FAQ: Everflux - mid-month Google spidering and minor updates - Sept. 2002

The minor activity in between major Google updates

[Marcia]

There's one major Google update per month, which starts approximately the 20th to the 28th of each month and continues for several days. The new data migrates to the partner sites within several days.

See the Google Update History [webmasterworld.com] for details.

There is a major crawl at this time, with some reporting full crawls simultaeously with the start of the update or just prior, while others are not crawled until after the update is complete.

For several months there's been spidering of sites going on all month, even in between the major updates, but this only represents a small percentage of sites and while it may or may not affect ranking changes, it doesn't affect the entire index.

There was a lengthy discussion of what's been called The Everflux Effect early in July:

[webmasterworld.com...]

We've been having a lot of threads starting with questions about this all month long, which makes it hard to find all the relevant information related to it. Also, the volume of posts is making it harder to find other information relevant to Google.

Let's confine discussion of the mid-month spidering and minor update pattern to one thread, to help everyone find the information they need more easily.

[zeus]

I had a PR0 on this update, so all my sites are not showing up on my good keywords, that means 0 traffic from Google, but yesterday my site showed up on my keywords not as good as before but we are only talking about4-6 places down but when I use the tool I still have a 0PR but the cache from 29 aug (new) showed PR4. I then when to the directory and my site was still under all the PR sites and the link check was still 0 even if I know I have some PR5-7 sited pointing to me and they still have the same PR.

Today I was agian out, 0 traffic from Google, so there could still be a update in action and I have also seen different results everyday since the Google started the update, but after yesterday I think my page still have a change.

zeus

P.s Great now my site dossent even show a 0PR, but now its greyed out in the tool bar.

PP.s OK now it is a PR0 agian, jesus this is pulling my nerves, its obvious not enogh that I got a soccer injury and now cant play for 7month, nob then the gods said lets give him a little more pain by messing up hes ranking at Google, but I do not give up hope I know my site is good so it will rank good in this update.

[Birdman]

I'm not sure when the main update finally settled, but I uploaded a completely new design for a site Saturday morning hoping to get them in next month.

Googlebot hadn't been by up to that point so I thought chances were good for the next update. Lo and behold, there's GB the next day(Sunday). Grabbed a couple pages that day and next. Then, ate the whole site the next day.

So, I'm happy at that point. Well, go figure, all the new pages are in right now and some placed well. I suppose it could be one of those in and out deals for the rest of the month.

If the pages were to stay for good, would that be a rare occurence to get pages in that fast?

On a side note, I was not able to put 301 redirects on the old stuff. Hosted on Win2000 system and no access to IIS manager. I had to use meta-refreshes and robots noindex,follow with a single text link on all old pages. I know it's off topic, but real quuick, is that going to affrect me in the long run?

Birdman

[startup]

We are not giving the update enough time to finish before discussing the results. A big change happened in the last 18 hours. The window for the update lasts almost 2 weeks. The major changes take place during the first week and everything appears to settle. Always be prepared for a change up to 2 weeks latter.

[podawg]

I hope so,
This last update saw me drop **Huge** on my keyword rankings.
I have lost almost 60% of my traffic since it happened. Same PR, but it means nothing with out good serps.

On the bright side, google seems to have crawled nearly my entire new site which I didn't get in until about day 2 of the update. Thought I would be completely missed. Her first visit came on the 28th then later that day she brought all her friends.
Makes me feel a bit better, I guess

[Tropical Island]

Our listings are still changing and we now have a dated entry in www of Aug. 31 on 2 of our sites with the new page in the cache. On one term we just dropped 4 places which put us into the 2nd page. This has all happenned in the last 2 days.

[SuperSoup]

this morning i did a check on all my incoming links and i do have some doorway pages hosted on diffrent domains all linked together for the first time in two years the links on these pages disapeared will this mean ill get PR0 next update or is this temporary? the strange thing is my listings are still ranked well were they always have been?
any comments?

[FlashRed]

Sounds transient, we had a similar thing happen last month (not ALL backlinks dissappeared, but most!).

The recent update saw our site return to normal. This only happened for one of our websites and it was quite unusual. I wouldn't think it is a precursor to PR0, you would be PR0 now.

[SuperSoup]

here are more details.. it's all links coming in to my little web of domains. grant you my web only consisted of 4 domain names my main one and three others.

example www.mymaindoamin.com still has most links minus my own domain links which where there last month

www.domain1.com had over 80 links last month now has 0 incoming links still ranked well though?

same for all other domains

this is what they all say now:
Your search - link:http://-----.com/ - did not match any documents.

Suggestions:
Make sure all words are spelled correctly.
Try different keywords.
Try more general keywords.

these were just extened products each on a seprate page i did make one change from the last month i added an aditional link with my keyword in the text to my main site for a total of two links coming in to my main site from these pages. do you think this could of contributed and is it to late to change it again before the next update finishes?
thanks

[SuperSoup]

you sure this is not a precursor to PR0

[SuperSoup]

this is a new kind of penalty

has anyone experianced this before

[zeus]

I also got a PR0 with this update, but 1 thing I dont think it is, that is, its NOT a penalty.

zeus

[SuperSoup]

well thats why i think its a new kind of penalty if they take your links away then you are not going to rank well so this is a new kind of penalty

[Beachboy]

Well, you may be right or not. Unfortuately, the Google honchos don't give us advance notice of changes they make. So let's sit tight and see how things play out. In the meantime, if you think Google has implemented a new penalty and you've been caught up in it, give some thought to what to do in the meantime until a final determination is made (you don't want to waste time by doing nothing if you're right.)

[SuperSoup]

can it be concidered a penalty if google is not reporting any incoming links to any of your domains because they were linked to each other. has any one had this problem? im assuming that when next months update comes around ill be droped like a bucket because i have no link popularity.

anyone

[brotherhood of LAN]

How high is the PR of your site?

If its 3, or maybe even four, there maybe not enough high PR links showing. Only PR4 and above links are listed with link:site.com

[fathom]

More likely than not, if your site does not have PR4 pages or above, or links coming from PR4 pages or above you will not see any backlinks in google.

In the case you still have link popularity but google will just not show them to you any higher.

[SuperSoup]

last time i checked i has links coming in from my own sites two of them which i think know i know is a no no but the point is that these sites would often appear in my backward link check unless something has changed in the last month i did notice that my pages that are not appearing are PR3 but they were there not to long ago and had been there for at least a year. Is this a new type of penalty from google so people dont make thier own link popularity?

[SuperSoup]

ok i just confirmed one of my other stores that sells something else has a PR4 it is listed in odp and has a link to www.mysite.com and it does not aprear on links:www.mysite.com or any other site that i had a link before is as if they did something manually anyone ever seen anything like this?

googleguy is this a bad sign?

[cminblues]

Ok some facts:

I've some sites under penalty in Google [-> greyed-dropped].

These sites have still good links from ODP & Yahoo.

But these links are not showing at all in the Google adv. search.

So, I think when a site is going 'dropped', not only it disappear at all from the visible Google database, but also we don't see anymore all the good links to this site.

Note also that, int the last days, Googlebot come in these my sites, but request only the main page. [I mean '/'].

Hope this help.

[SuperSoup]

ok or is this PR4 threshhold for back links a new thig when did this start?

[Beachboy]

The PR4 threshhold has been like that for a lot of months, at least. But I don't recall from precisely when. It's not new.

[cminblues]

SuperSoup, take a look also at this:

If you have site 'ABC' under penalty, then also all the other sites you have with outgoing links to 'ABC' are under penalty.

So, you apparently loss links, but the fact is [a part of] your sites group is being 'dropped'.

Check your logs and see the accesses with
HTTP_REFERER similar to: '..google...q?.'

Check also, in the G search field:
'-ghhjanonsensewordhjkj site:wwww.yoursite.com'

If you see nothing, then your site is dropped :(

If your site appear, then consider get some good links.. :).

[zeus]

I link to some of my other sites and they also have a PR0 now.

zeus

[Birdman]

An update on my earlier post:

I uploaded a completely new design for a site Saturday morning hoping to get them in next month...all the new pages are in right now and some placed well. I suppose it could be one of those in and out deals for the rest of the month.

Yes it is in and out

[RussellC]

I have noticed something different just recently with one of my regularly crawled sites. Say I get a fresh tag on Aug 31 and then today I don't have a fresh date. The current cache of the page is still from Aug 31 even though it has no date. It used to revert back to a month old cache when there was no fresh date, now it keeps the freshest. Much better.

[john5]

A new page that I uploaded on August 29 is in the regular www index and ranked number one - although by no means competitive. But amazing indeed. Google robots have been a permanent guest on my two web sites since the last update.

[mikeputnam]

My site was "partially" crawled 8/6, 8/14, 9/1. I continue to have a PR of "grey" -- Current Page is not ranked by Google.

At what point do I start worrying that I'm penalized?

[RobPike]

Good Day All

I've been left quite perplexed since Google's most recent 'update'. I created a couple of new sites and manually added them. During and after the last 'official' dance there were no sign of any of them. However, last week, doing a search, each of em were in the top 10, for their relevant keywords. None of em had any PR, none of em had any backward links (that google saw), in checking my logs, i noticed that googlebot visited a couple of times (25th, 26th & 27th), this listing remained constant, till fri/sat, when doing the same search i realised they were all gone. Not even in the first 20 pages! If i pull up the site, there is still no PR.

Although it was #4 last week, if i search for the domain name it says it can't find any info. on the site.

Does anyone know, or could shed some light as to what exactly might have occured? Has this happened to anyone else? Is this new listing (minus my site) going to remain constant till the next update? Was this some precursor to what's going to happen during the next idex, will i reappear then? Any one who could provide an informed opinion, i'd be very grateful, as my job is now in jeopardy, as management thinks something was done wrong.

thanks all

[edited by: Marcia at 4:38 pm (utc) on Sep. 3, 2002]
[edit reason] link to tool removed [/edit]

[przero2]

I have seen this happen to new sites. In 'n' Out, time for an in 'n' out now for me;)