Forum Moderators: Robert Charlton & goodroi
Have been waiting for google's pending update but didn't get any on that. From last two days I have noticed extreme changes in search results for same google domain (like .com or .de or .nl etc.) with different interface language selected (like hl=de or hl=en or hl=nl). When you change the interface language the whole bunch of results are different.
Is this the actual update this time? Enabling the geo centric data which google wanted to implement for better localization? If yes (and if someone else is also seeing this change) then may be we can all identify the parameters of this new change, like language, servers in geographical locations or extensions (.de, .nl etc.)
-- rishi
There may be two reasons for us:
1 - some folks here who looked at my site said it has the www and non www problem
2 - after years of hiatus, we again started accepting link exchanges. since we created new pages and had 0 pagerank, we also accepted sites with 0 pagerank (our link pages have PR of 5, and the site has PR 6)
In the same way Napster and MP3 downloads were heralded evil until it was in the hands of corporations and now being rebranded the saviour of the music industry so I can see large manufacturers moaning about the destruction of there brands via Google mom and pop sites.
In actual fact its the destruction of there margins they are concerned about. The enterprise network that involves small business and information sites is doing a great job of reducing price's to consumers.
The whole of the internet market depends on continually being challenged.
Some of the pages I have seen representing manufacturers and corporations are in my opinion being artificially boosted in current serps.
Perhaps we will need in the future a NASDAQ listing to please Google.
I sincerely hope this was an experiment not an update and that Larry and Sergi next time there at dinner with the head some large corporation explain the reason there not number one on there product is because there website is rubbish.
The sandbox, the boost to corporate , this is just preventing invention and progress. For me right now Google is becoming just like every other fat cat corporate company, its at the top and trying to make time stand still. And on evidence of last non update wooing and panning to the wishes of its new found corporate friends.
What date would you put on this? Year month that is. Are you rounding up? Down? Again, I don't see this as a central question, we just took a close look and it's not a sufficient cause of the drops we're looking at, the drop is the result of something else, we can already pinpoint at least 2 items, tentatively.
I'm talking about supplemental results in the natural serps, not supplemental results in the site:example.com type query. Can you point me to a WebmasterWorld thread > 1 year old that refers to this, can't find one, lots of ones about site:example.com supplementals.
I'm not putting very much weight on the supplemental thing, sorry, that's why it doesn't interest me, it hasn't been the trigger for any issues I've had in the last 6 months, and hasn't affected rankings or serps meaningfully from what I can see in the areas I'm looking at. To me it's an interesting glitch, that's all, although I think if you look back and locate the actual date it was first noted, it might be interesting, but for other reasons.
However, I'll resist speculation those reasons, don't want you to cut your feet on broken glass or anything.
Asking for an explanation about something that doesn't seem to have much to do with this current thing, I don't know, why? What's the point? I'd be happy to see something that indicates that it is important, but I haven't seen it yet, each time it's come up I've checked to see if that affected anything, and it didn't.
The things that I'm wondering about are: bourbon, link directories, backlinks, outbound links, dmoz. I'm wondering because that's where we are seeing interesting differences.
Pursuing this supplemental thing question isn't going to do me or my clients any good, since it's not the cause of what we're seeing in the new results. I see it as a bug, there are certain qualities to that bug that I'd missed before today, which make it much more likely to be a bug, since there's no reason at all for those to be happening in terms of logic, serps, adwords, or anything else, more glitches that is. It might be theoretically interesting to pursue that question elsewhere, but it won't help me resolve the issues here.
The overall changes, that's getting interesting though.
A recession is when lots of people lose their job.
A depression is when you lose your job.
After being knocked totally out of google for my main keyword phrase by this update/not update I reappeared on page 20 a few hour ago. Since then I've rocketed up to page 18. So still some movement going on. Ooops as I'm writing this went back down to page 19.
I think what is most disturbing thing to me about this non update is the rise in Corporate sites in the same way Educational sites rose in Florida.
I have noticed this also. I wonder if there is a higher weighting on the home page as opposed to the inner pages and thats why there are more corporate sites coming up. Many of the optimized pages are gone.
If this is the case it clearly makes it harder to find information. Because the home page is just a sales pitch the inner pages have the content.
Obviously there are plenty of pages ahead of people in the serps that are not the home page no need to point it out. I am just suggesting that there may be less.
I think what is most disturbing thing to me about this non update is the rise in Corporate sites in the same way Educational sites rose in Florida. Although the university sites did no competitive harm the rise of global corporations would snuff out invention and competition.
Depends on why they climbed in the rankings, doesn't it? Maybe they're doing something right (or not doing something wrong), and the smaller guys can learn from their example.
If it's any consolation, most of the top 10 for the competitive travel keyphrases that I watch aren't corporate sites. The majority of those top 10 sites are owned by tourist offices, small to midsize companies, or even mom-and/or-pop work-at-home types. So while it may be true that big corporations are doing better in some parts of the index, the Fortune 500 aren't dominating across the board.
Only thing is I hope it does not last as long cause I took a beating in it dropped over 150 spots or more for each of my top tier KW's
I think what is most disturbing thing to me about this non update is the rise in Corporate sites in the same way Educational sites rose in Florida
I'm seeing this trend as well. Interesting thing is that the tops on my main keyword right now is a big publication that is the very antithesis of the keyword. It's not even relevant to that keyword, given that the publication talks about the other end of the spectrum.
I remember back about 10 years ago when the Internet search engines leveled the playing field. All of a sudden, anyone with a good hand at graphic design and who could learn a few SEO tricks could start a business and compete with the big boys. Next thing you know, Joe's Computer Parts is competing with IBM and Mary's Candle Store is taking business away from the Yankee Candle Company. This helped stir up the pot by throwing a wrench into the trickle-down corporate monopolies that seemed to have been dominating the U.S. economy.
Now all of a sudden you see the big corporate websites dominating a majority of the Google rankings under the most profitable search phrases. What happened? Did Google get too rich to bump elbows with us little guys? Hey, Larry and Sergey - did you forget about us little guys on the Web? Remember us? You used to be one of us!
I have talked with dozens of webmasters who are going to be forced to lay off workers because of this turn of events. Could this be the end of the little guys being able to compete with the big boys era? With all the money flowing to the top again, will this damage the already fragile U.S. economy?
Oh well, it was good while it lasted. We may be back to the old "rich getting richer" dilemma again.
I have talked with dozens of webmasters who are going to be forced to lay off workers because of this turn of events.
I'm glad I don't work for a webmaster that makes these types of decisions. Those workers should quit today and go work for someone that knows what they are doing! Webmasters with such short-sightedness probably deserve low rankings anyway.
Or maybe they are just exempt from doing anything wrong. I just watched one billion dollar company entering the UK.
First they created a UK website under .co.uk Then they got links from universities and authoritive sites. Then they created a load of pages interlinked hiding over 80K of content from users through css "no display". And then they 301 it to "uk" sub domain of there .com site.
Now there number one. So tell me please what exactly can I learn from this? Shall I just apply for a nasdaq listing so I can spam too...........
[webmasterworld.com...]
Note the misplaced optimism from Google Guy about an "experimental" feature now gone very wrong. (August 2003 for those too lazy to click.)
See also: [webmasterworld.com...]
"I'm not putting very much weight on the supplemental thing, sorry, that's why it doesn't interest me,"
More the pity for you. Canonical issues have been THE issue with Google for more than a year. The vast majority of posts here about losing ranking for a year or more have been strictly canonical problems. Supplementals are yet another canonical area.
==
"I think what is most disturbing thing to me about this non update is the rise in Corporate sites in the same way Educational sites rose in Florida."
I can't fathom how this could be "disturbing". This is a great thing in general. More to the point though, I see little of that. The phenomenon here is harmful to corporate or "parent" sites.
[edited by: steveb at 1:56 am (utc) on Oct. 18, 2005]
That things that are important will be recognized as important, most of the time.
But it isn't a level playing field is it.
Back to my original point corparations have been boosted in this non update and it seems to me exempt from penalisation
The appearance of the early 2003 supplementals, no surprise at all, neither was their integration into the primary result set a year ago, or their starting to pop up in the standard serps, that all fits.
Canonical issues, interesting, except we have sites with and without past canonical issues experiencing an identical drop. But a quick check showed something unexpected, I'm not going to put too much into it yet, have to confirm it on other topic areas, it's too easy to put too much into certain things this early on.
[edited by: 2by4 at 2:23 am (utc) on Oct. 18, 2005]
I'm glad I don't work for a webmaster that makes these types of decisions. Those workers should quit today and go work for someone that knows what they are doing! Webmasters with such short-sightedness probably deserve low rankings anyway.
You know, you're right. How stupid of them to go to work for someone who hasn't figured out what Google is going to do next! Just because they found a job after being laid off after the dot.com bust doesn't mean anything. They should have gone to work for Google! Then they wouldn't have to worry about what Google is going to do next.
There's widespread speculation as to what is behind the changes - main theories at present are:
Data loss at Google causes an incomplete index - suggestions of Googlebot panic spidering to rebuild it
Semantic processing of links that mean established and varied links are weighted more, giving more power to internal links and less weight to link development work
New filter for site-wide links
Increased weighting of authorities to reduce presence of less established sites even further, to limit spam
...at least most people here agree, that they have an explanation or not for what is gong on, that today's results are overall far worst than before.
Don't worry guys, it's just the annual Christmas update. Commercial sites plummet, bid prices skyrocket, all returns to normal mid-January.
Never out all your eggs in one basket.
Well if this keeps up will G$$GLE be the next excite or infoseek
Perhaps they can work for someone with a crystal ball next. I know what you mean though webmeister this does look like the end of something great. For the first time in years I'm more motivated to create a search engine than another web site
This one especially is interesting, the other points I can't see much concrete example of on a range of sites, some fall, some don't, but this one, definitely. Also I suspect a lowering of the value of other links. This would also account for the rise of larger companies in some serps, they would naturally tend to collect authority type links.
This is currently the strongest argument I've seen, and one I saw early warning signs of a few weeks ago.
Well if this keeps up will G$$GLE be the next excite or infoseek
Let's not forget how search engines get popular. Webmasters like search engines that rank them well, so they tell everyone they know to use their favorite SE. The buzz gets around the office that the webmaster says AltaVista is the best search engine, and next thing you know the whole office building is using it. When AV become the webmaster's enemy by deranking all of their sites, the buzz got around because the webmasters were mad at AV, and next thing you knew, nobody was using AV. And guess which engine us webmasters told everyone to use instead of AV? You got it - Google.
Deja Vu. I was in a guitar store today telling the guys there about what Google did yesterday. They jumped onboard and said they were starting to use MSN and Yahoo more anyway. A few conversations like that can change the way people search overnight. A bad reputation travels faster than a good one. I'm not making any threats, I'm just saying smell the coffee and look what happened to AV. No one is too big to take a fall.
[edited by: Webmeister at 2:42 am (utc) on Oct. 18, 2005]
In respect of big corps...I am not sure I see this happening. i do see older sites seeming to get better ranking. If it is the case large corps and such are getting better positioning it could be similar to what they applied to Google News in May. There they stopped listing stories by pure date and added in quality/trust factoring. Thus on G News now you won't often see smaller outlets top lining, though they are still included....
Anyway, looks like still some movement on this but having said that it has been going on for 2 weeks for us...so I starting to think is it just going to stay in flux like this...I can deal with daily changes but would not like to see drastic ones all the time with traffic up and down like a yo yo.
