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]

[arizonadude]

I'm still seeing them live in Arizona.

[TheMadScientist]

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

LMAO... I can't even get my family to listen to me talk about what I do, so I don't think my post count here matters a bit, and I really only post because at least I know I'm saying something someone is reading, mainly because every once in a while tedster takes his golden snippers to one of them. (Of course I only put the parts he snips in to make sure at least someone is still reading, because I know he's going to snip it if he sees it... lol.)

Anyway, whatever infrastructure they're serving today, I hope they serve up some more of it... I'm liking the traffic so far. Haven't been watching rankings too much lately since there's so much changing, but watching traffic almost exclusively over the last 3 weeks has been very interesting since the traffic 'bounces' I've been seeing correspond with the timing of some of the 'something changed' posts here...

[vstevens]

No caff here either, east coast.

[johnnie]

So, are we placing wagers on the final rollout date? ;) Seems c-day is imminent.

[louieramos]

OK some IPs are changing back... looks like the only ones left are

74.125.95.132
209.85.225.103

What are you guys seeing right now?

[barretire]

Wow looks like I missed all the fun. I have not seen the results here on the East Coast. I am also wagering that this will be fully rolled out by let's say 8:00 pm EST Monday..

WhiteKnight Looks like I missed a battle as well. Hope you aren't bruised up to bad LOL.

[louieramos]

Where are you guys getting the idea that it might be rolled out by Monday? This looks like another tests again because out of the 5 IP's showing the caffeine result earlier, only 2 are left.

[trakkerguy]

Yup, I'm not seeing it on google.com anymore, IP 74.125.19.106.

[walkman]

" Yup, I'm not seeing it on google.com anymore, IP 74.125.19.106. "

Right now it's caff

[trakkerguy]

Right. I see what appears to be caffeine on 74.125.19.106.
Also, for google.com I'm now hitting 74.125.19.99 and it also appears to be caffeine.

[MLHmptn]

Seeing it live on comcast and aol now again too. Drop the bomb G! Let's get this 180 day spike of caffeine over with, I need sleep!

[roadkillu]

Yep, seeing Caff again in Seattle on google.com....when will it just stick already?

[johnnie]

209.85.225.103 is bouncing on and off. Make up your mind already, google!

[waynne]

Ah it's just like the old pre Florida Google dance days!

[kd454]

I woke up this A.M in a dream that caff was rolled out already, am I am sick man?

209.85.225.103 is where I have been seeing it more on than off.

[whitenight]

I woke up this A.M in a dream that caff was rolled out already, am I am sick man?

Should have checked the time and date in the dream, so you could win the bet!

_{gambling views expressed in this thread do not reflect the views of the boards or its management... small legal disclaimer so we can have fun with this. :)}

[internetheaven]

Is anyone else in the UK reading this thread and thinking -- "what's all the fuss?"

Caffeine, whilst viewable, is not really impacting search results for UK searches as far as I can see. Is it really that big a change for the rest of the world or are you just excited because you miss the Google Dance threads and this is something to talk about? ;)

The twitter results and inclusion of Google Bookmarks are huge changes for me personally ... and they're awful too!

[vstevens]

So we know what we are looking for, especially since those of us on the east coast haven't really seen caff. yet, could we do this?

Take a random search term say.. baseball or whatever and could one who sees caff list the top 5 results?

[whitenight]

vstevens,

Caff has consistently been on [209.85.225.103...] for about a week and half now.

Pick 10-20 terms, related to ur site and random and take screenshots.
Analyze the difference between that dataset and say [64.233.179.xx...] datasets, so that you have a control to compare what others are seeing when they report Caff is live at xx etc.
See?

Is anyone else in the UK reading this thread and thinking -- "what's all the fuss?"

2 different points here.

** Like any "update" some are affected positively, some negatively, many are "ho-hum" or "what's the fuss"
depending on their movements with SERPs.

** i have a feeling non-US results are not going to feel the full effect of Caff until Gorg gets the US results stabilized which has been a "journey" in itself.

[kd454]

Caffeine, whilst viewable, is not really impacting search results for UK searches as far as I can see. Is it really that big a change for the rest of the world or are you just excited because you miss the Google Dance threads and this is something to talk about? ;)

Yes there are some BIG serps changes in caff that have a very positive effect on some of my sites.

For some big term's I have gone from 8 to 2 in caff serp's. This is reflective of all the work I have been doing over the past year/year's. I have 2 client's that go from 9 to 10, up to 2 in caff serps for there money terms. And these are only the ones I have been paying close attention to!

The current serp's are very stagnant I could go on and on, but yes some big changes are coming.

I am thinking it could increase my traffic by at least 35%, when your talking big terms that can mean big money ;)

Should have checked the time and date in the dream, so you could win the bet!

lol, yeah I am sure I will have another!

[johnnie]

Hmmm... Can anybody confirm to me which results are showing on 74.125.95.132, compared to 74.125.79.147?

[trakkerguy]

74.125.95.132 looks like caffeine to me.
74.125.79.147 looks like what I order at Starbucks - half-caf. Not caffeine, but different than regular serps, and closer to caffeine. Whatever that means.

[edited by: trakkerguy at 3:58 pm (utc) on Mar 12, 2010]

[johnnie]

Thanks for confirming my thoughts.

Anybody know what is going on at 74.125.79.147? The entire cluster of 74.125.79.147, 74.125.79.99 and 74.125.79.104 is showing some mighty weird results. It's not caffeine, but it doesn't look like old results either.

[gouri]

I looked at the cluster and I am seeing what you guys are seeing.

They results are not the regular SERP and they are not Caffeine but they look more similar to Caffeine than the regular SERP.

In terms of the number of competitive sites that are showing up for a seach, the number is closer to what I am seeing in the regular SERP than Caffeine.

[johnnie]

These are the results that are live for our country. And frankly, I don't like them. I want caffeine back.

[textex]

74.125.79.147, 74.125.79.99 and 74.125.79.104 all look the same to me and don't look like what I have been seeing as Caffeine.

[edited by: textex at 4:23 pm (utc) on Mar 12, 2010]

[gford]

Very interesting and thanks to the many who posted caffeine DC IPs, big help!

I find it very interesting that these results almost reflect what I have seen for months on the big words I track whilst the main old google index (whatever we are calling it) did some bizarre changes that I discussed earlier in this thread.

I am definitely seeing a lot of bouncing between the two. It has been hot and heavy for me since Sunday March 7th midday.

I do not have an explanation for the bizarre results that began to appear on that day on non-caff DCs and that bothers me..

[curioustoddler]

Has anybody checked results at google.com.au. Are they close to caffeine results?

[levo]

All of them still have months old 301'ed URLs.

[Seattle_SEM]

Results 401 - 457 of 457 from www.example.com. (1.78 seconds)

1.78 seconds - WOW!
They sure need some caffeine.