Forum Moderators: Robert Charlton & goodroi
In the past two upheavals by Google (8th March 2006 & June 27th 2006)it has been apparent that the changes have been roughly accross the board, with the obvious exception of the 64.233.189.104 DC.
The DC seems to use the same cache dates as the other DC's and has the same amount of supplemental pages also, and yet somehow it has ignored any penalties that have been applied to the other DC's and gives treats my site as though nothing were wrong.
Any idea what the purpose of this DC could be?
All the Best
Col :-)
[edited by: tedster at 7:46 pm (utc) on July 21, 2006]
Earlier today it was just on:
gfe-hk
gfe-ro
Now I see it just on:
gfe-bp
gfe-hk
gfe-jp
gfe-nz
gfe-po
gfe-ro
So it is moving through and appears to be expanding. At one point, refreshing gfe-cw would cause a complete alternation of results...crazy stuff.
Also, I noticed that if you accidentally put in keywrod in instead of keyword and get the spelling suggestion, the result will be sans filter.
Again, for those of your getting filtered out at the #1 position, are you #1 for allintitle, allinanchor, and allintext? We need to figure out why we're being caught in the crosshairs here.
Cygnus
gfe-ar
gfe-bp
gfe-cw
gfe-hk
gfe-in
gfe-jp
gfe-mc
gfe-nz
gfe-po
gfe-ro
gfe-tw
I fear that this is going to migrate through and that those affected will be just as angry as those affected on June 27th -- the question I still don't think we've come up with the answer to is "why" is the filter only hitting very select phrases, leaving the rest of the site completely safe. Not only is it unusual, it seems pretty stupid to me.
Cygnus
Again, for those of your getting filtered out at the #1 position, are you #1 for allintitle, allinanchor, and allintext? We need to figure out why we're being caught in the crosshairs here.
I have a page being filtered out from #1 - shows at #1 with quotes and with allintitle and allinanchor it shows at #1 plus an indented listing. allintext shows nothing.
I also have a page that usually shows at #2 and it now gone but shows at #1 with quotes and at #1 with allintitle and shows my home page (instead of the usual subpage) at around #35 for a regular search. weird
So far the commonality between our 3 issues is allintitle; for my query, the title is an exact match to the query -- is it the same for your two queries?
If so, then that's probably what they are filtering on, and it won't be too hard to confirm it with some extra research.
The question then becomes...what kind of filter is that? If a person is looking for North Atlantic Widgets, one would assume that a site with the title of North Atlantic Widgets is pretty relevant, especially if it has the relevant backlinks and text usage on the page.
Anyhow, this could be a first step. Others chime in if you see something similar or completely different.
Cygnus
For the first time in 7 years I'm getting good solid feeds from Yahoo. I've been hammered by Google again & again over the past 14 months and at last someone is sending me business again.
I'm relieved that someone is starting to take advantage of Google's weak results. You can be sure that the only reason Yahoo is changing, is to pick up where Google is lacking in quality. Unfortunately, I think that MSN might have beaten them to the prize. Over the past 4 weeks, the traffic I recieve from them has almost reached the Google limit prior to 27th June and the customer feedback and client checkout is much higher ... I love it and look forward to them beating Google over the next few months, MSN make Google look like a bunch of amateurs IMHO.
Best wishes to all
Col :-)
I thought that might be the case, but if it were so, then my site wouldn't rank for the synonom of this phrase or the plural of this phrase. It is #1 allinanchor for all three phrases, and #1 allintext for two, but is only #1 allintitle for the phrase that I'm being filtered out on.
Do you have any being filtered out right now? If so, check to see if the title used is an exact match to the query; I have a hunch that it is triggering the filter.
Cygnus
I think while Google gets away with twisitng the dials on the orgainics to send us all running for cover (adwords) then the others are going to do the same. Clearly there is money in volatile serps.
I had some great rankings on Yahoo until aoubt 4 days ago, about 4k in pages indexed and ranking top of the charts for lots of good key searches. Then overnight - Gone. It's like they hand jobbed the whole vertical, the results are totally different.
This must be the name of the game now in modern search.
Again, for those of your getting filtered out at the #1 position, are you #1 for allintitle, allinanchor, and allintext? We need to figure out why we're being caught in the crosshairs here.
I had #1 positions on a few high competition 2-word phrases prior to 6/27.
Typically my pages would also rank #1 for allinanchor, allintitle, allinurl and allintext.
Now two of my pages that used to be #1 are ranking around 4-5. Searching for one of these with allinanchor it comes up #4. For allintext and allintitle it is not found in the first 100. And for allinurl it shows up at #1.
My guess is that maybe some of my backlinks are being discounted, or my internal linking counts for less, or the pagerank computation got calculated differently - or incompletely - on the 27th.
Do you have any being filtered out right now? If so, check to see if the title used is an exact match to the query; I have a hunch that it is triggering the filter.
I have one page being hit by this microfilter. The title is NOT an exact match to the keyword, it is off by one word. The keyword search I use is kw1 kw2 and the page is titled kw1 kw3 kw2. I was number two for this phrase forever, then number 1 for the last week or so, and now I am gone unless I search in quotes, then I am number 1 again. This is a definite money phrase for my niche.
FYI, my home page was hit with a similar microfilter for a 2 word money phrase I have been somewhere on the first page for for years - probably 10 years. This happened at the end of last week for a day or two - I didn't pay much attention because the rest of my site was unaffected. I am now back for that phrase, and two spots higher than I have been for the last couple of years.
As an update, I now see the microfilter on the following:
gfe-ar
gfe-bp
gfe-hk
gfe-jp
gfe-mc
gfe-nz
gfe-po
gfe-ro
gfe-tw
(so two less over the past two hours for those of you playing at home)
I'm off for a quick dinner, but will return with more updates.
Cygnus
The DCs starting with 64 are still awful for us and the site: is messed up. The DCs starting with 72 are not as good as they were before the 27th but much better than the 64 results and the site: is as it should be.
What I'm wondering is which DC set will prevail across the board, if one is a test run or a mess up which one is it?
Since my traffic dropped so much on the 27th I've got to assume that it is the 64 DCs where most people conduct their search, but does that it mean it will be the one to prevail?
gfe-bp
gfe-hk
gfe-jp
gfe-mc
gfe-nz
gfe-po
gfe-ro
gfe-tw
What I have found is if I choose “Search pages located in: United States” on any of these datacenters, my ranking goes back to normal. Also, if my keyword is put in quotes or I use the nofilter mentioned earlier, my results go back to normal. I think ClintFC may be on to something with the corrupt Geo/Language partitioning data theory.
This particular microfilter seems to focus more on the title, although my theory of exact match was already dubunked with KW1 KW2 KW3 matches filtered a KW1 KW2 search.
It is possible that LSI comes into play in regards to the title this time around, with G wanting to see more use of phrases rather than the one money phrase, but that comes off as a bit silly to me. "North" and "Up" can sometimes mean the same thing, but a person searching for "Up" may not want to see geographic directions and is more interested in the height...bad analogy, but what I'm getting at is that the LSI used wouldn't be very good, especially if they wanted to start seeing us use phrases that don't make sense to the end user.
Anyhow, I'm still looking at this stuff to see if I can crack what this filter hit and what they meant to hit; the two hour update shows that most of the datacenters reverted, with the microfiltering remaining on those that kicked it off this morning:
gfe-hk
gfe-ro
Additionally, I couldn't get to gfe-rn while my colleague could, so maybe they're filtering ME out now. :-)
Cygnus
The stuff Cliff pointed out actually sounds like a whole different problem on the geopgraphic side of things; they appear to be related, but I wouldn't be surprised if it is two different processes that determine geographic origin and LSI -- they go hand in hand, but can be a bit exclusionary too.
I just posted when I saw your post...are you still gone on all those datacenters? If so, then we may be seeing two different microfilters; one on title/LSI and one on geographics.
Cygnus
1. Two different filters; the geographic mess coupled with the over-optimized title filter.
2. The filter is more micro than I thought, only filtering out sections at a time among the datasets.
The second option doesn't logically make as much sense to me, given that it would require them to take a group of phrases, track click-thrus and "relevancy" of the result, and either grow or shrink that set of phrases that they keep applying the filter to. Although, it has been happening on the same problem datacenters.
Since I'm in the US, it might be hard for me to get deeper into the geographic mess, so I'll try to focus on the piece that is in front of me. Let us know if you uncover any more patterns with the "search by" stuff (i.e. is it moving in tandem with the title filter or growing/shrinking on a different schedule, are you seeing more or less sites getting affected as time goes on, etc).
Cygnus
One more piece of info about my initial post...I am also in the USA. My servers are located in Texas which makes this problem even more strange.
D
Without quotes though, the home page is gone. This started last Friday I believe for us.
The rest of the site does not seem to have been hit just yet.
We are also in the USA and server in Texas.
Berry
my initial thought regarding the whole business of titles with added stuff (navigation, etc.) in the serps was that google was trying to give users more information.
so, if the title was "blue widgets" (short title), then google may have wanted to give the user a broader view of what is on the page, thus they pulled some extra info from the nav bar that expanded upon the title. they then showed a new title in the serps, something like "blue widgets home widgets history blue widgetizing"
so, if they are playing around with titles, then perhaps that is also affecting some of you in regards to the allintitle. perhaps google doesn't like your title for whatever reason, and a match to the search phrase is bumping you out. title is too short, or too specific, or not descriptive enough....etc.
the two may be only slightly related, but it does seem as if G is playing around with titles, which is causing some problems for some of you.
It seems strange that many of us get hit with every single update or change they make. No matter what update, my competitors never move an inch. Just seems strange to me.
There are a couple of things that make your theory hard to prove:
1. A site: command shows the correct title
2. Allintitle: still shows correct placement (with the right title)
This isn't datacenter specific as I check; whether the quotes are on or off, isn't affecting the visible title. Now, on those where the site disappears past 1000, there isn't a way to really know if the visible title is affected on the query itself...I would sure hope not, but we all know Google by now.
I will be paying close attention to see if G is changing any of the titles of microfiltered sites, just in case. Thusfar, I'm not seeing it though.
Cygnus
[edited by: JoeSinkwitz at 3:51 am (utc) on July 25, 2006]
How do you make that appear?
Anybody have a same experience?
but is back when doing "results from uk"
this was bouncing in and out like this during the last update. Sometimes I was there and sometimes not.
It has now settled on my big KW1 KW2 money term singular and plural
and on .co.uk I've been relegated from #1 to #2
All other terms are unaffected
The reason why I bring this up is that it happened a couple of times before and came back a few days after along with slightly different rankings - I assume (and hope because some SERP's are a little sh..ty right now) that current results won't stick for long.
