October 2002 Google Update

Official

[liamgt]

Definately getting different results on backward links for yahoo. www showing 657k and www2 and www3 showing 654k. Results for CNN are also different. Looks like the real deal.

Liam

[edited by: liamgt at 10:06 am (utc) on Oct. 31, 2002]

[rfgdxm1]

I see no site in your profile, djgreg.

[rfgdxm1]

podawg, I you sure they just aren't low ranked, but in the index?

[djgreg]

;)
Maybe it's because there are no adult sites allowed in the Profile and one of the Admins deleted it one seconf before you looked into my profile.
AM I allowed to post the URL here?

[lazerzubb]

>>AM I allowed to post the URL here? = NO, (TOS)

[podawg]

Pretty sure, I used allinurl:mydomain.com to look.
I show only one page on all three servers

[rfgdxm1]

>Does anyone know how you can get to see the new directory?

Google updates the directory on a different schedule. I am an ODP editor. The ODP is way late in the latest RDF dump. So it might be a while.

[Andrew Thomas]

rfgdxm1 - djgreg url probably removed it was a porn site :(

[djgreg]

PUH , then it is a little bit difficult to talk about my problem cause nobody is able to take a look at my site...
By the way: this is not a real porn site. It is a search engine for adult websites.

[edited by: djgreg at 11:13 am (utc) on Oct. 31, 2002]

[JonnyWales]

"You should never, ever under any circumstances be that invested in just one search result."

Brett, what you say is obviously right BUT my site is trying to sell a niche software product. Anyone wanting it uses the 2-word phrase; others may find it using other words but the serious purchasers know what they are looking for and it is this one phrase 95% of the time.

Looks like Google is concentrating (didn't it always)on large information-heavy sites and relegating small focused sites such as mine.

Most advice I see on WW seems to be for large operations able to have 100's of links and 1000's of pages. That is never going to happen with mine or many other sites ... way of the world I suppose.

[edited by: JonnyWales at 11:13 am (utc) on Oct. 31, 2002]

[percentages]

podawg,

I have a "squeeky clean" PR 7 site that is not showing on the www3 as indexed...."Don't Panic"....this is way to early in the dance to be looking for a bridge to jump off.

It will all come out smelling of roses in a day or three!

Have another Vodka ;)

[PFOnline]

So, what are some other good things to test out, on how our site looks so far in the update, besides checking backlinks and positioning... anything? anyone know? I'd like to know if my PageRank jumped if anyone knows how to check this!

On a different note, how'd webmasterworld.com itself do? :) You guys happy? Hope things went well for this site... This site has so much incredibly valuable information, and not to mention probly the only forum in the world where people are talking about the google update right now! This site knew of the update within minutes, (maybe seconds!) hehe :)

[jamsy]

Laz

I have your FAQ - very intuitive but one question i wouldlike clarification please

Any backlinks currently shown on www2 and 3 can these be increased during the dance?

thanks

[vitaplease]

From what I can see in this update, there seem to be no dramatic changes.

That is nothing as special as last update.

No reversal, or "weakening" of the effects/changes we saw in the last update.

Anyone agree or see other effects?

[djgreg]

I agree absoultely with you. No dramatic changes in algo so far.

[Andrew Thomas]

I cant see any changes at all to my site - positions are the same - pr is the same, and i optimized it and got rid of all js code to help spider it more :(

[klickman]

Hope everyone has seen EXCELLENT results like I have for my site:

Jumped from #10 to #1 & #2 for all of my major keywords. Been working on my site for the past month.

The question that I have is should I be concerned about competitors copying my codes? I don't want to loose any SERP at all. Or should I just continue focusing on improving my site, link partners etc and more vital content etc. It seems that I was able to beat the other site despite them having 2,000+ links to them.

I don't know what I have done specifically just good SEO techniques.

Any comments or suggestions.

[podawg]

a day or three of vodka?
My wife did want me to take up a new hobby to get me away from update watching.

[djgreg]

There are changes to my sites. Not all positive (as I mentioned above ;) ) ( hope you are not mad about me cause of the adult site)
but some sites have moved to Numer 1 sites.
By the way: All sites with pretty much and good content.
Maybe Google pays more attention to this factor as we thought.

[djgreg]

;) Sometimes I am happy that I have no wife.

[podawg]

sometimes I am happy I have a wife ;)

oh lord she's gonna kill me

[Monkscuba]

What Klickman says also worries me. Our site was nowhere until July, and now after several months of work and reading WebmasterWorld, we have very good rankings. I'm sure some of our bigger and longer established competitors will have noticed. Many have WAY more links than us, and if they copied some of our titles and text, I'm sure they could jump above us. With Google being so text based, it's not too hard to jump up quickly. In the country we're based, the legal issue would not be the same as in the US or Europe. Probably nothing we could do.

Anyway, let's enjoy it while we can!

[rfgdxm1]

>Brett, what you say is obviously right BUT my site is trying to sell a niche software product. Anyone wanting it uses the 2-word phrase; others may find it using other words but the serious purchasers know what they are looking for and it is this one phrase 95% of the time.

Brett, he's right. Your advice is only good for a site that would be about a lot of different things (or, products), and thus you'd want to be succeeding in for a lot of search words/phrases. My 2 little sites are the same. There are just a few keywords that I HAVE to hit on. Odds are my target audience will use them in a search. If you a targeting a niche audience, you have to hit on the keywords that you know they are going to use.

[mat]

Concur that nothing drastic has changed. Seeing some 'new entries' on page one SERP's in my area that do not have DMOZ entries, so that factor may have been downplayed slightly from last month.

Mat

[percentages]

My wife just got out of bed and jumped in the shower...snarling on the way that I had consumed all her rum while waiting for the Google update ;)

Dang not my fault I ran out of Scotch 3 days ago while waiting for this event :)

Guess I can go to bed now....happy that I can see the true outcome in a few days time ;)

[Monkscuba]

I'm very happy to have a wife, but sometimes she gets a bit bored with me talking about "web, google, website, update blah blah" instead of about my real work or about the future.

Suppose this forum is a place to get all your web worries off your chest, so you can go home and forget about it.

[rfgdxm1]

>The question that I have is should I be concerned about competitors copying my codes? I don't want to loose any SERP at all.

Hell, yes. If they consider their Google SERPs important, they definitely should be trying to copy what you did.

[uksports]

Not getting excited yet - www2 is showing cached pages from around the end of August but I know they have all been crawled since then as they have been in serps since then - made lots of changes resulting from last update which I hope will show up in a while - if only to see that I got it all wrong.....

[Monkscuba]

In a way I think we all copy our competitors if we see them doing well. Many times I have followed competitors round the web and tried to get all the same links as them. And will continue to do so!

[creative craig]

I aint gonna get all excited now, for one the boss will go mad and two after the last couple of updates, it never gives a good picture of what is realy going on. I'll do some deep checking later tonight.

Craig

[Brett_Tabke]

If a keyword is that hot, then it is bound to be competitive. Leave that keyword for the 90% of the sites to fight over and go dominate the 10% they don't worry about either. You can't survive on one search for long - especially if it is a high roi phrase.

For example: look at how hot "data recovery" is on some of the engines. They go to war over that phrase. You know there are 50 other phrases used around that? Leave the top words to the suckers paying $50 a click, and go rule the roost on those 50 others.