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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]
One weird thing I just saw is that for a highly competitive keyword I am #1 for, I am also seeing a page from my site down at #14.
Wouldn't you expect this to show up as an indented result at #2 below my page at #1? That's why I expect.
While the first pages of most keywords I track appear relatively stable (just minor shuffling), there do seem to be a number of new sites appearing on subsequent pages.
A couple curious observations thusfar:
On a "brand widget-type" search with 664,000 results, I'm seeing "In order to show you the most relevant results, we have omitted some entries..." after only 200 results. There are many relevant pages/sites that are indexed but not listed. When I do "show omitted results" the results are littered with duplicate content (as expected). The duplicate content is almost entirely from a single site (which ranks #1) and its many cobranded subdomains.
Another "brand widget-name" seach shows a different phenomenon. Again, many relevant sites have disappeared. But after about the 200th result, they've been replaced exclusively by cloaked redirects from a single source. The cloaker is using many subdomains of 4 or five primary ".info" domains, all redirecting to a single spammy pseudo-search site.
My working theory: there have been changes to the initial algo that determines which pages make it into the results, possibly allowing in more duplicate content, and/or loosening other filters (subdomains seem to be a factor in both cases). The algo that ranks the returned results may have changed also, but perhaps not. The addition of duplicate/spam content, even though it isn't ranking highly, may be effecting the mix of factors considered by the ranking algo. These lowish-ranking sites may be affecting SERPs further up the line, either by pushing them out of the result set altogether or by affecting the criteria used by the ranking algo.
This is, of course, conjecture based on extemely limited information. I plan on riding this out for at least a few days before considering making any changes.
What do you guys see at 64.233.171.147 - is this different to what your seeing at those others?
Incidentally the site: command on this dc doesn't work.
For me, with a big site, on 06.12.2004 I had 171.844 visitors. The next day I had 148 000 and now I have 120 000 visitors.
170 000 unique visitors was something normal for me.
I was expecting 200 000 unique visitors/day by the end of the year but today i'm struggling to survive...
I think this is a rollback, its showing alot of old titles and products that were gone awhile ago
Unlikely. An on target blog entry dated 11/30/04 has made it into the top 20 of my niche.
WBF
100K visitors would make me beyond ecstatic.
On topic, I'm seeing changes the past 2 days, doesn't look like a rollback to me though.
For a slection of my keywords, the SERPs on that DC look much more like yesterday's results, and don't appear to reflect any of the changes I've noticed elsewhere today.
That's correct, only see any changes on that DC?
First glance suggests that they've decreased importance of internal links, and possibly increased the value of external links, among other things.
Spammy sites with lots of networked ROS links are giggling right now.
Also, mega sites (mainly spammy ones) with no main theme but lots of sub sections having to do with anything and everything, all under one roof, are doing well.
I found the new changes on these IPs:
216.239.57.98 (and other CW IPs)
216.239.39.99 (and other DC IPs)
216.239.37.99 (and other VA IPs)
Also: 66.102.7.104 and 64.233.161.105. Don't know DC associated with these.
Can't get to any IPs associated with AB, FI, or VA, so didn't check those.
P.S. I don't any changes on 64.233.171.147.
Another site I have for which the same keywords apply is on the first page for everything. That site is 2 1/2 years old.
The main reason is that I noticed a couple of days ago that googlebot had started requesting pages that I 404'd at least 6 months ago.
sites that have penalties appear in serps for a while
this seems to be happen during a dance until each of the new algo / penalties are applied .
I would not take any notice until about tuesday next week if your traffic is down
steve
Perhaps the spam filters/control will be better than we thought?
Guess we'll just have to wait & see.
DOES ANYBODY KNOW A COMMAND TO FILTER OUT 'SUPPLEMENTAL RESULTS' TO GET THE TRUE COUNT? site:domain.com command is obviously won't do it.
Yeah it sorta does to me too.
Hard to know if this is it, or if it will evolve over the nex few days.
IMO it is an extremely odd time for a major update. It's too late in the Christmas season for bad results to be appearing again. By bad results I mean the ones with dead links. In one set of results I monitor 2 of the top 3 results have links to sites that are no longer there. Two of the results toward the bottom of the page are not relevant. This is what leads me to believe it will all sort itself out by the end of the update.
We'll just have to wait and see.
wellzy
caveman:
First glance suggests that they've decreased importance of internal links, and possibly increased the value of external links, among other things.
I would tend to agree with that assessment. Our site that's been hit hard has been coasting up until now on internal link structure and anchor text, with individual internal pages tuned for very specific keywords. We have several thousand organic incoming links, mostly to the home page, mostly with poor anchor text (e.g. the site name). The home page has faired much better today than many of our internal pages, many of which have no external incoming links but had previously ranked very well for their niche keywords.
I'd expect to find only two sets of results, flipping back and forth.
Is anyone else seeing more than two sets of results - if so do you have a feeling which one will be the final point of convergence?
DerekH
I used to have 1200 results on "contains the term" with the website name. Now only showing 270. Not right.
I see all the pages on 216.239.37.99, number of backlinks is correct here too.
The site is clean so I know this is not a penalty.
I also noticed a rollback on the directory.
