Google Update Bourbon - Part 1

Has the sandbox been busted?

[Dayo_UK]

continued from: [webmasterworld.com...]

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Seeing something happening on 64.233.163.104 and 64.233.167.104 - might be worth keeping an eye on.

[quotations]

We dropped by over 50 percent on a major information site today.

I am not seeing the reason for the drop in the SERPs on any of the data centers.

Everything looks very similar to how it did before with some minor changes (Meredith's mega-spam sites are doing much better.)

Someone from Google visited yesterday so it looks like they are hand tweaking again.

[patchacoutek]

Thanks for the answer,

I think I'm just feeling badder and badder every day since I've seen dramatic loses on google in the last 4 days now.

Many things are said about the timeframe in a google update. Is it clear that nothing is over until wednesday? Could it be already settled or could it take up until the next weekend?

If I understand correctly the update is over when all the datacenters present the same resulsts?

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My experience: in the last 4 days lost a lot of rankings, then today 50% of pages out of top 40 which is incredible. Many of them are out of the results in all the datacenters...Is it possible that my site was banned or still pages could reappear before the end of the update?

Thanks

[LostOne]

I'm suprised nobody has mentioned the no follow tags on links.

[clearvision]

This is probably a simplistic question, but is a site indexed by the IP address? If someone is on a shared server and another user on that server is a "boo boo" will it look bad for the other sites utilizing the same IP address?

[TravelMan]

If this update holds, Ill be able to retire too, as in, go find another job and do something else!

Its early days, but Ive been hit very hard.

Just got to sit it out and wait for the dust to settle, not looking good though..

[bunltd]

I haven't posted in an update thread since Florida. I haven't analyzed this one too heavily, but it seems similar. Once again, after doing well for years, with Bourbon, things are now tanking, like when Florida hit. Not even ranking for the company name.

The main difference I see is that instead of dropping completely off G like in Florida, we're seeing sites buried down in the results #100+. Previously held #1-2, #7-9 positions for years, stable. Oddly there's a fresh tag (May 20) on the site, not sure what to make of that.

Too soon to tell what will come of it, things did come back before, it just took some waiting.

LisaB

[Essex_boy]

Clearvision - Yes that has been said to happen previously, which is why you should really set up sites on diffrent servers around the world.

[joeduck]

How many of those hurt severely by this update or the last two made significant anchor text changes in the last few months? We lost 90% of G traffic after Allegra. So far Bourbon has not seemed to change things for us up or down.

I'm now looking at some major "anchor text to advertiser" changes we made as the possible culprit, wondering if G may now now be focusing a lot of negative attention on big changes in anchor text across a site even if they are relevant changes as they were in our case.

(We've been specifically told "you have no penalty" by Google) but traffic remains at about 5% of pre Allegra.

[spaceylacie]

How did we go from waiting until Monday to waiting until Wednesday? Someone said as long as I was seeing the same results in AOL and netscape, then it's official. Well, they are there.

I made $88.00 before I woke up this morning, Google visitors are coming in by the boat load. Which update happened mid-December? Was that the Florida update... I just recently started keeping up with this board. Whatever happened mid-December seems to be reversed in my case.

[chopin2256]

Interesting. Aol and Netscape keep switching between the results here 66.102.11.104 and the results in the regular www.google.com (as of now) Aol and Netscape do not seem to be set yet.

[steve40]

spaceylacie

You may be right that the serps are resorted and complete but often at the end of the data reorg update additional penalty filters are applied from watching over time what happens is site slowly goes down rankings to knowhere land hope these stick for you btw as its nice to see webmasters all get a crack of the cherry sometimes

steve

[weela]

Seeing the same, just refreshed and got a totally different set of results, I may postpone the hari kari.

[spaceylacie]

When I tried 66.102.11.104... same results, #1. Yesterday, I tried a few IPs that people posted and saw my old results, also saw old results in aol and netscape(yesterday), #14 for main keyword.

It so exciting to type in my keyword, press "I'm feeling lucky", and end up on my own site.

Even if it lasts just for today, I'll be happy. It's nice to be making over $10 an hour, 24/7.

[Andem]

I don't know what all the complaining is about. I've seen some nice changes in the SERPS, they seem much cleaner and some of the dust and junk cleared out. I think it's good for anybody without overly optimised pages and real content.

On a very good note, I have noticed some of the content thieves being thrown out the window. Kudos to Google!

[chopin2256]

I don't know what all the complaining is about

Webmasters who lost their rankings. If your site was lost in Google, you would be upset regardless of how "clean" the serps are.

[hdpt00]

My previously sandboxed site is showing 700+ on almost all datacenters and #4 on 3 datacenters. Noticing no surge in traffic, so clearly not showing on google.com yet.

Hopefully the DCs I'm on eventually propogate, who knows.

[Powdork]

Something said on May 19th suddenly makes more sense now.

By the way, I should mention that I'm gonna be on vacation for a week, starting in around an hour. My sweetie (yes, GoogleGuy has a sweetie) has threatened to hide my laptop while I'm not working, so don't be surprised if my post count holds steady at 2750 or whatever it is for a while.

C'mon, sneak off to a cyber cafe and at least take some credit for getting rid of the scrapers.

[natural number]

Finally, my site moved up in the serps after having been killed by Allegra. I'm noticing my Google PR isn't showing up in my tool bar, could google be updating page rank. I know the new tool bar has no page rank, maybe they will quit providing page rank..
I dont care as long as my rankings are good, and I can offer real content.

[spaceylacie]

That would be awesome if I could also get my PR back, from mid-December, when Google decided they didn't like me anymore. ;-(

I'm watching, but so far, no PR change, still 5/10, I used to be 6/10.

[walkman]

"Hopefully the DCs I'm on eventually propogate, who knows."

My guess is that they try out different filters untilt hey get it "right", that's why the difference in DCs. Eventually they'll pick one and spread it all over the place.

[Dayo_UK]

To be honest this is the first time I have seen a dance where factors appear to be added over time.

Nothing is the same as when I first looked at the DCS. Previously when I have seen new results on a DC they have not changed much and moved accross to all datacenters.

Not this time - things are still shaking.

[reseller]

natural number

>Finally, my site moved up in the serps after having been killed by Allegra.<

Thats encouraging post for us who have been affected by allegra too.

Keep those good news coming ;-)

[MikeNoLastName]

As far as factors being added in over time I agree. I have multiple domains and it's appearing to me that ones which have been heavily 301 redirected to (part of the content from an old domain relocated to it's own domain on the same server about a year ago) are not seeing the benefit of the redirects. Meanwhile pages which only originated on the new domain (not having been transferred from the old) are doing fine. However they DO seem to be properly registering all those backlinks.
All the pages still on the old domain are ranking higher than before. Hopefully they WILL be handling redirects properly this time around, and not penalizing heavily for them instead, like it's appearing at the moment!

[edited by: MikeNoLastName at 8:52 pm (utc) on May 21, 2005]

[Kirby]

One competitor for my #2 kw just disappeared from the top 100 but still hanging tight at #5 for most important kw. Not to say Im not glad to see him go from a business standpoint, but his site is clean from what I can tell and it doesnt make any sense to me.

Not much else major movement with the exception of a cloaker who I doubt will last.

[One_on_One]

I don't get this. I'm not a scraper yet I am not ranking hardly at all. My site is not even a high paying term. It makes no sense that I am being killed this update. I can verify this with anyone who wants my URL via sticky mail. I've never had any problems with G until now. This is just baffling.

[spaceylacie]

Oh no, lost first position for my #2 keyword in aol, by refreshing the page... still first in Google though.

A popular club in my niche, which I'm linked with, got my spot. They had terrible rankings until I linked up with them, now they are beating me at my own game. Errr...

[g1smd]

A site with a 301 redirect from www to non-www was finally fully listed as non-www (all pages with title and description) and all of the www URLs (as URL-only listings) were removed from the index as of about 2 weeks ago.

A week later the www URLs started being added back in (still as URL-only listings), and are still being added at a rate of 4 or 5 per day. I don't understand that at all. Google is unfixing the indexing of the site.

[theBear]

Me thinks it is happy hour, any decent Bourbon being served here ;)?

Is there any crust on the lava yet or is it still cooking?

[CygnusX1]

I hope my new website does as well as some of you have talked about.

[WebFusion]

I don't get this. I'm not a scraper yet I am not ranking hardly at all. My site is not even a high paying term. It makes no sense that I am being killed this update. I can verify this with anyone who wants my URL via sticky mail. I've never had any problems with G until now. This is just baffling.

Sticky me the URL...I'd like to take a look.

Thus far...my sites haven't moved more than 1 or 2 spots up or down across a plethora of keywords.