Forum Moderators: Robert Charlton & goodroi
Any fool can slap their favorite keywords into the navigation, and millions do, and it doesn't work for them.
It depends whether you are talking money (competitive) keywords or just made up words / uncompetitive keywords. I agree with santapaws regarding the unique or made up words - you can be ranking in no time just by slapping them in the nav, title, h1, url, etc.
But... when it comes to the money making terms the theory still applies regarding the keyword in navigation but you also need an array of other SEO factors thrown in on top, i.e. high PR, matured inbound links preferably consisting of similar keyword anchor text as the phrases you’re targeting and for those links to be coming from similar themed sites, etc.
What I'm afraid *might* be happening with this update is that due to Google’s new more efficient file structure they are now digging deeper, scraping the very bottom of the internet barrel which is churning up lots of low quality pages (and in turn many more links) that once had to be disregarded.
So a site that has e.g. 3000 poor quality inbound links pointing to it is benefiting much more than a site with only 75 high quality links, which to me seems like Google has shot itself in the foot.
[edited by: tedster at 4:07 pm (utc) on Nov. 1, 2009]
Remember his #1 top priority is combating spam keeping us lot happy is way down on his priority list.
Cheers
Sid
The overall picture seems to be one of the back-end programming not being consistent - is something new being rolled out?At any rate, is anyone else seeing some kind of short term strangeness?
I really do hate repeating myself. ;)
But I've been documenting this since August now
The infrastructure (NOT the SANDBOX datasets) looked like it was getting COMPLETELY rolled in, and then poof, it would get rolled back.
I've said repeatedly, it was obvious (to me, if no one else) they were having problems getting it completely meshed in the back end.
THAT SAID <start MC to whitenight to forum translation now>
these backend problems are why Goog is waiting until after the holidays to fully "announce" Caffeine.
Not because of some altruistic purpose to "save webmasters stress."
That has NEVER been a consideration for the pre-holiday period.
On the contrary, the last 2 years, Goog has embarrassed themselves with their traditional pre-holiday roll ins.
There's no way they wanted to screw up the holidays SERPs AGAIN with the added pressure of incorporating Caffeine with all the self-generated press over it.
I can 100% confirm the SuperMegaFast new indexing and ranking. Its been happening since around 10/10/09, when it was possible to get pages into the top 3 within 15 minutes. I noticed unclustering about the same time, but it's hard to replicate.I assumed it was Caffeine infrastructure at work, but MC has confirmed that there is currently no DC with Caffeine, and no large roll-out until the new year.
Got caught in the PR campaign, eh?
Again, all MC's comments have pointed to 2 separate aspects of Caffeine.
There's the INFRASTRUCTURE (which is already in place) which explains the "super fast indexing".
Again, no offense to those just noticing it, but that super fast indexing has been going on and off since the "Long National Nightmare Update"
Again, NOTHING spectacular happened on or around 10/10 to explain such a radical shift in indexing. So one has to follow the logical steps back to when something DID happen.
MC's comments that the Sandbox datasets would NOT be noticeably different from dev.goog to single DC to full rollout CLEARLY point to that being a DATASET rollout....
...Just like EVERY dataset rollout that's happened since Big Daddy.
MC has already hinted VERY STRONGLY that the INFRASTRUCTURE is already in place (if still buggy, while they have problems fully implementing it with the old infrastructure)
---------------------------
For those who think I'm clueless about this...
Ask yourselves, why was there NO comment from the plex about what the heck happened over the summer.
NONE!
It wasn't given an "update title".
It was NEVER explained.
It lasted LONGER than Big Daddy, and yet there was no official explanation for what was occurring behind the scenes?!
Not a month later, they are announcing "Caffeine" and
for the first time giving webmasters access to a completely separate datacenter to analyze it?
I suppose i'll need to wait until January to be proven correct, but ask yourselves.
Why would MC say that
"I don't expect the results to change much from the developer preview to the data center, nor from the data center to the full roll out." [webmasterworld.com]
IF
Caffeine is such a "radical" shift from what's currently in place?
Wouldn't one EXPECT a radical change in SERPs as well?
Why would he say
"To most of the world, they probably wouldn’t be able to tell the difference. Maybe just a few search experts can really tell any kind of a difference at all.
about an infrastruture that won't be "in place" for another 6 months (from the time of the interview to NEXT Jan)
if he has NO clue about what it's going to look like or how it will affect the SERPs?!
Got caught in the PR campaign, eh?
So, Matt, anyone, got a better explanation than Whitenight that caffeine infrastructure is live, but datasets are held back?
Whitenight has fallen into the trap of not only developing hypotheses but also testing these and proving what has stepped up from hypothesis to almost become a theory.
Meanwhile Matt Cutts was summoned up like some deity by mere mention of the words "Googleguy" and "Matt Cutts Blog" only to hint that all bets are off and the real project is now almost ready for perhaps rolling out to one data centre some time in the future, if it hasn't already been rolled out.
The puppy almost catches it's tail and we all go back to spending $1000s on Adwords.
Everyone at Googleplex fatigued by their labours mount their skate boards and go off for a well earned lunch break, they plan to return in early December.
I hanker for the days before the Florida update when you could sit on the castle walls of the #1 slot and chuck rocks down and the rabble trying to knock you off.
Best wishes
Sid
;-)
Meanwhile Matt Cutts was summoned up like some deity by mere mention of the words "Googleguy" and "Matt Cutts Blog"
Summoning MC is harder than you think.;)
Chicken bones and chants to the rel=nofollow gods don't work like they used to.
There is some sort of re-engineering that didn't go too well..
Also a couple of newly launched sites just can't rank as others I've worked on used to, by showing a natural pattern of getting links. Not even for "example site"...
Another observation is that despite the ultra fast indexing, a site which recently changed architecture etc with no SEO considerations in place, the changes happening take real effect much later, despite being indexed in minutes... Traffic is increased by 30-100 visits a day on a week-by-week basis.
So very slow to catch-up I reckon...
Seems to me there are only some keywords affected:
Keep following this line of thought/observations, cangoou. ;)
it leads to some important discoveries.
Well done!
Matt has limited tools and one of these is what he says to the public. I believe Matt is doing a great job!
The point that he WORKS for GOOGLE, not US, is more than enough reason to question everything he says.
I(we) don't hold it against him personally, but when he's speaking on Goog's behalf, then he's SPEAKING ON GOOG'S BEHALF.
It's not in his or Goog's self interest to HELP us.
For many years(and even still), many webmasters have believed everything Goog said (via MC) unquestionably like some holy pontiff.
The ONE thing that NEVER lies is the SERPs themselves.
THAT'S who everyone should be "listening" to, not the employee of a competing website,
no matter how amicable he is, or how well he does he job...
Not. :)
These maps have not changed in months, so I resubmitted them ... and they're fine .... odd that it would come up like that and I've seen it happen before as well.
Our site is very old ... established in 1997 and on a very fast server, we were also one of the first to start using sitemaps. All whitehat, no intentional spammy links, but there's always scrapers and their sites linking to us... it's a constant battle.
If this is an update... maybe it should be called "Flux"
This is just like Big Daddy all over again. The classic art of mis-direction.
Oh no ... the 'Flux'.
It is an important day for this site as it coincides with the release of something today. I do not recall ever seeing this before.
Thus, MC - or previously GG
No difference, just given name vs forum persona.
Remember what made MCs career was the way he, as GG, sorted out the Florida fiasco.
What do you mean by GG "sorted out" the florida update?
What do you mean by GG "sorted out" the florida update?
He gave us a way to communicate directly with him, read our cases to try and understand what was causing the problems and then sat with the engineers until they sorted it. My site was one of the ones they specifically looked as an object lesson.
I recon that his actions in this helped his career and richly deserved it is.
Cheers
Sid
Is there anything we can learn from that behavior?
