Forum Moderators: Robert Charlton & goodroi
It spends two weeks on the first page (ranked 1-10) of results and then one week on the tenth page (ranked 90-100). That's fine if there was a big datacenter update, a backlink update or something currently underway but this has been going on for months!
Either my site is good or my site is bad, how on earth can Google be this indecisive for this long? It's really frustrating because now we can see it coming, I got up this morning knowing that Google will have flushed us and I won't get back my first page rankings till this weekend.
I think that Google is currently testing the most extreme theories of every analyst they have on staff and has given these teams a datacenter or two to use for their tests. I think Google is going to devote six months to this experiment -- and they are about halfway through this -- then they will pool their collective results and come up with an algo they really like. Only after this period, probably Sept 1st, will the SERPS revert to something that will hold steady through Christmas.
You got an inside track?
Well I have heard some theories... sounds plausible enough, but as you are so specific, what evidence do you have to support this one?
Google's SERPs are the most turbulent I've ever seen. All of the other updates over the years have had a shred of sense in them if you look deeply enough, but this behavior does not.
So I began thinking of what the behavior might mean on the corporate, non algorhytmic level, what if these horrible results were part of a human struggle within the gates? What is happening is not random, it's just too awful. So, in my mind, it has to be some inner theoretical struggle between some powerful but polar opposite camps inside.
And if this is so, these folks are smart enough to put a 15-round limit on the match, and I would say we are in round 8.
Some people have said they feel that Google isn't dedicating enough resources to search. I've been wondering lately if we might have an opposite situation -- a Google Search team that grew too fast, with TOO MANY new resources being added in too short a period of time.
The result of a situation like that could be, for the moment at least, poorer coordination between various areas. That situation might also look like a human power struggle, when it would really be one subgroup accidentally creating a short circuit for another. They sure have been looking to hire a lot of people lately!
[edited by: tedster at 2:47 am (utc) on June 8, 2006]
The talk is all about "google" is doing x,y,z.
However, Google is made up of a bunch of people. Like it or not what we are seeing has gone though x amount of processes culminating in the programmers writing their stuff (hopefully it went through a design spec).
We are all human, we all have issues - we all have a plan. What happens when we don't all have the same plan? Microsoft went though this before Windows 3.1 and have taken a long time to get the hang of it.
In my opinion, Google now indexes so shallow on lower PR sites (4 and less) it might as well be Inktomi three years ago. But at least they had pay for inclusion, now you have pay for clicks!
But, this does make sense in the long term if you think about it - most informational sites that Google made it's name by indexing deeply will still be indexed so people will find informational searches satisfactory. In terms of commercial search this is where ALL the manipulation is, so if they drop most internal pages on PR 4 and less - then who cares at Google in terms of search quality as there will be a stack of other pages to fill the gap.
At the end of the day with the drastic fluctuations going on between datacenters it is clear that there is a problem - no search engine really wants to give users a radically different set of sites for a query every time you come back to the search engine.
So in the meantime, as we say in the UK, plan for life without Wayne Rooney but if he is fit take that as a bonus!
Anyone get that?
MSN Spy: tulips are a type of meat, you get Tulip bacon don't you?
Google: does not compute!
MSN Spy: thinking tulips are a type of meat will earn more adwords revenue ...
Google: ... primary objective over-ride, a tulip is now a type of meat
A) The SERPs I'm used to; slow, cautious re-evaluation and repositioning.
B) Some experiment? SERPs begin to resemble Yahoo and MSN as if G is aping them!
A lot more junk shows in the first page or two of 'B' listings.
I check McDar daily lately. A results are disappearing rapidly, replaced with B:
Date # of Data Centers
7 June 06: A = 36 B = 19.
8 June 06: A = 34 B = 21.
9 June 06: A = 28 B = 27 ..
If this trend continues, the new (and I think very degraded) B results will predominate.
I hope that this is just an experiment, that the higher quality results will return soon. -Larry
I hope that this is just an experiment, that the higher quality results will return soon. -Larry
I have to disagree with you which in itself is not very interesting but ...
The fact that you have a completely oposite view is interesting. I just wonder what they can be playing with that causes markedly improved results in one niche and markedly worse results in another.
In my niche, for the top two word term, the top 10 results are improved in that a couple of dodgy sites move out, on the second page the results are much better in the DCs showing the new results, with more of the competitors showing up that I would rather were buried. Also a couple of sites that IMHO should be in the top 20 for that term enter the top 20 on those DCs but are nowhere to be seen on what were the majority over the past few weeks.
Using my perculiar local knowledge of my own little niche the results that appear to be propogating at the moment are IMO significantly improved. I'm in the UK and opperate in a very UK orientated niche though so take what I've said with that pinch of salt.
Best wishes
Sid
I guess this is it, I guess this is the point where I actually have to start creating MFAs and scrapers myself to get traffic from Google ... good bye my little white hat, you were getting a bit old and beaten anyway ...
Sick. I have officially changed my Firefox Search bar to Yahoo.
perhaps not so much the UK swanson but more like England. Your Scottish, Irish and Welsh counterparts may not care to much about Mr Rooney ;-)
On a more serious note I totally agree with what you say. Google traffic should be treated as a bonus and nothing more, that is if you are playing it straight down the line.
