Data Center Watch 2006 May 05

Oh no. . . . not another DC thread!

[Komodo_Tale]

I am seeing changes in:

64.233.161.107
64.233.161.147
64.233.179.99
64.233.179.104
64.233.187.99
64.233.187.104
216.239.37.99
216.239.39.99
216.239.59.99
72.14.207.99
72.14.207.104
72.14.207.107
64.233.167.99
64.233.161.99
64.233.161.104
64.233.167.104
216.239.39.104
216.239.59.104
64.233.179.107
72.14.207.107
216.239.39.107
216.239.59.107
216.239.59.147
64.233.167.147

And am experiencing major happiness. Some of these these results were visible on five DCs on and off for the last week. It now appears to be spreading and on some DCs I am experiencing a small additional boost.

I for one hope this sticks.

[ramachandra]

I am seeing supplemental pages are going out of Index sometimes all in most of the DCs but randomly will again come back. Site Ranks well when there are no supplemental pages in index.

Anyone here whose ranking improved when all supplemental pages are out of Index?

[g1smd]

The "experiment" started (well, was first noticed about 2006 Mar 24th ) on [64.233.185.104...] and then moved to [72.14.207.104...] soon after; and has been seen on a few more, from time to time since then too.

[steveb]

It' becoming more clear that many (most?) supplementals haven't disappeared, but rather are just hidden for some searches.

Some that I have been tracking for two years seem gone via the normal "search for text on the page" method, but still appear for various other searches like -www

[g1smd]

In the "cleanup" datacentre I cannot find any Supplemental Results dated before (older than) 2005 June.

I'll try some other searches to see if any still fall out.

<edit>No. In that datacentre the Supplemental Results with cache dates older than 2005 June really are GONE. However, there are a whole load of new Supplemental Results dated 2005 July to 2006 March. These are for different URLs to the ones that have now been de-indexed.

Additionally, the Supplemental Results that previously had cache dates from 2005 July to 2005 October(-ish) are still there in the index in the same status, with the same cache.

[steveb]

Yes, June 2005 are the oldest, however the main point is some are being hidden.

The weirdest thing is doing a -www search brings up a dozen supplementals not shown elsewhere even though all these pages do have www in the URLs and they are no different in any way from any other pages on the domain in regards to anything having to do with the www. It's like the -www is just functioning as "here are the supplementals for this domain".

[g1smd]

I see several people report that today, but cannot reproduce it for any of my regular searches or any creative new ones that I have tried.

[petehall]

De-boxed SERPs back on the climb - now currently at 14 DCs.

[Ellio]

why "de-boxed"?

[Kangol]

I only see good results on 64.233.167.99. On the other DCs my site dropped. Also I see a new layout. Check it out.

[Nick0r]

Anyone else still seeing massive amounts of pages missing? Unreal amounts almost. Down to under 1/10th of indexed pages.

[McClaw]

Hi All

When I search on 64.233.161.147 and I do a "pages from South Africa" search I get exactly the same results as "the web" search.

Any of you guys seen this happening?

[lgn1]

Finally seeing some movement, now up to 16 datacenters with the 'good results'.

The fact that the 'good dataset' did not simply disappear, and is now climbing, is a good omen. Hopefully this time it will spread across all datacenters.

[reseller]

Talking about Google Datacenter Watch thread. It seems the spirit of this WebmasterWorld thread has "propagated" to Matt's blog :-)

And Matt has just posted a comment...

[mattcutts.com...]

[whitenight]

Haha,
You know G is clueless when they actually start taking suggestions from the peanut gallery.

Reseller, the problem with that dc is that seems to keep changing intermittently throughout certain periods of the day.

[reseller]

whitenight

"Reseller, the problem with that dc is that seems to keep changing intermittently throughout certain periods of the day."

In general it has been very stable recently compared to the rest of the DCs. Maybe you saw minor reshufflings, or a minor everflux (if one can say so).

IMO, in addition to the "standard" DCs Watching, we have at present two sets of DCs which are worth paying much attention to:

The set which g1smd call "experimental"

[72.14.207.99...]
[72.14.207.104...]

The set which has been called "Miss Gorgeous" in a comment today on Matt's blog. Claimed to be less spammed on top 20 of its serps in addition to high search relevancy.

[72.14.203.99...]
[72.14.203.104...]

Having said that, I see lgn1 reporting today 'good results' on 16 DCs.

As such we might conclude that today's DCs weather report is encouraging indeed ;-)

[Ellio]

The set which has been called "Miss Gorgeous" in a comment today on Matt's blog. Claimed to be less spammed on top 20 of its serps in addition to high search relevancy.

[72.14.203.99...]
[72.14.203.104<...]

Reseller (AKA Harith)

PLEASE stop this pretence at trying to fool folk that comments made by Harith on Matt Cutts blog are not one and the same as Reseller.

If you treat people as stupid many are going to get very fed up with you.

PS> Nobody else would be silly enough to call a DC Miss G....

[steveb]

reseller is going to do his promo spamming no matter what. Let's just try to stay on topic despite that unfortunate situation.

I think petehall has a desandboxed site on the one batch of datacenters. There is nothing desandboxing about those results in general.

[reseller]

steveb

Do you see less spam and better search relevancy on any of the two sets I mentioned, or any other DCs?

I.e any trend om moving to better serps quality?

Thanks.

[petehall]

steveb - I have two on those DCs.

Maybe they were never sandboxed, but one site was not in existence until September 2005.

I just thought sandbox meant ">12 month site which does not rank" :-)

[F_Rose]

Could someone please explain what sandbox and desanbox are referred to and what effect it has on websites?

[icedowl]

I'm very close to having all my pages back at 66.102.7.104 - which shows cache pages located at 72.14.207.104

By the way, this was this moment in time's default DC. It could change later or tomorrow.

[steveb]

"Do you see less spam and better search relevancy on any of the two sets I mentioned, or any other DCs?"

No. The quality is clearly in the bottom 10% of the Dcs. Horrible spam not found elsewhere, lots of the "show the parent blog domain for unrelated terms" results that signal the weakest/half-baked results, etc. Those DCs are kind of interesting how the terrible results sort of popped out of nowhere when everything else was trending towards either better results (despite dropped pages) and the more established group.

[M_Bison]

looks like most of the DCs have reverted to the way they were. Pity, not only because our site was no 1 for our adwords keyword, but they seemed to be a lot better (ie less spammy).

[crobb305]

Could someone please explain what sandbox and desanbox are referred to and what effect it has on websites?

Do a Google search for 'google sandbox'.

C

[MLHmptn]

Honestly the best results I had ever seen were the "MYSTERIOUS" ones that were being shown on search.earthlink.net, search.aol.com, search.comcast.net, etc., last week some time when we all noticed the BIG CHANGES. Whatever Google is doing now is beyond me as the results seem to have reverted to the old SERP's that were stagnant for quite awhile.

Enough ranting, hopefully Google will see it through....

[fred9989]

And now, as I look at the data centres, they seem to have reverted to the least good of all the recent results.
It seems astonishing to me that such good qaulity as we have seen signs of recently has been cast aside and replaced by, shall we say, results of dubious value.
They seem to be ones that rank more according to the backlinks than the on page factors.
While the Google engineers play with their algorithm, the consequences are profound for us webmasters and the search public alike. Surely this cannot be a reasonable way for Google to run a business?
Rod

[reseller]

Good morning Folks

steveb , M_Bison, MLHmptn and fred9989

Are you sure you are talking about the serps of

[72.14.203.99...]
[72.14.203.104...]

That set of DCs has been stable for at least the last few days. I haven't seen any "reverted" to the old serps etc..

Within the sector I watch, I still see clean serps and good search quality.

[edited by: reseller at 5:16 am (utc) on May 12, 2006]

[MLHmptn]

Good morning Folks
steveb , M_Bison, MLHmptn and fred9989

Are you sure you are talking about the serps of

[72.14.203.99...]
[72.14.203.104...]

That set of DCs has been stable for at least the last few days. I haven't seen any "reverted back" to the old serps etc..

Within the sector I watch, I still see clean serps and good search quality.

Unfortunately no reseller, those results are showing all kinds of supplemental results for one of my sites and the results in the sector I watch have been stagnant for over a year. I'm talking about the ones that NEVER appeared on any DC. They only appeared on Google's search partners...earthlink, att, aol, netscape, icq, etc.... They were on the search partners for about 2 days and then suddenly vanished. The reason I call them "MYSTERIOUS" is because they were never on any DC. Also it seemed that sandboxed sites were being let loose again in waves.

It appears it was around May 5th.... [webmasterworld.com...]

I know it's all a mixed bag of opinions we all have but those SERP's that a few of us witnessed were unbelievable! I honestly have never thought all that much of Google's relevance and the SERP's a few of us seen were simply RELEVANT 1-10...... Something I have never seen on any search engine to date.

[reseller]

MLHmptn

Thanks for Clarification.

Lets hope things get better for your sector too.

Never lose faith in Google ;-)

[MLHmptn]

MLHmptn
Thanks for Clarification.

Lets hope things get better for your sector too.

Never lose faith in Google ;-)

Honestly reseller I have no faith in Google until it proves me otherwise. :>~ IF and that is a big IF Google ranks this one site of mine in the 1-10 range it will only be an added bonus.

I honestly have never understood Google. I have other sites that rank very well on Google and the SEO I have done on them has been half a$$ed. But yet the site I have high quality relevant one-way links to has over 1000 products that are all about that one certain keyword and it has never ranked in the top 100 on Google. I'm beginning to wonder if I have just over optimized this particular site. The funny thing is all the other search engines have my site within the Top 5 consistently for 2+ years now and my sites name even shows up in WordTracker for the search terms I target with over 250-300 searches done on it each month. And why Google consistently sandboxes my site is beyond me when people search for us by name and we're in the top 25 on WordTracker for our targeted keywords. Even more disgusting is when I go to mamma and search and I search for the targeted keyword and our sites name shows up in the related boxes above all the SERP's.