September 2002 Google Update

It's Official

[nell]

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

[Jane_Doe]

I don't see title as being important in some of the terms I track. I made a new page where the search term exactly matches the title and the page name, and that new page in nowhere to be found in the top 30 SERPs.

What's odd though is that two of my other pages from a different site are in the top 20 for this term, even though they don't have the search term in the title or URL, and one is on a fairly different topic. They are both in DMOZ. Plus instead of the two pages from the same site being grouped together, one page is postion #8 and one page is position #19 (Google-AOL style) instead of one being indented and listed below the other.

[born2drv]

Has anyone tried to correlate dmoz descriptions/titles with ranking?

I have great ranking for most of my search term combinations that are contained in the description of my dmoz listing (none in the title).

[davidku]

Normally when the dance started, is it normal that our referral from Google drop? My site used to have 400-500 referrals from Google but during the refresh, it drops to 200-300.

Whew ! Glad to see new pages added in WWW2 and WWW3.

[teeceo]

"My sites links or showing in www3 and www2 but not www, is this part of the dance or am I updated intil next time?
teeceo." can someone please answer this?

teeceo.

[qball0213]

Well, I'm no expert, but it looks like what is on www now is some kind of combination, if that is even the right term, on it I am ranking better on some of the search terms I actually watch, while I am off the map on some on www2 and 3 and the same on other search terms. One page I'm fine on, I have lots of links pointing at me with my keywords in the anchor, while the ones that are gone are ones that have no other links pointing at them, other than my own. Now, on www, I am doing better on almost all my terms now, as compared to yesterday, I think, I wish I could look at yesterdays now. :) Maybe they are experimenting with part of the page rank that has to do with internal linking, to determine what kind of index it would make.

[AAnnAArchy]

It's interesting, the terms I've ranked highly for today have migrated from International (.ca/.de/co.uk) to www3 and www2. Is it normal to start in the international databases?

AAnn

[Jane_Doe]

>"My sites links or showing in www3 and www2 but not www, is this part of the dance or am I updated intil next time?
teeceo." can someone please answer this?

If you mean you have new pages and links that are showing in www2 and ww3 but not www, yes that is what normally happens. Usually the new pages then get migrated over to www over the next few days.

[hotice_2002]

I think google is really updating.
My website disppeared from top 100 with special search term. I also can not find it within top 500, it disppeared, but while I search it with my url it comes up. I think goole is really updating. I am waiting for my website appear again.

[jaytierney]

Well, I for one hope the dance isn't finished. Talk about a bad fall... for my target search phrase, I went from being ranked #8 to all the way back on the 9th page... and this is the result of my site GAINING over 80 links in the last month and not losing any. Ouch...

[lazyz]

It seems like the new index is smaller... number of links on old www versus www2 is way different...

[NovaW]

The algo certainly is a bunch different & not good. I only really look at one very competitive search term with > 3million results.

Competitor sites that have been in the top5 for 18 months or more are now much lower - we are lower too. I know all the sites in the top30 fairly well & based off the change of results this is what I am seeing

- Anchor link text used to be very important - This has dropped significantly as a key factor
- Don't see any new impact of title or on page factors
- PageRank has increased in value in the algo.

It seems that pretty much the update always ends in exactly the same way that it starts - I hope this changes.

The first page of results are now largely bad returns with low consumer value. This is bad for google, but I am only looking at a narrow field & it may not be true for the big picture. Google does seem to mix it up a bit & tweak - so perhaps (hopefully) they will go back to results that are relevant in upcoming updates - but I'm resigned to the fact that the current mess is here to stay for a while.

[mack]

Through looking at the serps I would say this was a pretty regular updage for Google. I think we are just comparing this update to the last three and the last three where extremely lame, by Google standards. I think there is a little more weight on title tags. I also think there is more weight on anchor text that is similar to the title tag of the site that is sending the link. Perhaps this is Googles method of preventing of-content links for the purpose of gaining pagerank.

Anyone else seeing this?

[philicious]

I have found that two of our sites now have Open Directory listings/links in the results, but when you click on the directory link, the sites aren't there. And they are nowhere on DMOZ.

Anyone else come across this?

I'm not complaining, as I have picked up excellent results after just 3 weeks of doing the work for the client...

[BikeMan]

Yes the number of backward links seem to have been reduced in this update. Probably some link farms being dropped.

Other then that this update convinces me that the Google algo needs a major tweak.

Google has to give more leverage to content (if not less to keywords in the link text).

[Marcia]

Bikeman, have you noticed whether it was inbound links that were discounted, or whether it was several links coming in from the same site? I haven't had any decrease in links so I haven't noticed that.

[BikeMan]

Marcia,

Its a particular site which has got dropped for sure. Haven't really had a real close look at the others though.

[BikeMan]

Whats really getting my goat is a site that I've grown to hate has made it through and gone up 5 places in the current update.

This site has been dead for over two years and has absolutely no relevant content to the keywords. The keywords appear nowhere on the site. It seems to be surviving on a few backlinks which come from pages that haven't been updated for years. But to move up 5 places?

[George]

Now seeing WWW3 results in the .co.uk WWW.
Is this here to stay now? The past dances I have seen suggests we are 80% there.

George

[infodigger]

BTW,

Happy birthday Google. Seems that you are getting wiser update-by-update:)

Here is an article about the "go to hell" case:

http://www.forbes.com/business/newswire/2002/09/26/rtr733157.html

I believe that this case is more like a "filter list" rather than a general change to the algo.

[Learning Curve]

Jane_Doe's observation that PR is now weighted more heavily may explain something I'm seeing. In "city_name keyword_2" searches that I follow, three local newspaper/TV sites have moved up strongly. These general interest sites are large, with a huge number of internal links, and high PR. Keyword_2 is a small part of their sites.

[vitaplease]

Well there will definitely be enough to talk about during the Pubconference! ;)

Unlike what Webguerilla says I think this is the time to discuss and check.
As soon as www2 goes to www there is little material to compare and discuss and verify with.

As confused as I am, my preliminary conlusion is that anchortexts have devalued or evened out.

Maybe best to be checked with index pages as they often have the most incoming external links.

Please check for yourself using the function: "allinanchor: keyphrase"
and comparing those results with a normal search for "keyphrase" in both www and www2.

I would hope to be able to conclude that surrounding text of the anchortext is more important?

Also could it be that a one-off high pageranked anchortext external incoming link containing keyword is discounted in value if it is not back-uped by more anchortexts of lower Pageranked pages exteranl incoming link pages? (that is a more even distribution on links is necessary, or buying one high Pageranked link is less effective?)

[KakenBetaal]

Interesting update! I've done well on some phrases, and not so well on others. Most of my important phrases have gone up in the results.

Two that have gone down were "xxxx shops" and "xxxx lessons". Given that this page is actually about "xxxx shops/lessons in some_city", that's probably an improvement from the users' point of view.

[rytis]

I am looking at one page that jumped into #3 from nowhere in top 100 for 500.000 serps search. Page is last updated 1997 and ugly - you know these abandonned sites - default fonts, lots H1... Search phrase is 3 words, without quotes. The only appearance of phrase is 2 times as end of one sentence and beginning of other, all in H1 tags. Not in title, body text, alt tags, meta tags, incoming/local link, url - nowhere else. Words that form the phrase are in text but separately they are just ordinary words, used often everywhere. Search allintitle:"phrase" (in quotes) returns 400, these have the phrase also throughout the site.

It has only one incoming internal link and 20 links from outside. None of them are reciprocal. Half of linking pages are PR7-8, others lower. Majority of links anchor text is URL (common in 90's), none has single word from that phrase. Link check on alltheweb shows 19 of the 20 plus 3 other, unrelated too.

I just hope this new algo doesn't go live...

[ppg]

being new to this, much of the fine detail is still over my head, but regarding incoming links and this update:

I have a PR5 page linking into my site which has disappeared on a link:mysite.com search on www2.

I'm not drawing any conclusions. The page concerned is still live and still in the google index for www2. Strange.

[Sebastian]

**** PR Calcs happening ***
I'm seeing some PR fluctuation on my site, i.e. pages which show different tool bar PR, alternating on each visit.

This is an indication that Google is well into the PR calculation phase (final phase).

[x_m]

I am also seeing new results on www , if the update is done it was really quick this time.

[zeus]

the content text keywords are not that important this time, but title has got more power and I think the link text is the same.

zeus

[nvision]

Hey guys and girls, maybe someone can tell me what's happening - my site's link backs have gone up but, although still in DMOZ, my site's no longer in the Google directory and doesn't show up on any of my keywords, and I have a horrible gray PR bar - have I suffered from something no seo would like to dream of? heeeeeeeeeeeelp..... I haven't done anything shady to the site!

[Andrew Thomas]

Can someone just answer me this please?

I have a new site, it is showing on www2 and www3 but is not yet in www.google, should i be in their by now? or will it take a few more days?

thanks

[Sebastian]

nvision

when the PR is being recalced, your bar will often go grey for a short period of time (no sexual references intended). Mine did earlier today.

Just give it a little while. If it's still grey on your site this time tomorrow, then you're probably best seeing your GP :)