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The biggest question I have is: Can this happen again?
I am curious of other thoughts on the Florida Update - one year later.
Maybe something is up. Over the last few days Googleguy has been pretty active here as well.
My gut feeling though is that there is no new "florida" around the corner.
What then is about to hit us? No idea, it's about asking the right question and I don't know what it is. Catch 22.
Can this happen again?
Can and probably will. Algo tweaking is what Google do.
some suggested google was broken
That was mostly webmasters who'd lost their rankings. Google is never broken, they just sometimes have good SERPS, sometimes have bad SERPS. Whichever it is at any given moment depends on which side of the fence you're sitting.
TJ
PS : A shake up right before the holiday season has to be great for AdWords revenue.
Google is getting boring and I need a challenge ; )
And PR as a measurement of prestige is probably out. forever.
Of course these are only my guesses. I agree, Google has gotten boring. It's like watching grass grow. I want the days back when you can make a change on your site and see your ranking swoop and dive within days.
They always have something or the other is store for all of us. Right now my websites are doing good too, good enough for the biz and not too good to keep lots of eyes away :)
CaboWabo
Nobody knows anything should be the standard mantra. Those few who do, usually keep their mouths shut.
What I do see is the new MSN search on the horizon which should prompt google to get back to the business of getting new sites and fresh information out there - pronto!
When MSN sends me more traffic than google, will I really care if they change the algo or fiddle with the sandbox? Not likely.
When MSN sends me more traffic than google, will I really care if they change the algo or fiddle with the sandbox? Not likely.
If you are referring to a possible MSN-dominated future, well, maybe. If you're talking about right now, and MSN is sending you more IPs than G, then you're doing something wrong with G.
I think it will be 2006 before you see that.
Looking at my logs, and specifically the MSN-referred traffic, I can only say - LET's HOPE SO!
Any way my point is at some time in the future search results will stay the same.
It wont matter to google what other search engines pop up.
I personally have seen some sort of serp update every three months.
Last one was in august, this one is due for november.
Those sites which comply with Google's webmaster guidelines should have nothing to fear. The problem is that Google raise and lower the bar without warning ... redifining what complies and what doesn't.
My advice should there be a shake up is to try a few different startegies and wait to see which one works. Then get to work rewriting your sites.
My problem last year was I kept waiting and hoping it was all a bad dream. I waited far too long before taking action and lost nearly half my income for the year. THAT won't happen again!
Have a back up plan folks.
The sandbox is also not exactly the most dymanic tool to combat stale results either!
The only way forward to to be able to better assess on page content and site quality.
The real question now is "what is Google's priority?"
Good search results or PPC revenue?
You think the results are stale now.
Can you imagine the resources it would take to asses site quality.
It would have to be done my humans, becuase any algorithm can be figured out.
How long does it take for a site to get in to the dmoz.
Ive been waiting for 6 months and longer on some of my sites.
And to that JJ I shall look forward to a few laughs. :)
It seems to me Google is running on 8 cylinders pedal to the metal. I don't think we'll see a huge change in typical search, everything will be 'eased in'. I do think Google will put more effort into ancillary businesses. They will grow areas of search other than that you normally associate them with.
Google results appear stale because of their slavish reliance on backlinks.
I see sites that have not been touched for 5 years at #1 for some terms simply because of old links, no reflection of quality or content at all.
That why I would guess, and hope, that a major tsunami is coming our way.
In my little corner of the web, there is a very high ranking link page (in fact, an old link FARM, no less) that hasn't been touched since 2001, the webmaster's address no longer exists, and half the links are dead. But it sure comes up high in the SERPs!
Then, there's that PR0, keyword-stuffed, say-nothing, phony directory subdomain page with only two links, also high in the SERPs.
And the immovable #1 is a trashy, affiliate-loaded page that has garbage links and advertising all over the place, but hey! They've been on the web for nearly 8 years. Zero value, #1 for at least 5 years! Again, it's depending on stale links from pages that have not been updated in since the Flood.
It's not Google's fault, it's our fault for creating pollution on the web instead of real content, content that people want, rather than content we want to impose on people to make money.
I expect and hope for another major change like Florida, but the timing on it isn't going to be dependent as much on the calender as it will be on Google's failed technology being fixed. We've seen backlink and Directory updates rolled back recently because of bungled data, so it would seem unlikely that we would see a major change (either algo and lagtime-wise) soon. I certainly hope we do though.
