Google's Pending September Update

I have seen some changes in geo...

[rishic]

Hello People,

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

[Pirates]

Yea I am most interesting in a fix.

Is anyone seeing a connection between length of urls and results?

For instance is
www.yoursite.com/subcat1/page
better than
www.yoursite.com/subcat1/subcat2/sucat3/page

[Webmeister]

Matt Cutts has ammended his blog and expects Brett will name it sometime soon.

I already named it Katrina. It's been the F5 of updates so far. The best anyone else could do is downgrade it to a tropical storm.

[madweb]

madweb... but you are agreeing with that site... to spam, hide text, etc. Question: Do you have sites like that? Relevant but spamming the key words?

No i'm not agreeing, No i don't do that on my sites.

"Googling" is a pop-culture phenomena.

True, but it only got there by word-of-mouth, and some other search engine can do the same in just the same space of time.

These teachers switched the start page on every computer in the school to Ask.com when they heard what Google was doing to people.

And that's how word of mouth can work! Google toolbar is installed on every PC at my university. If results aren't good enough they'll switch it, all the students will change their habbits... then they go home or off to work and so the habbit spreads.

[McMohan]

I wouldn’t be surprised if Brett slaps a name on it pre-emptively

There goes a suttle hint for Brett to officially declare this as an update.

[Hollywood]

Has anyone who is getting hit hard recently added a new google sitemap.xml page?... as opposed to the regular "site-map.html" type of page? I was thinking when this sitemap.xml first started (once again by google) that it may be a set-up. I recently added one and could never figure out what priority to give each page. I gave most of the good content pages an 8.

:o

Hollywood

[longen]

Checking my stats following the decline in traffic i find that US visitors as a percentage of the total is half of what it was previously. The site is a dot com hosted in the UK with Europe's biggest host.
Anyone affected by the update seeing changes in the source of the traffic?

[helleborine]

Hey, I dusted off the pages of the baby-naming book and I would like to suggest the following:

Update...

Casualties Galore
Calamity Jane
Catastrophe
Crash Test Dummy
Collapsed Rankings
Concussion

or just name it after me... update Chantal.

[aeiouy]

Has anyone who is getting hit hard recently added a new google sitemap.xml page?... as opposed to the regular "site-map.html" type of page? I was thinking when this sitemap.xml first started (once again by google) that it may be a set-up. I recently added one and could never figure out what priority to give each page. I gave most of the good content pages an 8.

I thought priority was a 0-1 number... ie .1 .5 .8.. Did you give them all .8 or 8?

[Hollywood]

.8 not 8

Not all of them just the ones with the most important content.

[idolw]

why do you want to wait? Cutts says PR/BL update coming - these will be only public ones, not the real updates.
Accoriding to: [mattcutts.com...]

When new backlinks/PageRank appear, we’ve already factored that into our rankings quite a while ago. So new backlinks/PageRank are fun to see, but it’s not an update; it’s just already-factored-in data being exported visibly for the first time in a while.

I bet they will be seating in front of the monitor, watching 1000th page of this thread and laughing.

Cutts saying he still awaits some flux means minor changes and not update continuation. We, webmasters simply do not want to understand this "poetry's" real meaning.

The internet turned out to be powerful medium, because it used show the world a bit different from the one presented in TV ruled by large corporations presenting all the time the same look at life.
Now, Google joined TV and sucks as well. The search results present brand names well-known from TV.
I do really not need to search (neither Google, nor Yahoo or MSN) for stuff I know it exists and have goods I want to buy! I will simply type in the URL hammered into my brain by zillions of ads in TV, radio, papers, etc.
Unfortunately, none of these websites, well advertised offline, will show me an individual point of view I usually search for online. These will only show me lists of widgets I want to buy and nothing else. They will not help in choosing the best one for me, as they are at the top of Google results only because the landing page is the longest listing of widgets put online and not a page showing directions to more specific types of widgets and widget advice pages.

Believe me or not, but I really know that if I want to buy Dan Brown books - I go to Amazon or Barnes & Noble, if I want to buy second hand laptop on an auction - I go to ebay and I need to go to hotels.com if I want to book hotels worldwide.

I know all that because it has been repeated to me zillion of times everywhere outside the web and on the web too, of course - through regular advertising.

Unfortunately, none of the above quoted give me additional value Google so often asks tiny webmasters for. The only value (if I want to call it that way) is 5 types of popup windows containing ads, even more ads on the more often visited websites and the longest list Googlebot could find.

Results looks as they look, because all small webmasters had enough taste to put widgets into various categories in order to make visitor's job easier. And that made their pages not relevant enough to be worth showing to Joe the User.

[Ivy_G]

It's hard not to get overly frustrated when ebay listing are showing up on page three of search results.

[SEOTard]

Even though we have benefited GREATLY from this update (and deservedly so) the car wraps thing is just pathetic.

Also as I posted earlier a wedding invitations search produces 3 directory style sites in the top ten with obvious keyword stuffing.

Needs to be fixed. I just hope our very legitmate, whitehat site is not affected when they finally figure it out.

[leveldisc]

For those who want to name the udpate -- you must use a name beginning with the letter 'C.'

Too tempting

[sonny]

update:Cornholio

[mjtaylor]

Has anyone who is getting hit hard recently added a new google sitemap.xml page?...

Not in my realm ... my two hardest hit sites don't have site maps . Period.

MJ

[SEOTard]

update: Car Wraps?

[jam2005]

Whatever Google did, it just made my day! One of my websites had its duplicate content penalty removed, it was taken out of the supplemental results, and it is showing up in the search results again! It got hit with the penalty when one of our competitors copied our website. We've been trying to get it fixed for months.

Granted, we are on page 40 - but that's a start! It's better than not being in the first 1,000 results.

Now, if only I could figure out why my rankings went down on all my other sites...

[webpro00801]

>1) They ranked it completely wrongly in the first place.

Right - how can that be? I was #1 or #2 for a very broad general geopgraphic term for about 5 years! Now I am chopped liver?

>2) They don't rank things well in general.

They used to -

>Can a page be suddenly and totally irrelevant?

Great question - one thought I had was that maybe the algo is a bit like a hit record, if one site seems to have growing traffic, and another stagnant or flat traffic, can the algo catapult the "hot" site ahead?

And to make matters worse - instead of being #6 on Google - we are actually #9, because they are throwing in an extra set of search results for "broad geographic term" maps - which in the past we were also always in the top 3 SERPS and are now on page 5! And that is the main thrust of our site - we have maps of this specific region. I am at a loss...

[aeiouy]

update:Cornholio

Haha... or captain crunch

[defanjos]

Also as I posted earlier a wedding invitations search produces 3 directory style sites in the top ten with obvious keyword stuffing.

SEOtard,
What makes you think the keyword stuffing has anything to do with the ranking?

I bet it does not make a difference if they have the words once or 100 times on the page.

[SEOTard]

defanjos,

can't be sure. however, they were nowhere near top ten before this update. to repeat the search term in anchor for every major city in the US would appear to be keyword stuffing.

Doesn't make them illegitimate, just stands out.

[reseller]

Ladies and Gentlemen!

Please welcome for the third time, the KING of all updates..ONLY on Google The Mother of All Search Engines "Simply The Best, Better Than All The Rest.."

Update Bacon Polenta

And.. of course I do respect and appreciate that its gonna be Brett & Co who shall name the update. No doubt about that.

But allow me to motivate my choice of the said name.

- Its Matt Cutts favorit dish. "Mmmm. Bacon-y goodness" :-)

- Its a sweet way to thank Matt for being of help to the webmaster community.

- A reminder that even Matt´s blog could be GoogleWashed (thanks to Dayo_UK, Nick Wilson and Danny Sullivan).

And there are other reasons which I have already forgotten ;-)

[SEOTard]

reseller,

I thought it had to start with "C"?

[OptWizard]

WHO CARES WHAT IT IS NAMED

[phpdude]

**Also as I posted earlier a wedding invitations search produces 3 directory style sites in the top ten with obvious keyword stuffing.**

Yes, the PP site is a stroke of genious! It is stuffed to the max and comes up under a lot of other types of searches.

Google has rewarded them handily for creating a keyword laden directory.

[followgreg]

I didn't go through posts to find out what site you're talking about but I see a lot of "spammy look" type of sites.

I see sites that rose from nowhere and other that were buried long ago and none of them appear to be legitimate, link shemes, poor design and content, spammy look, non theme related link popularity.....

Code name: "katrina" if it keeps dirty results like this

My choice is still code name: "bozo the clown" because it's colorful, looks like a joke and useless but funny to look at

btw I like to watch results from "seo optimization"

[edited by: followgreg at 8:31 pm (utc) on Oct. 18, 2005]

[SEOTard]

phpdude,

yep - they really have become a powerhouse for many, many terms they "represent".

Again - they are not illegitimate, just stuffed with keywords - right or wrong.

[reseller]

SEOTard

>>reseller,

I thought it had to start with "C"? <<

After Borboun there was supposed to be Update Gilligan .

And now its Bacon Polenta´s turn ;-)

[followgreg]

reseller >> credit will be given to you, are you happy now, can you just shut it up? :)

Some SEO'd sites seems badly hit while they seem legitimate with good content while spammy look sites rise back from nowhere and look like crap.

funny cause today I see an increase of traffic from Yahoo! may not be related but it's funny to see that :)

[aliszka]

I love this one from threadwatch:

Don't worry guys, it's just the annual Christmas update. Commercial sites plummet, bid prices skyrocket, all returns to normal mid-January.