Forum Moderators: Robert Charlton & goodroi
Thats very interesting. I still think that Brett and GoogleGuy were describing two sides of the same coin.
Brett called it update while GG said its just everflux and no algo changes going on right now.
IMHO, we are witnessing the new kind of Google updates, which don´t necessary include an algo changes.
Actually if you study GoogleGuy´s posts in connection with Allegra and Bourbon and now, you discover that he has been telling us that what we usually understand of update has changed to something new which he prefer to describe as "everflux" which doesn´t include algo changes while an "update" must include an algo changes.
That means that today everflux actually covers the changes we usually see on the old updates, for example:
- New serps (but they are everchanging)
- Sites drop or gain in ranking
- New baclink count
etc...
Thoughts?
Google updates and everflux suck
Everything else is just everfulx.
Justin
Forgot (Ginger)
Google cant fix the Canonical url problem. Until fixed = no update (IMO)
Get similar joke results with other keywords. Except its no joke.
If they keep changing all the time, eventually every surfer will experience rubbish results and then the whole thing will degrade.
Our authority pages on 'widgets' with good content which used to be close to top are now on page 5 and a list of affiliate links with no content from a directory is no.1.
Ridiculous. Well they say they want feedback so I've sent it for every search I do which has joke results. It used to work (relatively) well.
It seems that our good friend at the plex, Matt Cutts wish to contribute to this thread about his understanding of "What’s an update?"
http://www.mattcutts.com [mattcutts.com]
Why do I have this strange feeling that it was Matt whom we were exchanging posts with on this thread this morning ;-)
oooooohh now then ... we do have issues dont we :P
Just having some fun, and wish people would inject some form of reason when dealing with the hair splittingly small numbers surrounding top rankings...
Justin
BTW Those % are real - how much algorythmic change does it take to move from one to the other? I'll go back to just reading now, and let people get back on topic =)
Many have suspected that for a long time. But GG and Brett have never revealed it here, as far as I know.
When I see the results I see at those two datacenters in the main index, then it will be an update... maybe...
then it will be an update
Two employees of G had said that not is going an update... so...no way.
Backlinks... they just change, they don't update.
PR... updates, but the effect is a month or more old, so it isn't something to pay attention to in a "changing"/update way.
Directory... it clearly updates, but doesn't impact anything else, so that is just a "directory update".
Serps changes... should never be called an "update". Serps changes multiple times a day. Today I rank in three different spots for the main thing I care about. I bounce around all the time, as do all the results I pay attention to. Serps are in a constant state of everflux. When they are NOT, now that is notable.
Algo updates... this is when Google updates what it is *doing*. Driving your car in different directions is not updating. Getting a new car is updating.
From what I can see, we have more than average everflux due to introduction of a lot of new URLs (some are pages and sites, some are phantom URLs). This recently has been a pre-update phenomenon. PR should update next month. Perhaps there will be an algo update in a couple weeks, maybe it will be longer. Till then, everflux goes on.
not an update ..... yet
Over the last couple of years there has been a Google "Christmas impact" algo update so keep your eyes open :-)
So, I had a site that was gone from Google for about 8 months, came back about 1 month ago. Was back for many of my original well ranking terms, many on the first page. My site covers 4 main topic areas, all fairly distinct. Today, 1 of those topic areas has dropped about 40 spots for ALL terms in that topic. However, the rest of the site has remained exactly where it had been. VERY bizarre if you ask me, but also concerning me a lot, as it could just be a matter of time before the other 3 topic areas suffer a similar fate.
I'm also trying to figure out where this fits in without there being any algo changes. Maybe this is part of my site getting back into the index after being out for 8 months and is an anomoly.
Has anyone else who's been pretty steady for a while noticed a large drop today - beyond the usual everflux changes you've seen?
Finally, I need to try to figure out why I was penalized in the one target area. Only thing I can think of is that perhaps that topic area looked like a set of doorway pages as I have many similarly formatted pages with different data in the tables for different subtopics, but the tables themselves are formatted similarly.
As usual, I'm just going to have to wait and see where this settles for my site, and keep developing the content. What else can ya do?
[66.249.87.99...]
[66.249.87.104...]
It is time we asked the question, then what is an update?
Maybe it's an update when GoogleGuy says it's an update?
It is time we asked the question, then what is an update?
Also interesting is the nihilistic version: "When is an update not an update, Gilligan?"
... Algorithm and SERP walk into a Las Vegas Bar.
SERP says "Algo, is that an update in your pocket or are you just happy to see me?"
I have read what Matt wrote several times, in an attempt to "decode" few terms ;-)
Here is some food for the thought:
"The term “everflux” is often used to describe the constant state of low-level changes as we crawl the web and rankings consequently change to a minor degree. That’s normal, and that’s not an update."
I wish Matt or our good friend GoogleGuy tells us more about how they understand state of low-level changes
What have been reported here on this thread and few other threads can´t be described as state of low-level changes ,IMHO. Take a look and judge for yourself:
- new serps
- new backlinks
- new numbers of results
- new pr
- fresh filters applied
Matt proceed on his blog:
"Usually, what registers with an update to the webmaster community is when we update an algorithm (or its data), change our scoring algorithms, or switch over to a new piece of infrastructure."
IMHO, the most important question isn´t the technicality, but the impact an "update" or "everflux" has on the serps and ranking or dropping of our sites..
And it seems that both "everflux" and an "update" has almost the same impact!
Because of the importance of this subject, pls allow me to recall one of my previous posts, and another GoogleGuy´s evergreen reply which might be relevant to our current discussion:
[webmasterworld.com...]
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reseller
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msg #:562 5:57 am on June 2, 2005 (utc 0)
googleguy
There has been several interpretations to this line of yours:
- Then there will still be some minor changes after that as well.
I myself wish to ask whether that means that the serps shall be "everchanging" or what I call "The Rotating Algos" ;-) as in the case after allegra update.
Would you be kind to elaborate more?
Thanks
==============================================
GoogleGuy
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msg #:565 6:18 am on June 2, 2005 (utc 0)
reseller, currently, a few data centers have some different data that should be everywhere in a few days. I'll keep people posted on the status of things, and collect feedback closer to the end after things are settling down more. I'd expect that things will be back to their normal level of everflux by New Orleans. But we do have incremental indexing after all, so it's normal to expect a certain amount of change to the index every day or so (aka everflux).
In fact, everflux is a pretty good analogy. If you go back to summer 2003, update Fritz was the beginning of the transition from a monthly update to an incremental index. It caused a lot of comments, because plenty of people were happy with an index that only changed once a month. A lot of the thickness in my hide started with Fritz during summer two years ago. :) Summer in the northern hemisphere is often a good time for a search engines to work on revamping different parts of our system and improving our quality; typically search engine traffic is lower in the summer due to seasonality. So the summer is a good time to think about things like bringing in new signals of quality and ways to rank pages, plus doing things like reorganizing our webmaster pages, etc. etc.
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Thoughts?
"If you've got a directory full of doorway pages that do JavaScript redirects, I'd highly recommend removing that immediately. We've been improving our ability to find pages like that, and it's much better to remove it before we take action on it."
It's nice PR from Google to give a final chance to those who are still wearing black hats.
I'm looking forward to see cleaner SERPs in the near future.
There's a nice Spanish say: "En guerra avisada, no mueren soldados".
It is time we asked the question, then what is an update?
It seems to me that defining "update" is very much in the eyes of the beholder. While G may want to define it as rolling out a new algo, or some other play on semantics, if someone with the experience and breadth of knowledge that Brett has wants to call it an update, I am willing to accept it is an update.
In the days of the dance I don't believe that it was always a new algo that defined an update. It was a significant change in SERPs and backlinks.
In the era of adversarial information retrieval there must be some advantage in obfuscation of the obvious.
WBF
Surely an update is when the results of a search visible to a user ( remember them? - the potential visitor/customer ) is not the same as the last time they looked.
So the poor user who really "knows" that great web site is on page 2 of Google suddenly cannot find it anymore.
For this reason stability is important - and Google may be kicking themself in the teeth by creating everflux.
Stability is also important for those luckily enough to be highly listed in Google as it on this basis that plans and developments are made - making good web sites great.
Everyone expects adverts to change - as per any publication - but the main search results are those on which Google has created its reputation and consequently current size.
Googles problem is ensuring new user-worthy sites are shown, eliminating scrapers, site copies via affiliates using frames etc etc, our problem is trying to ensure that we don't get caught in the net and changing to suit. Hence - presumably - this topic.
Whether you like it or not Google traffic is important - and cross search engine optimisation will become more difficult in the future, I predict, as the the others try to carve out their own "personality".
Unless you have a mega-dollar budget for offline advertising and brand development I guess that is they way it will stay.
Opps sounds like an MBA course!
I haven't seen any major changes in the top 20 results during all this time.
GoogleGuy's news of an upcoming shakeup in rankings are quite encouraging.
