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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.
I have a non-commercial page on sparkling, translucent widgets which you can find in Xanadu.
The titie of the page is: "Xanadu sparkling translucent widgets"
The <h1> on the page is: "Xanadu sparkling translucent widgets"
The page is about five screen lengths and there are pictures, descriptions, information and relevant links.
The page is well linked to from the rest of my site and to the sitemap. It has a high PR. A lot of visitors have bookmarked the page - some have even written me letters to tell me how useful it is for them.
I would argue that it's the best information sheet on this topic which exists on the web. (Yes, okay, I'm a little bit partisan, but I've invested a lot of work into it >;-> )
The search term "Xanadu sparkling translucent widgets" now brings up nothing in Google for that page (at least not in
the first hundred results or so), whereas it used to be listed first. (And I'm not surprised, it was the most relevant page on this topic by a wide margin).
I'm most worried about how those people will return the page who, instead of bookmarking it in their browser use Google as 'their bookmark system'.
I'm confident they'll find the page in the end - they'll keep looking for it as it's the only one that provides that sort of information... but I'm mystified as to why, when I've only ever used "white hat" techniques the page has vanished...
I can only conclude that the serps will take a couple of days to settle and when they do, it will be back there in the first 3-5 results.
(Of course I'm not talking about one page here... I'm talking about 65-70% of the pages on my site).
[edited by: ronin at 6:38 pm (utc) on Nov. 15, 2003]
In your quality guidelines.. It says don't participate in linking schemes.
Can you define what a linking scheme is compared to just having links to other sites that are related to your industry/field/subject/etc.?
I agree completely. We banged on for ages before the message got over. The same with PDFs and Spamazon during that second problem period. There was strong resistance on both occasions to the idea that the quality had dipped badly.
It has dipped this time as well. No doubt about it. However, at least some specifics have been sent in straight away, creating at least the opportunity for some sort of wind back.
Sadly, I don't expect to see it for some time though.
>> Has a real feel of somebody going round cracking nuts with a sledge hammer! <<
Indeed. The collateral damage is immense, and the Google itself is far from immune from it.
[edited by: Napoleon at 6:36 pm (utc) on Nov. 15, 2003]
No point getting mad or frantic, for a few days at least.
GG, can you at least tell us how long things are likely to be shifting Eg timescales on filters, other data etc?
Would at least enable people to say to themselves in 3 or 4 days - ok back to the drawing board.
Some of us work hard in doing the stuff that we do, I for one am concerned that my efforts may now be in vain.
[edited by: TravelMan at 6:39 pm (utc) on Nov. 15, 2003]
What percentage of your inbound links to that page had "Xanadu sparkling translucent widgets" as the anchor text?
I know most people with this oppinion usually keep quite on these threads, so I thought I'd lend my voice.
Loads of pages dont have Title and Description shown too.
peterdaly, much appreciated. It's like a telephone survey on a local news station--only people who feel very strongly tend to call in. So we do take self-selection into account.
Very little changes. The sites I expect to see are there, and reasonably ranked. Some higher, some lower, but within what I'd consider within normal bounds.
Thus, looks good. Only possible issue, which I am not the best person to evaluate, is the spamminess of searches. And, that is a real tough one, as spam tends to be defined by many as competitors ranking higher. ;)
Still too early to worry... more data... more filters... somehow I don't think it'll turn out as bad as most non-black-hats think.
I sincerely hope that this is also an update that will take out some of those who use twenty or thirty highly interlinked sites, with keyword links on the bottom of every page to get their rankings.
Oh well,It is exciting to say the least.
[edited by: nancyb at 8:52 pm (utc) on Nov. 15, 2003]
Most results I see are linking to inside pages and
not the index page of a site.
www.awebsite.com/apage.htm
appears instead of
www.awebsite.com
This is a major bounce and i'm seeing many homemade websites appearing higher then biq quality sites.
All my sites are whitehat sites with not a single spam in them, this update has put my sites into positions that i had a year ago. Not all is bad but does seem to be quite arratic behavior, I mean good quality sites that were well ranked because they were very relative are suddenly judged completely different. And they don't have a single spam issue.
I thought the days of these major updates had gone but seems like they are back. I also don't see much or if any change in the backlinks.
Its a very bold move for Google to suddenly change their ALGO like this, not that I am complaining much but it is very arractic.
I believe or hope that a lot more data is going to be fed into the results soon.
Just sit tight everyone do doing anything dramatic just yet!
Okay, it seems like we're well into the "sky is falling, imminent death of Google predicted" stage. I'm going to get some breakfast--I'm starving--and will check back in afterwards and throughout the day today.
[edited by: GoogleGuy at 6:49 pm (utc) on Nov. 15, 2003]
I agree - no point in getting mad or frantic - none of us can change the Google SERPS
I think all we can do is express our own opinions and stand firm in our beliefs, as this is the business we are in and we are passionate about what we do.
Personal expereince is always going to play a part, no getting away from that, people who have gone from the SERPS will not be happy, people who remain will be happy and most will sit back quiety smiling to themselves and will not come by forum3 to post that they are happy!
[edited by: viggen at 6:50 pm (utc) on Nov. 15, 2003]
Ahhh! The golden information nugget! :)
Are you guys seeing what we are seeing?
In several SERPs I show up in the top-10 for allinanchor / allintext / allintitle, yet am nowhere to be found in the top 250+ results.
Bingo, bet it's the index & it's less than a year old. Oh well, Google fixed it before, they'll fix it again.
>"Xanadu sparkling translucent widgets"<
What percentage of your inbound links to that page had "Xanadu sparkling translucent widgets" as the anchor text?
For on-site inbound links, all of them used that text - in a consistently placed menu bar. After all, that was the topic and title of the page.
For off-site inbound links, I have absolutely no idea. I don't chase after inbound links from other websites. I see my job as writing pages that are good enough that people want to link to them without my having to ask them first.
Most of the time, asking people for links doesn't quite seem like cricket.
Where do you think the problem lies?
Insufficiency of external inbound links?
Or penalty because all my internal inbound links use the same text? (Why on earth would this be penalised? >;-> )
In response to my own question: no PR value shown, also, the returns are the same as for the main Google search.
Re-read the above.
Now... that's a massive change too. Think about it. Any ideas or speculation of what's going on here?
I have never used any SEO techniques other than using common sense and providing good content.
Maybe im in a less competitive business, but for the past
few years, updates have come and updates have gone, but
I have stayed relatively unchanged in the google listings.
Not last time I looked. Why have the search facility on there if it returns the same stuff?
Also... how long has the PR indicator been missing?
Are you talking about PR0? - if so take of the?il=1 at then end of the url.
Wonder why it is linking like this though?
