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]

[maximus12]

Hey Brinked, what proxies are you using to check this. Can you give me any good tips on which ones to use?

[brinked]

maximus, for starters you could use available web proxies. There are millions of them out there, all loaded with ads and waiting to bombard you with them!

you can just browse google through these, hit up a site that shows the sites location like ip2location to see where that proxy actually is located and do google searches from that proxy and keep a log. This would be a sloppy way of doing it, but at least its something...and free. Of course you will need to know the difference between caffeine and non caffeine serps

[multimonkey]

I have been watching these threads for a while now and have a few questions that I was wondering if I could get answered?

I'm in the UK and since the initial testing of caffeine, it was advised to get the uk version of the results to add
&gl=uk
to the query.

This would always (and has) produced different results to "non caffeine" data.

The testing methods that appear to be taking place now appear to somewhat more advanced, do any of them apply to UK data? Or is it simply a case of going directly to the datacentre ip addresses and adding the search extension?

[johnnie]

Hmm... Half-caff seems to be gone at 209.85.225.103.

74.125.79.147 is still displaying it though.

[Kelowna]

Hmm... Half-caff seems to be gone at 209.85.225.10
74.125.79.147 is still displaying it though.

johnnie,

74.125.79.147 is not used for USA serps, you can clearly see the link on the page to go to google.com, it also says Google English on the heading. If you are at a true google.com page then it will never link to google.com, what you are seeing is results meant for google.ca or some other country.

Also there is also no such thing as 1/2 caff results. You need to use a web proxy that shows USA results to see the real thing. Out of the 20 or so proxies I use I am seeing the new results on over half of them and it seems to be growing.

[gouri]

Can someone tell me how we can find web proxies to search the web?

I have looked but all I see is a way to type in web addresses, not search the web.

[Kelowna]

Can someone tell me how we can find web proxies to search the web?

I have looked but all I see is a way to type in web addresses, not search the web.

gouri,

just type in google.com for the web address, then search :-)

Also be sure to check out the ip address of the proxy to be sure they are located in the USA or you will not get the correct results.

[member22]

I think that those of you that see caffeine results or what they call Half-caff are totally dreaming... I have been looking through proxy all around the world for the last 2 weeks for my keywords and websites and see absolutely zero change in rankings...

So either I have no luck and google hasn't crawled my site yet and has crawled all of yours or you haven't check your SERP'S in 2 years;)

By the way google boys it would be nice it you started rewarding the good guys working hard everyday ( like myself ) ... because my business is seasonal and I can't wait another 6 months ... and as you all know unless you are in the first 3 results on a money making keyword on google you won't make a single dime from the internet !

[tedster]

member22, it's very possible that the SERPs you watch are the same on Caffeine and the old infrastructure. Google did have hopes that might be the case, at least for some.

[trakkerguy]

member22 - Caffeine serps are the same as regular serps for many of my keywords/niches. Yours may be unchanged by Caffeine.

Did you see any difference in your serps when G still had the Caffeine test datacenter operating?

[member22]

Trakkerguy - When google had the caffeine test datacenter operating I didn't see any change but to me it was normal.

However over the course of the last 3 months I have gotten more and more of google algorithm to rank better ( including multiplying by 3 the number of links ) and I see no reason why my ranking aren't changing other than the fact that google has installed caffeine but hasn't redone it calculations yet for re- ranking website ?

Could it be the reason... ( am I just seeing the rankings of 5 months ago but with the new caffeine infrastructure ? nothing else calculated ?

Thanks,

[pxc433]

Could some explain this to me: Am I seeing caffeine? Some aspects of this thread are difficult to follow for non-exports like myself.

We have a server hosted in Texas. So I can log into this, run firefox, and perform queries, and I have a US IP address when I do so.

1. http://74.125.95.132/search?q=widgets
2. http://www.google.com/search?q=widgets

The results I see for 1 and 2 are completely different.

Is this a result of caffeine, and is 1 caff?

[edited by: tedster at 5:41 pm (utc) on Mar 15, 2010]
[edit reason] make urls unlinked [/edit]

[Kelowna]

Could some explain this to me: Am I seeing caffeine?

74.125.95.132 is not used for USA serps, you can clearly see the link on the page to go to google.com, it also says Google English on the heading. If you are at a true google.com page then it will never link to google.com, what you are seeing is results meant for google.ca or some other country.

To see caffeine do the following...

1- search for web proxy sites
2- check the ip address of the proxy site to be sure it is USA based
3- search google from the proxy site

If the results look the same as regular google then you need to start again with a different proxy in a new location. It should not take long as I find at least 50% of the proxies I check are showing the new stuff.

[brinked]

Heres my findings for today. Nothing has changed since yesterday:

Yes means that at least 1 proxy in that city had caffeine results on it. No means that I do not find caffeine rankings in any of my proxies for that city.

Wayne, PA - YES
Dallas, TX - YES
Providence UT - NO
Walnut, CA - NO
Los Angeles, CA - NO
San Diego - NO
Woodstock, IL - YES
Arlington, IL - YES
Chicago, IL - YES
Englewood, CO - NO
Absecon, NJ - NO
New York, NY - NO
Scottsdale, AZ - YES
West Palm Beach, FL - NO
Colombus, OH - YES


These are just based on the proxies I use. Just because I said yes or no to a caffeine finding does not make it official, since as far as I can tell, caffeine is not 100% in effect in any given city or state.

[whitenight]

ok, now you're upsetting me, brinked! (in a good way)
Where have you been the last 3 years?!

Your results coincide with mine.
Now let's figure out WHY it's hitting some cities and not others.
Unlike the last Caff rollout (failed), with the spyware included, this rollout seems more sensible and spyware free, but there's still a rhyme and reason to it
and
i strongly suspect behind that door is another clue to Gorg future plans, agreed?

[brinked]

WN, I have been lurking these forums. I never really posted because at the time it was better for me to listen rather than inform.

Right now caffeine has been lifted from everywhere I can see...which is pretty normal, they will probably pop back later.

Why caffeine can be found in some cities and not others is interesting. It could be that google just decided to test in cities with predictable search habits. Cities like new york and California are areas where a lot of technical people are, a lot of SEO companies, tech firms etc. Google does not want to test caffeine on people like us, they want to test caffeine on what they consider to be the average searcher.

Google has a lot of information they use when deciding where they should test caffeine, we will never know the true reason because I highly doubt they would make this decision based on one or two factors alone.

[whitenight]

Google does not want to test caffeine on people like us, they want to test caffeine on what they consider to be the average searcher.

Right, which implies they are purposely trying to "hide" something.

My massively huge ego :) would love to say, it's simply because they don't want people like us announcing to the world, when they fudge it up, and the hows and whys, but it's gotta be something more than that, right?

Did they sneak the spyware back in, just less detectable? (not that many people noticed the first time)

Just thinking outloud this post,
but continue to keep an eye on how they roll this out.

Those "other factors" usually make themselves apparent sooner or later and can be used for SEO analysis or simply catching Gorg trying to carve out their "Big brother" empire.

[mirrornl]

Gnoothi seauton

sorry.....couldn't resist

[whitenight]

&#915;&#957;&#969;&#952;&#953; &#963;&#949;&#945;&#965;&#964;&#959;&#957;

"Know thyself"?!

Cryptic. :) But i like the code, even if i don't understand the reference.

[arizonadude]

I've seen the caf results all day today in AZ.

I'm seeing more geo targeted local maps on some terms I'm watching and they are pretty broad and have not been geo targeted before, so this is something new to the terms I watch.

[brinked]

To the people in california, or people following cali, what kind of caffeine findings have you seen recently? California is so big so its hard to get a good grasp of it, but I have not seen caffeine in LA, San Diego and Walnut.

[internetheaven]

Now let's figure out WHY it's hitting some cities and not others.

Does the pattern of cities coincide with any particular internet service provider's territory? If I worked for Google and wanted a real good test of caffeine (or any big change) I would want a data deal with an internet provider to give me all the juicy details of what the user did AFTER searching and BEFORE searching ...

... pardon me if I've misunderstood how the US system of phone lines and ISPs works. I'm from the UK, it's a little different here.

[whitenight]

No, this makes perfect sense internetheaven.

Off to the batcave to do research! :)

[1script]

< moved from another location >

Hi all,

One of those days I haven't had in years. You know, the one when you check your stats and you see a dramatic traffic drop across (almost) all your sites!

All affected sites are in different niches and as such very little or no interlinking. All sites had different standing before the trouble: some had great traffic, some not so much. Some had many incoming links, some less, some had new links added recently, some had not. Sites are evenly distributed between different servers on different IPs. Most have dedicated IPs. A couple had server issues and were down for more than 24 hours just couple days ago but most run perfectly for years. All built on the same CMS (not WP) but templates vary widely - a product of many years of disparate development.

Just about the only thing that ties them together (other than most are under the same WMT account, but even then not all are) is that they are all forums.

Am I just feeding the flames of my paranoia or some of you guys can also confirm weaker standing for forums in this new update?

I guess, I should also mention that those sites have not just slipped a couple positions down in SERPs. Great many keywords that used to be on Page 1 and bring traffic are nowhere to be found in SERPs, not even -50. However, some still rank roughly where whey have always been.

Speaking of penalties: none of the usual indicators like domain name in quotes or site:example.com type searches bring anything out of the ordinary.

So, is it Caffeine finally being digested by the system that wreaks havoc or is it another one of the proverbial trigger-happy Google interns? What do you guys think?

[edited by: tedster at 9:57 pm (utc) on Mar 15, 2010]

[brinked]

One strange thing that bothers me is that I have 6 proxies in woodstock, IL. All of them are in the same network...they are dedicated servers...and all but 1 consistently show caffeine. Why does that 1 not show caffeine!?!? I am going to do more research

[tedster]

1script - since Caffeine is only appearing in some places and not others, maybe you could look at your analytics to learn if there is any geographic correlation.

[gouri]

Does the pattern of cities coincide with any particular internet service provider's territory? If I worked for Google and wanted a real good test of caffeine (or any big change) I would want a data deal with an internet provider to give me all the juicy details of what the user did AFTER searching and BEFORE searching ...

AOL Search and Comcast Search are both showing results from Caffeine and they are both also internet service providers.

Could these two things be related?

[brinked]

im not seeing caffeine on aol or comcast ATM. I even searched them through a proxy that does see caffeine and no luck.

I have seen caffeine on comcast once when WN mentioned it. I never seen caffeine on aol. Those 2 are weird how they show for some and not others.

Since aol and comcast have never shown caffeine consistently, I doubt they are related to this caffine watch

[internetheaven]

AOL Search and Comcast Search are both showing results from Caffeine and they are both also internet service providers.

Could these two things be related?

im not seeing caffeine on aol or comcast ATM.

You searching on AOL or Comcast websites will not provide a data trail ... if you are a subscriber to AOL or Comcast however you may be seeing different results if AOL or Comcast are actually in cahoots* with Google to provide extensive user data of beginning-to-end user interaction with Caffeine.

It might help if the people that reported seeing caffeine on AOL or Comcast confirmed if they were subscribers to that ISP.

*Disclaimer: I'm not saying they are, this is just a hypothetical as to the pattern of the current caffeine roll-out.

[vstevens]

Whitenight,
How can we recognize indications of subtle spyware? Also, what was caffeine showing last time out of the box when it wad obvious? Thanks.