Google Update Bourbon Part 3

[Sweet Cognac]

Continued From:

[webmasterworld.com...]

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My whole site has a new cache date of May 25th. Maybe once these other sites around me get recached, I won't hold such an honorable top position. But at least Google has found my pages worthy to sit in the Search again.:) It seems strange to look at the stats and see Google in there, after 6 months of just seeing Yahoo and MSN referrals.

My website has plenty of outbound links, but they are on relevant pages. The problem my site has always had, was a lack of "inbound links." I got tired of searching for people to link to me (with all the spammy sites around) and gave up. So my pages have acquired some links naturally I guess(and I'll bet I still don't have more than 30 inbound links for the whole site) Still have a PR4, which I've had since it disappeared in Nov.

[edited by: Brett_Tabke at 8:54 pm (utc) on May 27, 2005]

[nzmatt]

How about the "belly" button? -- OK time for bed...

[Clint]

I don't know about you guys but i have a huge amount of bots of my forums right at this very moment.
Perhaps this update is taking a new turn?

Anyone else seeing a huge amount of bot activity on their sites?

Well this is something else that's horrifying. I just checked my "latest visitors" under cPanel (under stats) which is supposed to show the last 300 visitors, and I don't see a SINGLE ENTRY for the Googlebot! Not only that, the page has been huge the past few days, but there's only a few items on it now! This also shows how much G has SCREWED ME! Barely enough visitors now to even register!

Now on another note, when I've been checking it that area past week, I keep seeing this entry for <snip> and "that page" keeps trying to access an image I have on one of my pages! The exact same thing also happens at a similar URL of <snip>, unlike the URL above it IS accessible to non-members. I look on the page, and there is NO REFERENCES to my biz, the image, nothing. Both of these URL's are returning a code of 403 (prohibited on my server)! That should not have been happening because the IP's of those sites were NOT on my IP Deny list! I did however ADD THEM to my IP deny list. Does anyone know anything about those "suspicious sites" and why they'd be trying to access that image at my site?

Edit to update that now I CAN access that URL for some reason!

[edited by: engine at 2:07 pm (utc) on May 31, 2005]
[edit reason] TOS [webmasterworld.com] [/edit]

[reseller]

Clint

I suggest that you remove the url from your post. Its against the TOS of these forums. Too specific.

[Dayo_UK]

Clint

I would imagine it is a case of hotlinking - it is relatively common - esp in a forum - as a user may of wanted to add an image to the post.

Dayo

[etraffic104]

Well this is something else that's horrifying. I just checked my "latest visitors" under cPanel (under stats) which is supposed to show the last 300 visitors, and I don't see a SINGLE ENTRY for the Googlebot! Not only that, the page has been huge the past few days, but there's only a few items on it now! This also shows how much G has SCREWED ME! Barely enough visitors now to even register!

Clint, I would suggest you check who is linking to you. It might be the reason. Googlebot is fine on my site, doing it's normal activity. It's reason enough for you to get concerned...

[helleborine]

That's settles it for me, at least. MY fat lady has sung.

How can a #1 site fall so low, and so abruptly? It's not a technical glitch, otherwise I wouldn't still be first in Yahoo, and I would never have been #1 in Google to begin with.

The datacenters show two sets of ever so slightly different results for my company name. But they have been stable for the past 3 days now.

It's like the white pages aren't even in alphabetical order anymore. No one can find my site. Traffic has gone from 1600 uniques and 25K page views (the visitors stayed a long time) to a mere trickle. The site was very appreciated by the visitors. I received 2-3 emails every day, no exaggeration, thanking me for the "great free widget plans." My niche is a small one, but I do have more incoming links than my "competition." I have, modesty be buggered, no competion.

To be buried in the red light district of the SERPs is an insult. It's incomprehensible. The number one spot is hogged by an abominable link & affiliate page with a huge ebay listings ad unit, links to Fastclick (that's right, Fastclick!), and Amazon links everywhere. Zero content whatsoever. That's what is floating on top.

I've come here for answers. No one has a clue of what's going on. This is how absurd the SERPs are. No one can make heads or tails of them.

I've become bipolar - one minute I have faith that Google knows what it's doing and will fix it, the next I fear that maybe they are oblivious to some very good sites that be been severely, and unfairly penalized.

[nzmatt]

Yes, Google has become a capricious mistress.

Maybe this is what it takes to stay ahead of the spam jam...

[europeforvisitors]

EG. For those with the problem (hopefully coming out of) eg EFV then DCs beginning - 216.239.57.* and 216.239.53.* have backlinks and pr consolidated on both the non-www and the www.

I don't know if the update is still going on, but index maintenance certainly is. As recently as May 26, Google.com was still showing 1,130 duplicate www versions of my pages; that number hadn't changed in nearly two weeks. In the last couple of days, the number has dropped significantly (it's currently at 391 after bouncing around a bit). This is the first time the number of spurious www listings has been below 1,100 since I learned about the "canonical problem" back in late March.

If you've been hit by the "www vs. non-www duplicate content" issue, searches on site:example.com and site:www.example.com may offer a glimmer of hope (over time, if not immediately).

[Clint]

Ok, regarding the URL in my post, I see someone has removed it, sorry. Now the question is, why can't we put URL's in our posts?! How are we supposed to let anyone know about a certain URL? I've seen numerous other URL's in posts, even on some of the pages on this thread.

Dayo, (remember) I checked the HTML code of the pages for any references to my site, me, biz, domain, etc., and image and found nothing. That's what's got me puzzled. :o

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From etraffic104:
Clint, I would suggest you check who is linking to you. It might be the reason. Googlebot is fine on my site, doing it's normal activity. It's reason enough for you to get concerned...
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Could you please elab on that? ;) What am I to look for exactly? There are a LOT of sites linking to me. Some with my knowledge in link exchanges, but most (I'm recently finding out) WITHOUT my knowledge.
Thanks.

[Clint]

I see some of you referencing the www prefix issue. Can anyone please explain why this is significant or is it significant? My sites are automatically accessible with or without the www prefix (by default host design and no intervention by me). If you enter www.mydomain.com in the address bar and go to the site, that's what you see in the bar. The same when entering mydomain.com, it then shows in the address bar when at the site. So, is there something I should do about that? I'm not sure how this is currently handled in my case, or what it's technically called "redirect wise" if any. So if there is something I should do to help with this G cr@p that's going on, please tell me what.
Thanks.