Google's Pending September Update

I have seen some changes in geo...

[rishic]

Hello People,

Have been waiting for google's pending update but didn't get any on that. From last two days I have noticed extreme changes in search results for same google domain (like .com or .de or .nl etc.) with different interface language selected (like hl=de or hl=en or hl=nl). When you change the interface language the whole bunch of results are different.

Is this the actual update this time? Enabling the geo centric data which google wanted to implement for better localization? If yes (and if someone else is also seeing this change) then may be we can all identify the parameters of this new change, like language, servers in geographical locations or extensions (.de, .nl etc.)

-- rishi

[WebPixie]

It appears that it's not officially an update.

But don't get hung up on the word. There have been major changes in results in many markets and it appears that many sites have lost greatly in positioning. I doubt 99% of webmasters really care if it's officially an "update" or not. They just want to know how it effects their sites and why. The whole update or not an update agrument seem silly to me.

[MissusC]

Janiss you said: As for my websites (at least my main one), I'm beyond trying to figure out what Google is doing and am trying to figure out how to do damage control. Which is kind of like a blind person trying to make his way through a junk shop without tripping, but it's all I've got to work with.

Boy oh boy did you hit this nail on the head. I have given up trying to determine what Google is doing as none of it makes the least bit of sense. I have watched all of my sites go up and down like a seesaw for the last year and can't find any reasons for the ups and downs other than what a lot of folks on here are saying. Google is turning dials up and down and watching webmasters writhe in agony.

Me thinks it is the Google torture chamber.

Wonder how many Google Geeks get their jollies reading this forum? At this point, I wouldn't mind torturing a few Google geeks in return.

[almar]

Our site is completly listed in a Google site:mysite.com search, yet not one single keyword for any of its hundreds and hundreds of content pages are listed anymore. We have lost over 80% of our traffic.

Google help claims that the site "is not currently penalized, and it is included" in their search results. Yeah, but under what?

Yahoo at the same time is on the mark. Too bad no one uses Yahoo to search.

As far as we can tell, we have no bad backlinks- although only a smidgen of or backlinks are recorded in google, but there in Yahoo. No duplicate content, except for our RSS feed. And no black hat tactics.

What to do?

[Ouroboros]

Google help claims that the site "is not currently penalized, and it is included" in their search results. Yeah, but under what?

I just been searching and searching through Google's pages for one which would tell you whether a site has been penalized or not, but I can't find it. Can you tell me where it is?

[followgreg]

I don't think either that update or not has any importance, really...come on.

But basically and totally objectively SERP quality is really BAD, I can't even find what I used to search for (I'm not a bookmark person)
I found Google not bad at all since June/july but now wow :)

I won't even try to damage control, if this war is about bull#*$!s forget it, I will hope that users will give a shot to the engine that delivers best results which is not google since yesterday.

And Yahoo delivers traffic, MSN too but on in every industry but it is still impressive sometimes.

[madweb]

There are still two different sets of results, (sometimes three) when searching the datacenters. To be more precise, I see similair top 20 sites but ranked in a totally different order for a very niche search.

I think geotargetting is important in deciding which set of results you get. I can still only ever get old results using default google - which automatically changes to google.co.uk for me, whatever i try and type in the toolbar.

Perhaps we can try and compare with results others are watching, to see if there is any consistency.

Old results:
64.233.161.105
64.233.171.104
64.233.171.105
64.233.179.104
64.233.185.104
64.233.187.104
64.233.161.147
64.233.171.147
64.233.171.99
64.233.179.99
64.233.185.99
64.233.187.99
66.102.9.99
216.239.37.99
216.239.39.99
216.239.57.99

New (better for the search I am trying) results:
64.233.183.99
64.233.183.104
64.233.189.104
216.239.53.99
216.239.59.99
66.102.11.99
66.102.7.99

[needinfo]

madweb,

Our results are exactly the same on both sets of those Dc's, very bad for us.

[followgreg]

I have mostly the same results across DC's but they are very slighly better...very very slight improvement compared to yesterday

[thecityofgold2005]

Read Matt Cutts.

The serps for different sectors / searches are being updated at seperate times.

There is no old/new serp split anymore! It is next to worthless posting lists of dcs.

[FattyB]

Well that will do me. I am glad Matt has posted something. At least I know I am not paranoid, mad, delusional.

A bit of communication does wonders. :-)

[JuniorOptimizer]

"A bit of communication does wonders. :-) "

Oh yeah. It was a great post. I really got some great insights into how things work ;)

[jamsy]

I have just read Matt Cutts Blog - interesting - when on earth was the last time there was major flux/update/re-ranking PRIOR to a BL or PR update. Do you think they realise something could be wrong with the current serps and need to revert back under te guise of PR and BL update. I know we are due a PR update but BL - haven't we just had one of those?

[JuniorOptimizer]

So Cutts implies that the 9/22 "update" was directed at "removing spam". On 10/17, they must have decided that the exact same site wasn't spam at all.

[webpro00801]

My site was number 1 for years on a very specific geographic term - it is a travel site - now a competitor is number 1, I am number 6 and have lost lots of other spots. Looks like my business and traffic will be off a good 25 to 35%. The frustrating part is not really knowing what to do - have been online for nearly 11 years and always ranked high - this is the worst thing that has ever happened to us.

[thecityofgold2005]

'So Cutts implies that the 9/22 "update" was directed at "removing spam". On 10/17, they must have decided that the exact same site wasn't spam at all.'

Or what you see today is some kind of roll-back and in the next few days we will see the 'update' serps with a PR and BL update incorporated.

Anything is possible.

[WebPixie]

I'm guesing a change in how backlinks are valued is part of the change in SERPS we've been seeing lately.

That said, Google isn't in the habit of making haste to deliver information to SEOs that can be used to better understand how they rank sites. If this is an unscheduled backlink update and google has changed how it valued backlinks... I don't know, seems strange. I wouldn't expect google to make a change and then say heres the data you'll need to figure it out.

This should be interesting.

[rj87uk]

This should be interesting.

Ok well one day down... two more days and im telling the boss.. *shivers*

[madweb]

when on earth was the last time there was major flux/update/re-ranking PRIOR to a BL or PR update.

My belief is that PR and backlinks are always updated before or during an update BUT they don't show you the new stuff in the toolbar or SERPs until afterwards. (Sometimes PR numbers are updated in the google directory before the toolbar.)

In fact they never show you the complete backlinks, to prevent you from working out exactly how they affect the SERPs.

[speedfight]

Hi All,
I created a great text based easily indexed website of over 500 pages in July but forgot to change the description and keyword meta tags contents... simply repeated it across all pages.

Now all pages have ben thrown in to the supplemental index with very bad SERPs.

Do you think I have been dupe filtered as part of recent changes in googles algo or are lots of sites being thrown into the supplemental index recently?

I'd like to know what everyone thinks on this.

[soapystar]

i think this has been stated enough for it to stick....it wasnt a duplicate filter..it was a combination of filters which included a SIMILAR page filter.....NOT duplicate....

[WebFusion]

My site was number 1 for years on a very specific geographic term - it is a travel site - now a competitor is number 1, I am number 6 and have lost lots of other spots. Looks like my business and traffic will be off a good 25 to 35%. The frustrating part is not really knowing what to do - have been online for nearly 11 years and always ranked high - this is the worst thing that has ever happened to us.

If the worst thing to happen to your site serp's wise is losing 5 places...count your blessings. There are 5+ year old whitehat site's here that have lost 5 pages in the serps with no discernable reason.

But no matter.....yahoo and MSN are still pumping in the visitors ;-)

[madmatt69]

Not quite sure what's happening, but after having been slammed in the updates in March and February of this year, suddenly in the last two days my traffic from google has tripled - Though still half of pre-Feb/March numbers.

I'm hoping this isn't just some sort of rollback, but positive results from the changes I made trying to recover all that lost traffic.

[ScottD]

webpro00801, I also am in the travel sector too and you can expect a lot more competition coming up to try and push you further down, but its not all bad news - your search terms are likely much wider than you realise.

We fell a similar amount once and didn't suffer too much - people tend to look at several sites in our sector so concentrate on having the best site and a good product to sell them.

Some of my competitors are excellent at getting high SERPs but there product presentation is terrible. I'm sure people then try the next listing down.

[speedfight]

re: my earlier post. Is it possible to recover pages from the SUPPLEMENTAL index?

Lets assume that I was slogged by the SIMILAR page filter because I had similar meta descriptions across all website pages (or is that not a correct assumption to make), then.... is it possible to get these pages back in to the MAIN INDEX?

Will simply making the meta descriptions unique bring them back in to the main index. (the rest of my page content is unique - its just the meta descriptions and keywords that would have triggered the similar page filter I think).

Ahh... so much to learn!

[gweston]

So if the corporate sites are dominating the results that must be do to a total discounting of recip links.

Obviously the big corps have tons of non recips.

The problem I think Google is going to have with these results is when people are looking for info they don't want to watch a commercial and thats what many of the big corp sites are.

I don't like bashing Google cause I think they are a great company. But until the SEO community figures this out MSN and Yahoo are going to be happy.

[almar]

Webfusion- What do yo mean by"But no matter.....yahoo and MSN are still pumping in the visitors"?

We barely see a burp from either, but are hotshots in listings?

[Kangol]

Sorry, I've missed a few posts. Why Bacon Polenta?

[AlexK]

speedfight:

Is it possible to recover pages from the SUPPLEMENTAL index? ... is it possible to get these pages back in to the MAIN INDEX?

Try to find my earlier post in this thread (neither G, Y nor MSN have it indexed yet, although Yahoo does better than any of them) and you will discover that a fix put in place in January of this year still leaves thousands of pages from my site in the Supplementals, even though the G-cache for many of those supplemental pages is missing. It seems that it is very easy to get into the supplemental cache, and damn difficult to get back out.

I am surprised at the obsession with the DCs. Surely the following is the only one which matters:

Average pages/day referred from Google:
* Jun = 2,270
* July = 2,019
* Aug = 2,002
* Sep = 1,650 (average upto 21st)
* Sep = 755 (average from 22nd)
* Oct = 729

In the same sentiment, if you have lost 68% of your G-referrals then who cares whether what has changed is officially classified as an update? (although I do understand the need to know whether a new item has been factored into the algo or not).

[Dayo_UK]

Does Google still have a robot that indexes the web!

I have not seen Googlebot properly since about February. :( - All these people who are saying they have recovered since the February, March, May problems - you recovered with fresh cache dates - or old cache dates?

It is very concerning that Googlebot has picked my site map up about 5 million times today - but not managed to visit one single page of the site :/

[WW_Watcher]

80% Of Traffic from Google, from About 800 different targeted keyword combinations, Poof, Gone.