Google Updates: How do people know when?

Where do you find out?

[Snookered]

People on this board all seem to know when updates are going to take place. How do get to find this out? Do Google tell you or are you making well informed guesses?

Thanks

[plasma]

- check your logs daily
- check the SERPs regulary

[taxpod]

The best way I know to find out that there is an update going on is just to accept the fact that if it is posted here as official, it is. Knowing how or why people here know is largely irrelevant. They do and that is an undisputed fact.

[Netizen]

I think there is a difference between a perceived update as identified here e.g Brandy, Florida, etc, and everyday updates. Google is continually updating its index as it spiders content in a daily basis. What is called an update here, these days, is a major shift in the SERPS caused by an algorithmic change at Google.

[moftary]

What about PR updates?
Of course, you will know there was a PR update when your website PR increase/decrease, but when it preserve its PR how would you tell?

Cheers,

--moftary

[Stefan]

You find out about PR updates at WebmasterWorld.... :-)

Even if your own PR hasn't changed, other members here will have seen changes and posted the news.

[jocelynd]

The amount of backlinks is an indication when the PR itself did not change.

[Snookered]

By update I mean title changes and new pages showing.

Like lots of others there hasn't been much Google log activity recently and not all my logs are updated daily, so there isn't much scope for finding a pattern.

>> Knowing how or why people here know is largely irrelevant

Black Magic or what. Or stable whipsers from Google. Isn't there a better way than that? We need to plan ahead.

Do page ranks always change slightly before an update?

Thanks

[rudy0826]

I think the original post means how do people know if google is spidering them each day. I think the answer is check the logs but I think what he/she wanted to hear is that there is a tool that does this. I have a script posted on a site if anyone wants it...I dare not post it here.. heavens forbid we have a link to the outside world I would get banned or something.

[steveb]

"By update I mean title changes and new pages showing."

This happens every day. Google was showing March 1st fresh tags at 1pm Pacific time today. Googlebot is much more active than it ever has been, and daily fresh tags are one result.

[Stefan]

People on this board all seem to know when updates are going to take place. How do get to find this out? Do Google tell you or are you making well informed guesses?

I dunno Rudy... I read it as he was wondering if people here somehow know when updates are coming. Before Dominic, last spring, that was true; there was a predictable regularity for a long time. Then it changed, and now no one really knows.

Snookered, Google has been in flux for the last few months, so maybe what you see here is people, watching sites and serps like a hawk, reporting changes within minutes of them happening, whenever anything is truly afoot.

ADDED: Should've read msg#8...
What steveb said.

[edited by: Stefan at 10:28 pm (utc) on Mar. 1, 2004]

[MedCenter]

Google Web Search updates:

1. PageRank
2. Ranking algorithms
3. Backlinks
4. Data
5. Directory Listings

They all occur at different times.

PageRank is usually never less than 3-4 weeks. Backlinks 2-3 weeks. Data depends on your PageRank, often it is daily. Ranking algorithms, depends, we've seen 3 in 4 months now - that's a new record. Directory listings have taken months recently.

[g1smd]

>> Ranking algorithms, depends, we've seen 3 in 4 months now <<

Umm, now just where did I just read that they have been trying 5 or 6 per month recently?

[Snookered]

Wouldn't it be more helpful if Google themselves let us know? I realize their job is massively complex and they're continually fighting colossal amounts of spam.

However, when is the last time you went to a bank for a loan and they said: "Yes you can have one, but we can't tell you when". ?

Banks have just as much data to manipulate as Google.

[synergy]

Taking what steveb said a bit further:

Googlebot has been spidering the hell out of my site, and it has been noted by others as spidering them alot as well. SERPs are showing fresh dates on nearly all sites 1-20 (in my sector).

With this you could probably bank on some changes coming in the next few weeks. Seems like before an update, they spider the index extra fresh so that changes applied can be measured with the latest data.

Wouldn't it be more helpful if Google themselves let us know?

It's not in Google's interest to let us know when an update is going to happen. Remember as webmasters we anwser to the search engines, not the other way around ;)

[metrostang]

Google has also been active on my site, but no fresh tags for anything except index. In my sector, you have to go 3 pages deep to find a fresh tag for many popular keywords. The most I could find was 7 fresh pages in the first 30 results for one phrase.

I thought it was a problem with my site, but it appears many in my area are experiencing the same problem. All of the fresh tags I saw were for index pages, nothing deeper. It doesn't make sense that Google has the capability to crawl the pages and can't update their database.

I hear others say they are seeing fresh tags within one day, but that's not what I'm seeing in my industry.