Google Updates and SERP Changes - February 2010

[mikeclover]

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

I have noticed a big increase in my Blog Traffic, but my keyword traffic is down. I am going to assume that Caffeine has not hit all data servers yet ? I would assume this because my contacts in Chicago, Iowa all say my keyword rankings are -30. My assoicates on the west coast say I am on the first page. Here in Texas I am on the first page. The wierd thing is my traffic is not really down. hmmmmmm

[edited by: tedster at 5:47 pm (utc) on Feb. 1, 2010]

[walkman]

Crawl rate is amazing for me, about 80% of the pages get visited daily (so if I have 1000 pages I get 800 gbot visits)

[RishiRich]

I have no idea what is going on at Google....My Crawl rate has really been terrible since mid January..No Deep Crawl.......

[drall]

Really low crawl rate here to on our biggest property, down from around 100,000 hits a week to 6000 or so. Been like this for about 2 weeks.

[RishiRich]

Here Are Some Of My Personal Observations:

1. Caffeine Is Not Live Officially. It is Still Being Tested By People At Google.

2. Google guys are keeping silent about Caffeine roll out because they failed to make it live "After Holidays" (1st Week Of Jan).

3. As Described By Many People "Their Results On Google Flunctuate A Lot". To my knowledge this is only because Caffeine is being tested and will only give you a very little idea of what the actual results may be when the actual version rolls out. The results may be entirely different when the actual version rolls out.

4. Google Gave us all a sneak peak at Caffeine which they have never done before because they wanted us all to be prepared for the massive change. By massive i mean really massive. The results that were shown on Caffeine were not actual results that will be shown when the caffeine rolls out. They were just for the heck of it.

5. Google's Deep Crawl Is Being Delayed Until The Time Caffeine Is Ready To Roll Out. My Personal Guess.

6. Few Things To Watch Out For Will Be

a. Page Load Time
b. Duplicate Content
c. Reciprocal Links
d. Deprecated Importance Of Long H1 Tags

Rishi Rich

[BillyS]

RishiRich -

Welcome to WebmasterWorld!

I think you're about 90% correct in everything your saying. What I dont get is where 6d is coming from.

[RishiRich]

Dear Billy...This Is Again My Personal Observance. I have seen this for some sites.

In My Opinion H1 Tags should be small because they are heading tags and not for stuffing all the Keywords. So shorter relevant h1 tags are bound to get more attention than long h1 tags. Also short h1 tags become more important when the keyword that you are reaching out for is very competitive.

Rishi

[RishiRich]

Welcome to WebmasterWorld!

ooops! forgot to say thanks for the warm welcome billy...!

[walkman]

The results that were shown on Caffeine were not actual results that will be shown when the caffeine rolls out.

No offense, but how did you figure this one out?

[tedster]

I think it's a fair assumption. The web will have changed significantly in the many months between the time the original Caffeine sandbox was made public and its eventual launch. The Caffeine infrastructure will be running on a different crawl of the web, and that must change the rankings.

Caffeine is not essentially an algorithm, and certainly not merely a set of data from one crawl. It's an entire back end infrastructure that will support future algos and sets of results.

[RishiRich]

If i was at Google i would be testing lots and lots of variations to see which one is the best from User Point of view.

They are still working and making changes which implies that the results will surely vary because the one shown to the webmasters is certainly not going to be the one that goes live.

The version which was shown to us certainly delivered results faster. If speed was the only criteria Google was eying with Caffeine than they would have hit the nail in the first week of January itself. But they didn't because they are onto something different. They are still testing it.

"The delay in rolling out caffeine is directly proportional to the extent of changes that have been made or are being made as we talk"

Greater The Changes - Greater The Variations In Results.

Trust me on this! The results are surely going to be different.

Rishi

[aristotle]

In my opinion Caffeine doesn't involve any changes in Google's algorithm. The SERPs will probably change, at least slightly, but that would be caused by a change in the set of input data.

[RishiRich]

Dear Aristotle. My Left Part Of The Brain Says "Just Relax It Is Not An Algorithmic Change" But My Logical Right Part Of The Brain Says "Something's Cooking. Expect Variations."

Going by my past experiences i can say that most of the time my Logical Right part Is Right.

[TheMadScientist]

In my opinion Caffeine doesn't involve any changes in Google's algorithm.

Yeah, but changes in the underlying data and the ability to process that data can cause SERP changes even if the algo for processing stays the same. EG If you can process inbound link fluctuations faster and over a greater number of pages at a time the algo doing the processing did not change, but the ranking positions sure might. Big Daddy wasn't an algo change either...

So, I agree with your statement, but think the changes could be more than slight. Maybe not initially, but definitely over a relatively short period of time. IOW the changes may not be noticeable (or highly noticeable) at first, but I think a snap-shot now and in two months (or two months after the full roll out) might tell a different story. (My opinion only, and no WhiteKnight I don't want to argue about this one. LOL. ;)

[basicus]

Finally registered here. Been following this (and the previous one) for some time. Hi guys.

[aristotle]

Mad Scientist
You could be right about major changes. But if so, I suspect that they will mostly affect smaller sites, and take place lower down in the rankings rather than at the top. I would be surprised to see much change in the top 5 or 6 positions for most searches.

[SEOPTI]

Their indexing technology took a step backwards with caffeine, we are back in 1999 again.

[RishiRich]

Expect Caffeine Roll Out Once The Deep Crawl Begins......Fair Assumption!

[whitenight]

WhiteKnight I don't want to argue about this one. LOL. ;)

hehe, i'm honestly, seriously, too tired to debunk recent chicken-bone throwing in this thread
instead of consistent analytical research based on time-tested procedures, and chronicled for the past 7 months.
So no arguing here. ;)
(besides, i truly try not to "rant" on newer posters)

Everyone's entitled to an opinion, right?

Their indexing technology took a step backwards with caffeine, we are back in 1999 again.

lol, that's funny. Actually it seems they reverted back to Windows 98...oops, did i say Windows... i meant Florida 3.0, as it appears Caff was so incompatible with the Big Daddy coding, it was necessary to go back to an older more stable version.

Honestly, Caff is lightening fast WHEN it works properly.

[walkman]

They are still testing it.

...
Trust me on this! The results are surely going to be different.

Ok, 'different' is different from what you implied. Google always changes the algo in one swoop then and then tweaks as it goes live and as it get feedback. You made it seem as Google had gone through all that trouble to put the new results (clearly different) in some DCs, but the final results will be totally different.

I can also guarantee you that the results of 1 hour from now will be different, at least because new sites and pages are indexed. Is that what you meant :)?

And 'trust me' doesn't carry much weight, unless you work for Google in one way or another, no offense.

I too think that Google screwed up in something, maybe the feedback shows bad SERPS or it maybe a hardware /capacity issue. It' one month late already.

Indexing for me is sometimes just seconds away from pinging it, and as far as I can tell, always in the same day

[RishiRich]

Walkman I was composing a big post for this thread that might have really helped many other guys. But i deleted all of it; don't know why but i did it.

Ok, 'different' is different from what you implied. Google always changes the algo in one swoop then and then tweaks as it goes live and as it get feedback. You made it seem as Google had gone through all that trouble to put the new results (clearly different) in some DCs, but the final results will be totally different.

"It was a Feedback Oriented Roll Out and Not The Actual Version. So any one would have guessed that the results are going to be different."

I can also guarantee you that the results of 1 hour from now will be different, at least because new sites and pages are indexed. Is that what you meant :)?

Nope This Is Not What I Meant!

I am a perfectionist i believe in achieving 100 %. My Page Speed Score is 100 and My Yslow grade is A but many of you would have settled for any number below that because many of us do not want to make an Effort thinking "I cannot do it", "It Involves Big Coding Change", "These Changes Are More Than Enough".

Google hints at factors that are of importance because they do not want anyone to be dead sure about any factor that holds importance in their Algorithm.

I am hinting at something above. I hope you will be smart enough to understand what i mean.

"Trust Me" doesn't carry much weight now. But i guess 45 days down the line it will"

Last words of advise:

1. Pay Attention To Your Spellings And Grammar On The Website. It is an important SEO aspect.

I am out of WebmasterWorld

Rishi

[whitenight]

:)

Anyone, Wanna see Caff in action?

Type in recent SNL guest "Crooked Vultures"
(Band's actually "Them Crooked Vultures", but it's easier to see Caff. with the former term.)

[BillyS]

>>I am out of WebmasterWorld
?

I spent most of Friday and Saturday tweaking my YSlow score too. I didn't get to a A, but I managed a C from an E. Google and a CDN is the only thing slowing me down at this point.

[zeus]

hmm if your traffic is down, could maybe be this issue [webmasterworld.com...] ,because I dont see real changes in serps

[mikeclover]

Everyone I know is experiencing major changes in rankings. This is typical during an update with Google. I would chill out for a couple of weeks, and lets see what happens. No one but google knows when caffeine will be completely rolled out. I would assume we will hear something once its done. I personally have seen my site go from the first page to -30, back to the first page and then back to -30. Samething with my competitors. It is obvious that some are being affected and some are not. Time will tell.

[TheMadScientist]

I am a perfectionist i believe in achieving 100 % ...

Last words of advise:

1. Pay Attention To Your Spellings And Grammar On The Website. It is an important SEO aspect.

Thank for dropping by even if only for a few posts RishiRich.

Hope you'll drop by and continue to contribute in the future rather than just reading what others share, because there's usually something new going on and multiple opinions keep up thinking...

What would you and others learn here if no one shared?

[edited by: tedster at 10:28 pm (utc) on Feb 7, 2010]

[crobb305]

I believe the expectations above, that Caffeine will not include any algorithmic changes, is contradictory to what many of us observed during the public view last summer. Lots of people reported that many more pages of their site(s) were beginning to rank well. I personally saw vast improvements on my hopepage rankings and on the rankings of internal pages that had never previously ranked well.

Then, the public review was removed, and the launch of Caffeine was delayed (indefinitely, it seems). Meanwhile, many people here are reporting snail-pace crawl rates. My last deep crawl was January 9 (mearly a month ago!). I am getting 8 to 20 requests from Googlebot a day), which seems more like Googlebot on Xanax than Caffeine. I do see rapid indexing of new posts on blogs, but internet isn't made of only blogs. Many established sites have been around for years, and still provide updated content that needs to be crawled.

[RishiRich]

"One Who Laughs The Last Laughs The Loudest!"

[Petrogold]

Why my site is no more in SERPs?

[TheMadScientist]

"One Who Laughs The Last Laughs The Loudest!"

Well said... Glad you didn't really quit on us. ;)

IMO your point applies to some extent and is site dependent... On 'Twitter Style' sites (possibly forums) IMO you'd expect 'text message' type posts and they'd be 'correct usage' while on an English Lang. website you'd expect perfect grammar, spelling and punctuation to be 'correct' there, while on others there would be an expected percentage of errors based on the average for the whole to be considered 'correct' (much like the spam detection based on phrase predictability and usage), so maybe your post is perfect? (Like I said, you said there was at least one hinted at meaning (or something to that effect) and I thought it called for further review of the entire post.)

More specifically to the topic since we have been asked to return there:
Most of my rankings are static to up, as well as traffic.

Why my site is no more in SERPs?

You'll have to give way more detail and information for any type of meaningful answer other than 'something changed', either on your end or on Google's. Probably best to start another thread and provide some specific details about what's changed to have a discussion about it and try to find some answers.

[basicus]

I have observed that the rankings change very little the last month compared to earlier periods. I track around 800 words or phrases currently. I also see that the crawling rate and indexing rate is not in synch at all anymore.