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]

[brinked]

my guess is they have finished testing. This does not mean they are ready to roll it out right away. This can simply mean they are done accepting user feedback about caffeine, are aware what needs to be fixed/adjusted and are making any fine adjustments they need to make before they fully release it.

We could see it live this week, maybe not, only time will tell.

[BillyS]

Until someone starts consistently using the words (with understanding)
"INFRASTRUCTURE"
and
"DATASETS"
I just assume they are, at best, confused, and at worst, clueless, about what they are or are not seeing in terms of Caff.

I'm sorry; I was using facts as stated by Google employees. I'm certainly not confused and I'm not speculating as are others in this thread. You don’t need to repeat posts on my account, I’ve read enough and my memory is very good.

There have been some very poor observations in this thread, which is unfortunate for lurkers. I’ve got a better name for this update than Caffeine – I’d call it update Peek-a-Boo. ;)

[John_Lee]

look guys, i'm quite new in the town, i know nothing about what caffeine is? it's like big deal :D
but past 3 days Google has viewed my blog 3 times.

--Google (66.249.71.102)---14th February 2010---Apo, Armed Forces Europ, United States

--Google from California

--and google again from idk

but my PR is still the same :(

[brinked]

John, this has nothing to do with the caffeine update.

You really shouldnt worry about your PR. Focus on the quality of your site and your rankings.

[Shaddows]

Just a point of clarity on "speed of search".

The speed changes are mostly (completely?) backend infrastructure changes, reducing batch-processing and moving to some sort of realtime data integration.

So Big Daddy crawls, indexes, ranks, returns on request.

There is a delay between crawl-index and also index-rank.

Ranking is interative, with new data arriving from the previous iteration (PR and PR-like data), as well as fresh spider/index data. It is done in batches. Iteratively. In batches.

Caff crawls, indexes+ranks, returns on query.

There is reduced (eliminated?) delay between indexing and ranking. It is not batched, it happens on-the-fly. There is an iterative element, in that some ranking factors are ultimately self-referential, but it is not run iteratively.

Now, my understanding is that the Caff infrastructure is not compatible with BD datasets and algo, simply because it doesn't follow the same ranking routine.

Originally, it was meant to mimic the latest Big Daddy set. Hence the Long (inter)National Nightmare so that BD looked Caffy. And the Caff alpha set, where people were invited to comment on differences with BD. Trying to marry these failed.

Now they just want to eliminate the major problems, so they rolled back BD to some semblence of stability, and tested some Caff sets to limited audiences, presumably those who have very well understood and predicatable behaviours.

As to how you know any large algo change has occurred, you monitor trends over large (privately acquired) datasets.

And Matt et al are concerned about managing Google's image and corporate requirements, not about communicating clear, concise, timely and accurate information to the group most likely to subvert both image and aims. Just like I am about my business, and you are about yours. Sometimes, these converge, but mostly not.

[helpnow]

Brilliant post, Shaddows! Bang on! Thank you for the effort!

[mcskoufis]

Nice one Brinked and Shaddows... When you try to keep up with 5-6 dev projects and another 7-10 seo projects is hard to follow all what is mentioned in these particular threads, so maybe sometimes miss the point... Apologies to the rest of the folks for that... (that is if the comments on people posting clueless clues goes to me)...

[whitenight]

As always. Thank you Shaddows

(As if you even need them now.... +3 whitenight-info passes, but -1 pass for not "translating" in Dec. as requested) ;)

the Long (inter)National Nightmare

funny! :) I guess I should be more internationally "sensitive", eh?

tested some Caff sets to limited audiences, presumably those who have very well understood and predicatable behaviours.

Line of the month.
More people need to focus on this aspect of the Caff testing.

[caribguy]

targeting US Military servers who are the 1st main group I've identified that's receiving a disproportionate amount of Caff. Dataset results

presumably those who have very well understood and predicatable behaviours

Hard to get strata that are more homogeneous than that...

WN already noted this, apparently I needed Shaddows to spoonfeed that info once again to 'get' it....

Threads like this one are pure gold, thanks!

[zeus]

wow, just made a typical search and the results where really bad, no.1 was a site that looks like it was done in 1999, with gif flags, bad colors and content which I search for was also not interesting for me on that site. no.3 had not much to do with my search, i really thought that I had misspelled something, its a LONG time since i have seen bad results on google.

[kd454]

wow, just made a typical search and the results where really bad, no.1

Yeah I am seeing the same thing, seeing some really old SERP results on some searches.

[Cindywho]

I'm noticing major fluctuations across a lot of SERPs I'm monitoring. Seems something happened to Google's algo on 30th January, and then again a week later (around the 7th February). Anyone notice anything similar?

I noticed major changes too withing the same time period you mentioned too. 95% of my Google traffic dropped for good keywords.

[crobb305]

Yikes. I agree with Zeus. Seems like a flash back to years past. Very old pages in the results and some old cache dates showing also. I am also seeing it take up to 5 or 6 days for a "fresh" cache to appear. For instance, I see some pages that got a cache update today, but the cache dates are from February 3 through 6. I have never seen that before (or maybe I just didn't pay attention). It seems like a fresh cache would be just that - fresh. It shouldn't take 5 or 6 days to go from crawled/cached to appearing in the serps.

[cangoou]

So as I read the posts I guess this are not the SERPs we are going to see for long? I don't mean the normal fluctuations, for me there are big differences in rankings without any reason.

[kevsta]

Is anyone else seeing what appears to be lightning fast rankings changes in reaction to site changes made, but the new page then doesnt appear in the cache for up to a week / 10 days?

ie the new rankings (still on old page) precede the new cached page appearing in the serp?

I(would swear I've)observed this on 3 different sites recently and assumed its to do with this new lightning fast infrastructure.

[crobb305]

kevsta,

Read my comment 3 posts up, about the slow cache appearance.

[RishiRich]

Well Guys I Said Before "Google Caffeine Is Expected To Be Pushed Live By 20th Feb" This was based on my own calculations and my own predictions.

Today i received a 502 Server Error when i tried to open Google.co.uk and Google.com

I may be wrong on this "But i think Caffeine is being pushed live now"

Rishi

[seolearner]

All Google services were down at that time. So it's not just google.com, even gmail and analytics were also down. Google don't have to take Analytics and gmail down to push Caffeine on Google search.

[drall]

I know something big is on the way when adsense bot exceeds gbot.

Always does that on my biggest site right before a firestorm ignites on the boards. jagger, big daddy, florida yadyadayada.

[dertyfern]

No Google services down in the UK. Odd serps though, jumping around quite a bit.

[ChrisHamilton]

UK serps look absolutely rediculous to me at the moment

[basicus]

I monitor Scandinavian serps, polish, uk and us ones here from Spain where I sit. I also check the serps regularly from New Jersey and Poland. It has been a few very quiet days for the 1000+ phrases I monitor. By quiet I mean they look frozen. Something is on it's way Chris. I feel it as well.

[basicus]

Ah. I was referring to drall's last post about adsense bot.

[cangoou]

A lot of domains which vanished from Top20 are coming back in these minutes - you can almost see them climbing.

[Lorel]

My traffic has risen by 20% for Jan and likely to be more for Feb (it was a steady 20% less all last year so this is a noticeable change). And I'm too busy to add more pages to my own site and haven't touched it for months. The same pages/keywords are ranking on top - just more traffic to them and I get about 95% traffic from Google. Several of my clients have seen the same rise in traffic. I can see nothing that is causing this rise other than it must be Caffeine. I live in the PNW area of US.

[mikeclover]

My site dropped first of February for competitive keywords, roughly -30. I need some mojo, here in Texas. I hope caffeine will do something posetive... Yee Haw.....

[roadkillu]

Good Gosh, the SERPs seems *stuck* right now with an old crusty dataset. Can't seem to get any movement with some significant link builds. It's eerie out right now.

[brinked]

I agree. There has been little to no movement the last few days. Could mean nothing.

[walkman]

Dead air for the past 2-3 days, the serps seem old. Time to add some caffeine

[rise2it]

Sigh.

It's the weekend...go outside and do something...go see some friends or family.

This update may happen tomorrow, or two months from now. It may be a major shakeup, and it may end up being really minor to your niche.

When it happens, it happens...and if it affects you, you'll know.