January 2007 Google SERP Changes - part 2

[frakilk]

< continued from [webmasterworld.com...] >

A very interesting article (including comments by Matt Cutts) has been posted over at PBS. It may be possible that it is related to the December/January changes
[pbs.org...]

[edited by: tedster at 8:00 pm (utc) on Jan. 11, 2007]

[itloc]

During the last few hours my site received the level of traffic I had around one month ago. It seems that all is gone again. Some result checks show SERPs as before.

I have never seen such a big movement in such a short amount of time ever since I am working on my site. That was something big and I would rate it as a step in the right direction.

It also showed me one very important thing: the dissappearance (supplemental, old caches etc.) of my pages from Googles search results has been not my fault. It wasn't duplicate content, unreliable server results, 301 gone wrong or something else. It wasn't my sitemap file, not the technology I do use or something else. The pages ARE there.

It's simply that the plex is able to send 15'000 users on one day - and the other day they send 200. Or nothing.

I do respect the basic ideals and the idea behind Google - to make knowledge available in an accessible way. I like Google.

On the other hand, Google has to understand that professional webmasters that run large websites can't run these websites without a certain stable level of traffic. One day nothing the next one thousands ... that's the nightmare of every server admin.

I am not raising my hands here saying that Google owes me something - they don't. If they send visitors to pages in my industry that are (IMHO) of a lower quality then mine - that's ok for me.

I would be very grateful for a stabilization of the current situation. Send me nothing or send me thousands - but do that in a linear way. Thanks.

itloc

[Bewenched]

Anyone know why a site that showed a -1 page rank would show at the very top of the serps....

it is a good quality site that beats us every time on a certain key phrase, but why would the toolbar show a negative?

has anyone else seen that before?

[pteam]

Is there such a thing as -1 page rank? lol

[gehrlekrona]

I should have known when I saw the sudden influx of hits that something bad was going to happen. I have posted here and other places that I have seen this happen several times and I think that what is happening is a big shuffle of results.
Old results gets mixed with new results and then when the old results are gone, only the new results are left, which usually means just a few hits coming in.
I usually check around 2 PM and see how many unique visitors I have had and today I had passed the amount of unique visitors by 11AM and I was happy and didn't realize that it was a BAD thing.....

All this Google!@!#!# is just making me depressed so I am probably going to sell my web sites and get out of this business. It's not worth it anymore. I've had it with Google!

[mattg3]

Just wondering, has anyone else has noticed this particular time frame with their websites?

I see around 17.00 and 1.00am UK time. Weird. One minute the server is nearly collapsing the next it's normal. :\ While another server is stable as a rock. Weird.

[mattg3]

All this Google!@!#!# is just making me depressed so I am probably going to sell my web sites and get out of this business. It's not worth it anymore. I've had it with Google!

Jagger was the first step on the way down.

[gehrlekrona]

< moved from another location >

-- Last hour update and it is NOT GOOD at all! --

Been following Google today and during the last house (4PM Sunday 14th) I have seen a huge drop in visitors and tons of new spam sites showing up in the search.
I have checked their datacenters and a lot of EDU spam and blog spam sites start showing up again and my site and other sites I rack are not to be seen.
I see a lot of sites in the SERP's that have a cache date of Jan 13 so i guess they decided to let loose the cached/spidered pages from yesterday without screening them at all...'

Just when I thought their crap was over, then it starts all over again....

GEEEEESSSSHHHHhhh...........

[edited by: tedster at 5:54 am (utc) on Jan. 15, 2007]

[jetteroheller]

5 hours of happines!
I was expecting at least 1 day :)

My wife was so happy Saturday evening.

How can I tell her what Sunday evening happened?

[Bewenched]

Is there such a thing as -1 page rank? lol

I use an online service to check pr instead of the toolbar and it definately showed a -1

I wonder if this means they're about to be dinged for something... they certainly have enough paid for in bound links.

[chelseaareback]

"My wife was so happy Saturday evening.

How can I tell her what Sunday evening happened? "

same here - although given that this has now happened 4 times in the last six days my one is now almost as bored as me with the constant changing

worryingly I reckon these results will stick - although it sonce again hit me hard they look a touch more ordered than this time last week

[itloc]

jetteroheller & chelseareback

I do have exactly the same problem. I also have to tell her that our planned holidays in may ... well...

itloc

[zeus]

I now see sites out and in of the index, sometimes totaly gone than back, also some new sites on page 1 here and there, it looks like there are some real changes going on with the serps now, not only backlink PR update.

The wierd thing I got a site that always is totaly out of the index when a update is on then getting back when it settles, its a little scary everytime.

[Pico_Train]

Haven't moved from page 14 to page 17 range since the 20th of December for my top page. Great stuff...

[besnette]

Poof! - Gone!
As of about 4pm yesterday, my whole site has basically diappeared from the SERPs. My site has tons of user-generated content (classified listings) - I get over 100 a day. My site was 60% G traffic. The only "weird" thing I did recenly is 2 days ago, I made the choice in the G. Sitemaps console to associate the wite with www. as opposed to non www. (there are three choices in there, the other one is to not make an association). Other than that it has been business as usual.

This is very scary - as was mentioned above there is nothing linear about this. Your business that you have worked for years on can be gone in a heartbeat.

I am hoping that this is a glitchy thing. I have really good backlinks, and have constant unique content coming in. I don't do anything spammy or scrapey on the site. It has been a pretty steady evolution since I started it.

If feels like my site got a pink slip without any warning or explanation.

[skweb]

My experience is identical to that of Zeus. You close the browser and find that your website is gone while in the next session everything is normal. Traffic is down some 50%. It is happening to only one of dozne websites that I manage.

[trinorthlighting]

Everyone who gets US traffic has to remember that the ice storm has effected a large part of the country. We are hardly seeing any traffic from the midwest right now because a lot of people are without power.

So if your traffic fell, it might be a reason why.

[jakomo]

Hi trinorthlighting!

Did you check if your pages are in Google? For example my problem is that since yesterday 90% of my pages (around 300) have disappear for the top ten ranking....

Best,
Jakomo

[shogun_ro]

Oh my GOD! Lost again!

[johnhh]

yep its a case of - now you see us - now you don't - now you see us - now you don't - its called the GoogleGame (TM).

[rjkdesign]

I found that 70% of the datacenters I checked listed me at number 7 for my top keyword. This was at 1pm GMT. Now at 8pm GMT I have dropped back to 265 on almost all datacenters.

It just really sucks balls :(

[SEOPTI]

2 sites which recovered dropped again a few hours later.

[shogun_ro]

There is a issue with www .
If you perform a search for domain.com in a DC let's say [72.14.203.99...] the results are listed ok, but if you perform a search for www.domain.com the results in first spots are sites with a link to you and after those are pages from your sites.

[icedowl]

There is a issue with www .
If you perform a search for domain.com in a DC let's say [72.14.203.99...] the results are listed ok, but if you perform a search for www.domain.com the results in first spots are sites with a link to you and after those are pages from your sites.

I find just the opposite to be true.

[shogun_ro]

I find just the opposite to be true.

You have set preferred domain a non www?...becouse in my case I redirect 301 to www.domain.com .

[zegiv]

Lost again too!

GoogleGame
Game Over
Please Insert Coin(s)...

[gehrlekrona]

I just checked my stats and they are sparse today :(
One thing I noticed is that links show up in the search that I told Google not to spider since the paths they had/have are all screwed up.

Here's an example:
/search/index_state.php/livechat/sales/index_state.php?catid=133

This happened the last time things got screwed up and now it seems that they back to it again!

What are they doing?

[icedowl]

You have set preferred domain a non www?...becouse in my case I redirect 301 to www.domain.com

I also do a 301 redirect to www.example.com which is definitely working so something somewhere is strange.

[zeus]

skweb - yes it is a little scary everytime, Im also down, but i think about 60%, but i will bet in 1 2 days im back, (i hope), be cause if you in a bang are just out of the index something is wrong, but this site is a slow mover a few pages every month, thats is, so never big changes, so a stable site, if something is wrong it can only be the googlebug (302,301 hijacking) but i think not. There is a lot of flux right now

[reseller]

shogun_ro

There is a issue with www .
If you perform a search for domain.com in a DC let's say [72.14.203.99...] the results are listed ok, but if you perform a search for www.domain.com the results in first spots are sites with a link to you and after those are pages from your sites.

Regarding the DC you mentioned [72.14.203.99...] it isn't as "updated" as the rest of the DCs, I guess.

Matt mentioned it in one of his latest posts [mattcutts.com] :

Matt Cutts:
I’ve mentioned before that some data centers (I believe 64.233.183.xx and 72.14.203.xx) continue to show PageRank values from a slightly older infrastructure. Not a big deal, but I wanted to mention it for the hard-core data center watchers so that they don’t get confused.

[skweb]

Yeah, my website has decimated over the course of last 24 hours little by little. We are talking from 6K visitors a day to 1K visitors during this time. A very well established website that has been around for 9 years with solid rankings. Almost all rankings gradually disappeared after essentially not doing anything at all. As others are saying I hope that it is just a data push that is causing turbulence but what bothers me that about 10 other websites that we have that bring some 20,000 visitors a day are behaving normal for a US holiday.