Forum Moderators: Robert Charlton & goodroi
Which update affected (in a drastic manner) the most sites?
Which update altered the serps most from prior update to post update?
Did the serps improve or degrade on each update?
Do we have definitive answers to what changed in each update?
Are the same people affected by both updates?
Can we categorise the updates at all further than simply 'update'?
Florida hit me hard!
And yes i would agree with Brett_Tabke both are very much unlike to be compared together.
Can nothing be gained even by looking at the differences?
What made Florida so much 'worse'?
Hate to say so here when so many are hurting but I have done extremeley well out of update Allegra. Florida hit me hard!
I thought things might head this way.
Is it the same site that has done well in Allegra that did badly in Florida? What did you change after Florida? Apart from seeing the end result of Allegra do you understand why you have done well out of Allegra but badly from Florida?
Many of us has been affected by both of these updates, but which one was more servere? And, I know that some of us got it worse from Allegra and others got it worse from Florida. But overall which update makes the least sense and is hard to justify the end results?
By "worse," do you mean:
- For individual Webmaster World members, or...
- For users?
If you mean for individual Webmaster World members, then I'll say that I felt no negative effects from Florida and have received a big traffic boost from Allegra. (Other members obviously have had different experiences.)
If you mean for users, then the answer probably depends on what the user is searching for. I've found that Allegra has improved the quality of search results, but others have reported the opposite.
Here's something else to keep in mind as far as search quality goes: Since Florida, Google has been inundated with millions (billions?) of junk pages. So it's hard to make a valid quality comparison of the Florida and Allegra algorithms based on search results alone.
Florida - a bit of a blip compared to Allegra. At least Florida 'blew over', as far as I can see Allegra is still causing damage indescriminately...
[edited by: PatrickDeese at 6:25 pm (utc) on Feb. 17, 2005]
Allegra definitely worse than Florida.
Maybe they think everything is fine with Allegra.
Our competitor now has over 30,000 links listed in Google where they used to have fewer. Making sense of this is kind of difficult.
[edited by: SEOMike at 6:51 pm (utc) on Feb. 17, 2005]
do you understand why this page is #1 search for "table lamps"?
Yep, on page factors.
Looks like the handiwork of someone on another forum.
I always knew my turn would come. But I'm not going to cry. Dragons don't have tears. lol
On page factor? "keyword" appears three times and a whole bounch of unrelated ads.
what thread, can you show me?
do you understand why this page is #1 search for "table lamps"?
and remember it is (table AND lamps). The strength is in the pages linking to it. Latent Semantic Indexing.
It disrupted results much more violently IMO.
Remember how the Google FEMA team had to come in and fix things after Florida?
:)
Seems to me that with Allegra, G found some interesting ways to out sites that focused too much on repetitive and/or unoriginal methods of:
- extending their presence on the Web (IBL dev)
- mechanically targeting kw phrases (internal and external link filters, plus stemming and LSI-like hurdles).
The trick, as always, is to sort out what hurdles must be overcome and what filters must be avoided (and how), and equally important, to difffereniate between highly related pieces of the algo.
IMHO, if you get Florida and the so-called sandbox (I still hate that very misleading term), Allegra is not very remarkable. Paying close attention to what appear to be the two main indexes G is playing with is revealing. The index that is not being shown much is way too loose for their tastes, if recent past behavior is any indicator of future action. But the one not being shown much also does not suffer as badly from the problem of nixing some sites that should not have been nixed, which is probably why they're still studying it.
<wild guess in form of a prediction>
Those who have seen your internal pages rise to new heights: Don't bank on it lasting forever, or even more than a few months.
</wild guess in form of a prediction>
Allegra is Google trying to pull itself out of the mud.
Florida was all about the algorithm. Allegra has almost no algorithm component. They aren't on the same plane of exostence.
Florida was Google at close to its best, where it was clearly trying to do its best.
Allegra is Google trying to pull itself out of the mud.
Florida was all about the algorithm. Allegra has almost no algorithm component.
Very interesting post can you or anyone else venture to fill this out a bit?
Are you saying with Florida Google brought out a radically different new algorithm, a completely different way of determining relevance?
But Allegra did not alter this algorithm in any significant way instead google applied various filters, patches and traps as well as making the usual calculations?
Am also interested in the 'mud' what was google trying to rectify, compensate for, do with Allegra, in the course of trying to present something resembling sites in order of relevance?
Allegra isn't about filters or any of that armwaving stuff. They tried to end the sandbox for at least some sites, and simultaneously the amount of pagejacking increased dramatically. Just like their previous brief experiment with ending the sandbox, there was collateral damage. They went from a sandbox and some pagejacking to a sandbox and more pagejacking, but presumably they will make another attempt to fix the problems sometime "soon".
Do you think people who disappeared have done so not because of some refinement to a mechanism/filter but rather due to a 'bug' or 'pagejacking'?
Florida was not all that radical
There might be a few who disagree with that statement. A question of semantics, I guess. ;-)
Staying on the subject of which update was worse, few updates compete with Florida in terms of marketplace impact, or algo shifting.
<opinion>
Allegra seems like simply more knob twisting of the algorytmic approach that started with Florida. I can only guess at reasons, though I'd agree they're experimenting with helping some sites out of the freezer, in part. At least, that is one of the results.
It's not just that however. Some highly SEO'd sites that passed muster in prior updates got hit on this go round, seemingly related to dup filters, LSI like tweaks, and site structure issues. Requirements WRT backlinks have changed too. This time, having lots of backlinks did not, by itself, help highly-SEO'd sites as much as was the case in the past.
Whatever Allegra is trying to achieve, it is still grounded in the philosophical nature of the world since Florida.
</opinion>
Regarding latent semantic indexing in both Allegra and Florida.
Was LSI first introduced with Florida?
Also do people feel LSI is used solely to judge a page/surrounding pages for penalising/points off/filtering? Looking for the bad basically.
or is LSI now integral into the scoring of pages. Is a pages merit now judged on the content (related words) of linking pages and not just the anchor text of the linking pages and the title perhaps. If this is true when did it become true? (not that clear but hopefully you understand)
