Possible Shift in Google-Webmasters Communication Policy!

Have Googlers stopped announcing updates and posting weather reports?

[reseller]

Hi Folks,

I have noticed in recent months a remarkable shift in the way Google employees communicate with the webmasters communities.

For one reason or the other the Googlers have stopped posting weather reports about the new infrastructure. No more posts explaining critical changes on the serps. No more talking about specific DCs as they use to do. No more chat when it comes to Google serps and possible changes which are so clear and obvious to even novice webmasters. The only thing we have been hearing is the famous "Data Refresh".

Of course, one of the reasons for the shift in Google's communication policy mightbe the continuous trouble the Googles are into since the deploy of BigDaddy.. "if you have no good news..keep quite".

If its true that the Googlers have decided not to talk to us anymore about the serps, DCs and possible filters, algo changes and announcing possible updates. Do those same Googlers deserve to be invited anymore to the webmasters conferences and meetings, for example?

What will be the consequences of Google shift in Google-Webmasters communication policy?

Many thanks in advance for your contributions to the thread.

[trinorthlighting]

Yes I do believe in it. Listen, I employ 10 people who do nothing but build websites. In our portfolio of websites, I would say 80-90% of them rank top ten in their serps for their particular keywords in their niches. We have been building sites since the 90's so trust me; there is a lot of wisdom behind these words.

Now, if you take a sudden dip in the serps, do not blame Google. Check your site..... When one of our sites takes a dip in the serps, 99.99% of the time it’s our own fault and we catch it.

A bit of info, we had a few sites that recently had a hack and a worm eat through it. Guess what it did, it wiped the title tags out for every page in the site. Another site we had drop recently, was because a user who processes orders for the site was playing around in some of the php coding late one night and erased the default meta tag coding. Another time, a disgruntled employee did some damage.

Those are just a few examples, but I have been in this game a very long time and trust me, when you drop in the serps, 99.99% of the time its something that you should be catching anyways.

Always check your sites if you have multiple users who can access the internal workings of the site.

[edited by: trinorthlighting at 10:05 pm (utc) on July 27, 2006]

[ClintFC]

Maybe instead of sitemaps have an individual separate entity cover those requests. I do not use sitemaps and do not have any intention do do that :(

You don't need to actually submit a sitemap in order to register for a sitemap account.

[outland88]

I want to know about one thing GG and that regards the shuffling of the past few days. Quite a few established sites have totally vanished from the Google index with regard to competitive keyword searches, The missing sites though reappear when quotes are added to the keyword search. Is this something that will be corrected or is this here to stay.

I believe Rugles 2 KW Term Filter thread explains it best.

[fivehills]

I would really love a way to talk to someone about it without posting publicly on a message board or in blog comments. An email address would be great.

[gcc_llc]

" Yes I do believe in it. Listen, I employ 10 people who do nothing but build websites. In our portfolio of websites, I would say 80-90% of them rank top ten in their serps for their particular keywords in their niches. We have been building sites since the 90's so trust me; there is a lot of wisdom behind these words."

So do a lot of people. Give it a rest. Nobody cares about how many people you employ or how many sites you monitor. The thread is about Google public relations, not how you can fix everyone sites with your years of so called experience. People are sick and tired of people like you thinking they know it all and generalize about everyone elses site. Go have fun with top 10 niche sites and stop telling everyone what their problem is.

[hdpt00]

Care to talk about how Goog screwed a lot of people with no warning whatsoever about a major "quality score" aka profit gouging update?

It'd be nice if you gave maybe some subtle hints about what your little bot considers high quality. I guess it isn't original content.

[colin_h]

"I guess it isn't original content"

[IMHO] I'm finding the recent flood of 'original content' to be just as bad as spam. I mean, anyone can build a page targeting a specific keyword, paraphrase an encyclopedia and then stick adwords in it ... it's hardly original.

Give me comedy, give me art and for goodness sake get rid of the spam.

Joy to the world

Col :-)

[edited by: colin_h at 10:23 pm (utc) on July 27, 2006]

[steveb]

"But the infrastructure at 72.14.207.104 is orthogonal/independent of many other changes."

And featuring some of the worst results Google has ever had.

"has some newer infrastructure that makes site: queries more accurate"

One look shows this not to be true. In fact, the queries are far less accurate as they return pages not from the domain being searched for.

GG, once again Google has introduced something broken, far worse than what it is replacing.

[2by4]

trinorthlighting, I agree, it's gotten increasingly tiresome reading these threads. For some reason certain types of people become very defensive when any suggestion is raised that it might be a technical issue on their sites that are causing the issues. Don't ask me why, it's weird, I saw this first really clearly in bourbon, jagger too, the issues were easy to see, easy to fix, but only if you accepted, looked for, then fixed, the issues. We did, and our sites mostly recovered. I'm sure the people who didn't, won't, and haven't, accepted these things are of course mysteriously still suffering.

I don't blame googleguy at all for not dropping by, why? These forums have gotten loaded too heavily with this type of thing, it's getting more and more tedious plowing through the dross to get to the stuff that's worth reading. Brett should look at this situation, I agree.

[colin_h]

steveb

I've got to admit that my site has got a repaired site: / home page result on that server.

I love ham

Col :-)

[steveb]

Try

site:example.com -www

I see multiple results not from example.com, but rather
example.com-1.garbage-spamming-doofus.com

[gcc_llc]

Yeah its my broken site that is causing the 5 billion pages of spam to get indexed. Its my broken site that ranked for years then all of a sudden took a hit June 27th. Spare me the "your site is broke" argument.

I guess Amazon.com was broke when it completely disappeared from the index on June 27th.

If you don't like what you read, tough. I could care less about what you want to read.

[trinorthlighting]

gcc_llc,

What I am trying to say, if you email google 99% of the time you will not get a response.

What I am saying, lean on a few of us older members who can and would be willing to help newer members.

2by4,

You are so right, every time google makes a tweak, bam there are a slew of newer people who flock and complain. I guess we have been around long enough to know the cycle and yes, I do wish brett would do something about it.

[edited by: trinorthlighting at 10:34 pm (utc) on July 27, 2006]

[gcc_llc]

And thats the problem and WHY people are pissed. Thats the point you seem to be missing.

[colin_h]

nope ... still get my home page.

I love Google and take back everything that I've ever said about Googleguy (except that comment about him being messianic in 2005).

I get dizzy in the presence of beauty

Col :-)

[fivehills]

So you guys say we should all accept and know what is wrong with our sites. Well, we're not all professional webmasters. Some of us are just trying to build something useful to users. My site is not spam and when people can actually find it in Google, they love it and return again. So you're saying there's something I'm doing wrong, but I don't know what it is. I've played by the rules that I'm aware of, but I can't read Google's mind. Some of us don't have VC funding and can't compete with the big guns in our industry. There really needs to be a way for people to email someone at Google and ask, "What am I doing wrong and how can I fix it?"

[gcc_llc]

"You are so right, every time google makes a tweak, bam there are a slew of newer people who flock and complain. I guess we have been around long enough to know the cycle and yes, I do wish brett would do something about it."

Have you ever considered that people are sick and tired of the "tweaks" without any explanation? Or are you so dense in your "veteran" years to not get this point?

Old timers. Give me a break.

[trinorthlighting]

Google is a corporation, just like any corporation they will more than likely employ the bare minimum employees. If google was to answer every email, it would have to hire and train hundreds of competitent employees. (Very costly)

[gcc_llc]

You can't be this dense.

[steveb]

Topic is "Google-Webmasters Communication"

[gcc_llc]

That's what I thought until the old timers kept telling my site was broken.

[colin_h]

IMHO Google should stop the frantic back stabbing by only providing top 100 results. This would certainly lessen the amount of 'Google is an evil monster' posts and might give searchers more choice ... let's face it, they're too lazy to look on page 2.

Does anyone remember the days when I used to get drunk and come on WebmasterWorld and rant? I've really matured nah?

Tuna Mayo & a splash of Worcestershire sauce

Col :-)

[trinorthlighting]

Smiles

[gcc_llc]

Really?

I guess Amazon.com was spam on June 27th. Those 5 billions spam pages really helped as well.

Nice edit you made.

[colin_h]

"Old timers. Give me a break."

Look into my eyes, look into my eyes ... you are getting cranky.

I foresee the end to this forum ...

... You're back in the room

Col ;-)

[gcc_llc]

"my site is broken, my site is broken"

Huh, what?

[colin_h]

IMHO anyone who utilises Adwords etc. is only making pages to make money ... and should be kicked of the index for spamming

He He He ... I love life and everything that it throws at me

Col :-)

[RichTC]

"They tweak to fight spam"

Dont agree. Thats what they want you to think. Fact is only Google want to make money from the serps and imo the constant tweaking is to push up adwords revenue.

Proof is that the serps have been worse than ever since BD rolled out at the start of the year - since then Googles revenue has climbed

Meanwhile spam is just as bad as it was. As i see it most of the sites currenly losing rank for keywords for certain key terms are in fact quality long term established websites, meanwhile the junk and spam sites continue to clean up better than ever!

[ashear]

Hi Googleguy,

I am sure this topic feels almost like a flame war building up. I am not exactly known for pushing through re-inclusion requests or questions regarding ranking fluctuations. But my first ever request for site review has been ignored, due to the disappearance of its rankings after the 27th. Previously email addresses are posted for webmasters to provide comments, and we seem to not have that ability at this point. Any chance this might re-open?

[trinorthlighting]

Do you blame them rich? If you owned google is that not what you would do?