July Update?

[Heywood_J]

Is it me or does it look like a significant update is going on at google. I am noticing a number of SERP changes for a few of my sites and they've been fluctuating for the past few days.

Anyone else noticing any major changes?

[steveb]

The link command was very useful, in obvious ways to find related sites (much much better than the "similar pages" way), but also to avoid bad neighborhoods.

This information can be found other ways, even if it is more time consuming and generally less accurate, but both these tasks (related sites; avoid bad neighborhoods) are vital tasks and if you haven't been doing them one way or the other then you are missing the boat.

Same old song, the girl who can't dance says the band can't play.

[oaktown]

You're right Kirby. Sorry. I didn't mean to imply that G doesn't "see" them but rather that they (pages ending in "guestbook.html")are given no weight, as for some time now I haven't seen pages with that name show as backlinks.

[1milehgh80210]

Okay, I apologize. Yes, the link function was working spectacularly before. And No, I can't dance..

[SuddenlySara]

oaktown... are you seeing the current Google dance where guestbook.html links and similar are everywhere?

[my3cents]

The new #1 result for many of the top phrases in my industry is now a 404 page for a site that does not exist anymore.

Most of the competitors in my area that actually had good relevant content are now gone. I saw a few missing a couple days ago, now I find a few more that are gone.

I expect this week to be good for me, since my website is one of only 4 websites in the top 20 that is relevant.

[Kirby]

steveb, Agreed about the pro SEOs, I just dont think the majority of self-professed SEOs are pros. I also dont understand what you mean by an accurate backlink command. It is accurate, just not comprehensive. Now they simply show the low end as opposed to a hodge-podge compilation of PR4+ links.

How are you judging bad neighborhoods? Just based on backlinks? I've seen link farm links as backlinks when the link farm page is nowhere to be found in the index.

I guess you also have a point here, but perhaps its Google's way to alter our thinking. If we are concerned about who we link to but cant use links to judge, then maybe our outbound links should now be based on the value of the content of the page we link to (vote for) instead of its perceived value as a reciprocal link.

[sit2510]

It looks like G has reverted its backlink report to the previous ones. I think the backlink results in the past couple of days might not be a temporary glitch, but more or less a half-cooked results. Interestingly, it helps to reveal the trend what G's backlinks will be.

[bts111]

Google write the rules for the game that we play.

Learn the new rules and keep playing.

It gets a bit boring otherwise : )

[steveb]

"It is accurate, just not comprehensive."

Google commonly returns about 1000 results for searches, or all available results, less "omitted results".

The link command is a search, and it fails to return anything close to accurate results when the universe is less than 1000 results. Yes, with over 1000 results they could plausibly show anything. But now (when their are under 1000 possible results) they are choosing to show results that are not the most accurate, relevant, correct and useful results.

Yes it's just a goofy webmaster search, but it is still a case of a search engine deliberately serving up poor results for a search.

[kaled]

I am, in a small way, a sci-fi buff. One thing that always amazes me is that some people read far more meaning into irrelevant details than is reasonable. They will assume that everything in the script has been thought through perfectly - there are no mistakes. Anything that appears to be a mistake is simply there to baffle us.

WRONG.....

If Google didn't want us to use the link command, they would have withdrawn it. Turning it into a junk command simply makes them look stupid and amateurish - not something they would do intentionally.

Kaled.