Forum Moderators: Robert Charlton & goodroi
complain about a real problem
Can't see the sandbox being a "real" problem, or a problem at all. It's there to stop the SPAM. If I start a new company called Mesothelioma Lawyers Ltd you reckon I should show up in the top 500 purely because that's my company name?
Sure, the "sandbox", whatever it is, hurts some. It hurts people who are creating sites for free traffic. Many of them are spammers/freeloaders. It also hurts others. They - particularly anyone starting a new business with a business plan that relies on free SE traffic - are probably better off staying unemployed (or employed if they can find a job). Any new site starting off on the premise that free traffic will sustain it deserves to fail.
So, if you remove the sandbox as a reasonable cause for complaint, and remove most of the other whining, we'd reduce this thread to one page and those that can't even be bothered to read it will get a personal reply from Googleguy because he owes them.
One new feature I am seeing is pages that were previously white in the toolbar are now gray. I'm especially talking about pages on established sites that are new. Previously such new pages were PR0 but white.
"The Allegra update is not over yet. IMHO"walkman:
it is for me. I don't rank anywhere no matter keywords what I use (short of using a sentence). Before I was on a few DCs, now I'm not. Technically I'm still in the index since all the pages are indexed.
I have triggered someething. It could be the pages I deleted months ago via Google's remove service resulting in a dupe penalty. Maybe they're still valid on their end, just don't show up for the users.
For people who's sites have dropped off the map, I'm curious when your lastest cache on Google is?
Google is refreshing my site in its cache almost daily, but looking at some cached pages using various levels of search complexity, the results seem to be disjointed. Its as if using a 2-word search comes from a newer index than using a 5-word search.
I discovered this because I was using the search operator:
info:mywebsite.com
The result that came up was different than using:
cache:mywebsite.com
My website layout has a datestamp in the top header so the date Google snapshotted it always shows up in the summary text. The two sets of results show different dates in the summary texts.
Huh, that's funny. Where's the "info:" results coming from and why are they so much older than "cache:"?
Strange days indeed...
Top entry is "Brand blue widget", but its not the actual Brand site which isn't shown in the results at all, nowhere.
Try the same in Teoma (not even UK only it pulls the correct site up).
Yahoo-worldwide, bizar brings up paypal as the top entry, followed by correct Brand blue widget.
Yahoo-uk-only brings up the correct Brand site as the top entry.
Seems to be another Allegra glitch.
[edited by: ciml at 5:09 pm (utc) on Feb. 20, 2005]
[edit reason] Widgetised [/edit]
I believe Google updates are just all part of survival of the fittest evolution theory, if you're down on this update, don't blame Google, blame your SEO skills which are lacking/not up to date.
Why, is your site doing well now or something. If you have been doing this for long enough you will realise it is a roller-coaster ride.
I have sites that now rank top 5 for all my keywords (since Allegra). For the best part of a year they were no where to be found, firmly in the sandbox for no good reason. I didn't change anything and now the site appears to be the authoratative resource according to Google. This is not because of new SEO practices.
Before you make patronising/niaive comments get your facts straight.
Interesting observation. Any thoughts on this folks?
btw, to answer an oft asked question:
In Will Smiths new movie Hitch, one of the main characters is named "Allegra". She gets "Googled" while a screen shot of Google is in the frame...imagine that ;-)
