September 2002 Google Update

It's Official

[nell]

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

[gopi]

See one example of how irrelevent the SERPS in www3 are now..

"Dept Consolidation" is a competitive term ( not my industry).Search for that in google now...

None of the results exept #3 and #10 are relevent. I guess this term was ruled by keyword-keyword domains before...eventhough they may looked spammy they served the purpose...gave the user what he searched for...but NOW?

[edited by: gopi at 7:03 pm (utc) on Sep. 26, 2002]

[edited by: WebGuerrilla at 7:15 pm (utc) on Sep. 26, 2002]
[edit reason] removed url [/edit]

[rfgdxm1]

>rfgdxm1 and onebaldguy...that was the case before , but now PR seems to be irrelevent.

Then why is onebaldguy's competitor doing so well with only 3 inbound links, with 2 from a PR8 site? Of course, it isn't the site's PR that counts onebaldguy, it is the PR of the pages on that site that are linking to him. The only way what you are saying makes sense is if onebaldguy's competitor has keyword stuffed his page to the max. It seems to me at the moment anchor link text is de-emphasized, not PR.

[SmallTime]

Arrrgh!
Checked 6 nice clean sites -all down. Less relevant sites taking their place (at least in my opinion :) Agree that link text and/or pagerank is less of a factor, also noticed my backlinks down slightly rather than up. Two new sites - one that was in via "minty fresh", out. One spidered thoroughly not in at all.

[Mr_Tickle]

Maybe because you spelt it wrong. :)

That should read DEBT consolidation surely?

[edited by: WebGuerrilla at 7:13 pm (utc) on Sep. 26, 2002]
[edit reason] removed url [/edit]

[namniboose]

A new site I submitted got indexed and started getting hits on tuesday the 24th. If that's not an update I'll eat my mouse pad.

WOW! I just checked my own site and it's gone to #1 for my most cherished keyword phrase! DEF-IN-ATE-LY an update!

[edited by: namniboose at 7:10 pm (utc) on Sep. 26, 2002]

[ScottM]

You need to spell "debt" with a "b", not a "p"

:>)

[teeceo]

Hi all. last month I had 0 backlinks show up only (containts the term) and now I am seeing 25 backlinks to my site on www3,and www2, but not yet www, and also my PR has not changed yet, this is all part of the dance right?

teeceo.

[HollyHats]

I just checked my url and it say cannot be found. Does this have something to do with google indexing?

[bobmark]

anyone else think it's odd that www3 is in www so quick? Where I am we are usually real late and people all over are reporting the migration long before I see it. Not this time, it's already moved.
My problem now is whether to make page changes to reflect what I think is the new criteria shown in this update or to assume it is a temporary anomoly and stick with what got me to #5 before today.

[webman]

Don't know if this helps anyone, but I just figured out that both of the sites (out of 6 total sites) that are COMPLETELY missing from www, www2 and www3 are sites that are updated in Google on a daily or weekly basis (you know, the ones that show in the SERPs with a date). Anyway, I'm hoping there is some correlation between that and the fact that they are removed. Maybe Google is merging the "minty fresh" sites in with the rest of the index and they just haven't appeared yet. (Notice I'm trying to keep a positive attitude until this is all over).

[ScottM]

I'm going to throw out the idea of some "randomizing the results".

Nothing would be more frustrating to us than chasing a ghost. I've read and re-read most of the comments here and it seems each claim has a counter-claim. And then each counter-claim is is reclaimed...etc.

Now why would Google do this "Randomizing month"?

Some possibilities:
1. Flush out amateur SEO. (They tried it and it doesn't work.)
2. Relieve some dependance on Google. (Everyone seems to be putting a lot of eggs into the Big 'G' Basket. Admit it...You are already looking at other S.E.'s for some traffic or maybe...ahem...'AdWords'....?)
3. Watch for major changes in websites THIS month. (Thus flushing out those who are trying to 'adapt' to the 'new' algo.
4. Flushing out some unethical behaviour at directories.
5. Shaking up the whole SEO world for a month. Can you imagine how many 'pro's' are going to have some 'splaining to do on Monday?
6. (added) If the results aren't relevant to the searcher...maybe they'll click on..ahem...AdWords? (/added)
7. (added more) Flushes out Page Rank for Sale. (/added more)

Any way you look at it, this update is a HUGE change.

Has anyone noticed the ABSENCE of many moderator's comments and senior members? (Listen carefully...that's the sound of many of us scrambling to figure out what's going on.)

As in Chess...

Google says 'check'...

[edited by: ScottM at 7:30 pm (utc) on Sep. 26, 2002]

[bobmark]

I had wondered something like that too webman.
My homepage was last freshened sep 24 and appeared with that date in searches and now it's like it isn't in the update and on some searches I get a 2 month old version of the page.

[Rugles]

Here is the site description for the number 1 site for my most important keyword:

"Microsoft Internet Information Server
The Web Server Designed For Windows NT Server Why not add the latest
features to your Internet Information Server? Documentation. ... "

The site and the keyword has nothing to do with computers or servers.
Real wierd!

[argusdesigns]

webman:
The exact same SERP was given to me shortly after the dance started (I almost dropped my cup of coffee when we vanished from WW2 & WW3). After a couple of hours it reappeared though in all 3 databases. Same situation as you, we are updated weekly (with date in SERP). I think you will be fine, and very soon you will see your results. :)
I need a valium...

[gopi]

"Has anyone noticed the ABSENCE of many moderator's comments and senior members? "

Thats a good observation scott...i cannot believe that moderators and Pro's including brett didnt commented on this update yet..that too with this much algo change...

Think some Secret " Pro Only " conference call going on :)

Just kidding :) :)

[edited by: gopi at 7:49 pm (utc) on Sep. 26, 2002]

[hooloovoo22]

i'm seeing something along those lines also

a site that used to be a resource for my industry went out of business over a year ago is again listed in the top 100 for a very competitive term (1,000,000 results)

Furthermore, the site has been gone and redirects instead to Yahoo!, which has been that way for a good 8 months. This site has been gone from google completely and now has made it's way back still redirecting to yahoo homepage. This tells me they are hardly, if at all, even looking at the keyword density, title, etc.

this one has a long way to go yet

[argusdesigns]

Scott..
I thin quite possibly you hit the nail on the head....EXACTLY!
::::crickets chirping in the background:::::

[bobmark]

thanks argusdesigns
I am seeing very odd absences of previous "minty fresh" results and it DOES seem like they have not been merged yet (or God forbid, have been lost forever).

[rfgdxm1]

One thing ScottM: I think it is too early in the dance to assume anything. It may be that this dance they have changed things such that the early part of the dance will look more different than at the end with the new algo. While we can comment on what it looks like now, there really is no guarantee that it won't change in the end.

[egomaniac]

I agree that anchor text doesn't seem to be having much effect in the results I am seeing. Whether that will change I don't know. It should, otherwise Google's got a poor quality index out there. I'll define that so I'm not just cryin' about my own site. When the number 2 result for a popular info tips keyword is a major software company that doesn't give any tips, that's poor quality. Just happens that the software company is a PR8 site, beating all of the PR4 and PR5 sites that are usually there for this phrase.

For the past few months, what you see at the beginning of the dance has been what you get when dance is over. However I do recall some updates late last year (and maybe early this year) where the dance truly was a dance. Things would change around for days before settling down. Let's hope this update still has a lot of dancing to do.

[Marcos]

Scott, I donīt think itīs random at all. hooloovoo22, you are right, keyword density, title, or anchor text donīt count so much. gopi, you are making me paranoid!

Take a look:
[webmasterworld.com...]

[AAnnAArchy]

Most of my sites are adult sites and I haven't noticed that the top ten have changed at all for any keyword I've tried. Not at any of the WWWs. I thought that was really strange, so I decided to look at Google.ca and *everything* there is different. My pet site, book site and a friend's pet sitting site all skyrocketed in the past 24 hours. None of these results have ever shown up like that at WWW.

Okay, this is freaky. While proofreading my first paragraph, I decided to search another keyword at Google.ca. All of the results have completely changed back to WWW. I'm so confused...and depressed. Give me chocolate.

AAnn

Added: Okay, two minutes later, Google.ca is back with the new results. Maybe I should just stop looking. As if... lol

[edited by: AAnnAArchy at 7:45 pm (utc) on Sep. 26, 2002]

[ScottM]

While we can comment on what it looks like now, there really is no guarantee that it won't change in the end.

I'm in agreement with that statement.

It's just a working theory...which will be adopted to a better theory when we have more information.

[edited by: ScottM at 7:43 pm (utc) on Sep. 26, 2002]

[martin]

I'm seeing lots of pages excluded from my robots.txt shown in the SERPS like uncrawled. There are just too many.

[WebGuerrilla]

>>Has anyone noticed the ABSENCE of many moderator's comments and senior members?

There really isn't anything to comment on yet. I truly appreciate everyone's excitement, but it just isn't possible to draw any valid conclusions about possible algo changes this early in the update.

You need to at least get to the point where everyone is seeing the same thing.

So lets talk this time next week... :)

[ScottM]

There really isn't anything to comment on yet.

Hmmm...that makes some sense. Perhaps some of us newer members have never seen a REAL dance?

[born2drv]

Has anyone noticed the new index has been pulled from WWW or is it just me?

[johnsmith222]

HARD FACTS

1. Scott is right

If the results aren't relevant to the searcher...maybe they'll click on..ahem...AdWords? (/added)

seems logical

(added more) Flushes out Page Rank for Sale. (/added more)

you guys have provoked google by putting "GOOGLE PAGE RANK FOR SALE" alerts on the front page of Webmasterworld. You wanted it - now you have it. Good luck with your work.

2. Anchor text seems to have lost its importance.

3. I think I'm seeing more *corporate* results for keywords in general.

Good luck once again :)

[Jack_Straw]

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.

[martin]

>You need to at least get to the point where everyone is seeing the same thing.

...and also to the point where everyone is seeing the same thing when he/she repeats the query 10 minutes later.

That's just not true for me now.