:-( : Update...false alarm Sept 2005

What *is* an Update?

[straticus]

Continued from:
[webmasterworld.com...]

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It seem the backlink update has begun, not surprising after the heavy spidering lately, good luck everyone!

[bts111]

Brett knows what is going on. Lets not beat around the bush. Who on god's earth creates a site like this and does not know when there is an update. Nice work Brett :)

If your site is worth visiting you will be fine, no matter how heavy the storm is ;)

[Rugles]

AP just announced it? What are they using these days, smoke signals?

It happened yesterday to our "little buddy".

[vabtz]

If your site is worth visiting you will be fine, no matter how heavy the storm is ;)

You can't really believe that.

[webhound]

I think he meant you'll be fine in the long run, maybe not immediately. :-)

[SuddenlySara]

for about a month googlebots have been going wild all over us and for the last couple weeks our backlinks were updated but kept switching back and forth from previous to new (now backlinks seem to be all updated) but still stranded in the same keyword places Gilligan.

[Brett_Tabke]

This is appearing to be a very "bourbon" like update. I think we are seeing it rolled out in changes again. Bourbon was actually 4 mini updates (algo tweaks). I think we are seeing the same thing again.

[otnot]

I'm seeing a huge increase in number of listings and I personally think it's Google keeping up with the Joneses or Yahoo's increase.

[angiolo]

The only changes I see are in the Google directory.

[ken_b]

I'm seeing a huge increase in number of listings ...

Yeah, me too. For instance, using a site: search today, my 1,400+ page site is now showing 12,900 pages, up from 4,600 for most of the last year.

So when I see a serp that jumps from 5,000,000 to 22,000,000 I'm a little skeptical.

Page counts in G may not be all that accurate.

[edited by: ken_b at 8:56 pm (utc) on Sep. 7, 2005]

[Rugles]

>>>I'm seeing a huge increase in number of listings

Yes, I am seeing a doubling of results for some keywords.

[wiseapple]

The only thing I am seeing... When I do a site command - I used to see a number of 88,000. This is about four times the number of actual results. When I do the site command now, I see a number of 239,000. This is about ten times the number of actual pages.

What gives?

[caveman]

4 mini updates (algo tweaks)

Hehe. Indeed. Those Bourbon tweaks were like earthquakes: Some people around the Web never felt a tremor ... others saw their villages crumble ... and in the damage areas, no one knew when the aftershocks would stop. ;-)

[skyhawk133]

I'm seeing large increases in pages spidered as well, however, I see this each month after the spidering has finished. Jumps up about double then quickly comes down.

[Iguana]

Those Bourbon tweaks were like earthquakes

That's right caveman. I still don't sleep indoors. I will be quite happy if this is just a backlink/PR update.

[reseller]

Hi Folks!

I wish to recall a GoogleGuy post (in connection with Bourbon) which might be relevant to this thread. I regard it as one of GoogleGuy´s evergreen
[webmasterworld.com...]
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GoogleGuy
Senior Member

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joined-Oct 8, 2001
posts:2827
msg #:5 8:07 am on June 2, 2005 (utc 0)

One thing that I noticed in the first 300 posts or so was a discussion about whether backlinks or PageRanks were also being updated at the same time. In general, I wouldn't fixate too much on backlinks or PageRank during an update. The external backlinks/PR that we show have at least a couple factors that complicate analysis. First off, they are a snapshot in time, and the actual backlinks/PageRank used for ranking are from a different time interval. Another complicating factor is that we don't show every backlink on Google; we only show a subset of the backlinks we have internally. [One of the things we needed to do on our webmaster pages revamp was to go back and make sure it's clear that we only show a sampling of the backlinks we know about, not all backlinks.] The snapshotting + asynchronous nature + subsampling actions means that it's pretty hard to trace the reason for a ranking change back to a particular exported view of backlinks or PageRank. This is an area where I wouldn't read as much into the particular backlinks or PageRank that you see at any particular instant in time. Also, if a backlink or PageRank external update happened at the same time as ranking changes, I wouldn't read too much into how closely in time they happen together.

Just as a guide for people who don't eat and breathe WebmasterWorld, we typically show new backlink sample sets every 3-5 weeks or so. We have a bank of machines that computes PageRank continuously (and continually, I suppose; I wasn't an English major), but we only export new visible PageRanks every 3-4 months or so.
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[edited by: reseller at 9:26 pm (utc) on Sep. 7, 2005]

[caveman]

> if

If Brett gives it a name you can pretty much assume it's real. But hey, maybe the damage zones will not include where you live this time.

[steveb]

Backlinks updated, which means nothing at all, and in a perfect world no one would even mention it again.

Directory updated. Fine, good, it was due.

PR not updated. (Please don't say it is unless you provide DC with the updated PR.)

Lots, though not earth-shattering, Serp changes everywhere. Tons of extremely low quality, high-crap-tactics pages added, which if Google behaves as it has this year is a sign of a significant update underway.

Even if the update doesn't amount to much eventually, good name.

[jgbmarc]

thanks steve, great post.. now let's all just wait and watch

[reseller]

Brett_Tabke

>>This is appearing to be a very "bourbon" like update. I think we are seeing it rolled out in changes again. Bourbon was actually 4 mini updates (algo tweaks). I think we are seeing the same thing again.<<

No please..not another Bourbon. One of the kind was more than enough.

So we are going againg through those mini-updates; 0.5, 2.0, 2.5 and at last 3.5

I recall especially the last part of Bourbon was just about the time of the latest PubCon. That last part from 2.5 to 3.5 was the real webmasters-killer. Don´t hope Gilligan has such an ugly part too ;-)

[The Contractor]

For instance, using a site: search today, my 1,400+ page site is now showing 12,900 pages, up from 4,600 for most of the last year.

So when I see a serp that jumps from 5,000,000 to 22,000,000 I'm a little skeptical.

Yep, I thought it was bad when Google showed 4x as many pages of a site using the site command. Now it's literally 10X the amount of actual pages.
(even if you count all pages that are blocked via both robots.txt and meta noindex,nofollow tags they are still showing over 6X as many pages then could exist in my wildest dreams)

[joeduck]

I'm also noting huge increase in site:oursite.com as I did in Bourbon, yet our SERP results remain the same. Based on some of the weirdness in the site:oursite.com results over time I wonder if those numbers often include URLs that are not actual pages in the site - e.g. dynamic page results, incoming redirected links, etc.

Good repost of GG's notes about how cautious we should be interpreting the link: information.

[modemmike]

I wouldn't fixate too much on backlinks or PageRank

Let me see if I understand this... so in theory a site with 0 PageRank and only a few inbound links could rank at the top of search results? or is it that high PR and inbound links simply gives you a shot at the top ranks?

[stinkfoot]

>>I'm also noting huge increase in site:oursite.com as I did in Bourbon, yet our SERP results remain the same

Yup all it is pretty meaningless isnt it

/twiddles thumbs

[joeduck]

Yes to both questions modemmike. Pagerank is a form of "query independent rank" or "popularity". Google used to weight it very heavily in rankings, but most in the forums seem to believe they no longer put a lot of stock in it.

I don't agree and think PR remains a major factor for all SE's becauses it's a great measure *unless it is manipulated* at a site.

I think Google has become somewhat weird and inconsistent about policing what they see as PR manipulation - and this has led to many site/ ranking casualties.

[stinkfoot]

>>Google used to weight it very heavily in rankings, but most in the forums seem to believe they no longer put a lot of stock in it.

Seems to be true tbh ... but .. it is useful to a webmaster to see other things that would otherwise take you ages to find out.

Pagerank = kinda useful webmaster tool

[modemmike]

I think Google has become somewhat weird and inconsistent about policing

I'm just trying to figure out why my site is no where to be found in the SERP's after a 301 redirect to an 18 month old domain name... I feel like the site is in the sandbox but I just can't imagine why G would do this to sites... 138 BL's, DMOZ, Yahoo listed, 0 PR on toolbar, G Directory shows a PR of 6 yet here I am playing with Tonka trucks? Been waiting over 80 days (since 301 redirect) now or is that not enough time to tell if one is in the sandbox?

[stinkfoot]

>>or is it that high PR and inbound links simply gives you a shot at the top ranks?

In many debates there are people who have argued this. Recently the term High Quality Inbound links has been prevelent as a responce to quiries from google.

High quality = close to home page = higher PR

but ... the more you get the more likely you are to be penalised for gaining to much to fast ...

Go figure

[edd1]

I think it's time the terms visible and non visible page rank were used consistenly as they are not the same thing - non visible page rank is massively more important yet every time someone mentions page rank they are talking about the far less important visible page rank.

[stinkfoot]

>non visible page rank

You mean ... is it Quite Interesting content?

[gweston]

I monitor 1000s of keywords all financial related, which are among the most competitive on the net, and I am not noticing anything more then up 2 down 2 on any of them. Which is the same as any other day.

Are we sure this is an serp update and not just a backlink update?