Forum Moderators: Robert Charlton & goodroi
However, that doesn't stop them from implementing "tweaks" they know full well will ruin perfectly legitimate sites and companies, sometimes apparently just on a test basis.
>>Yep well some people have to watch there words as they may have had manual help from Google. <<
Thats correct ;-)
I'm having strange results on site:mydomain.com - it says there are 1,390 results, which is too high, but when I get to page 10 it doesn't automatically list the next page numbers, I just get the "we have hidden similar results" blurb. Does that mean anything beyond 100 pages is supplemental? Not many of the pages have the actual "supplemental" tag.
WOW.. the reseller friendly DCs are back.
64.233.161.99
64.233.161.104
Goooooooooooooooooooooooogle ..leave those 2 DCs in peace.. or else ;-)
How about you folks.
Do you also see the said Dcs friendly to your site?
Just gobsmacked that after I changed my homepage last week someone has already scraped/cached it - and appeared in the Google index on page 1 for my unique company name :( - Exact copy of page - so nice to know that nothing wrong with on page optimization.
While I am nowhere. :(
The problems seem to be getting worse now that Google has been listed. Maybe the engineers arent the problem, but are just following orders.
Your scenario: A bunch of cocky programmer geniuses at Google are nodding obediently and keeping their mouths shut while an investment banker on Wall Street sends them lists of domains and pages that should be promoted or demoted in the search rankings.
My scenario: Changes in Google's algorithms and filters simply aren't favoring certain types of pages or sites at the moment, and some legitimate pages are getting lost from the SERPs as a result.
Which scenario is more likely to be accepted by a reasonable person who doesn't have an axe to grind?
No - I am very much a believer that G has a bug to sort out. I dont believe in the conspiary theories - but being listed has definetly changed Googles communication policy.
Just look at some of the older threads I pointed out about Canonical urls in my post in supporters and see who gave feedback/help.
Oh well times change.
Google has become spectaulary unable to fix even basic flaws in its algo (ie the multiplicitous duplicate content issues) for a place so full of phds and money you'd think they'd at least be as good as yahoo at this, but no.
Nope.
Neither do I! :o(
The problems seem to be getting worse now that Google has been listed. Maybe the engineers arent the problem, but are just following orders.
Your scenario: A bunch of cocky programmer geniuses at Google are nodding obediently and keeping their mouths shut while an investment banker on Wall Street sends them lists of domains and pages that should be promoted or demoted in the search rankings.
My scenario. LOL. If you re-read my top comment I said "maybe". However I dont think engineers have total control over Google results. I think group meetings of Google top brass will decide, and then tell the engineers what they want. I never said these people were Wall Street bankers.
My scenario: Changes in Google's algorithms and filters simply aren't favoring certain types of pages or sites at the moment, and some legitimate pages are getting lost from the SERPs as a result.
This isnt a case of favoring certain sites, a huge chunk of sites have disappeared, probably never to return. Again I doubt it's some legitimate pages, from the general consensus on most webmaster forums. You may not be hurting because of this update, but some of us are on death row. It seems more severe than all the previous bad updates. I just cant see alot of websites returning.
Yeah.
What Google reminds me of is in my earliest days of maintaining mainframe programs. You would have these immense monsters that dozens of people had worked on over the years until their complexity was such that nobody could fully appreciate the implications of any code change anywhere.
What bothers me is Google seems to go happily along kind of like "Oh well. If a few thousand legit sites get killed off, that's life."
At this point they have to know that any change is going to have huge effects throughout the index - punishing the innocent as well as the guilty - but they apparently just don't care. And its not even clear what conceivable improvement they are trying to achieve. Consensus is every major change they have made over the past year or so has actually made their results less relevant.
Now, after last weekend, most of our sites are in the 50s and 60s. I'd hate to think that Google would do any such thing, but boy, it sure makes me wonder.
This isnt a case of favoring certain sites
I said Google may not be favoring certain types of sites at the moment. That has a much different meaning.
a huge chunk of sites have disappeared
That's hyperbole, not observable fact.
probably never to return.
What basis do you have for that statement? We've had quite a few reports here about sites have taken a hit in Google and recovered after a few months. (Mine is one of them; it may have been a victim of the www-vs.non-www canonical/duplicate content issue.)
Again I doubt it's some legitimate pages, from the general consensus on most webmaster forums. You may not be hurting because of this update, but some of us are on death row.
Been there, felt that. I tried not to lose my objectivity, though. Search rankings are like the stock market: Sometimes you're up and sometimes you're down, but the important thing is to prosper over the long term.
It seems more severe than all the previous bad updates.
Sure, it seems that way to you because you're hurting. I've seen hardly any changes in the SERPs that I track, so to me it doesn't even look like an update at this point. I'll bet you weren't talking about a "severe update" last March, when I lost 70-75% of my Google referrals overnight, as did a number of other content publishers of my acquaintance. But it sure seemed like a "severe update" to me (even though Brett didn't acknowledge it as an update, unlike Danny Sullivan over at SEW). Severity, like beauty, is in the eye of the beholder at any given point in time.
Whether currently affected site owners will recover is going to depend on several things, namely:
1) Whether they're victims of a glitch (in which case they'll probably recover in time);
2) Whether they have technical issues or other problems at their end that, rightly or wrongly, make it harder for Google to do its job (such as failing to redirect non-www URLs to www or vice versa).
3) Whether their content is the type of content that Google wants to index. (Boilerplate content, cloned directories, and scraper sites may not qualify.)
But it's too early for site owners to talk about Doomsday; even if they've been whacked by the current update or tweak, that doesn't necessarily mean they'll still be out of the Google index or down in Google's rankings several months from now.
a huge chunk of sites have disappeared
That's hyperbole, not observable fact.
I know my sector inside out. Lots of my competitors have totally disappeared. Many of them 4-5 years old. Of course I cant give evidence.
I've lost about 80% of traffic three times over the past year and a half, I never complained on WW or had a go at Google. I expected to be back in time and always was.
This time it just feels different, I have no evidence. It's the fact my main site hasn't just lost it's traffic, it's just disappeared off the Google map. I've seen this with plenty of 4-5 years sites in my sector.
I agree it isn't Doomsday, but it sure feels close this time. My sites have been up and down in Google for 4 years plus. It's the first time some of them have totally disappeared.
In the past people always complained on these threads about losing a % of traffic. Now it seems to be more and more of 'My site is lost'.
[edited by: mikeD at 7:48 pm (utc) on Oct. 3, 2005]
Have to agree with bobmark here. No basis for it except observations over last year or so.
Google used to be a young company, fast on its feet and with the origins and goals of its program clearly in sight.
I too worked on bug fixing for ten years on what was, well.. lets just say a very large and complex design program easily on a par with the complexity of the Google programs, OK so what? well my experience was that after a while programs get out of hand, too big, too clumsy and complex and need a rewrite..this is when the new guys come along and the whole thing repeats..
Could Google already be at that stage?
is is when the new guys come along and the whole thing repeats..
Could well be, MSN and Yahoo are producing results nearly equal to Google now. Google's success was always on being an inclusive engine. If they wont allow new sites to rank well then they have long term problems.
I for one would like you to come over and wash my car.
It may be tempting, but people should obey this forum's charter and not make pleas, obnoxious or not, for Google Guy to say something about anything. He'll speak when he has something to say.
And once again, I have no clue where this weird presumption that Google is perfect comes from. They screwed up. They would fix it if they could -- if they recogonize the problem. With 302s in February, the Google employees were in pure denial, frankly foolishly so. Perhaps that is the case here, but that seems unlikely. They screwed up badly in an obvious way... and it is obvious because there is no upside here to the screwup. In other words, &filter=0 did NOT show any significant amount of spammy sites disappearing. If this filter was intended to hurt low quality sites, it didn't happen. I only see authority sites, and good quality mid-level sites, being the ones to disappear.
The Supplemental Index was a stupid stupid stupid idea that has some merits (lots of stolen copies of pages DO end up there after all), but it is badly conceived and horribly implemented.
Google is my friend, but every one of my friends has done stupid things in their lives and needed to be told to go take a lie down. Google fix your core product please. It's embarrassing to see my friend hurl in the bushes this long.
