Google "Honorary Update" - Buffy

June 2007

[tedster]

Ever since Update Jagger, which prepared the way for Google's new Big Daddy infrastructure, the changes and shifts to the SERPs come so frequently that we haven't called an Update in over a year. Instead, we've been trying to watch the SERP changes in an ongoing, monthly thread that shifts with the irregular roll, pitch and yaw of the good ship Google.

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]

[potentialgeek]

I noticed a few websites which are 'old' and use keywords in the domain name got bumped up lately (from nowhere). They haven't been changed, optimized, or anything, for about four years or so. I'd mostly ignored them while working on other projects.

I actually think it's reasonable to weight sites when this combo is true: old domain AND keyword in domain. Either one is not significant on its own, but together, often pretty solid.

p/g

[oasisfan]

Well it seems our moment in the sun has come to an end as quickly as it started..

Went from near 4000 uniques to 2000 (ie back to what it weas pre June 10th) and today sitting at 1600.

Google was 80% of our traffic now its only 25% .

One strange thing I have noticed is that a site reffering us traffic for search term say Fury Purple Widgets (which is the subject of OUR page) is from a top 10 rating page which is called Purple Widgets awhich just has a bit of blurb (No actual info on Purple Widgets at all) and then lists of sites , our being one of them, who have pages on say Silky Purple Widgets, Hesian Purple Widgetc etc . ie this directory type site is ranking beteter than the sites it lists even though it has none of its own info on Purple Widgets .

I have long given up worrying about search engine traffic and we just build our site regardless! Maybe its a glimpse of future traffic to come or not-who knows.

[reseller]

arubicus

Furthermore, I wish to add that after the said site being hit by Allegra, I did a thorough cleaning as to possible duplicates and possible excessive internal and outbound linking.

oasisfan

Well it seems our moment in the sun has come to an end as quickly as it started..

It could be as well that Update Buffy is still underway and things keep changing for some time yet.

[SEOPTI]

The long tail boost has lasted just a few days, back to normal traffic levels again.

[Marcia]

I still don't think this is actually an update in the classic sense, it's more like an adjustment in the up or down weighting of some filters.

[subway]

Looks like importance has been upped for links from that total farce of a directory DMOZ. A great shame if you rely on a “bent” competing DMOZ editor to list your site.

I think this would also explain the reason that lots of old sites have sprung back from nowhere. By that I am referring to old, out of date DMOZ listings that haven’t been tidied up in years.

[Front]

our site is in DMOZ, but we still got hit pretty bad.

[arubicus]

Furthermore, I wish to add that after the said site being hit by Allegra, I did a thorough cleaning as to possible duplicates and possible excessive internal and outbound linking.

Yep did the same on our site.

[walkman]

>> I still don't think this is actually an update in the classic sense, it's more like an adjustment in the up or down weighting of some filters.

I agree, but what's the difference in reality? To me, fiters are part of the algo. It is how they decide to rank sites and which ones to exclude.

[potentialgeek]

It's an update if your site was hit hard and a dial turn if it was hardly hit. :/

Remember that old (c. 1980) Ronald Reagan joke?

"A recession is when your neighbor loses his job; a depression is when you lose yours. Economic recovery is when Jimmy Carter loses his!"

p/g

[mvandemar]

The key with the .edu spam is to report it to the .edu domains. Get it to the right person and it disappears very quickly indeed.

No, I would not call that "the key". Having people who care about the serps manually contact the offending sites one by one is hardly what I would call an effective strategy.

Google needs to figure this one out. It's been a tactic for years, and honestly, they should have beaten this one way before now.

It's pretty simple too... I saw an obvious solution to it over a year ago.

-Michael

[tedster]

Looks like the specific comments about this "non-update" have run their course and we're getting into our regular discussion of the Google SERPs. So I'm locking this thread - let's go back to the regular, ongoing discussion at:

June 2007 Google SERP Changes [webmasterworld.com]