SQL Slammer and grey PR

Anyone else affected?

[HenryUK]

Two of the sites that I monitor and work on, both previously PR6, were taken out by the SQL Slammer virus over the weekend, possibly during the final pre-update crawl.

Both have "disappeared" from the new index (www2) in that typing in their respective URLs fails to find the sites, and have lost their backlinks.

One has grey PR now, the other still shows it (the latter is in the directory).

I am confident that neither site will have been penalised.

Has anyone else suffered in this way? And will Google be looking at disparities between the previous and present indexes in order to revive what would seem likely to be a potentially large number of sites?

Here's hoping...

[amznVibe]

I've noticed a similar thing for a couple sites I run. I was hoping to see the inbound links go up, possibly double, and in the end they have gone DOWN for total number of inbound links. It's hard to be sure because google doesn't show you ALL the inbound links its aware of, but some definitely have been lost.

I went to some of the unlisted sites to check and yes, the links are still there. We might have to wait a month for things to get fixed.

All the datacenters seem to be in sync with the new index, except [www-in.google.com...] which still has the old index
(last good place. to check your old links before the reindex)

[edited by: amznVibe at 10:06 am (utc) on Jan. 28, 2003]

[onionrep]

Hi Henry

Yes I too have been hammered by this, I really am not happy about it at all.

I used to get good positions on a range of terms, I now find im lucky to get to position 40. Traffic has plummeted, sales are down.

I worked hard to build a good site with good content, and now find that since this little sql worm escapade, I have an intermitently grey toolbar.At first i thought that this maybe down to the way things go all weird during the update, although as the update becomes more entrenched Im beginning to doubt this theory.

Backlinks keep appearing, then disappearing as does the PR.

I have used adwords since Nov but this in no way compensates for the losses Im experiencing. In fact believe it or not, I only used it to increase visibilty on terms I wasnt reaching, and to give a little back to google for all the good traffic and sales generated.

Ill say no more as Id hate to be accused of whinging or sycophancy :)

Seriously, maybe GG can give us the official position with regard to this attack and how it has actually impacted upon the index?

[Powdork]

There is no way the SQLSlammer is having any effect on the update that is showing a snapshot (very long exposure) of the web as it was in the first week of January. Either your server was down then or you have a penalty or your results are merely the result of fresh listings that may have been affected by the worm. In all but one scenario you must just sit and wait. Of course there are many other reasons why your ranking has dropped or disappeared.

[HenryUK]

There is no way the SQLSlammer is having any effect on the update

I have a horrible feeling that you are right, but the coincidence - both unrelated sites down, both suffering the same way - led me to clutch at that particular straw.

Thanks for your replies. I'm heading back to the drawing board.

[jomaxx]

I tend to agree with Powdork (great screen name) that Google's PR calculations for the dance would have had to have been completed well before the SQLSlammer worm hit.

The Freshbot does feed into the monthly update in some manner, but I can't see how a site being down just a day or so before the dance started could cause it to be greyed out. Same applies to sites linking to you being unreachable.