AthlonInside]

I strongly believe the localrank is further implemented in this page!

My competitors who are playing well all the time (since I even start maing my current site) fall a lot off. What he is doing is linking to his own site in his large domain farm!

[nutsandbolts]

GG: Can we expect sites that are currently missing to filter in over the next week or so, as happened during the last major update? There does seem to be a number of people affected by the "index page missing" thing again.

[textex]

It's not only the index pages missing from serps, it appears to be the enitre sites.

But, when I search for obscure terms that use random words from title that don't make sense together, sites are ranking.

[edited by: textex at 5:24 pm (utc) on Nov. 15, 2003]

[Nick_W]

What about expired domains? - I recently bought a killer domain but have no idea if it's blacklisted yet..?

Nick

[leef50]

I too have fallen foul this time for my site which was at #3 and now deep down at #277 or so. Recently though, I had a 301 moved permantly redirect from one domain to this domain which screwed us and was an inocent redirect with nothing sinister going on. I guess this is having no impact on the SERPS for me but the update def has caused me a bit of heartache :( but we cant be sure what the problem is.

Shame when the good guys get hit. All we can do is sit tight, afterall, google wants the index to be great as do we and as GoogleGuy correctly points out, some will be happy and others will not be. Just a shame that good guys are currently seeing their sites disappear or drowning in the basement of the SERPS for once good ranking searches.

[GoogleGuy]

Nah, I was up late last night, so it already feels like dawn. :)

How about, I dunno, a moon pie eating contest? (Maybe NickW can't get moon pies where he is..)

[webified]

Hi,

Can anyone confirm that sites are actually missing, or index pages are actually dropped? I haven't seen any evidence--domains, index page URLs that I track are still in there.

[Napoleon]

>> it does seem like we're crossing into the "sky is falling" stage of the update. :) <<

Sorry... I don't agree.

The update is a BIG step backwards. Very much like the major hiccup we had a few months ago.

Yes, it looks like index pages are suffering again. And/or larger sites have inner (in many cases not relevant) pages flying high. A sort of re-run of the SpAmazon fiasco but with a different twist.

Many industry leading sites have gone as a result. No ifs or buts, sites that everyone expects to see there are no more.

For me, the decision is clear already. Wearing white hats is almost as likely to end in tears as wearing black ones. I'm heading back to black.... at least if you take a fall then you can actually accept that you deserve it.

The update does Google no favors at all.

Adios.

[markus007]

Googleguy,

I was number 1 for thousands of different search terms, and have 10's of thousands of pages. It seems my homepage has vanished completely, and i'm not appearing in the top 500 for any searches i try, even with filter=0, and traffic pretty much went to 0. I haven't spammed my site, so i'm wondering if should i file a report or are there more changes to the serps coming..?