Major Google Changes

Significant movements in rankings.

[Imaster]

Hi,

It seems that a major google update is under way. I just checked www.google.com with the normal set of keywords that I generally use to monitor any changes and found what I believe is a major update. Now its back to original results. Its kinda on and off.

One of my site had a 50% increase in the number of pages crawled.

I hadn't much chance to check out whether the update spells good news or not, so lets keep our fingers crossed.

<Imaster adds>
The changes are visible on 216.239.39.104

[edited by: ciml at 2:15 pm (utc) on Dec. 16, 2004]
[edit reason] Addition [/edit]

[newsphinx]

Yes. My client continues telling me: "Our listings are going down!" Yes, they are jumping down and up. Looks like a BIG update.

[petehall]

The IP is displaying two sets of SERPs.

[mat]

Presumably Calum let this through for a reason. Maybe he's bored?

Can't see nuffink.

[jcoronella]

Maybe he's bored

Maybe he was feeling nostalgic with Christmas coming up and wanted to see an old-time update thread.

[mat]

Aah. That'd be kinda nice. Carte-blanche to be puerile and flippant?

Now, where is that damn hosts file?

[petehall]

Now, where is that damn hosts file?

Already tried that - no PR update as far as I can see.

[Iguana]

I'm seeing some big drops (e.g. #9 to #44) in my rankings for my more competitive phrases (no changes for others). That's bigger than everflux has ever been for me

[Dayo_UK]

I am seeing changes too.

Lots less pages returned on the site:www.domain.com check for some of my sites (although it is switching on that Datacentre) - I assume that the pages omitted are the url only listing which I dont want listed anyway.

Slight changes in serp positions too.

[Dayo_UK]

On Second looks it looks like a rollback to me.

Lots of 404 pages appearing that have been deleted from google live index - cache links not working (as these pages are deleted) and new sites(less than 1-2 months old) not showing

[joeking]

Can't say if a major update is underway, but definitely changes in the SERPs we watch. Positive too! Thanks for letting us know ciml.

[petehall]

This isn't an update (I hope!), a keyword we have a top position on is only returning 2,550,000 results instead of the usual 11,900,000.

Unless of course they are going back to "Searching 4,000,000,000 web pages" again :-)

[a389951l]

BL have been updated for my site when I look at:

216.239.59.105

[bether2]

I'm seeing big changes also on some data centers - as mentioned above. And referrals from google are down. Haven't seen anything like this in 10 months or a year. Unfortunately, it's not a positive change for me - and the keywords I checked aren't extremely competitive.

I'm talking about pages that were ranking in the first five positions being moved down to the 4th or 5th PAGE of the serps.

I'm glad had high rankings for as long as I did. But this big change puzzles me, since my site is clean (ie, no tricks) and has been pretty stable for quite a while.

[northweb]

yes, movement in the serps. guess google needs us to buy more of it's adwords....

think i'll wait for msn

[bd4rr]

I also noticed that 2 days ago, the indexed pages of a few my sites have changed a lot, so much that made it doesn't look real. But my post is still waiting for approval.

[DerekH]

I'm seeing at least three different sets of results - one of my sites has 60, 69 and 151 pages indexed according to the time of day, and the backlinks to it are different too.

Maybe this is Google's answer to MSN - two updates at the same time...
DerekH

[bd4rr]

Same here. And the figures are keep changing back and forth. Even at the same time, from same PC, using FireFox some time got different results from using IE.

[mykel79]

I see changes also.
I noticed a surge in traffic on one of my sites a few days ago. After investigating I found that it appears high in the SERPs on google.com (for some keywords with a couple of hundred thousand results) in Australia and sometimes in the US and Canada. If I go through proxies from those parts of the world I can see the results, too.
These results haven't reached the datacenters in my area (Poland, Europe), yet. The site is nowhere to be found for the same searches on google.com from here. This has been going on for since the 12th of December. I keep wondering which results will prevail in all datacenters...

[airpal]

Sheesh... the thread title got my hopes up that Google might have started ranking sites made in 2004. No such luck.

[northweb]

mykel79 i had the exact same results increase in relevant traffic Dec 14th. Adsense revenue increased by 50%, then they switched datacenters. Results are ugly.

[quotations]

Highly seasonal pages on one of our major sites have moved from #1 or #2 to the 30's while non-seasonal (general) pages on the same site have moved up 2 to 5 spots.

Seasonal traffic is down about 20 percent and general traffic is up about 15%.

Adsense is doing somewhat better.

[CalmBlueRage]

I noticed this 3 days ago. Our site went from 3rd to 1st in results and the toolbar directory icon finally lit-up, assuming it had also been updated.

Within minutes, the results and toolbar were back to previous state.

[Powdork]

Sheesh... the thread title got my hopes up that Google might have started ranking sites made in 2004. No such luck.

On first glance, my sandboxed site has now been dropped from the obscure phrases that were the ones it ranked for previously. Unfortunately I can't check my logs for this site til after midnight. I am guessing there are some terms I am doing better for since Adsense impressions are up slightly at this point.

[karmov]

We just underwent an overhaul on our design. A few small imporvements and was eager to see if it helped, but with significant movement in the SERPS it's going to be harder to gauge... Unfortunate timing for me...

[itisgene]

So, no sandbox lifting for this update?
I cannot find my new sites on the Google, yet for the competitive words.

[Imaster]

For one of our sites, the traffic has dropped by around 30%. The rest remains same.

[Blackguy]

i have pointed this out few days ago. I do not know if somebody ever noticed.

[webmasterworld.com...]

[iblaine]

I am not seeing any changes in my sites however I do buy clicks from ArticleInsider and their traffic is up since the 15th. I think it's still debatable whether or not we're in an update. The site RankPulse doesn't show any major changes.

[devitnow]

Yes, big changes for me too, and it's not good at all - infact, it's the worse change in SERPs I have seen for my site in 3 years.

What's so odd is that everything is systematically down, everything. I have a solid, solid site with no shady SEO, not even link-exchanges, and quality incoming links from hundreds of unique domains from major high PR sites. My search postitions have dropped from 1 page to 4th and 5th. Weaker terms which where on 4th and 5th are nowhere. Also, my terms are not very competitive.

But I don't think it's a rollback. Doing a Google search that shows very new site content is still there.

I hope we're just in the middle of something that just looks ugly right now. I'm just going to chill out for awhile.