Forum Moderators: Robert Charlton & goodroi

Message Too Old, No Replies

Google Update Bourbon Part 3

         

Sweet Cognac

8:35 pm on May 27, 2005 (gmt 0)

10+ Year Member



Continued From:

[webmasterworld.com...]



My whole site has a new cache date of May 25th. Maybe once these other sites around me get recached, I won't hold such an honorable top position. But at least Google has found my pages worthy to sit in the Search again.:) It seems strange to look at the stats and see Google in there, after 6 months of just seeing Yahoo and MSN referrals.

My website has plenty of outbound links, but they are on relevant pages. The problem my site has always had, was a lack of "inbound links." I got tired of searching for people to link to me (with all the spammy sites around) and gave up. So my pages have acquired some links naturally I guess(and I'll bet I still don't have more than 30 inbound links for the whole site) Still have a PR4, which I've had since it disappeared in Nov.

[edited by: Brett_Tabke at 8:54 pm (utc) on May 27, 2005]

Rollo

10:47 pm on May 30, 2005 (gmt 0)

10+ Year Member



helleborine,

Yes, I must have misunderstood... sorry about the spam-o-ramma comment. I got stuck on 400 links per page and couldn't get link farm out of my head. Was that right, per page or was that just 400 internal links?

If it's the former, I'd recommend breaking up the links into a number of smaller, site maps, properly optimized, by major topic and go from there.

What is the % of similar content, abeit original, on your pages? If it's too high, that could hurt as well.

helleborine

10:49 pm on May 30, 2005 (gmt 0)

10+ Year Member



Yes, they were internal links. But I've already re-done my site two Saturdays ago as a counter-measure to what I believe Bourbon might have been about.

My pages are similar in their text content, because the variable content is graphical in nature, ie, the "free widget plans" are graphics. I'm currently working on adding useless verbiage to 450 pages. It's a hobby, I guess. Some people do crosswords.

helleborine

11:06 pm on May 30, 2005 (gmt 0)

10+ Year Member



And yes, PR is back, and weird, I still have two different backlink numbers depending on the DC - but that hasn't changed in several days.

What could that means in terms of the progress/termination of this update?

moneymancn

11:09 pm on May 30, 2005 (gmt 0)

10+ Year Member



To all of you who have spent an agonizing few days I would say "Listen to your Uncle Brett"!

MM

ann

11:15 pm on May 30, 2005 (gmt 0)

WebmasterWorld Senior Member 10+ Year Member



Google guy made a couple of posts in the toolbar section. Seems there is no PR update and that it was only turned off to "add infrastructor"

Weekend chosen as it was a holiday...

Abigail

11:16 pm on May 30, 2005 (gmt 0)

10+ Year Member



I have been watching a number of data centres all day for a site I have and believe it or not I am constantly getting a revolving 3 different sets of results for that site's page count on each of the Google IP's - seems to change 1,2, then 3 with every refresh. Very strange, can't recall seeing that amount of rock n' roll before.

RichTC

11:51 pm on May 30, 2005 (gmt 0)

WebmasterWorld Senior Member 10+ Year Member



No,

Im still seeing the same useless results in the UK.

Unless they are about to change the results to fall in line with data centre 64.233.163.104 where at least they return results in line with the search made, i dont see any hope for google.

Currently, it looks like the results i see they are happy with, its been this way since after midnight on Friday.

What a waste

fearlessrick

12:06 am on May 31, 2005 (gmt 0)

WebmasterWorld Senior Member 10+ Year Member Top Contributors Of The Month



Google is already a mature, experienced company with the long term success goals.
They, for sure, do not have the kind of take-the-money-and-run mentality.

You're joking, right? Google went public less than a year ago. They are still in diapers and prone to making many blunders, missteps and miscalculations. From where I sit, these rolling updates, being a pain in the behind, are a symptom of their teenaged mentality. Give them a year or so and they'll likely be just another failed dot-con-glom-er-ate.

Let me explain this one more time, for those who haven't adjusted the antennae on their tin foil hats:

Let's say you sell "world class blue widgets" and you ranked high in the serps prior to bourbon and you also carry adsense to bring in extra revenue from your solid traffic.

Now along comes joe surfer looking for "world class blue widgets" post-bourbon and your site is sitting around #76. He sees a lot of somewhat-related stuff but some very targeted adwords ads on the right.

CLICK, to one of your competitors. Google wins by not having to share the revenue with you, and by not having to adjust smart pricing for the adwrods advertiser.

You get nothing, Hoggle gets it all.

Further, you may not be happy with this arrangement and start paying for some advertising. Now Hoggle is not only happier, but fatter.

Got it? From a business standpoint it's called "maximizing revenue." Problem is, they'll eventually lose all credibility as a search engine. But then, they'll switch the algo again to accomodate that. Don't be so naive to think that this could not be happening, please.

Google is playing with some real heavyweights, notably Yahoo and MSN. In the long run, I think the older guys will eventually trash them into ruin.

As for the Bourbon Dance, yes, we're still dancing and I believe dancing may become a permanent condition. As it is, this is now Day 11. My four word very specific to my site search result has changed. I used to be #1, until bourbon. I've been hanging between 72-76 for the past nine days. Today, just now, #86. A new low! It's actually getting worse, for me, anyhow.

flicker

12:10 am on May 31, 2005 (gmt 0)

10+ Year Member



Helleborine, I just ran into a photography site having the same problem you are. I wonder if one of the problems is Google's inability to parse images (and thus recognize them as unique content). I mean, how does Google know that the image on each of your 400 subpages is a one-of-a-kind artwork? For all it knows that could just be your company logo.

I suspect you're on the right track, trying to make your site look significantly different from a garbage site to an algorithm unable to see its images. Let us know if it works!

helleborine

12:14 am on May 31, 2005 (gmt 0)

10+ Year Member



I will report if it works!
This 789 message thread spans 79 pages: 789