Google Updates and SERP Changes - March 2010

[drall]

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

I have been watching all of my competitors which pretty much live off of large amounts of longtail traffic loose overall traffic the past 4-6 weeks and that includes us.

I dont know whats going on but for big sites in my section of the web site page count has been dropping at a constant decay and new content is coming in very very slowly and not nearly enough to counter the drops.

Overall traffic seems down about 8-10% for all of us and those drops are graphing perfectly to the drops in page counts since mid January.

At the same time the crawl graph in WMT and my local stats package show a flatline since mid Jan with no deep crawls and about a tenth of usual crawl activity.

All of this for us and our competitors started mid January
1. dropoff of the googlebot deepcrawl with a flatline stable crawl at a much lower rate.
2. daily reductions in pagecount across a dozen sites by exact same percentages
3. similar gradual traffic declines matching page count falls
4. uber slow new page caching and ranking

When I see this happening to not only us but many pr6-8 sites in my sector it gives me comfort to see that it isnt only us but also concern because it isnt only us.

Just going to keep chugging along, not much you can do but sit back and watch this stuff unfold.

[edited by: tedster at 5:49 pm (utc) on Mar 1, 2010]
[edit reason] split from earlier thread [/edit]

[seolearner]

And here we go again... Yet more power to the domain name. My site is now outranked by a site that offers less content and an overall less satisfactory user experience. The only thing they have going for them is their domain. How frustrating.

True, for me also the same thing. Out of first 10 results, 6 are with domain name. Now G. is making harder to fight with domain names. G. give so much power to domain names that people with domain name don't bother to delete "Hello World!" post.

[textex]

We don't even know if this is Caffeine. And if it is...likely is not the final results.

At its core, Caffeine is not an algorithm update or a ranking change. But it is a very huge change in how Google collects, stores, and processes information.

While this may result in some visible ranking changes on Caffeine, ranking changes are not the point and Google hopes to keep ranking changes caused by the new infrastructure to a minimum.

[vstevens]

Hello,

Anytime I click on any of the supposed caffeine data sets, cG always refers me back to my local data set which is 74.125.47.125 ?

Any help on this would be greatly appreciated so I could have a look at the caffeine results (along with millions of others!). Thank you in advance.

[Dave_Hybrid]

Use a proxy.

[vstevens]

Thanks Dave,

'use a proxy'

I am using the Firefox proxy, but same thing keeps happening?

[trakkerguy]

vstevens - you need to add the query string, like this:



74.125.95.132/search?q=widgets

[vstevens]

Great, thanks again trakkerguy and Dave.

[trakkerguy]

While this may result in some visible ranking changes on Caffeine, ranking changes are not the point and Google hopes to keep ranking changes caused by the new infrastructure to a minimum.

Yep, that's what they say. I'm still seeing some real crap results for some serps I watch.

[Kelowna]

ranking changes are not the point and Google hopes...

I hope for a lot of things too but these results are quite a bit different for sure. Maybe that is why they are taking soooo long to roll out the new caffeine.

[Shaddows]

"Google hopes..."

Yes, as I posted previously, they tried very hard to make BD and Caff spit out the same results, but failed.

Ultimately, what Google wants is irrelevant. Different caff datasets are "in the wild" so can be studied.

I really wish they would just roll it out. Not because of any ranking differences, but because it's really hard to do any testing or indepth analysis on something that keeps disappearing- and is frankly variable when it does appear.

And if it is...likely is not the final results.

Sure, and mainly because there is no such thing as "final results".

Well, until they discover their One Answer. But they were, all of them, deceived

[Kelowna]

Looks like caffeine on two ip's now and other ip's are starting to get stirred up as well with ever changing results. I see caffeine on these two...

209.85.225.103 and 74.125.95.132

[whitenight]

Caff was also on the 66.102.7.xx's
for about 4 hours last night.

Results tend to appear and disappear around predictable cycles, so if one is intent of discovering them, one can.

_{(no, i'm not going to tell anyone the cycle. its better for one to discover it themselves, mainly so i can retire from the updates :) )}

Sure, and mainly because there is no such thing as "final results".

:) Thank you.


------------------


As said 9 months ago and every month since, if one is "hoping" for the datasets seen now to be radically different when its "launched",
one might find themselves hopelessly disappointed and confused in "deciphering" the new changes.

And yes, the current Caff datasets have passed all my "up to date" tests recently, so there's very few "Ghost Datasets" that need to be added.

[gford]

The caffeine results seem to "fix" the "broken" results I am finding on their other DCs which is encouraging for me as I have spent waaaay too many hours the last 3 days on this. So patience is my new course of action and not to go crazy on authority links just yet..

[edited by: eelixduppy at 9:59 pm (utc) on Mar 11, 2010]

[textex]

By it I mean what Caffeine is all about. I am in by no means saying I do. But Google has said it is not about an algo change but instead about how the data is stored, indexed and results extracted. It is about when and how, in the message path, the algorithm is applied.

Again, we don't even know if those DCs are Caffeine and even if it is...NO ONE can say that the end result will look anything like it is now. Caffeine may already be out and that DC everyone is freaking out about is merely a DC google is doing some sort of other testing on.

[edited by: eelixduppy at 10:00 pm (utc) on Mar 11, 2010]

[arizonadude]

Results tend to appear and disappear around predictable cycles, so if one is intent of discovering them, one can.

I am seeing this as well and during those cycles, I'm also seeing some of the sites that were gone on the comcast site now included again.

[cangoou]

The strange thing is the cycles are clearly visible, but seem to be a bit different every time. So it's hard to tell what each cycle represents or what is ranked better in one cycle and what in another - not even telling which factors will be weighted high when everything will be folded together. I agree with Shaddows that testing and taking action is difficult now - and has been since the whole chaos started.

[whitenight]

Yes, I've got live Caff datasets on google.com in my neck of the woods. :)

(at the exact time of this post, since ill have to clarify later)

Come on, Gorg. Let's end this long INTERnational nightmare.

[edited by: eelixduppy at 10:18 pm (utc) on Mar 11, 2010]

[roadkillu]

Ditto whitenight. I'm seeing caff dataset on google.com as well (Seattle, WA)

[trakkerguy]

Yes, seeing caffeine here in california last 15 minutes on google.com.

Still some very crappy sites in top 10 for some serps I track.

[edited by: eelixduppy at 10:19 pm (utc) on Mar 11, 2010]

[whitenight]

Ok, so we're getting Live Caff on google.com from the west coast.

My proxies say it's all over the US , but i'd like some reports from the East Coast usual suspects (cough, barretire?) :)

[whitenight]

we got the trifecta, people.

Live Caff Datasets on AOL.com too!

"All bets on brinked's prediction pay 10 to 1."

Now placing bets on the rollout to all DCs.

I'm going Monday morn 2am PST....

[louieramos]

OK at the moment I can see caffeine here:

66.102.7.18
74.125.95.132
209.85.225.103

Can someone add more IP where they can see Caff? Normally these results only stays for like 4-5 hours, but with the 74.125.95.132 its been more than 24 hours.. Maybe Google is now slowly rolling it out?!

[internetheaven]

Many of the newbies think that just b/c someone has 1000+ posts that they must surely know what they are talking about.

... I have almost 2000 ... no-one listens to me ;)

A lot of newbies believe everything they read. I don't think believing a 1000+ poster is going to make much difference to their downfall.

Most forums posters talk/type with total authority no matter what they are talking about. One piece of advice I will give is that newbies should remember that most people in WW threads (whilst often genuinely helpful) are still quite likely their competitors.

[edited by: internetheaven at 11:07 pm (utc) on Mar 11, 2010]

[whitenight]

lol i listen, internetheaven :)

_{and i was talking the same way when i had 5 posts so go figure. :)}

[internetheaven]

lol i listen, internetheaven :)

and i was talking the same way when i had 5 posts so go figure. :)

Aye, I think it was you he was talking about! ;)

[whitenight]

haha u missed the drama already. =P edited away.

--------------------------------

Live Caff now gone from AOL and Google.com, but one might want to review the aforementioned "Halloween Thread" as it appears this rollout will resemble that one, with only slight differences and soon at that.

[johnnie]

Wow.. I've seen three sets of SERPs so far today. Guess they're turning some dials at the 'plex.

[louieramos]

Lets stick to the topic guys, anymore different IP?

[brinked]

I see caff on comcast but not on AOL at the moment.

I am going to predict tuesday 2am EST for a full rollout of caff.

I am from the east coast, no caffeine here still

[trakkerguy]

I'm still seeing caffeine results on google.com from calif. IP 74.125.19.106