Reverted Back To Old Index?

[swanweb]

Hi all,

I have changed the titles of my pages to be more descriptive. Google has searched my website nearly 5 days in a row. It picked up these new titles as it was only adding 1 or 2 pages a day to the index. I checked and it had the new titles and the updates to the text, news etc. But when i checked it yesterday it has reverted the pages back to the titles that it prevoisly had.

I have also noticed that while it was indexing these new pages i could see when it last crawled the site e.g. 29 Feb 2003 - what does this mean as some sites have this some dont. It was showing the date it crawled the site when it was showing NEW page titles but now its reverted back to the OLD pages it doesnt show the date last crawled apart from the main page.

I cant figure out what is going on, my PR is still 0 aswell and well i have about 100 sites linking to me with at least PR4. Its all Weird. Is google still doing PR?.

Please Help.

Matt

[John]

I have a similar problem. Google has indexed several times and has picked up new index page only to revert to caching an old page ( 1-2 month old) a few days later.

We lost 35 out of 40 search terms from the first couple of pages in Google and these still haven't re-appeared in the first 100 pages

Google doesn't appear to be indexing much beyond the index page.

Total Google nightmare really. Any suggestions appreciated.

John

[steveb]

This is normal. Happens to everyone.

[webdevjim]

Steve,
Do you know why this happens? I've notice that it also has different dates for the same page in the cache for different key phrase searches.

[swanweb]

Its a bit wierd that this would happen. Google raves on about setting the pages relevency and being an up-to-date search engine, when yet it caches a page and decides hey ill just go back to the old one. Surely this will be producing many OUT-OF-DATE web pages which is not good from a search engines point of view.

Is the Google PR still updating because i havent seen it updated in a long while, ive heard that google is slowly fasing it out because of people buying high PR links etc, is this true? what is happening with PR these days.

Thanks
Matt

[metrostang]

I hope this isn't normal.

I've seen a new twist this morning. Two pages show a fresh tag, but when you look at similar pages both show up again in their previous version. Same URL, both are www.example and are obviously two weeks old. I thought older pages would be replaced by the fresh ones. Most pages crawled at the same time as these two show only older versions.

I'm confused. Is Google going through growing pains or have these things been the norm and I just wasn't paying attention.

[SyntheticUpper]

Google has the potential to throw up much worse for individual websites - it's a big Internet - many folks would be grateful just to be in the index, even if their listing was a couple of nanoseconds out of date :)

edit: sorry - a couple of weeks :)

edit 2: See below: I wasn't really referring to you John, if you have a non-crawling beyond index page issue that's a more serious matter and you have my sympathy.

[edited by: SyntheticUpper at 2:12 pm (utc) on Mar. 2, 2004]

[John]

It's not a winge about being a nanosecond out of date. We lost 80% of our Google top page exposure and the business that went with it. Now we have attended to a lot of problems on those original pages we are not getting them considered by Google as our current pages even though all their competitor like the nes pages very much :-) It make me wonder if Google will ever return to sanity or even the same planet as the rest of us. If Yellow pages manage to keep up by quill and pen I wonder why Google can't.....

[swanweb]

From a business perspective having old pages is not great for marketing products. Google seems to be slowing, showing older pages and not doing the job as well as it used to.

The internet is a competitive industry no matter what style of website you operate and the version that google shows of your website plays a key role in getting customers and income. If google is showing old indexes when it has new indexes there is something wrong. If google wants to be a key player in the market the ability to keep the information indexed up to date is a primary aim for quality of search.

Why google isnt performing as well as it should no one knows and we probably wont for a little while. They are getting to big for thier boots and soon enough the information it stores will just be a pile of out to date rubbish that no one will look at.

My website is crawled daily at the moment as i add at least 5 pages a week to try and work my way up the rankings but as it not showing updated versions of its cache doing this will get nowhere.

Who knows whats going on?, maybe another updated version of google?, maybe a bug in the search index?, whatever it is, the longer google leave this lurking the less reliable and relevent the information will get.

Matt

[metrostang]

>>>SyntheticUpper

Then you must have been addressing my post.

I'm not complaining. I'm pointing out things I've not seen before. Search results, crawling, fresh tags, no duplicate pages, expecting to see updates within a reasonable time have been consistant over the past two years for the sites I manage.

I was hoping someone here might come up with some logical reason why old pages are showing up and suggest a possible fix if the problem is with the site. From other posts here, it looks like a Google problem.

I think it does help your sanity to see that others are seeing the same issues and probably keeps you from trying to fix a problem with your site that doesn't exist.

[John]

The utterly brilliant thing about this forum is sharing a view of the world and finding out you are not alone and banging your head in vain!

I am not a techie and have a ton of other things to do so being able to post here and quickly find out that things I think are going wrong are real issues is priceless. I know threads drift off and occassionally you get a ton of advice you didn't really deserve;-) I still love it.

For a lot of reasons I don't understand our Google position has gone down and down and doesn't seem to be respondng to intesive care. Time to move on to other sources of revenue I think. Any bright ideas anyone?

John

[delsartm]

Hi all. I am new here but what is described in the first post (newer pages being known only to be replaced by older pages later) happened to me a few months ago. Very strange, but it didn't bother me so much fortunately. All was back to normal a few days later. So, there is hope for you yet, just be patient...

[Hissingsid]

if you have a non-crawling beyond index page issue that's a more serious matter and you have my sympathy.

Hi,

Does anyone know what kicks this off?

Has this changed significantly with the last update?

Best wishes

Sssid

[SyntheticUpper]

Ssssid, we've probably discussed this before - but the only time I've had this symptom was when I put a 301 in place to divert some not-www to www.

[plumsauce]

Its a bit wierd that this would happen. Google raves on about setting the pages relevency and being an up-to-date search engine, when yet it caches a page and decides hey ill just go back to the old one. Surely this will be producing many OUT-OF-DATE web pages which is not good from a search engines point of view.

they are confusing activity with accomplishment.

so is wall street.

++

[steveb]

"Do you know why this happens?"

Backlinks, pagerank and the master cache pages for sites are updated periodically, not instantly. Your basic ranking is based on your master cache page with its pagerank and backlinks. Fresh pages and rankings are just bonuses. This was more obvious when Google used to update in one big "dance" but the basic principle is still the same.

[Abigail]

I am seeing this, too - some pages that were changed and have been in the index "changed" well before the last update - have reverted back to old pages today.

[adfree]

no sign here (yet?)

[Abigail]

Back to the updated pages today - must have been a tech blip on the screen!

[swanweb]

My website is still showing older indexes, Google is still searching my site daily. Why o why is this a problem. Surely google needs to do an update on its system and do a PR update cause ive been waiting for months.

Matt

[ClickMagazine]

I've been seeing the same thing on a bunch of my sites. New title tag, back to old title tag, back to url and no desc. Then we move forward, old title tag, new title tag. Then we start moving backwards again.

As of two days ago Google has been spidering and we're seeing new title tags. Let's hope this time, they stick!

[SyntheticUpper]

We're probably heading for an update.

[Meta_Vision]

Let's see if I can get this thread erased, too.
{no longer smiling}

The flow of the search engine business
is charging a fee for frequent updating
of site content in the index.

This may be reasonable.
There may be alternatives.

Meta_Vision
whose eyes are wide open now
and taking notes for an article

[kevin1023]

I am thinking update also. I haven't been getting anything in except home pages.

[adfree]

so, now and surprising as ever (in the past couple of months), update, dancing ... wait a minute, I thought the dancing thing was over for good or is this one of Brett's tricks to get another record breaking thread going...?

;-)

[swanweb]

Hey i started the thread.

Google needs to sort itself out, 2 of my pages have reverted to titles previous to the new one. Its all wierd.

[steveb]

It's not at all weird.

This is how they've done it since freshbot appeared more than a year ago.

This is what they do. This is what they are trying to do.

[Rick_M]

Steveb,

I don't think this is how it's always been. I believe that around Florida the fresh pages started to stick and didn't revert back. It looks like since the most recent update, though, the fresh updates are like pre-Florida - they show up for a few days, then revert to old pages (or drop out completely). I'm hoping that with a full update all of these pages will get included. This is more like a full dance that we were used to before Florida - I agree that a record breaking thread is on the horizon.

[Liane]

It appears to be the "everflux" behaviour making a comeback. Do a site search and you'll find lots written on the topic. This is not new behaviour.

[Grace]

Ultimately one of my Pages for which the title and description were reverted is re-appearing with the new content.I hope all other changes and pages get updated soon.