Forum Moderators: Robert Charlton & goodroi
But something quite major is now going on with the Google SERPs. Members are reporting major changes in the single word search results, most particularly, but lots of other things are stirred up as well. On one of my single keywords, I've just passed wikipedia (yeah!) and jdMorgan reported the same for one of his keywords.
So it's time -- we are officially declaring Update Buffy. We'll begin with recent posts from our June SERPs Watching thread [webmasterworld.com]. What do you see going on?
< So why name it Buffy? Let's say it's in honor of someone who just
left her job but knows a whole lot about Buffy the Vampire Slayer.
We've never gone with someone's formal name for an update. Tip
of the hat to reseller, goodroi, and jdmorgan for their input >.
< further note - Matt Cutts says [mattcutts.com] that in his mind this is not an
update. OK - so we'll call this moment an "Honorary Update". >
[edited by: tedster at 7:27 pm (utc) on June 19, 2007]
Also little more weightage seems to be given to Dmoz -> Google directoty listed sites.
I suppose that's one way of looking at it Marcia, but Google could easily re-educate searchers
Ok, does anyone else see a Google/Darren Brown merger coming? :)
(if you don't know who he is, gotta search youtube, the guy will make you go Wow... even thinking of Google hiring him as a consultant on "behavioral influence" give me goosebumps. :))
-Michael
I don't really see a de-commercialization on the searches I'm watching.
I wondered about calling it an update but there are really no traditional updates anymore and it does help to have a name for this. It seems like something major is going on that is making some big shifts especially on one word search terms. I just hope it doesn't spread to two and three word phrases.
Since I haven't lost any traffic in spite of my top keyword being demoted I have to think that the difference is made up for by better long tail search.
I think you have something there Marcia. In my topic I do think people searching the one word would rather find free patterns then a site about the topic's history. Which is exactly why I've gone into making free patterns based on antiques over the last couple of years. ;)
hence the big changes some people are seeing and the almost non change others are seeing.
i see a very small change, consistent with the minor regular shifts since big daddy, on both .com and .co.uk.
They keep on tweaking it, I wonder when they'll finish. I think the current iteration is too far, I bet they'll pull back a little. They overshot. The results were better a week or so ago during the update.
i just made a search for a place to buy specific products on google. this is my search quality test and a way to see what our blackhat brothers play with lately.
have a look and see how badly the SERPs look.
idolw: it's a huge shame that your example has been removed - it's a great example of how horrible the google SERPS are for that very popular prescription drug we've all gotten horribly misspelled spam about. The top two results are .edu domains - Argh!
answers.com drops out of the top 100. Main listing for about.com drops 35 spots; two other ones drop from the top 100.
But these results are definitely NOT pre-May 24 serps. Some of the trivial sites that weren't in the top 200 before May 24 still hang in the top 40.
So in general we could say that Update Buffy has brought us better quality search results and boost in traffic for some relatively old sites regarding 2,3, 4+ words search queries!
However, few friends here have noticed "edu-spam" sites are still there at top of the serps for search query concerning buying specific potency-enhancement materials :-)
One keyword.domain.com site that was #1 for many months and #2 before that for years has disappeared out of Google SERPs; while another keyword.domain2.com site has jumped to top 10 out of nowhere.
p/g
Was that "hot single keyword" also related to potency-enhancement materials ;-)
MC says no update
You know, given that we do not have a flood of people rolling in the way we've seen with past major updates, I'd say his call is right. However, we do not have any landmarks for updates any more - it's like a vast expanse of time without any easy reference points to use in discussion.
I'm leaning towards letting this name stay, just for our own discussion purposes. For now I'm just going to edit the title a bit and call it an "Honorary Update".
You know, given that we do not have a flood of people rolling in the way we've seen with past major updates, I'd say his call is right........I'm leaning towards letting this name stay, just for our own discussion purposes. For now I'm just going to edit the title a bit and call it an "Honorary Update".
I miss the old days when there were real updates.
That last scenario is what has always been called an update, but what on earth could there be for a new algo element these days?
At any rate, I wonder what is helping all the long-tail searches? Can anyone who is seeing this see any relationship with those URLs losing a Supplemental status, for instance? That's one thing that might do it, since we now know Supplemental URLs get scored much differently - only "important words" rather than full text.
It was on my list of 'to do's' for the site to see what I could do about the problem, but now there are so few pages in the SI it's hardly worth bothering about.
As to when they slipped out and joined the main party though I really can't say. If I were a betting man however, my money would go on June 13.
You had to truin it for Vanessa, didn't you? :)
Honestly, it looked like an update to me.
Update or not update..this is the question!
I wish to underline that this isn't the first time that some of us don't agree with our kind friend Matt Cutts on update or not update [blog.searchenginewatch.com].
First off, Matt hasn't mentioned at all a possible data push or data refresh as a reason for the present changes. So what we have noticed isn't a result of a data push or data refresh.
Allow me to recall what Matt Cutts wrote once [mattcutts.com] about "an update"
Usually, what registers with an update to the webmaster community is when we update an algorithm (or its data), change our scoring algorithms, or switch over to a new piece of infrastructure. Technically Update Gilligan is just backlink/PageRank data becoming visible once more, not a real update. There haven�t been any substantial algorithmic changes in our scoring in the last few days. I�m happy to try to give weather reports when we do our update scoring/algo data though.
Lets take a look at what we have at present:
- Relatevely old sites including internal pages have started to rank high for 2,3,4+ keywords search queries.
- Members have reported sudden large boost in traffic for some of their sites.
- Top of the serps suddenly occupied much more than before by "authority sites".
- Then we have that one keyword query discussion and changes noticed in that regard accordingly.
The question now is: Could all above changes just happen by themselves? is there any logical explanations for above changes other than an algo update or a change in scoring algos?
Therefore Buffy is an update
IMO, whats left is we might discuss whether Buffy could be considered as a major algo update or a minor one. Not whether Buffy is an update or not.
While the rest of the results are moving around normally as they have for months, one word searches are pulling up some truly bizarre results.
For my main term, the second result I'm seeing for a site i watch has changed from the (objectively) second or third most powerful page on the site, to about the twentieth.
Another thing, there is a lycos search result ranking well, which i thought was weird, but now I see that page is linked from all the Lycos Top 50 pages, so it makes a bit of sense.
Would you be kind to elaborate more on what you just said:
While the rest of the results are moving around normally as they have for months..
Cutts is defining it by his definition so its a fooler. I also think they're doing a lot of experimenting with Universal Search and there could be hefty collateral damage over the summer months.
