Google Updates and SERP Changes - January 2010

[northweb]

< continued from [webmasterworld.com...] and [webmasterworld.com...] >

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the SERPs were different in the past few days for sure.
changed mid day today.

[tedster]

Google tweaks in minor ways all the time - pretty much every day.

[bobothecat]

"Google tweaks in minor ways all the time - pretty much every day."

I thought most of us did the same thing. :)

[walkman]

I got super heavy spidering today. Every single page must have been been pulled if I judge by the Googlebot visits.

[cangoou]

I got super heavy spidering today. Every single page must have been been pulled if I judge by the Googlebot visits.

About time, I still have a blog from begining of decemeber not shown in the index.

[johnnie]

Hmm.. A roll-back? I'm seeing some positions reverting to earlier stages, along with meta descriptions and titles.

[kodox]

i still like the old google.....

[superclown2]

All the sites of mine that I've checked are back where they were in mid-December.

[aristotle]

I'm wondering if Google has encountered some unexpected problems with the Caffeine rollout, causing a delay.

[walkman]

I vote for rollback, big time. While new pages are being shown in SERPS new links are not being credited, at least for me. I added a new feature and have gotten plenty of new links in the past 2 months, that the 'update flux' recognized with increased traffic, but now nothing.

[johnnie]

Hmmm... Things seem to have resolved. But only partly; for my main term I's seeing 'fresh' results again.

One of my newer pages however has dropped back to the position it had just after it was indexed.

I would vote for a roll-back on link profiles.

[levo]

I think rankings on [209.85.225.103...] also changed?

[caribguy]

seeing 'fresh' results again

Same here. A page containing a unique term that was published less than 24 hours ago is showing results for the main site and 2 somewhat obscure blogs that publish the site's RSS feed.

All three also show indented results for the term...

[johnnie]

Hmm... Now things have reverted again. Is G having the hiccups?

[dusky]

All what I can make out of it is the traditional G* dance taking place now BUT with the Caf SERPs included this time.

[pp46]

On one of my sites I very slightly modified the <title> 4/5 days ago and now the old one is showing up in the serps again!

For the same key phrase the site has been bouncing around from 1 to 90 during the last weeks its now at 3.

I try to do what I normaly do : IE Nothing and wait but this time I am getting upset here!

Why can we not have some sort of stabilty please M G !

[crobb305]

Is it normal for redirected URLs to your primary domain to contain the same backlink profile as the primary (e.g., you may redirect .org to .com)? I have never noticed this before, yet I am seeing it not only on my own redirected URLs, but also for malicious hotlink URLs that I do not own.

[johnnie]

If this is a Google dance, then there must be some pretty wild music playing!

[dusky]

If this is a Google dance, then there must be some pretty wild music playing!

Yes, they are all also on Caffeine which is worse now!

[dusky]

This must be hurting a lot of sites and benefiting many others too!

[pp46]

If they are to call the updates by drug names I would prefer something like valium or something to slow them down...

[levo]

Just started seeing shuffled-Caffeine-sandbox-like results on all datacenter IPs, but not yet on google.com

[66.249.89.99...]
[72.14.203.100...]
[216.239.59.100...]

Are these new-old-serps or new-caffeine-serps?

[Slick_SEO]

Google has been De-caffeinated. ;)

[walkman]

Something has happened, and to me nothing but 'didn't work as planned' makes sense. We're almost 1 month after the 'holidays' and 6 months after caffeine was removed from public beta.

[dertyfern]

Thing are def all over the place. I'm seeing old pages/copy on some sites I follow and on another site most pages are out of the index.

[dickbaker]

Levo, there's one key phrase I've been following through all this. On [209.85.225.103...] I've been #7 for this phrase. On the datacenters you mention, I've moved down to #9 or 10.

Oh well.

[levo]

Before Jan 18:
Caffeine Sandbox #5
Google.com and other IPs #23

After Jan 18
Caffeine Sandbox #2
Google.com #14

Today
All datacanter IPs #2 (using a serp checker software and checking directly)
Caffeine Sandbox #2
Google.com #14 (including mobile and aol search)

I was using a RDC from WDC, but just tested from Seattle and Dallas. Using IE and Firefox, never logged-in, and cookies disabled.

[Slick_SEO]

Something has happened, and to me nothing but 'didn't work as planned' makes sense. We're almost 1 month after the 'holidays' and 6 months after caffeine was removed from public beta.

I agree...

Thing are def all over the place. I'm seeing old pages/copy on some sites I follow and on another site most pages are out of the index.

..completely

Everything is so F----- up, i'm scared to make any major changes because by the time it's indexed and I see a result, I won't really even know what caused it.. Additionally, January is a nice month to compare with last years stats, and now everything is f-----. Kind of upsetting.. I'm sure 99% of the problems are with live search and figuring out how things are going to be indexed, not to mention everything that's previously indexed has to remain somehow.

Google is fine, they will always be #1 (unless they keep this up) and I don't see why they cant make an official announcement about whats going on here....

Maybe they are trying to ruin SEO for good so we're all forced to use nothing but adwords. :(

[JoeSinkwitz]

Another major issue; Google is having trouble with some older WP installs -- I know of more than a handful of unrelated older WP blogs that have been deindexed w/ clean WMT reports.

[BillyS]

We just saw a huge surge in traffic (2.5x normal) between 1:00 and 3:30 Eastern time. This is not noise, it was very real. I will be able to tell tomorrow where the traffic came from based on Analytics. Anyone else see this today? Unless we were on the news or something, a SE tweaked something, but only for that timeframe.

[BillyS]

Okay, sorry. False alarm. Analytics just update and it was from Yahoo, not Google.