Update Allegra - Google Update 2-2-2005

[illusionist]

My site which came back on december 26 update, seems to have disappeared again on this data center [216.239.53.99...] . Its notwhere to be found even in allinanchor, allintitle etc? I see majot change on that data center, is this a new update?

[Freedom]

I am probably going to get yelled at for this but Allegra was the best thing that happened to one of my websites which is now back from the dead after going MIA during the Florida massacre.

[Iguana]

When I look at the results I see very bad results - irrelevant in fact on 3 word searches. Coupled with the practical loss of many sites (maybe minor sites, just PR5) this is worrying.

My searching interest (and my website interest) is narrow (music) but I really think current results are rubbish. If I search for anything beyond 'bandname' or 'bandname lyrics' then I just get the same ecommerce/big affiliate sites (epinions/ rateyourmusic/ kelkoo/ metacritic/ launch) with individual album pages or band pages. Compared to Yahoo/Teoma this is very poor.

I remember a friend telling me about 3 years ago that he thought the 'amateur' had about 2 years to prosper before the big boys took it all over - it looks like he was right as far as Google was concerned but just 1 year out.

[LostOne]

"I wonder how many webmasters see the other side of the coin on this, i.e. the results look good."

Count me in. Absolutely stellar changes. Been working on links the past five months, while doing no changes to the site with regards to other SEO. Okay some text has changed or been updated on several pages, but when it comes to all the hoopla about KW density and other stuff I've ignored it.

Site was hit hard in early August recovered late August--then late September fell but recovered over two months. Hammered again in mid December but not as bad as August. Yesterday everything changed--up across the board and never have seen these kind of positions in the 2 1/2 years the site has been on the web.

I'm not writing home about this one--probably never will with how strangely Google works. Who knows what they will bring tomorrow, next week, or two months from now.

Crossin' my fingers

[jdh226]

How do I know if I'm in the "sandbox" or if I simply got dessimated in the SERPs? I've been top 10 for all of my primary key phrases for about a year, and now I'm not in the top 200 (or more). I am, however, the first site lsited when you type in my business' name.

Is this being in the sandbox?

[kahuna]

WARNING! THIS IS NOT AN UPDATE!

Cut and paste that to your clients.
I did that 500 messages ago and life is so simple.

I do have a theory about all this...
and it's called MSN "We're more precise."
So G is gonna look like the MSN so people say..
"Well, I just looked at MSN.. and it's like.. G.."

That is, spammmmy, by link and backlink. So then
all the SEO's will keep up with the spammies... and MSN will become useless, and G will shine again when it switches it's algorithym back, about the same time the MSN "We're no longer percise" advertising campaign is over.

gotta go... Coast to Coast and Art Bell are coming on...

OHHHHH and hey all you geek and "Don't Panic" fans...
if you are still reading this...

Hitch Hikers Guide To The Galaxy comes out in May.. this not the BBC version.

[I_Brian]

The datacenters don't look settled at all - from here all I see are inconsistencies and possibly an incomplete use of an index. I'd say it's too premature to start cheering or jeering either way. But once those numbers line up...

[Rollo]

Did anyone else come out of the sandbox for a few days, then go right back in again? Happened to me.

[Liane]

I have yet to see a negative to this update.

I haven't either, in fact quite the opposite ... but I am biting my nails as there are just too many negative reports to ignore what some of us may not be seeing.

The data centers are not entirely lined up yet so I would say its still too early to say anything at all. However, most appear to be stabilizing.

All I can say is thank goodness for MSN at this point. My site is doing great there ... despite all their glitches. Even Yahoo is delivering some traffic for a change.

To those whose sites seem to have disappeared, I wouldn't lose hope just yet. Its entirely possible for pages to drop out of a specific data center only to be picked up again. Wait a few more days and see.

Good luck everyone and hang in there.

[RichTC]

You never know perhaps google are going to provide results that have rich content in relation to the key words requested?

Oh sorry, just dreaming for the moment! more likely, it will be more of the same to try and boost adwords revenue further.

Until they wake up to the fact that Anchor text links should not be the primary factor anymore, Google will just continue to lose market share to the other search engines that are content driven.

With so many sites on the net, so many networks, so many directory sites, so many listing services the old method of links is no longer viable.

One or two here mention spam in other search engines but frankly, i would rather see the Google SERPS with sites that are rich in content mixed with a few spam sites rather than a mix match of dam directory sites and non relevent contents sites listing high as it is currently.

The Google SERPS have never looked so bad, in the majority of search requests ive done the results come back with next to ZERO content relevent to the search terms.

They used to be great at one time for content sites - its such a waste of what was once a great search engine

[Whoa]

Googleguy, when I search for our domain - let's say it's x.com and I search for x where x is a very unique name, many sites come up in the SERPS before x.com. It's #15 and other sites are ahead of it.

This is a very good site for consumers, great original content, did great in Google until recently, now seems to be down 50 places in the rankings on things it used to do well on.

Why would this be? Is there any human intervention available where you or somebody at Google could look into the site and see what happened?

I know you track billions of sites but I think this one could be a good one to look into to see if you think the new changes you are making are actually working. From my perspective, they are not.

Thanks.

[linux]

hm didn't anyone notice that it google is updateing the index and relations between websites. as example we have a price comparision, this site has a unique name. we also have a unique price comparison for dvds with an own domain. if you search for the unique name at google you only find the dvd comparison, the real domain is at #15, but thats NORMAL! google is updating the relations/links domain for domain. google tries to spider every page new for this update. your domain will come back with its name when google updates the links for this domain. it can take several days like at my domain .google made a directory update as well. so this is a superman update.
for me its amazing how fast google updates this superman update, but i think it will take another week till the all serps/domains are updatet

linux

[Whoa]

Linux, I think what you are saying is that x.com has not been processed for this new update yet and that once it is processed, then it will return to the spot it deserves in the rankings. I hope you are right, but I've got a bad feeling that it's been overlooked and they are not going to correct it.

In the meantime, I have found a knockoff site of x.com, where they just put the pages on their server and everything is the same except now it's y.com, not x.com.

This hijacking domain is www.excite.co.jp. I have seen other postings complaining about them. In fact, I found two of my sites on there. If anybody knows what the deal is with them, can you sticky me? Can something like this account for being knocked down in the SERPS undeservedly?

[BillyS]

There is so much traffic out there, that I really wish everyone the best with this latest update...

But clearly Google is struggling. MSN and Yahoo can easily connect my website with its own name. Since December Google cannot get me to #1, which shows a vulnerability of their algo. After sitting at around 150 for a month it moved up to #4 recently. After this update it now sits around #55 - and that is not even the home page.

My sandboxed site offers a very unusual section that MSN and Yahoo quickly put at #1. I am not even in the top 1,000 for this keyphrase on Google.

Maybe the it's the hangovers from the ski trip, but they are in sad shape. After witnessing these poor results myself, I have already switched over to Yahoo.

[steveb]

It's been common in the recent past for sites to temporarily disappear altogether, briefly, as datacenters shake up. I expect that is what a lot of people are seeing. If you appear on no datacenter, obviously that isn't good, but missing from some probably means nothing.

I've got two awol sites, but they are only awol on half the datacenters, so I don't think it means much, especially considering how sandboxed sites seem to be coming out gradually, definitely not all at once.

What passes for SE optimism these days: when they mush it altogether, maybe it won't suck.

[walkman]

I still do good at these DCs:

64.233.171.99
64.233.171.104
64.233.171.105
64.233.171.147

left over or some ray of hope? Come on Google....

[george123]

walkman me too ,cross fingers

[Newman]

Me too walkman...

[itloc]

me too ...

hope this update will not stick - it would be a joke. my site has been wiped out from the index.

[europeforvisitors]

"I wonder how many webmasters see the other side of the coin on this, i.e. the results look good."

My traffic is up about 30% since Allegra hit, so the other side of the coin looks fine to me. :-)

[walkman]

"walkman me too ,cross fingers "

so, what do we make of this? Our sites got lost or maybe the DCs haven't been synched yet? grasping at straws.

[itloc]

Don't bet on these DC's... :-(

[Newman]

Why Itloc?

[itloc]

Because they show significantly less results ... i do have the feeling they are being updated soon...unfortunately...

But who knows? Nobody.

[DavidT]

Some ******** put up a copy of my site on a tripod account. I've looked and looked and can't find a single backlink for it, my 3 year-old site has hundreds of them, solid ones, years old, and yet when I search "company name" the tripod site is listed around 20th, my site i can't even find.

When i complained to Tripod they took the copy down within 2 hours. My guess is I'll be waiting for google 2, not hours, but probably 2 months to sort out a problem which should never have arisen withing a properly configured and functioning search engine belonging to a multi billion dollar listed company. They are a joke.

[dvduval]

I have the same problem DavidT.
In one case there is an OLD yahoo store that is deleted that google thinks is a mirror of my site. In another case when I do a site search, google only finds too jump links from other sites.

It seems google's defense mechanisms are backfiring on honest sites. I've reported both instances, and have yet to see a change.

[walkman]

"Because they show significantly less results ... i do have the feeling they are being updated soon...unfortunately..."

yp, they show less results. Maybe because they don't show the sandboxed sites. I got a bad feeling too but I have to hope

[george123]

"I still do good at these DCs:
64.233.171.99
64.233.171.104
64.233.171.105
64.233.171.147 "
walkan check also these ones

216.239.53.99
66.102.7.99
216.239.53.104
66.102.7.104
66.102.7.105
66.102.7.147
that makes about 10 DC's
something must be cooking (i hope so)

[Newman]

Try now on Google with keyword: Super Bowl

Where is NFL official site?

Meanwhile on 64.233.171.99 results, NFL official site is #5.

[stargeek]

the results of a recent googlebomb of landmark controversial legal descion shows on the "other" datacenters, not on google.com. The other datacenters also shows the "dissapeared" sites. This is a good sign.

[george123]

"This is a good sign."
how can you explain that stargeek.