Forum Moderators: Robert Charlton & goodroi
Is this a penalty or a bug? Have any other sites been similarly affected?
I've been seeing some strange results for keywords I normally check. The strangest is when the search returns a result set of under 100,000 when it normally is a mid 8 digit result set.
In addition the folks who took over #1 slot from us in 2005 are nowhere to be found
There are other such results being shown, in addition it appears that as far as that site is concerned the long tail isn't anywhere near what it was.
Traffic is down close to 50%. Now the site normally has a tail that reaches well into the 6 digits in terms of keyphrases returning us.
So is something going on, well this critter says yes, now as to what I don't really know.
This is also our slow spell and the niche covered is also a bit depressed at this time, however the strangeness is in fact there.
But rankpulse shows that something definitely occured 2 days ago.
The reseller DC and MHes DC are both still useless for my major site. My other more focused site is fine. The only difference really is the age and reciprocal link exchanges are lower on the more focused site. The site structure is also different but a couple of folders shouldn't make too much of a diff.
Ho Ho Ho!
Hmmm....
[edited by: Pico_Train at 7:19 am (utc) on Dec. 24, 2006]
Lets take a look at the changes which have been observed since the start of this "Data Refresh" on 20th December 2006.
- changes in ranking of affected sites/pages
- changes of number of indexed pages of affected sites
- changes in number of backlinks of affected sites
- strange behaviour of site: operator
Any other observations you wish to add?
"www.my-domain.com/
Similar pages
In order to show you the most relevant results, we have omitted some entries very similar to the 1 already displayed."
Doin a site:www.my-domain.com at www.google.com yelds to output of 950 supplemental results first - than homepage.
Argh now thats great... on all the DC`s mentioned above issuing a site command for my domain returns the following result:
"www.my-domain.com/
Similar pages
And the supplementals are listed at the end of list or not?
> And the supplementals are listed at the end of list or not?
No. Even supplementals are not listed... Just:
"www.my-domain.com/
Similar pages
In order to show you the most relevant results, we have omitted some entries very similar to the 1 already displayed.
If you like, you can repeat the search with the omitted results included."
If i use "repeat the search with the omitted results included" then all my pages come up but with NO title and NO description and NO link to cached version and they are not marked as supplemental... the results i see are just like:
www.my-domain.com/
Similar pages
www.my-domain.com/dir/page.html
Similar pages
We have been hit hard, definately something is going on. Thanks for the christmas present G.
Super spam sites rule right now.
Same for my site.Normal list now for site: search and supplementals not in Google index anymore.
How about ranks for your keywords.
In my case I'm starting climbing 10 spots/day for main keyword from 120 on 18.12.2006
I was on 6 prior 17.12.2006
I spent about 30 minutes running thru a bunch of the G IP addresses, for about 25 or keyword combos & I just do not see any big changes in my sector. I only base this on what I see in the SERPS, I did not look at the misc G commands, I did not see anything that required me doing any research on the SERPs at this time. In my niche, I see pretty much the same sites, in pretty much the same order (some shuffling, not much, and most of the shuffling is my site moving amongst them, some up, some down.)
Traffic is down for us, but "tis the season", and not the best time of year for selling in my niche, as I would consider what I sell for the most part, selfish items, not much for buying & giving during the holidays, more of fixing & customizing. This changes totally after the new year & people start preparing early for the spring.
Happy Holidays To All! Good Health & Cheer
If I See Ya Today, I'll Buy Ya A Beer
If I Don't See Ya Soon, Have A Happy New Year!
WW_Watcher
Me being here has nothing to do with the size of what is going on.
The problem with all of these threads on refresh, penalty, etc is that they tend to spread out information over many threads instead of it being in one place, in addition the length of time it takes for adjustments to the index to reach the nooks and cranies of the WWW makes it possible for one person to see no change but someone else to see major changes.
Like I said something is going on but what I haven't a clue. I have even less of a clue as to what the final state will be.
There are too many external events that affect the niche I pay the most attention to, for me to do little more than note that changes are occuring.
With that I'm going to wish everyone here happy holidays and seasons greetings.
[edited by: theBear at 3:24 pm (utc) on Dec. 24, 2006]
"My best guess is that any changes people are seeing are because that particular data is being refreshed more frequently."
It seems that those successive Data Refreshes are targeting sectors/niches, and its therefore some of us are reporting changes while others not seeing remarkable movements within their sectors/niches.
Of course there is a remaining question to be answered:
What kind of Data Refresh that has such effect:
- changes in rankings of sites/pages
- changes in number of backlinks
- changes in number of indexed pages
Whatever the folks at the plex call those "powerful" Data Refreshes, I would say it migh remind some of us of the good old updates, not the classical Google Dances.
Having said that, I wish to thank Google and the folks at Googleplex for providing us with such a great search engine and the opportunity to learn, share and grow together in our search-knowledge!
And to all; I wish you and your love ones.. Happy holidays.
i realy hope they come back soon....
pffffffffftt
Mery x-mas all!
[edited by: mirrornl at 4:17 pm (utc) on Dec. 24, 2006]
=========================================================
Are you being sincere or is this a dose of severe Christmas sarcasm?
Good site: results for another 2 of my sites on [64.233.189.104...]
It seems we move in good direction.
Good luck to you, my sector's still a blathering mess, stuff all over the place with pages still either #1 or nowhere to be seen whatsoever.
There is absolutely no consistency with what is happening except for the garbage that has been sucked into the SERPs for my sector.
If I could see a logical alteration I could maybe wait a few days, let it settle down and then SEO for it, yet it is the utter inconsistency of what is happening that has me dumbfounded.
I reckon someone had too much to drink at the plex Xmas party and pushed a few buttons too many, wound the dial in the wrong direction and generally FUBT:-)
I have no idea where the hell that is coming from.
It looks like a hand reviewed commentary. It describes the general site type, but adresses the super category and the content, which supposedly is on the page, not very accurately.
Then there are the pages that just disappear from the index for a day or two, only to return again. A continual shuffling up and down slightly is to be expected, however to have it rank at #15 one day, then go away completely for a day or two, then return to the index just doesn't make sense. Is that page not relevant suddenly for the terms? Then all of a sudden it's relevant again two days later with no changes made to the page? I don't think so.
I have one key phrase on my site that I've been watching for several months now. It has been in the top ten on Google since it came online back in 2001. I have added to it, and made minor changes, but the basics are the same. It is now ranked at #715, under pages that are much less relevant to the specific search terms. If I search for blue Widget model #127, which my page is all about, it is listed under pages for blue Wadgets, blue Woosits, orange Widget model #12, model #2078, Corvette Barbie, Garden Tomatos, etc. This makes no sense to me. There is no way those pages are more relevant to the search terms than my page.
I have no idea if I've done something to chap the Google algorhythm or not. If I have, it's not intentional as there are no black hat tactics on my site that I know of. And Google's Webmaster Guidelines are so vague, they are almost no help whatsoever.
I do see snippets from my site on other authoritative sites, which have higher PR than my site, and normally there is a link to my site, but not necessarily to the exact same page the snippet is from. To expect me to contact all these other sites requesting they remove the snippet, or change the link to the exact page it was taken (stolen?) from is unrealistic. It would take literally months of doing nothing else, perhaps over a year, and who knows if they'd even comply.
Some of them may be redirecting to my site with a 302, I can't say for certain as I don't have time to check every single one of the links. This is a Google problem. They are apparently penalizing the site with the original copyrighted work, where said work appeared online first, and giving credit to other sites that have taken said work without permission.
Google needs to fix its data handling and algorhythm. They need to take their own advice and make sure they are providing the best experience for THEIR visitors. When searching for "blue Widget model #127" it is not a good experience to have to go through page after page of Corvette Barbie in the index. The only thing the two may have in common is they are toys, and they might be blue.
And then there are the eBay listings selling Widgets, which have often ended days or weeks earlier, yet are still ranked fairly well in the index. This is not a good experience for Google's searchers. I think with the search being so specific, it should return more applicable results first, then stick the Corvette Barbie pages in spots 450-890, instead of the pages that actually apply to the search term requested.
[edited by: AndyA at 5:08 pm (utc) on Dec. 24, 2006]
As for MC latest spin on this - I stopped taking any notice of him a long time ago and have no interest in wishing G a merry anything
I spent about 30 minutes running thru a bunch of the G IP addresses, for about 25 or keyword combos & I just do not see any big changes in my sector.
Isn't that the very purpose of everflux? In the Google Dance days an update would be done within a small space of time, resulting in Google being mobbed by a large number of fretting webmasters. So Google tried to smear it's updates out over time, so that the number of webmasters hit by the update at any one time would be less.
However, some webmasters were hit as early at Nov 10th, and the're still fretting and still looking for answers and being joined by new victims every day.
the serps are a mess with the terms I monitor
The SERPs aren't a mess in my search category, but very very conservative, with PR and age being king. It looks like the're trying to keep the links based ranking model alive at all cost.
If this it true, it doesn't seem to work very well, because in my search cat the big link buyers are on top. From what I see in the SERPs, I'd say it's pretty safe to buy links from sources that don't link to bad neighborhoods and managed by webmasters that don't post to SEO forums.
[edited by: Martin40 at 5:56 pm (utc) on Dec. 24, 2006]
IMHO Everflux is the process of google indexing the web, following links, taking what it finds, adding it to it's databases and then Appling weighting, filters, penalties, to build the G Serps.
G has gotten better(more efficient) at automating these processes over the last year & is making smaller changes daily (or every couple of days to a week), creating small ripples, instead of holding this data & pushing it out & having massive changes all at once. This also in theory creates a more up to date, dynamic set of SERPs. (In theory!)
I am not defending G, or it's processes, or problems, only trying to explain what I believe to be happening from the evidence of what I see.
Reseller: In response to your question,
"
What kind of Data Refresh that has such effect:
- changes in rankings of sites/pages
- changes in number of backlinks
- changes in number of indexed pages
"
Everflux
Happy Holidays!
WW_Watcher
Edited to add:
IMHO, G's commands/operators have for some time been kinda flaky, and do not report properly, & they may vary tremendously day to day, hour to hour, G IP address to IP address. When the SERPs, & corresponding traffic have not changed.
[edited by: WW_Watcher at 6:15 pm (utc) on Dec. 24, 2006]
The main keywords i monitor have been filled with trash and sites that are simply not relevant, at the same time i've seen the sites that have held top positions for years across all related keyowrds simply drop out of the top 30 or 40 positions.
Tried searching on their domain names only to find that the top results are for sites that are either linking to them or that have scraped content featuring their domain names, and this is across 6 or 7 different sites, all with different levels of seo, layout, site structure etc.
This simply can't be right, any one wanting to find a site in my niche will have to go down to about position 15 to find one that is actually relevant.
I am not defending G
You're very welcome to defend G. All that most posters here want is to know why the're penalized.
with PR and age being king
Oh...so a PR0 site a couple of years old now stuffs my 11 yr old PR7 authority site into oblivion?
I have 100+ sites practically all of which are older than Google!
It's not ageism nor experience in my sector, it's the random culling of absolutely anything, and that includes nearly all of my competitors.
This is not at all selective, it's a major GFU for my industry and, evidently, several other sectors too.
Are all the seniors at the plex on holiday and the juniors pratting about not knowing what they are doing?
If we run with the idea that this data push has lost information for some sites, then the effect becomes more logical. Lets say that some of the home page internal links and anchor text have been lost... this would have a dramatic effect on the rest of the site. Pages would not be lost, but pr flow and anchor text would be significantly effected, with internal pages suddenly having a different pattern of links and thus different emphasis and themes running through the site. For instance, a page linked from the home page with an seo theme of "widgets" is now only linked to from another sites links page and perhaps another internal page about "blue widgets". This could result in the page still ranking for "blue widgets" but no longer for "widgets". The overall 'theme' of the site has been lost by perhaps the anchor text information being dropped from some pages.
All speculation, but the way we have been effected suggests to me that sections of pages content have been lost thus empahisis and themes are distorted and the importance of pages dictated by the site structure has been recalculated. This would be in keeping with Matts decleration that no big change has been implimented, what has in fact hapenned, is the same algos as last month have been applied to incomplete data, producing a dramatic change to some sites.
One of the popular sectors I watch is awash in high ranking pages that have no business ranking so high, such as directory pages (Yahoo, Dmoz) and the index page of a traditionally low-ranking site that's been static for about a year and a half (the business was closed but is still online, site serves to send people elsewhere.)
Come on, Google, sober up, quit screwing around and fix this insanity.
same here I'm seeing linking sites ranking for my URL and I'm down at 30th and the index is completely lost its an internal page that's ranking
I really couldn’t believe I wouldn’t get my Christmas gift from Google and I finally did. Laying aside all the technical reasons those fellows at Google are downright evil when the holidays come around.
>Traffic is down close to 50%.<
About the same for me.
[edited by: outland88 at 7:48 pm (utc) on Dec. 24, 2006]
Happy holidays,
Triumph
