Update Saga. Part 6

[selomelo]

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Continued from:
[webmasterworld.com...]

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The same down-and-on problem here in Turkey.
But j3 goes on and off. No steady results. At least three different sets:

216.239.63.104 (I think with additional tweaks)
64.233.161.104 (still J2)
64.233.179.104 (J3)

[Kangol]

The test DC is gone for my term. [64.233.179.104...] is showing from 30,000,000 pages as it did half an hour ago, just 6.000.000.
Im back to page 4...

[lee_sufc]

kangol - same here....it was good while it lasted!

[Kangol]

Yeah.
Possibility we'll see it back this weekend. I noticed that tests are done in weekends.

[steveb]

I'd guess we'll see it next with current data rather than that old stuff.

[Miop]

Update from me.
Although the 301 from index.php - root was picked up at least 3 weeks ago, it is only just now starting to have an effect across some of the datacenters. Where this has been picked up, pages which McDar previously said were no longer in Google are showing up again for kw searches, albeit way down the index, but at least they are back there now. Additionally on those datacenters, where G has picked up the changes I made to similar content template problem (stripped menus completely except for bare bones links and removed straplines from title tags), those pages are ranking again, some quite well. I can't tell if the index.php/root page problem was also affecting those internal pages as improvements are all on the same datacenters, but different datacenters are showing different results for different keywords.
Where the root page redirect is now effective, I can see that Google is confused over the content of some of my pages where there is an overlap in terminology or descriptions. I can see this because when I do a KW search across the dc's, for some words, different sections are showing up on different dc's. Maybe this is G's dupe content analysis in play, but at least I am now beginning to see which pages are affected and can check them to see why.
I don't believe I have a penalty for 'lost' pages, I just think that G could not see clearly enough what those pages were meant to contain, and so they were not showing up for any search. The keyword analysis must be sharper than it was, as the pages ranked fine previously to the beginning of the canonical and root page/index.php problem and Jagger.
This whole fracass has so far taken nearly 3 months (6 if you stretch it back to the beginning of the www v non www issue) and is only just now beginning to show some improvement reflected in the changes I have made.
My site is now crap for the user having lost all the menus, but since nobody much was finding it, it was irrelevant anyway. I might try adding some menus back again when things have settled down a bit and see what if anything happens.
At the rate it is going, I would guesstimate that the current rate, the problems affecting my site will be more or less sorted in about 3 or 4 weeks (too late!), and that is if Google does not introduce any more factors in the meantime.

Hope you are all getting better Christmas business than I am! :)
Thinking of all you who have lost position and working on it.

[reseller]

Good morning Folks

The "real" weather report says that it will be a sunny Friday! Wish all all the same. May the sun shine on you, yours and your sites :-)

The case of that testing DC [64.233.179.104...] looks more silly the more I look at. Old files and quality of search doesn't look promissing at all within the sectors I watch. And I can't see much improvements occure on that test DC. And I can't imagine such data to migrate to other DCs.

I'm just wondering whether we are chasing shadows :-)

Wish you all a great day.

[outland88]

I would think they would avoid wasting their time without a purpose.

[tigger]

>I'm just wondering whether we are chasing shadows

nooooooo reseller, I only come along first thing to read your uplifting banter, don't tell me your finally starting to get fed up with this thing!

I've stopped looking at DC's, IBLs, cached info the lot and just getting on rebuilding and tweaking to see if I can ever pull anything other than naff traffic from G, but I'm doubtful

As Monty would say "this is a dead update" walk away let G play around with its so called testing and tweaking I'm sure once they have something "they" want feed back on they will soon come calling - Mmmmmmmm one way street

[Gimp]

What is the one way street? We get free traffic. They do the work and we get customers and make money. That sounds pretty one way on our side.

Those who have been full of predictions and chasing Data Centers have wasted not only their time, but have been providing comic relief to many of us.

Those who are providing commentary on what they think has hurt or benefited thier sites have been very helpful.

[tigger]

I wasn't referring to the traffic more the spam reports & feed back when they ask for it on test DC's nothing more - all I'm saying it would be nice if we had some real feedback from them regarding how much longer this is going on

[followgreg]

I agree, some feedback would be nice for sure!
Unlike reseller I find he DC mentioned perfectly legitimate across multiple terms, not more spam not less, many relevant sites make a phenomenal come back and some spammy link monkeys are off.
Maybe I'm not watching what is to watch though :)

[mycutegoddess]

I just checked to compare on google.com, 64.233.179.99 and 66.249.89.104. Every Datacenter seem to be identical. What about you guys?

[Armi]

"Every Datacenter seem to be identical"

Definitely not!

[Dayo_UK]

Armi

I guess you are partly right in the test dc is a Mozilla Bot test to a degree.

Although more than just added pages have occured on the test dc - so slight changes in other factors (whether these factors are related to what Mozilla bot can do over normal googlebot I dont know)

Heavy Moz Bot activity on Dec 1st which has not made it to the test dc from what I can see - heavy Moz Bot activity last night too.

[idolw]

The case of that testing DC [64.233.179.104...] looks more silly the more I look at. Old files and quality of search doesn't look promissing at all within the sectors I watch.

that's what i was sayingg. for my searches, this DC shows pages that do not exist since August and which were sorted out by Jagger3.

Also, this favours the ugly idea some spammers try to make use of: there are pages of service providing companies with only affiliate ID at the end of the URL. That's very stupid but this DC promotes it and puts such pages higher.

What is more, this DC shows bad results also for non-commercial searches. Usually google was giving perfect informational results for me and was just messing up with the competetive ones. That tactics allowed them to keep the users. However, if informational results will be such #*$!ty, people will really start using other search engines. And once they start using something else for informational purpose, they will not come back to google for buying stuff.
These are my points about the famous test DC and reasoins why I cannot believe they would make it public.

[followgreg]

I guess that I need to change my whole set of test queries...I really don't see more spam than on regular DC, but really not for some reason.
I'd love to see a dozen of well competitive SERP that turned into spam on this test DC if someone wants to PM that to me...

[Dayo_UK]

Just to add to my Mozbot obversations.

The Moz bot data that seems to have been added is from about the 21st November - however, lots of pages were also crawled at the same time on the 21st which were not added to the test dc.

So Mozbot still seems to be a bit of a bandwidth sucker with letter benefit.

However, lets wait and see

[Eazygoin]

If anyone wants to listen to the audio interview with Sarah Mackay, of Webmaster Radio, with Matt Cutts of Google, please sticky me, and I'll give you the link.
The interview is indepth, and covers such things as ratings, banning sites, reinclusion issues and also Froogle, Matt also speaks about hidden text etc, and ways of producing the best keywords for a website.

I am going to try and post the link here, and hope that Brett allows it. If not, sticky me :-)))
[webmasterradio.fm ]
Please note it takes a while to load.Don't worry if the page initially goes blank.

[BillyS]

heavy Moz Bot activity last night too

I think the observations about Moz Bot might be correct. I'm now down from 10,400 pages to ~525. Yesterday Moz Bot ate around 200 more pages.

I've also got some url only pages - but they are those pages specifically excluded in robots.txt.

[ltedesco]

The case of that testing DC [64.233.179.104...] looks more silly the more I look at. Old files and quality of search doesn't look promissing at all within the sectors I watch. And I can't see much improvements occure on that test DC. And I can't imagine such data to migrate to other DCs.

I'm just wondering whether we are chasing shadows :-)

My Google here in the US is exactly the same of [64.233.179.104...] today. I love it so far!

[Dayo_UK]

Billy

How many pages should you have?

I know you said somewhere - cant find at mo.

I am hoping that some of my supplimentals etc will start dropping out soon or replaced with crawled pages (maybe even Moz bot crawled)

I have loads and loads of pages crawled by Moz bot not in the index.

[BillyS]

How many pages should you have?

Used to show 10,400 on Google.com

Now showing ~525

Actually have around 1,025 and I told Google this through Google sitemaps.

Pinging www.l.google.com [64.233.187.99] with 32 bytes of data:

Hmm, never noticed that www.l before.

[Miop]

<http://64.233.179.104 >

My index.php page still showing on that dc - it's been gone and indexed as gone for a month.

[headache1987]

These are the DC's that are showing the "test" results:

64.233.161.105
64.233.171.99
64.233.171.104
64.233.171.105
64.233.171.107
64.233.171.147
64.233.179.99
64.233.179.104
64.233.179.106
64.233.179.107
64.233.185.99
64.233.185.104
216.239.39.98
216.239.39.99
216.239.39.104
216.239.39.105
216.239.39.106
216.239.39.107

[walkman]

going back and forth still. I tested my "domain.com" with #*$! and on the "new" results, I am #33--and that's an improvement. I am around 50 on ther ones.

Come on Google, let's get Walkman's site up. You know I'm a nice guy...deep down ;)

[pizzaiolo]

even the Manhatan Project had less time for test then those guys.

[headache1987]

I'm thinking this is a VERY Good sign, no?

[needinfo]

How does the [64.233.187.99...] DC look to some of you guys, we've just had a site drop down from #4 to past #300 . Anybody else seeing anything similar?

[Kangol]

Can be a good sign but the problem, in my case, is that on those DCs I have only 70 pages indexed from 100.
Also I see old cache - 3 Dec.

[texasville]

[64.233.179.104...]

This dc has to have the most bizarre results for me. It has pages that have been dead for 8 months showing back up in it. They are also non-www pages. I have had 301 in place for several months.
The dup content filters are cranked so high that using paragraph snippets on my articles index page has tripped the filter and made the articles themselves go supplemental. What guano.

[64.233.179.104...]

The serps on this dc are some of the worst I have ever seen on google. The usual high ranking sites that are usually present are gone. Replaced by spam and weird stuff. I think this dc has been trashed or is showing the serps they are trying to clear out.