September 2002 Google Update

It's Official

[nell]

7:15 est I see different results on WWW, WW2, and WW3 in Florida

[Marcos]

Hi Jack_Straw, I think the legitimacy of their results is really going to suffer now. They are trading marketing oriented results for popularity based result. Wrong move.

[egomaniac]

>What if the anchor value change and let's say too many indentical anchors are considered as spam instead of increasing popularity/PR?

I think this is a very real possibility. Some of my pages with few inbound links are ranking fine, whereas pages with a lot of identical internal links are buried in the rankings (i.e. the domain root pages).

[GetVisible]

missed it - got made redundant yesterday - too busy job hunting! Doesn't look too mad at the first look!

[chowcat]

Did anybody here buy page rank last month? And if so what is happening to your sites?

Just had a crazy though that this month maybe "teach people who buy page rank a lesson - as well as those who sell it)

Although there are other factors yes and it's way to early to tell....so sleep tight all.

[squared]

I don't think this is a response to PR being for sale. The reality is that people selling PR is a very small group of people.

Does anyone think theming might be involved this time around?

[mykel]

squared: theming might be the case..practically the only one of my sites that is holding on is a new one I made based on the theming tips I learned here.

[johnsmith222]

I don't think this is a response to PR being for sale. The reality is that people selling PR is a very small group of people.

yes but if you post alerts about "Google PageRank For Sale!" on the front page of Webmasterworld exactly what kind of reaction do you expect from Google?

think about it

[stuntdubl]

>You need to at least get to the point where everyone is seeing the same thing.
So lets talk this time next week...

I guess web guerilla has been through this enough times to wait to freak out for a week or so.

Good point WG.....it'll save me money on prozac too.

[squared]

johnsmith222,

I'd expect Google to look at the reality of the situation instead of the hype.

-squared

[rfgdxm1]

>Does anyone think theming might be involved this time around?

Hmm...this is something Google hasn't done before. What SERPs I am seeing for my sites would tend to be consistent with that. A couple other sites have moved up on an important keyword also, and neither of those has changed anything to try and optimize more for that keyword. Could just be coincidence.

[Jack_Straw]

Does anybody have an argument against Marcos assertion that what we are seeing this update is an attempt to combat the Google Bomb?

Doesn't that explain it all?

[johnsmith222]

I'd expect Google to look at the reality of the situation instead of the hype.

hype is part of reality :)

why provoke them if it's not that common?

can you see my reasoning? I just don't see the point in digging your own grave :)

I think you guys really need to take a minute to think about what you're doing.

[gopi]

Exactly squared...People buying PR is very very small its almost negligible...this keeps the number of people having power over SERPs to a minimum. Even if you count 25% of people in this forrum can manipulate google results its still small comparing the overall webmaster population.

Also even if people buy PR they are gonna spend money only for terms relevent to them . This makes the serp relevent...

But i said before if you dump PR for onpage factors , every joe and his mother is gonna try diff kw/title combinations and call themself SEO...

[Mr_Tickle]

Marcos (post 275) looks to me to be a very significant insight.
Of course, Google must combat the web bomb (Mocrosoft="go to hell") trick. It has been highly publicized and is embarassing to Google. It challenges the legitimacy of their results in a very public way.

That the focus of this index is to combat this explains alot about what we are seeing in this dance.

Agree with this 100 %

I think this is the algo change we are seeing.

Reading between the lines, certain companies, and one in particular with a very close business partnership with Google (mentioning no names) probably had a little word in Google's ear.......

I reckon the results we are seeing now will stick.

[martin]

The algo change you're talking about is just in your imagination:
[webmasterworld.com...]

[mykel]

As far as the matter of links is concerned - there are 4,930 link to yahoo on www2, but there were about 600,000 on www before.

[ann]

MY LORD!

I am gone for a few hours and a 9 page thread is now up to page 21!

WOW!

[SuperSoup]

i see over 650,000 on www2 for yahoo

[George]

Is there a thread record for this topic? Considering we can only guess what is happening at the mo, imagine the length of it in a week! :)

Google should be proud!

George

[Mr_Tickle]

The algo change you're talking about is just in your imagination:
[webmasterworld.com...]

That thread and also this one is talking about the algo change possibly being the decreased importance to link anchor text.

So, I'm not sure I understand what your point is?

[rytis]

If the "too many indentical anchors from same site" theory is correct, there must be cases where page is linked every time differently, e.g. "keyword1 keyword2 random_word1", "keyword1 keyword2 random_word2" - and such page should rank extremely well for "keyword1 keyword2" in www2/3 against www, because of rarity (well, weirdness) of such interlinking. I just can't find the right example. Anybody?
BTW if this is the case it is so easy to "correct" for next update.

[edited by: rytis at 9:06 pm (utc) on Sep. 26, 2002]

[mykel]

SuperSoup: I still see about 5.000 links here in Europe. You probably have a newer version of the database in the States.

[dan_popescu]

I don't get this. I ranked great (first page) for a few keywords and now I can't find my URL, not even on the 50th page on www3 and www2. Other sites that are totally irrelevant have better rankings. What is going on? Plus the backward links are the same.

Dan

[apays14]

I have a few questions.

1. I have 11 sites on google and have not seen any change in page rank to any of them. Have you seen the PR change with your sites?
Is the PR change still coming?

2. My main site is a PR 4. Last month I had 3 links going to this site when there should have been atleast 50. This month I have 2 links showing to my site. I also have a PR 9, PR 7, and several PR 5 sites that are linking to this site. Why are they not showing as links?

Thanks

[gopi]

Also if "too many indentical anchors from same site" is true its not only easy to correct for the next update...but also there is no need to maintain 20 different pages targetting different kw combinations...dump all those phrases in a main high PR page and make sure all this different kw phrases are in the incoming links.

Now your main page is #1 for all your phrases :)
, just kidding

[hooloovoo22]

i really wouldn't be worried except for the fact that it's already showing up in the main index. anybody seen it update that fast before?

back to 5000 links for yahoo? is this google's version of the wayback machine?

[Powdork]

Sept 25 fresh results are now folded into www and www2 but not for all the pages that were minted (sept 25) before the dance. In the beginning I too was aghast, but this folding is helping to push me back to the top. For now I'm all :) and the bottle of pills is still full.

[pmac]

we want googleguy, we want googleguy whats going on

I don't want to offend anyone, but it's these types of posts that make trying to read a 300 post thread painful. Do you honestly think GG is going to walk in to the middle of this thread and share the "algo tweak"? It's not gonna happen. Analyze the new results, and if you gain some insight into the changes and want to share them, please post so we can all share from your experiance. Make the necessary changes to your site and move on.

I don't come here to listen to whining and gnashing of teeth. I come to learn. It's tough to do when you have to wade through so much "noise".

[rfgdxm1]

>Do you honestly think GG is going to walk in to the middle of this thread and share the "algo tweak"? It's not gonna happen.

Good point. GG definitely ain't gonna spill any Google secrets. We also really need to wait until the dance is over before *really* analyzing in depth. At this point, we only have hints and working theories. Once the dance plays out THEN we can test those theories.

[AkanDian rain]

How long before www2/www3 moves into www?