Forum Moderators: Robert Charlton & goodroi
Is Big Daddy Choking Google?Web site operators are clamoring to understand what can best be described as an ongoing disturbance in the Google Force.
Google's search engine, once a clean, lean indexing machine, from a Webmaster's perspective has been slipping badly lately.
Starting about two months ago, site operators have complained that their Web sites have suddenly disappeared from Google's index for no reason, tantamount to disappearing from the Internet.
[eweek.com...]
[theregister.co.uk...]
[theregister.co.uk...]
The shear size of the organization is a detriment to their ability to act (on anything) with any expedience -- be it technology or business matters.
There was a time when an SEO type would have given his right arm to sit down with "an" engineer and get some real answers on the Google Ranking algorithm.
DON'T try that now! You would have to get 30 engineers in the room and NOT ONE of them would know anything! Because, the other 29 engineers probably just implemented algorithm changes that override (or at least negate to some degree) anything only one of the engineers thought he knew...
That explains why sites disappear, for instance, a few days or weeks at a time.
And this is one factor that frustrates the users...inconsistency. They are often unable to find the resources they saw indexed for the same search query the day before, because of the ridiculous inconsistencies among the dataceneters.
There's an old book on the topic something like - Teaching the Elephant to Dance.
They missed so many of the big stories with Google and SERP disasters (hijacking, canonical problems etc)... then they come up with a gem: Google doesn't make money from search, they make money from ads. A brilliant insight into something that has been puzzling all of Wall Street since Brin bought up all Google shares, de-listed, and took the company private!
No, wait! El Reg didn't come up with that conclusion themselves. Jellyfish did... and they quote him. No, wait, Jellyfish got inspired by a previous theregister article to come to the conclusion that Google makes money from ads. No wait....maybe El Reg was thinking of something jellyfish said earlier in the week. Arrgh!
theregister.co.uk, it wouldn't have been news last year this time, guys!
Remember, I started with "looks like" and it's only my opinion -- I have never had the opportunity to discus "ranking algorithms" with 30 Google engineers...
You are absolutely correct in saying "I am presuming that because of there large size it takes longer to implement new technology", but your statement: "my understanding is that they still advocate small teams" has a flaw inherent to their new size...
When Google was ONLY Sergey and Larry working on the algorithm, that was a small team!
Only presuming now, so don't shoot me here when I say that the current "small team" is huge compared to just the two geniuses and founders.
The first is something that we already know, that being the general starting period when all the problems with Big Daddy started (about 2 months ago).
The second is something that Google HAS to release to the public in the very near future; that being their earings reports from Adwords, etc.
Anyone care to take a "stab in the dark", as to what the earnings reports for the period in question will say?
Give it time this started from smaller e-news sites and is going up the food chain this has only been sense last week or so when a CEO made his “Google is full / broken blunder”
Those of us who were watching IBM for a living back then regard it as not particularly accurate.
I'm mostly a "lurker", and this thread caught my eye. About a week ago, my site shot up everywhere, and then slipped, and then disappeared from several SERP completely.
I have a friend who does, in fact talk to people at Google, although he doesn't use the inside access often, not wanting to wear out his welcome, i'm sure.
His people in Google told him, he says, that they were having some issues with sites that had sitemaps in Google, that Gbot wasn't visiting new pages, and that once a sitemap had resided there for a while, Gbot really slowed down on re-crawls.
Is any of this valid? germane? All hogwash?
tedster: that the important technology war is not Microsoft vs. Google, it's search engine spammers vs. Google!
Nope, that is not it.
The important war is not MS vs. Google, or even spammers vs. Google. It is "Google together with AdSence spammers" vs. Webmasters.
Microsoft is just getting warmed up here and watches which side to take.
His people in Google told him, he says, that they were having some issues with sites that had sitemaps in Google, that Gbot wasn't visiting new pages, and that once a sitemap had resided there for a while, Gbot really slowed down on re-crawls.Is any of this valid? germane? All hogwash?
I have placed only a few of the sites that I manage in sitemaps. They are showing home page only for site:mydomain.com.
All of the other sites (that are not in sitemaps) have also been reduced to only home page and they are not being crawled often either. So, who knows!
His people in Google told him, he says, that they were having some issues with sites that had sitemaps in Google, that Gbot wasn't visiting new pages, and that once a sitemap had resided there for a while, Gbot really slowed down on re-crawls.Is any of this valid? germane? All hogwash?
Funny you should say that. I have a site that coincidentally disappeared from Google's index (600+ pages) at the same time I submitted to SiteMaps about a month and a half ago. Now all that's left is my home page in their index. I suppose at this point a test wouldn't do much harm, as in deleting my SiteMap and seeing if the Gbot crawls again at a faster speed.
much like AlataVista in the past, and not unlike the legendary Don Quixote fighting Windmills, Google have drained their resources fighting supposed "spammers" - their implicit definition of "spammers" being 90% of the webmaster community - instead of focusing on refining their algorithm so that it would help the more relevant results surface above the less relevant results.
these two approaches *not* being the same thing, and *not* to be confused as being the same thing - Google has failed miserably because the geeks therein have opted, much like the geeks at AltaVista in the past, for fighting Windmills rather than honing and refining their algorithm to the best feasible level.
and no, their search results are not the most relevant in the market, and no the Emperor is not wearing any new clothes.
"But he hasn't got anything on," a little child said.
"But he hasn't got anything on!" the whole town cried out at last.
(from "The Emperor's New Clothes" by Hans Christian Andersen)
asta la AltaVista,
heisje
.
Just curious.. What search engine do you consider the most relevant, if not Google?
when I need relevant SE results for my personal use, i.e. for webmaster work as well as private matters, and have precious little time to waste searching, I definitely start with Yahoo - and scarcely ever need I to revert to Google, only to find then very disappointing results.
having said that, there is no doubt that, even so, Yahoo results leave much to be desired.
there is also no doubt in my mind that "search technology" is still at a very early stage in its development, and we should expect (and demand) much better results.
my point however, is that the folks at Google have been definitely on the wrong track, lack real vision for the future, and are anything than focused - already for some time now.
and Billy Bo is waiting round the corner . . . .
heisje
.
OTOH, spam is difficult to fight, especially if you have an agressive indexing policy ("we want to store the entire world's information"). A selective policy will cut down on spam but also deny "legit" sources of information access.
I think as long as it is cheap to create sites and links, and indexing is aggressive, spam will continue to be a problem.
Googleguy, if you read this I do sympathize with you for being stuck in the middle of legit and spam free sites that provide relevant products and content. I also know you have a big boss who is focused on making money for his investors via pay per click (adsense spam).
Google once wanted a spam free index. This is now a thing of the past. Instead of finding revenue without spam, they opted for the pay per clicks on spammy sites....(adsense)
Everyone, if google did clean up all its spammy (adsense) results they would put themselves out of business... So webmasters, if you want to be on the top, get out the checkbook.
If google wanted to really ban a lot of spam it would ban all its adsense sites right? Yea, ok when pigs fly may be that would happen.
I can't believe that four months have past and Google has not corrected the blahing problem where spam/redirect sites and 404's out rank legit sites on many popular searches in my sector.
Google search is now just a shadow of itself lost in the woods with amnesia crying out for help but no one is answering.
