Forum Moderators: Robert Charlton & goodroi
And now it has all completely changed to a result set similar to what wwas around a week ago.. gone are all the trivial bits of nothing.
Seems like somebody woke up down at the 'plex... "Oh crap, forgot to flip the 'make the results better' switch."
(Again, this only really applies to one word searches.)
[edited by: tedster at 4:37 pm (utc) on July 1, 2007]
Steve, are you checking other terms too, or just the single term ones when you say that results aren't sticking?
The numeric DCs have crap results, and really aren't worth paying attention to anymore. They never serve the same results as google.com.
So then what are you looking at Steve?
That was exciting! Oh how I miss the good old days.
Regarding the numeric DC's, I think they are still relevant. I still see results on them that do eventually migrate to google.com. I take them as an indicator though, not a cast iron prediction.
As we've seen, nothing is certain with Google anymore.
agree you can't rely on G traffic, unlike Y & MSN at least when it updates or changes it sticks around for a while
Google.com and search.comcast.net mostly.
walkman, there have been changes for two word and other searches that I watch, but those have been changing rather normally like in past weeks... I suppose definitely a little more volatile, but i haven't seen completely trivial sites rocket up the results for most other searches like they did for the biggest one word searches there are. In other words, I think there is a significant update going on, but what happened with one word searches was probably the result of some unique new thing that they were trying, which clearly failed very badly (or perhaps even more likely, it was half baked, like some ingredients were not added properly).
Some irrelevant sites stick to the top like glue and more others with any sort of crap are also on their way up.
My main domains are still ranking well with no movement up or down during any of this google shuffle.
Anyway, I hope these old results stay... thats my vote (not that it matters).
Just one example: Lots of local sites emerging where they don't belong, while well known national entities have taken huge hits. Many of the newly emerging sites that should not be there feature old school spam tactics (kw repetition and spam links above header and below footer).
When one searches on "blue widgets" and there are 20 or 30 reasonably well known national and regional companies to choose from, it should not be the case that a third of the well known, well established and long-ranking companies drop out, while unknown, tiny companies from Podunk WY, Funkville IN and Codie's Corner CO all hit page one. ;-)
And on lots of searches, by the time one gets down into page 3 or 4 of the SERP's, it's like the algo has gone completely haywire. Obscure spam sites, asian sites in EN language SERP's, all sorts of kooky stuff.
Comcast is still showing the established, normal, better results though.
the index page maybe #5 for one keyword phrase and #25 for a subpage.
That sounds normal to me. There is a filter that limits a domain to 2 results in any search, but 2 results is pretty common. If they end up on nthe same page of a SERP, that's were you get the indented listings -- the filter clusters the two pages into two adjacent rankings. So if you can raise the #25 to #10, it would immediately pop to #6, indented just under your #5 ranked url.
A number of things could have happened.
1) This is a new data push and the new results may re-appear over the next couple days (low chance).
2) The data and filters are not applied at the same time, so what you see may be data before the entire algo is applied (short term results) (fairly likely).
3) There is a big change to the algo - (probably not) - we have not seen any movement on a 100 plus other sites we manage.
4) It was a test by Google - turn a knob, does things change the way we want them to, no - turn the knob back and continue internal development until the next test (entirely possible).
Anyway you look at it - it is a good idea to have multiple startegies running at the sametime, then when these things happen - you have an insight based on experience across domains.
I do think that the change had something to do with the supplemental index - (I think too many new pages were ending up there, and G is trying to fix the issue). Watch for a change in the next month or so, and more people talking about pages coming out of sup hell.
[edited by: tedster at 11:11 pm (utc) on June 1, 2007]
Also I see better results to the UK akin to what there used to be before this happened when I click on "pages from the UK". So maybe a regional filter is turned off?
Isnt this just pages and sites coming out of the sandbox?
I do not believe that there is a sandbox anymore, maybe you would like to discuss this in a new thread, as my thoughts would certainly take us way off topic.
If anything, it might be sites coming out of supplemental, which I feel has somewhat replaced the sandbox.
I am not seeing the movement that you guys are. None at all. Maybe my widget kw/kp is not effected and yours is?
coming out of the sandbox?
For new or completely retooled sites to start ranking - or regain their rankings - they need to prove their mettle for a while first. Many of the sites popping into strong spots for the first time don't even have any mettle. :P
Things this bad won't last; they never do.
The new results seem to favor directories, free stuff and wikipedia over deep sites with extensive information on the topic.
I just checked comcast search and the old traditional results are showing there. I hope this is just something Google is just trying out as it seems to me that people who search the one word term want some information on the overall topic. If they wanted free stuff or a directory they could add one of those words to their search.
As far as my own site it really doesn't hurt me much as what I get through one word searches is just a drop in the bucket in terms of how people find my pages. More specific searches bring far, far more people to my sites.
It seemed to me that the comcast results favored Wikipedia and one-page-wonders, with sites like my own (in depth, in other words) being pushed down. Now that we're back to something resembling the configuration we used to have my site's back up again.
But like you, although I've lost a couple of hundred visitors a day because of dropping for that main single keyword, a much larger number come from other search terms. Overall my traffic's as high as usual. Still, I wouldn't mind that couple hundred visitors back!
Thank you Google for giving a -30 penalty for a page under construction. I was just working on it when I noticed it.
It seemed to me that the comcast results favored Wikipedia and one-page-wonders, with sites like my own (in depth, in other words) being pushed down.
So we are seeing much the opposite results. I'm seeing wiki, directories and such on Google and the old rankings on Comcast. I just checked again to be sure. It's all beyond comprehension what Google is trying to do. Hopefully it will get sorted out eventually.
I don't think I've ever seen such an extreme change on Google and I've been watching for several years. But so far I've only noticed it on one word search terms.
