Data Center Watch 2006-05-18

[g1smd]

Continued from:
[webmasterworld.com...]

---

I have been away for a week (just a quick look in, a couple of times during the week, even though I was supposed to be on "holiday") and while I was away Google got rid of the results that I previously referred to as BigDaddy A and B leaving only the experimental results, and the cleaned up version (with the oldest supplementals deleted) left behind, and the "cleaned up" version is the one that is on the vast majority of the datacentres now.

The "same snippet for every page" problem has also been fixed.

Sites that installed a 301 redirect before 2005 June no longer show the redirected URL in the SERPs.

Pages that went 404, and sites that went domain expired, before 2005 June no longer show up in the search results.

New Supplemental Results have appeared for any pages that have changed their status or their content at any time since 2005 June. For pages that are gone, the Supplemental Result has a cache of the final version that was online. For pages that have been updated, the Supplemental Result shows the previous content in the snippet, and the normal result shows current content in the snippet. In both cases the cache is usually only a few days or weeks old.

[edited by: Brett_Tabke at 1:36 pm (utc) on May 19, 2006]

[MLHmptn]

Welcome back G1. Honestly other than what you mentioned the SERP's haven't changed much in that time other than sandboxed sites have now been buried again. Some of us have given up hope on Google. I honestly feel like tagging all of my sites with an MSN search form and pointing out to my visitors that Google only wants to show them OLD sites. This whole supplemental, canonical, sandbox, etc. is getting ridiculous with Google. You certainly don't see this problem with MSN.

[lgn1]

I haven't check for a week also, however the good results now appear on only two datacenters, so it appears that the do nothing approach and hope the good results will spread is a lost cause.

The good news, is that I have stabilized in either position 50 or 51 on all the bad datacenters.

At least things are stable enough now to do SEO optimization for the bad data centers.

[reseller]

lgn1

"At least things are stable enough now to do SEO optimization for the bad data centers."

Very wise statement. Agreed. No need to sit and watch the grass grow ;-)

[garyr_h]

I vote for Update Alabaster.

[petehall]

Now unofficially back on:
64.233.167.99
64.233.167.104
64.233.167.147

Ha ha.

[reseller]

Good morning Folks

Looking at the bright side of the DCs, I see relatively spam clean top 10, within the sector I watch, on these two sets:

[64.233.167.99...]
[64.233.167.104...]

[72.14.203.99...]
[72.14.203.104...]

IMO, if the folks at the plex allow the data of those two sets DCs to propagate, we might have at least some acceptable serps, until further.

Of course, you might see something else within the sector(s) you watch.

Wish you all a great day.

[MLHmptn]

I still see the same garbage....The only plus that I notice is no supplementals...But on the other hand I see less pages indexed. That can't be too positive can it? Google simply removed the supplementals...WOOHOO GOOGLE! Mission accomplished....

[great_9]

Less pages indexed BUT THIS IS FANTASTIC!

A search for "blue widget" __with quotes__ return a stock photography site in the top 10, an automobile site. I cheked both of them presenting myself as googlebot (both) :) and none of them are doing any black-hat SEO. Not serving one page to a visitor, another to googlebots.

[reseller]

Good morning MLHmptn and great_9

Well.. I said "relatively spam clean top 10" :-)

I guess we might as well start to adopt to what I call "acceptable search quality" which isn't the same as good search quality.

That is the current, and maybe, the future level of Google's serps.... "acceptable search quality".

[great_9]

First of all, good morning to you too. btw. I'm mostly up before 6 AM. I like to start my day early.

Well.. I said "relatively spam clean top 10" :-)

Yes indeed, you did :-)
But: that stock photography site and the automobile site aren't spam. normal sites _without_ seo as far as I can tell, and I like to think of myself as IT lubricated :-D

I guess we might as well start to adopt to what I call "acceptable search quality" which isn't the same as good search quality.

I refuse to accept that. Why did they change the algo on dec 27th? why oh why? the serps were relevant. You could find around 1% spam on overall SERPs. Try to find a relevant site now. Needle-in-a-haystick I think it's called?

That is the current, and maybe, the future level of Google's serps.... "acceptable search quality".

Again, I refuse to accept it.
Right now, I can create a site with a title tag: "acceptable search quality", one link with that keyword(s) in it, stick one image with the same alt tag and the site will be on #1. Two weeks later after some scraper-spam-venture-capitalist-webmaster sniffs the power of my #1 site, he'll just copy it, put it on nonrelevantdomainname.com and guess what? I'll be #837, he'll be top 10.

[Hissingsid]

Hi,

I think that things are settling down a bit now. Still some subtle differences seen as detailed below.

9am London 20th May.

For our most competitive target term we are #3 on all DCs reported by McDar except these where we are #1

64.233.187.99
64.233.187.104

For a competitive 3 word term we are #2 across all data centres reported on McDar.

For a less competitive 2 words term we are #1 on all DCs except these where we are #10.

64.233.189.104
216.239.53.99
216.239.57.99
66.102.7.99
216.239.63.104
216.239.53.104
66.102.7.104
216.239.57.104
216.239.53.107
216.239.57.107
216.239.57.147
66.102.7.147

One explanation for the differences may be some local element in the algo, could be semantics?

Also for those of us in the UK these results are not too indicative as we also have a local filter applied to DCs when they are served up as .co.uk

Best wishes

Sid

[petehall]

...and now dead again.

Unofficially of course.

[g1smd]

Vanessa Fox has posted that the site: operator is not working properly for any Google queries with extra "punctuation" in them, specifically things like:

site:domain.com/ (trailing / on query)

and

site:some-domain.com (hyphenated domain)

See: [sitemaps.blogspot.com ] for more information.

[g1smd]

I recently thought that all of the old pre-2005 June Supplemental Results had been cleaned up, but I now see that when I make some other keyword searches that some of the URLs that I thought were gone, are still actually there and still show old content in the snippet.

I see words in the snippet that are old content that are no longer on the page, but when I search for those words that page is no longer returned as a match. That is why I thought the page had gone from the index as a Supplemental Result.

I believed that the page now only appears for current content as a normal result. It appears that some of the old Supplemental data is still there and can sometimes still appear in search results.

One problem with my report: I am not sure if the Supplemental data is dated before or after the 2005 June cutoff that I have noted elsewhere, simply because these results are (so far) all for PDF files - and PDF files do not show a cache date for Google's HTML version of the page.

It may be that I am mistaken and that these are recent Supplemental Results, along with the many more that I have seen dated 2005 July and after.

If, however, they are dated 2005 June or earlier, then Google hasn't actually fully cleaned these results: it will prove that remnants still lurk.

Further work with archive.org will be needed for comparison, to see what is actually happening here; but so far archive.org has not got a suitably dated copy of the files that I am looking at.

[petehall]

Still lurking on:
64.233.167.99
64.233.167.104
64.233.167.147

[steveb]

64.233.167.99 are quite different than before, and not nearly as good. Very bad levels of blog comment trustspam. That junk will end up widespread. They don't even have rudimentary spam removal.

[1984bb]

"That junk will end up widespread"
maybe for you is junk for me is a big hope....64.233.167.99

[Keypoint]

I believe this DC is more relevant:

216.239.53.99
216.239.57.99
66.102.7.99
216.239.63.104
216.239.53.104
66.102.7.104
216.239.53.107
216.239.57.107

[RoadRash]

I like what I see. :)

[chickenpaw]

The only ones we see that are different and include newer websites....

64.233.187.99
64.233.187.104

A couple weeks ago for 2 days the results where rolled from these centers to every center...then rolled back to the crap that is now back.

[petehall]

We need an update... not had one since November as far as I can remember.

Good results gone again from all DCs.

[asiaseo]

This one appeared some hours ago showing our site in a reasonable position as it was before. The sites higher than us I have no problem with at all as they were good relevant sites and provide up to date information with local content. Now those results have gone, not just our site but other good local sites. We do a lot better than many other sites in this region as I do my best to try and grasp all these ever varying requirements.
It's a good idea to try a search for something that is unrelated to your own sites but a subject you know something about, then you can see the sort of results that show up.

64.233.187
It was great for the few hours it lasted.

[lgn1]

Has google made a giant jump back in the past few days.

For the past several months, google has been indexing new content on my site.

For the past couple of days, Google is only indexing my home page.

This appears to be happening across all datacenters.

[steveb]

"That junk will end up widespread"

Should have said that junk will NOT end up widespread.

The major increase in simplistic spam often occurs when they introduce more data, but the total garbage doesn't stick in a high percentage.

[bumpaw]

http://64.233.167.99
[64.233.167.104...]

[72.14.203.99...]
[72.14.203.104<...]
The top pair has me at 4 pages and the bottom pair has me at 480 all supp pages. This is a quality site with yahoo giving right at 5000 and MSN 980.

[steveb]

Some major movement on 64.233.167.99, especially using the ie? search, in the past thirty minutes. Just an absolutely horrible introduction of garbage.

===============

And then out of nowhere, on a datacenter I can't find (tracert says I'm connecting to 72.104.207.99 but the results aren't there) I get the "good" results seen ten days ago that are shockingly GOOD.

[frup]

I am also seeing something different on 64.233.167.99

[trinorthlighting]

Ok, this issue actually floored me a bit.....

I was ranking top 10 for one particular keyword. Recently google dropped the cached page and ended up replacing it with a supplemental result (Now this is in the top 10 results for the keyword)

The supplemental result (Which shows up as number 8) is from a directory that my site has not had since last august.... It is a 404 page.... from almost a year ago....

People say google has fresh and up to date content.... Yea, ok drop the fresh content and replace it with a 404 page....

To top it off, when I do a site:mysite.com, none of the old directory pages (Supplemental) are showing up.... Yet when I do "mysite.com" a few show up..

Keep up the great job google, Microsoft will soon be taking your searchers...

[Hissingsid]

Steveb >> Some major movement on 64.233.167.99, especially using the ie? search, in the past thirty minutes. Just an absolutely horrible introduction of garbage.

Hi Steve,

The only two DCs that are different from the "norm" for me at the moment are 64.233.187.99 and 64.233.187.104. For the keywords I watch I'm seeing the same results on all DCs I can find for all of the KW terms checked except those two.

In my niche I'm not seeing garbage on those 2 DCs. Could you please expand on what you mean by "garbage" and give us your hypothesis on what you think they may be trying that are creating the different results on those 2.

Many thanks

Sid

PS You still winning at poker?